Post by Judge Sam on Sept 27, 2007 6:51:11 GMT -5
Well... here we are. 4 Days before applications close. The application period is always incredibly stressful for me... even for the tenth time as this one is. There will be periods as long as 3 or 4 days where I check my e-mail and no applications come in... and I wonder if any will. Applications really don't speed up near the end so I don't expect a bunch to come in.
It really wasn't until a few days ago that I was thinking Spies 4 was even going to happen. Every game is not guaranteed - without enough interest it just wouldn't happen. I really didn't think I'd have enough, but fortunately there has been sufficient interest to begin.
My previous 9 attempts at advertising had been the following:
- Post an advertisement at some central ORG places (FGC, ORG, altreality, etc)
- Put it in my live journal, AIM, personal accs.
- IM a few people.
And that's about it. Advertising was talking to people and posting announcements in a few central places. For most of my games I didn't even know a lot of the central places where people posted. I don't know how I got so many applications for that. Especially for Survivor: Wonderland, which I think was the most at around 36. (except all-stars which had like 45-ish).
With Spies 3 I started to advertise a little more heavily because I stopped caring about bothering people hahaha. =) Lost that stigma of sending unwanted messages.
This time around I set upon an unprecedented campaign, doing at least 3-4 times the amount of advertising I've done. I found so many more places and people to send messages to. Here's what I did:
- All the standard stuff.
- Posted it at a bunch of mafia / ORG boards, some with tiny amounts of traffic, some general mafia places where it got deleted quickly I bet haha. Everywhere I could find.
- PM'ed 20-40 people from 4 main Mafia places. I found everyone's name I could that had posted in a Mafia thread and PM'ed them with the advertisement.
- Made friends with a few people in mafia communities from spies 3 which helped bring in interest.
- Worked with Facebook Mafia which has like 40,000 people who use the app. Initially this was disappointing, but once I started privately messaging people and talking with them one on one about it I got some more interest.
- Developed specific messages for each place of mafia designed to appeal to who plays there.
- Sent out emails / IMs to past survivor / mafia players.
- Worked with a few friends to gather more people.
I did all this and I still had about the same level of interest as I did with Spies 3 in which I didn't do this haha (maybe because that was during the summer). Anyway, it is kind of disappointing that my massive, massive amounts of advertising only resulted in an average amount.
That's not to say I'm not glad to have all these people wanting to play because I am. It's just... with 5 years of experience hosting creative, intense, loved, reputable games it shouldn't have to be this hard lol. It's not fair that people post crap advertisements with no experience and get like 30+ for survivor/mole games.
I still think I'm doing something wrong not to get more applications. Cause I know that tons of people have visited the site from my advertising, but that's not turning into applications. Not sure why that is. Might be because it is difficult to explain what exactly Spies "is."
Yeah so... average level of interest, but at least the game will go on. Spent so much time advertising and stuff. Now it's time to start working on the game aspects again. I really need to write more Imprisonments. Those are the mind-wrenching things that get me agitated during the game lol. I'd rather spend more time reading confessionals, planning schedules, planning / writing up Exiles, etc.
So I've got to do that. Here's to hoping Spies 4 will be as successful as ever. =)
It really wasn't until a few days ago that I was thinking Spies 4 was even going to happen. Every game is not guaranteed - without enough interest it just wouldn't happen. I really didn't think I'd have enough, but fortunately there has been sufficient interest to begin.
My previous 9 attempts at advertising had been the following:
- Post an advertisement at some central ORG places (FGC, ORG, altreality, etc)
- Put it in my live journal, AIM, personal accs.
- IM a few people.
And that's about it. Advertising was talking to people and posting announcements in a few central places. For most of my games I didn't even know a lot of the central places where people posted. I don't know how I got so many applications for that. Especially for Survivor: Wonderland, which I think was the most at around 36. (except all-stars which had like 45-ish).
With Spies 3 I started to advertise a little more heavily because I stopped caring about bothering people hahaha. =) Lost that stigma of sending unwanted messages.
This time around I set upon an unprecedented campaign, doing at least 3-4 times the amount of advertising I've done. I found so many more places and people to send messages to. Here's what I did:
- All the standard stuff.
- Posted it at a bunch of mafia / ORG boards, some with tiny amounts of traffic, some general mafia places where it got deleted quickly I bet haha. Everywhere I could find.
- PM'ed 20-40 people from 4 main Mafia places. I found everyone's name I could that had posted in a Mafia thread and PM'ed them with the advertisement.
- Made friends with a few people in mafia communities from spies 3 which helped bring in interest.
- Worked with Facebook Mafia which has like 40,000 people who use the app. Initially this was disappointing, but once I started privately messaging people and talking with them one on one about it I got some more interest.
- Developed specific messages for each place of mafia designed to appeal to who plays there.
- Sent out emails / IMs to past survivor / mafia players.
- Worked with a few friends to gather more people.
I did all this and I still had about the same level of interest as I did with Spies 3 in which I didn't do this haha (maybe because that was during the summer). Anyway, it is kind of disappointing that my massive, massive amounts of advertising only resulted in an average amount.
That's not to say I'm not glad to have all these people wanting to play because I am. It's just... with 5 years of experience hosting creative, intense, loved, reputable games it shouldn't have to be this hard lol. It's not fair that people post crap advertisements with no experience and get like 30+ for survivor/mole games.
I still think I'm doing something wrong not to get more applications. Cause I know that tons of people have visited the site from my advertising, but that's not turning into applications. Not sure why that is. Might be because it is difficult to explain what exactly Spies "is."
Yeah so... average level of interest, but at least the game will go on. Spent so much time advertising and stuff. Now it's time to start working on the game aspects again. I really need to write more Imprisonments. Those are the mind-wrenching things that get me agitated during the game lol. I'd rather spend more time reading confessionals, planning schedules, planning / writing up Exiles, etc.
So I've got to do that. Here's to hoping Spies 4 will be as successful as ever. =)