A demo, with one map (hear me out).
finicky
Join Date: 2012-10-30 Member: 164613Members
Join Date: 2012-10-30 Member: 164613Members
Ns2 has nothing to hide, it is an incredibly good game.
NS2 does not bank on a large marketing budget to convince people they need to buy the game (letting people try your game and decide it sucks if you put 50million in marketing is against a publisher's interest).
Constant stream of indy games (and ironically the awesome price tag) make people skeptical about giving NS2 a chance. (afterall the bulletpoints are scary with the whole time investment to learn the game part :p)
Do what cs did 12+ years ago, do what battlefield 1942 did when it was unknown, release a demo (demo in name, trial version in nature) that gives people access to one map and both sides, no restrictions.
The only thing that stops this game from exploding in popularity (I believe) is that people aren't experiencing what it is like.
The 140k sales figure (as nice as that may be for an indy game in the first week) broke my heart.
I'm happy Uwe made some money on the game now but it's a real shame that more people aren't playing it. It's way too good.
I've showed ns2 to everyone I know that plays games, but everyone is skeptical and hard to convince to give it a chance. I remember it being a lot easier to get all my friends to play bf1942 way back, when I could just link them to a demo to sell them on the premise. I've only managed to get 3 people to buy ns2 to play with me, it was so much easier with bf1942 with the demo.
This is coming from someone who ignored ns1 (even though it was free, heh) in a time where I already had so much to play. A regrettable choice in hindsight.
Xcom for example is selling awesome amounts (consitently in the top sellers for weeks now), I'm confident that every single one of those people would get their jollies from playing NS2 as well (similar rewards in a way), if only they would give it a chance.
Not many devs have ever been able to come up with something of this level of quality, ever.
Your game has so much potential to be the next recognised all time classic ('dear Uwe, please don't sell out once you become big' letter soon to follow:p) , don't let the flame burn itself out. Show it off, let people sample, the quality will do the rest (if it doesn't the pc community is already lost).
I'm not being a negative nancy here, word of mouth will carry your game a long way, but more people need to try NS2.
NS2 does not bank on a large marketing budget to convince people they need to buy the game (letting people try your game and decide it sucks if you put 50million in marketing is against a publisher's interest).
Constant stream of indy games (and ironically the awesome price tag) make people skeptical about giving NS2 a chance. (afterall the bulletpoints are scary with the whole time investment to learn the game part :p)
Do what cs did 12+ years ago, do what battlefield 1942 did when it was unknown, release a demo (demo in name, trial version in nature) that gives people access to one map and both sides, no restrictions.
The only thing that stops this game from exploding in popularity (I believe) is that people aren't experiencing what it is like.
The 140k sales figure (as nice as that may be for an indy game in the first week) broke my heart.
I'm happy Uwe made some money on the game now but it's a real shame that more people aren't playing it. It's way too good.
I've showed ns2 to everyone I know that plays games, but everyone is skeptical and hard to convince to give it a chance. I remember it being a lot easier to get all my friends to play bf1942 way back, when I could just link them to a demo to sell them on the premise. I've only managed to get 3 people to buy ns2 to play with me, it was so much easier with bf1942 with the demo.
This is coming from someone who ignored ns1 (even though it was free, heh) in a time where I already had so much to play. A regrettable choice in hindsight.
Xcom for example is selling awesome amounts (consitently in the top sellers for weeks now), I'm confident that every single one of those people would get their jollies from playing NS2 as well (similar rewards in a way), if only they would give it a chance.
Not many devs have ever been able to come up with something of this level of quality, ever.
Your game has so much potential to be the next recognised all time classic ('dear Uwe, please don't sell out once you become big' letter soon to follow:p) , don't let the flame burn itself out. Show it off, let people sample, the quality will do the rest (if it doesn't the pc community is already lost).
I'm not being a negative nancy here, word of mouth will carry your game a long way, but more people need to try NS2.
Comments
A far better solution I feel is a free weekend. That gives everyone a taste of the game if they wish to try it out and it also leaves them hungry for more if they liked what they saw. It worked for me with CS:GO, it'll work with NS2 too.
A far better solution I feel is a free weekend. That gives everyone a taste of the game if they wish to try it out and it also leaves them hungry for more if they liked what they saw. It worked for me with CS:GO, it'll work with NS2 too.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
History has proven this to be false...
Believe it or not, when bf1942 released noone had heard of dice, and the game had quite a slow start. Battlefield became big through word of mouth, nothing else.
Nothing stopped people from playing just the demo (I believe it had 2 maps out of 14, maybe just one, wake island the most popular map was one of them) , and some did (demo servers were up for years) but since it was actually a good game people wanted more.
It helped tremendously to advertise the game and get people interested, people who then went and told their friends who then told their friends.
Uwe has a good game on their hands, they have nothing to hide, the more people see and experience this game the (exponentially) much more they are bound to sell.
Everyone who knows about ns2 and wants it already has it... everyone who likes it will want the full game to play all maps (it costs a measly 20 euros).
As long as they make demo servers seperate (like bf1942 did) there is nothing to lose for anyone.
And yeah, a free weekend would be nice (though I've never once bought a game based on a free weekend:p , if anything a free weekend is a way for people to get their fill and not have to buy it).
They should instead do a free weekend on steam, believe it or not that brings in a lot of player and sales. There is a reason Valve does it so often.
Steam didn't exist when BF1942 existed. Like RMJ mentioned, a lot of companies within Steam has great sales because of free weekend.
Honestly the only way to go is either a free weekend or a trial version where it's limited to time played, not a single map. This solution can be abused if not set up right, so free weekend is probably the best bet.
This.
Although the performance issues could scare away a lot of people.
I personally do not want hats and Russian 8 year old's trying to command over a mic or simply people who speak no English on every single server including their own.
We are not suggesting that the game goes F2P, only to have a free weekend. The game is F2P for that weekend only, so everyone that doesn't have the game has a chance to try it out. After the weekend the game is no longer F2P and anyone that's hooked and wants to play more has to buy the game.
Although the performance issues could scare away a lot of people.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Would you prefer people to be tricked into buying the game? People deserve to be able to make a fair assessment.
Nope. Towards the end of the Beta when people were still making baseless claims that performance would improve, I tried to tell them to be more honest about that since it would be a consumer protection issue.
What I meant was if NS2 was to have a drastic performance increase (maybe if they re-implemented LUA-JIT) after the free weekend, people who had a bad experience during the free weekend would have already dismissed the game and probably wouldn't hear about the performance fixes.
Making a one map demo would require a tremendous amount of work.