Free Credit for advertising

So I came across some coupon for free credit for advertising. I think that some Devs can use them to advertise for Zero-k a bit.

I know that it is better to save for the steam release but these are limited time only so Best use them now.

Beside other people can use them for their own web site as well.


http://adbounds.com/umhost.asp
http://blog.adstage.io/2015/01/05/new-to-bing-ads-get-400-in-free-credit-with-adstage/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141201035307-53078510-2000-worth-free-pay-per-click-ppc-advertising-credits
http://www.minterest.org/free-pay-per-click-advertising-credits/
http://tools.seobook.com/ppc-tools/free-ppc-ad-coupons.html
http://www.startupremarkable.com/hustlers-guide-1420-free-ad-credit
https://www.rewardli.com/offers/2106-bing-yahoo-search-advertising-free-credit-coupon-code
https://www.imsmb.com/100-free-advertising-credit/
http://clairepells.com/50-dollars-free-credit-facebook-ads/
http://www.ppcian.com/grow-your-business-free-100-admedia-credit/

Disclaimer: I haven't use any of them and it seem like they overlapped a fair bit so use with caution

I would avoid all advertising (other than word-of-mouth) until the game is sufficiently polished to be attractive to typical new players rather than as off-putting as it is now.

Word-of-mouth is effective even at this stage because the person you're talking to is much more likely than others to be interested in trying Zero-K given your personal recommendation.

Advertising to a general audience at this stage is counter-productive. The average person will give Zero-K a brief try and then quickly abandon it, and then will never try it again. Whereas that same person will be much more likely to stick with the game long enough to actually appreciate and enjoy it if we wait until we have a much better new-user experience than we do right now.

A small marketing campaign might be sensible even at this point, just as an experiment. For one, it would give us some experience in running marketing campaigns. And second, we could get some data on what our retention rate is like and what factors are the strongest influence in our low retention rate. But even running a small campaign will require someone who can actively manage it and commit some serious time and attention to it.

I encourage anyone who thinks otherwise to prove me wrong by running a successful marketing campaign.

I'll throw in $100 towards the effort so there's actually a budget to work with.

CrazyEddie
I'll assume some advertising is better than no advertising at any point. afterall it's "free" [except for time and effort to familiarise with the system, which we would have to do at some point anyway]

quote: I know that it is better to save for the steam release but these are limited time only so Best use them now.

quote: Advertising to a general audience at this stage is counter-productive. ... A small marketing campaign might be sensible even at this point, just as an experiment. ...

uhm so are we doing it or not?

i have never on purpose clicked an online-ad.

quote: On the other hand, are people who can't install AdBlock able to install ZK? :D

Ideally the installer would be sane.

quote: Do you really fear that people who see this advertisment AND try the game with negative impressions are the same people who will see the steam advertisment and then don't try it anymore because they have already tested it before even though they would have liked it then?

Yes. I am very confident that anyone who tries ZK and finds it lacking now will not even bother trying it again when it comes out on Steam. I also expect that they will in many cases share their opinion with their friends who see it on steam and thereby dissuade their friends from trying it as well.

"Hey, look, a new free RTS came out on Steam!"
"Oh, I tried that a while ago. It was crap. I couldn't even figure out how to start a game."
"Oh, okay. Never mind then. Hey, look, a new free platformer came out on Steam!"

quote: There are so many people that this portion will be low.

It's true that the number of people reached by a small advertising campaign will be much smaller than the number of people reached by a Steam release. That just means that the damage done by advertising too soon will be small. But even better than that would be doing no damage at all.

quote: Stop repeating this line please !! It is not off-putting for me at least, and it sure isn't for potential new players.

I repeat it because I believe it's true. Of course it's not off-putting for you, or for the handful of other players that we've managed to attract and retain DESPITE the hideously poor new-player experience. I believe it is very off-putting for the great majority of potential new players that we could otherwise attract and retain.

If you believe otherwise, please step up and run a small marketing campaign to attract and retain new players. I'll contribute some funding for it if you do.

quote: poor new-player experience (poor in what way? You've got an auto-installer and then ZKL downloads everything that is needed. How easier could it be frankly??

It's poor in every way imaginable.

• install often fails. See multiple threads about the issues.
• there are no tutorials even though the UI is rich to the point of bloat and there are many complex mechanics.
• ZKL is a shitty glorified irc client. I dare you to find the skirmish button (hard mode: in less than 10s like in any proper game; easy mode: at all).
• the campaign is not what the average porcnab expects. [Spoiler]
  Despite evolving comms being a "major" feature loved by noobs, the campaign boi has no proper progression (in the sense that you get a set of modules which is fairly random, not monotonically more powerful over time, and not customizable). No unit progression either, it keeps at low-mid density. You never get to make a Bertha or any strider, and you always have just 1 or 2 facs unlocked. The journals effectively don't exist due to hard access. It only offers a handful of text lines about each of new units introduced in each mission. It's fairly difficult to find the actual campaign UI instead of individual missions. Individual missions are mostly random unmanaged crap.
• ZKL is shit and there are no tutorials.
• many people don't want MP (and some don't want MP before SP) so combined with the above (ultra-terrible SP) you lose out on a huge portion of people.
• no proper way to control your own MP room. You can do "!map red comet" but a nub won't know either about the !map command nor about the names of good maps. People keep asking how to add a bot or control boxes.
• ZKL is shit and there are no tutorials.
• if you instead join a public room it takes a lot of time to get a match going due to random chat and especially due to voting on irrelevant crap which the newbie doesn't even understand.
• the game then starts. Except it doesn't because you are on ATI and graphics are broken.
• most games are in a retarded 10v10 environment where a nab can't learn for shit, only annoys the pros, is completely powerless and likely to get called a lobster.
• ZKL is shit and there are no tutorials.

Did I mention ZKL is shit and there are no tutorials? Check out what the negative reviews of Evo are about to see why it's so important.

@Connectable define me success. For example I would say that if ZK would have a playerbase comparable to FAF or Istrolid I would deem to be a huge success for Zero-k. 200 players playing at all time? Sign me up scotty!

What ZK needs is a decent playerbase and this could be acheived only by making the initial experience less shitty and the game itself more attractive (it looks like a game from 10 years ago at best).

I don't need thousands of players. I don't need esports in ZK. Heck I don't really need a competetive scene for the game. What I want is to find a 1v1 opponent within a reasonable time of 3 minutes. I want to have more people playing Zero-K no matter how it is acheived whether it is from Steam or some other place.

quote: These things will all get resolved. When they do, that will be the time to do a real marketing campaign.

quote: I think I've heard that line for literally 8+ years now. It's funny to see it again.

IIRC problems don't just "get resolved". It's work. It takes time and effort.
It's overly positive to say "it will be done one day" since it might as well never be the case since.
The balance of the development team is negative. There are more devs that leave the project than come to pick up the work. The latest addition to the development team is Sprung and at the same time it lost at least 2 team members: xponen and Saktoth (not to mention the hiatus of Licho @KingRaptor and CarRepairer).
The current dev team consist of:
GoogleFrog who is basically the lead of the project and does all the heavy lifting.
Sprung that goes all around fixing things and now doing all around things as well.
Anarchid who mostly makes random stuff he likes to do at the moment.
@KingRaptor who once 3 months fixes his campaign missions and sometimes adds a new one.
Licho who shows up sometimes to talk and fixes infrastructure things and works on the new lobby.
Shadowfury333 who does some maintanace work from time to time and uprades some UI widgets.

From all 6 only 2 of them are doing their updates regularly and then 3 of them do barely anything. I would not say that I see ZK future to be particularly bright if nobody will pick up the torch and start contributing to ZK. Time is not on "our" side.

Oh and I don't mean any disrespect towards the less active devs. I certainly appriciate the work you have done to ZK. I'm just stating the fact that ZK needs more development power to secure the future of the project.

quote: the campaign is not what the average porcnab expects.

Really? Last time I played through some campaign levels, I only beat half of them by going full porcnab...

quote: ZKL is shit and there are no tutorials.

I am (perhaps baselessly) hopeful about the lobby situation. A tutorial bears some thinking about.