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Sites you visit
We're steadily moving towards running a lot of ads again, and I'd love to hear what your favorite websites are (since you are, collectively, our target audience), particularly as involves games, roleplaying, fantasy, or anything somewhat related to Achaea's subject matter.
Thanks!
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Comments
Slashdot.org
Just kidding. I think a lot of us are decently involved in a niche group, so I think something that has a lot of indie coverage would be good. Cinemablend.com/games (Gamerblend) and Rockpapershotgun.com are both pretty good bets, and would likely have people interested in trying other games. Don't know how much they take on adverts though.
It's hard to say, now that I am older but I do recall seeing a lot of ads on webcomic stuff. Vgcats, ctrl-alt-del. That's actually what drew me in as a kid.
I've always really found that the people that will play muds though, are the ones that are going to play muds. It's hard to convert people that only play other games. I thought of trying to steal a slot on Mobafire for the leagues players.. but people who are really invested in MOBA stuff will really just likely play more MOBA games. I dunno, I'm no high tier marketing analysis guy.
Slightly off topic, but I think getting an interview or two with gaming magazines or something would also help increase player interest. As many people have said, they heard about achaea through articles on gaming sites.
I think it also could be worth while looking into stuff like fanfiction websites. People that enjoy reading/writing and lean towards a fantasy base. Sorry I didn't have many personal sites to provide, but hopefully something seems helpful!
Also reddit, and various webcomics: Gunnerkrigg Court, Doctor McNinja, Lovecraft Is Missing, Girl Genius, Wonderella, Bad Machinery. Many webcomics run advertisements with Project Wonderful, an advertising service that tends towards tasteful ads, and seems targeted towards the young-adult-disposable-income crowd, but the details of how it works (of which I have only fleeting understanding) may not mesh with your business plan.
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I learned about Achaea way back in the day when I used to frequent this site called BYOND(www.byond.com). It's a site where you can play games, and program your own games in a simplified but still pretty complex coding environment. It was a very niche site with a lot of creative games. In particular it used to have several tabletop roleplaying games. From there I met a guy that later introduced me to MUDs. First Icesus, which we played for maybe a week, and later the so-called best MUD on the market - Achaea. BYOND is a much smaller community nowadays, but it looks like there's still a fair amount of concurrent players there(4k when I looked). I know that one of the most popular games there(which I still pop in every blue moon to play) is a largely role-play based game.
I think the problem with advertising is that 95% of games that I see advertised on site ads are garbage. I used to be optimistic in seeing those ads. "Hey, that looks cool", but it's just another one of those low-end cash cow games. On the surface, Achaea probably looks very similar to one of these games, and with just a quick onceover, a prospective new player won't be able to tell that Achaea is any deeper or more interesting than the others. I know that the first thing I do when sizing up a new game, especially a game that advertises itself as free, is search their site for pay options. If other people are like me, they're going to get to Achaea's options and see "$599 credit package" and run for the hills. The business model definitely is a huge factor in what games I choose to play or not play. It's pretty tough to diffrentiate the crap games from ones that are promising, because they all promise the same things on their introduction pages.
That said, I check in pretty regularly at Walky webcomics like Dumbing of Age and Shortpacked!. Also others like Giant in the Playground and SNAFU (yay Grimtales). Maybe you'll want to consider ads on GameFAQs as well.
http://www.androidcentral.com/
http://www.metacritic.com/
http://translate.google.se/?hl=sv&tab=wT
http://www.deviantart.com/
http://dictionary.reference.com/
http://www.rollspel.nu/forum/
https://www.youtube.com/
http://thepiratebay.gl/
I guess those are the more frequent ones.
I think the ads are a good idea, but ads tend to bring in a certain type of player who saw the ad. I'm sure there are some amazing people on all these sites, even 4chan (RIP @Aardvark), but it's exactly the kind of player who responds to an ad on a whim who isn't going to stick around with a game like Achaea. I click on ads sometimes when I feel like wasting 5 minutes, not so much when I want a hobby that will EAT MY LIFE. You'll get some who move beyond that, but not many I reckon.
I came to Achaea when I was already looking for something to do on-line. I was already a fantasy nerd with some spare time looking for a free game I could play when I wasn't at home with access to more sophisticated things like porn or an xbox or Battlestar Galactica.
My internet knowledge is like zero, and I don't go to any of those hentai sites that @Skye linked to, but the way that I came to Achaea was pretty much by googling on-line, free roleplaying games and then going from there. I think the adverts more likely to generate genuine new players are the ones that we could get somehow to people who are already looking for something like Achaea (or maybe even a graphical version) but have never heard of it. Is there a way to reflect that somehow in an ad? Something that triggers on a very specific google search maybe? (Although I have no idea how prohibitively expensive that would be).
I'd be very wary of trying to match Achaea's immediate, marketing appeal with that of the disposable graphic time-wasting games (I worry that the new logo and some of the previous ad-work tries and plays on that level), and go with something that speaks to Achaea's strengths - depths, complexity, player interaction, "your are your own lead character in a novel of your own writing" type of stuff. Most people who click on game ads are looking for a doughnut, a sugar rush. Achaea isn't a sugar rush, it's, um... a 5 course banquet for a very refined palette (this metaphor needs work). How you reflect that in an ad either, I don't realy know. Helpful, huh?