Twilight Forums

Ryme, would you sue me if I made a bunch of MMO characters named "PLAY TWILIGHT HEROES!!!!"?

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TheK3vin- #325

http://soundcloud.com/thek3vin

I wouldn't sue you, no. However, I don't think that's a good kind of advertising, and thus I would discourage it. It's far more likely to annoy people than to make them intrigued, and if they come here it's going to be to complain or call me or the game or the players jerks, mostly.

Well I was kind of kidding, but I suppose I'll make sure not to do that.

In slightly related news, I updated the Twilight Heroes thread in the KoL forums. You guys really should post your support there if you haven't already, it's a great way to gain publicity with a big group people who we all know enjoy the genre. The thread has 2,000 views or so and 60 posts already.

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TheK3vin- #325

http://soundcloud.com/thek3vin

saw it and did.

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The boat oar. Chuck Norris' one true weakness.

Or you could make dumb ads like Ask Jeeves.

That's right kids, go vandalize your school with "Twilight Heroes ate China" or something.

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It was no time at all, for you.

Wake up and smell the ashes.

i have no school, but i'm putting that somewhere.

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The boat oar. Chuck Norris' one true weakness.

Ive made a TH page on wiki, but the Mods always deleted it for copyright infringment, even if all i right is 'Twilight heroes is a free to play browser game'.

Ive tried, but sorry i cant be of any actual help.

I'm actually working on a page on Wikipedia for Twilight Heroes, mostly by ganking the format for the KOL page and replacing info as necessary. I'd appreciate any resources you guys could send me so I could attribute properly, and I'd be more than glad to show it to Ryme before I posted it.

Honestly, until I've been around for half a year and half thirty thousand more players, it's probably going to get deleted constantly until someone becomes convinced TH is "important" enough to be listed. I think this is a case where spamming them at this point is only likely to make them upset. Rather than spend a lot of time ticking them off, I think our efforts should be focused elsewhere.

Yes, at the moment we should be focused on ticking off the player base, then move on to other people across the internet.

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TheK3vin- #325

http://soundcloud.com/thek3vin

How about a banner ad / thread on large forums like SomethingAwful? That sure kickstarted KoL's boom.

*volunteers someone else to make a TH flier*

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Advertising is obviously the easiest way to get the word out. You want to shy away from rewards for referring new players because of the inherent "click here"edness you'll get. Also, Wikipedia is NOT worth your time as an advertising source, people don't generally go to wikipedia looking for games.

I think we need to start with created advertisements, there are probably a few players here who can come up with visual ads that are quite nice, we could work on some tag lines which work as captions and quotes/links for signatures on forums.

"It's not an ordinary game, but we're not ordinary heroes."
"You're in for one wild night."
"Does your boss know you go out every night dressed in your pajamas and fight crime? No? Good."
"Caffeine good, Work bad."
"Ever wish your could quit your job and fight crime for a living? We're halfway there!"
"Did you know it's really cool to fly? Wanna find out?"


But the images are much more important, and I can't work on those. Having ads available makes advertising that much easier, and having an engaged player base working on it is only a good thing.

Edit: Oh, and if you're aiming for hero styled sites to advertise on:
http://www.evil-comic.com/

Seriously, this topic needs to be thought about. Ryme, I heard 3 sent you some fliers, anything going on with that?

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What ever happened to those? Did they get posted anywhere? I've never heard anyone claim they came to the game because of the posters, and I wanted to see if they were effective before spreading them around.

I never actually got a copy of the final version I believe. I think 3 had sent them to you so you could post them up somewhere. So I don't think anyone has posted any yet.

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Oh, gosh. Sorry. I thought he would have talked to some folks and posted a few somewhere. Haven't seen him in a while, though.

Here's the link:

http://www.the-three.net/documents/wanted_mick.pdf

No offence to the 3, it is a great poster. I'm just worried that if people who have never experienced the game see it they still won't know what it is about. Yes fighting crime is a part of it, but there is so much more. It has alot of humour, pop-culture references, comic references, etc. I think if the poster would cover more aspects of the game people will get a better idea of what it is about and interest will be sparked quicker.

That Flyer looks really cool. If i saw that, i would definitely at least visit the website.

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I am Whuknose, all your steak bow before me.

http://www.coolavatars.net/avatars/24/commentgasm.gif

Huh, I haven't checked the forums in a while, so I didn't even know this was being discussed. The responses already seem mixed, which is to be expected, so I'd like to explain why I did it the way I did.

On the topic of how well the poster encapsulates the many facets of TH gameplay & style, you're absolutely right, mischal. The flyer doesn't hit on everything that the game has to offer. It was a calculated decision to do so, though, and there were two primary reasons for it.

1) Practicality -- it's just a 8.5"x11" page, and there is only so much that can be squeezed in. If I tried to to make it cover every base, it would look insanely busy and certainly not very attractive to the target audience.
2) Virality -- Whuk's response sums up the intended effect of the flyer perfectly, and it's the same response I've heard from most non-TH players I've shown it to. The idea isn't necessarily to tell people *exactly* what the game is. The idea is to create a buzz; to spark interest in the website without explicitly saying what it actually is. That's why they go to the site: to find out what the deal is & what's being advertised.

That said, I do think that I managed to work in allusions to many aspects of the game even with the virally minimalistic approach I chose to take: crime fighting, humor, superhero-ish stuff, science fiction etc.

At the end of the day, though, it's not the end-all be-all of TH advertising. It's just one possible flyer that's available for you to print out & post if you feel so inclined. By no means is this the only approach to take, and personally I don't want it to be the *only* flyer. I'd love to see some other members of the community take a crack at designing some sort of poster/flyer. The more diverse & varied, the more effective a "street team" campaign will be.

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Top Web Games seems to have free listings. (At least as far as I checked in the registration process since you have to the be the owner of the site/game to actually create the listing) and I know they sort by category and a number of useful filters when searching for games...

I'm working on some banner ads. I've got a couple going.





I think the first is okay, but it doesn't quite get the humor across, and it also fails to mention the game is free to play, which I think will have a lot of appeal. Or that it's an RPG.

The second is better, in part because it mentions the free and the RPG. It's also a bit more humorous, though at least one person has suggested it may not be clear from the line that the pajamas are your starting equipment, and may lose something.

Any feedback is welcome.

Slight reorganization of the text. Funnier?

One more. Took out the what are you waiting for, made the text a little bigger, easier to read, less clutter. Is that better, or does the call to action help?

In-chat consensus was with #3, so I'm going to try that in a few places, see how it works. For accuracy of results, I request that current players of Twilight don't "test" the links or anything like that if you run across them.

Interesting old thread from KoL that was dug up. Simple posters with tear tags for people to post in likely places. I know The_3 did a poster for us. I don't know if that one ever saw any place on the real world. I wonder if something simpler, like the ones here, and with the functionality of tear sheets as done here, might be a good thing to try?

http://forums.kingdomofloathing.com:808 ... hp?t=84983

Couldn't hurt.

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The churches are empty / The priest has gone home / And we are left standing / Together alone
--October Project: "Dark Time"

i like the banners, but just something to bring more people maybe from google is putting a side text box like the beta testing box on the homepage that says its a free browser-based rpg like in the banners.

lots of people (myself included) search under those terms, and it really helps to have it on the homepage. i remember when forumwarz first came out and it had those words on the homepage and was ranked really high up in google for browser-based, free, and rpg. it had like 30000 in its first month. (but got a little boring for me so i quit)

A couple of notes:

1) I've been exploring Project Wonderful, and after the first week it looks like it's going to be effective. Though she hasn't logged in for quite a while, (in Dumbledore voice) ten silver stars to Huffle--er, Rantinan for being the first to suggest it!

2) Twilight Heroes has been listed on Top Web Games. Anybody who feels so inclined is encouraged to register a vote for the game, so that people will know how good it is. http://www.topwebgames.com

3) I'd like to start working on some kind of physical Twilight paraphernalia. I'm thinking maybe a T-shirt or two, and perhaps doing it as a contest. Get the gears churning in your heads, and keep an eye out for a thread about it in a day or two.

Sole legend: points taken. I did have that information on the What Is Twilight Heroes link, which is itself pretty prominent, but I've moved up the "free, browser-based" information on that page, as well as adding a line to the home page.

Also took the opportunity to add some randomized humorous taglines to the top of the page, and to do a little visual cleanup.

Heh. I suggested Top Web Games ages ago. Can I have some silver too?

Seriously though, if you really want to pimp it, you should be able to include a link that will take players directly to the captcha for TH.

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The churches are empty / The priest has gone home / And we are left standing / Together alone
--October Project: "Dark Time"

If top web games brings in a bunch of new players, I'll reward the recommendation, sure.

I suggested Twilight Heroes to memepool.com, Little Fluffy Industries, Ricecop!, and 1km1kt.net.

once i get back from my vaca i'll look for more. hope these helpes!

How about a referral system? With certain rewards for referrals or just a competitive referral system?

Eh. Referrals promote abuse.

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Vote for TH on global rankings!

Yeah, I've shot down referrals a couple of times in this thread alone. Just encourages creating tons of junk accounts, and then leads into the temptation of multi abuse, perhaps. Also, someone inevitably pulls annoying stunts to trick people into following their links, like misleading sig lines and such.

It would be nice, because I'd love to reward people who genuinely do spread word about the game, but it's not reliable to try to track.

Bump. Banners are still welcome, as are ideas for physical products and/or street team formations.

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Vote for TH on global rankings!

Offer unpaid internahips...Yes I hate my job.






-WB

Unpaid? I don't think you'd be able to leave your job then.

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Vote for TH on global rankings!

For gleet justice!