Starbound preview at Insomnia Gaming Festival

This is another topic that i'm pretty... opinionated about. Luckily it can be summed up in one sentence: The hype or advertisement the youtubers will attract will be no less if they put it out after everyone else got their copies too as opposed to an early copy.

 

I'm not angry.
I'm a Misanthropist. Means that I hate/dis-trust Humanity.
In the case of the YouTubers, I just don't think that It will bring good publicity to the game. Some people won't play games because a certain YouTuber has played it, stuff like that.
I'm not angry, just suspicious.
Also, I'm not really a big fan of them myself, but couldn't care less about whether they play it or not. I'ts just that sometimes, the best way is just to let the community pass it through word of mouth, and then other will join, and do the same.
Apologies if I came across as angry.

 

Why do so many people try to put so much pressure on the devs? I know most of you don't have bad intensions, but you just get half-blinded in your need to play the game. These are human beings and they are experienced in what they are doing. It is THEIR project, they can delay it as much as they want if they think it benefits the overall experience. When I see people saying that they are disappointed or demaning a roadmap update or whatever...I don't understand it. If they would feel like it was right to release this stuff, they would certainly do it.

 

Agreed.
But, the attention the youtuber will get will be less in comparison to those who got the earlier access (its like why would someone watch x's intro video of Starbound if they already heard about from y's video, that came 3 months earlier than the rest of the youtubers). Of course the developers will be fine no matter which choice they make in regards to whom gets what earlier.

 

Question: After 57,000+ people have preordered the game, is it possible that we've sort of plateaued on the efficacy of word-of-mouth marketing? I found out about Starbound from another Terraria player. I imagine the people on this forum have similar stories. There hasn't been a ton of "official" marketing for Starbound yet. I just figured as we got closer to release that there would be more Starbound marketing through established channels. It's an honest question, not some sort of attack.

 

Because they told us we would get a roadmap update at a certain date, and we never did.

 

What i'm saying is give everyone the game at the same time. It's about the game, not the youtubers...

 

Yes, but there are reasons to that I am sure. Do you think they delayed it to trick us? To make us angry? No, they have a limited amount of time everyday to get stuff done. Updating the roadmap takes time away from actually developing the game AND from their free time they could spend hanging out with friends or whatever. We are not entitled to anything, they are human beings and not robots to serve our will.

 

Ah, well, when you said that you would be back once the fire cooled down, I took that as your anger.

 

I have to commend the team for having daily updates- especially during such a busy time.

It used to be really hard to predict how well Starbound is coming along but these past few months have been great with having updates, Bartwe's streams and more...

Tiy, you say everything helps, so I'm hoping maybe I could give a few hints about "spreading the word?"
As someone going into advertising, I would agree that promoting/advertising the game is equally as important as having the community spread the word. I'd also like to recommend not only attending gaming festivals but to really go out there and maybe try to create some creative or ambient adverts around cities/towns. It can be relatively cheap will definitely gain attention/spreading the word very, very quickly.

Here is what Game of Thrones have done recently:


Also Direct Mail is another good advertising method as it's cheap and you can be as creative as you want with it. (See how cute the thief is?!) Only problem is you'd have to have some idea of who to send to but this can be done by setting up a competition at the game festival.


Well this is maybe a little off topic, but I thought it might be useful to give a few advertising hints for Starbound if needed

 

I understand that, shit happens. But they don't even talk about it. The only thing they say is "soon", and we've heard that many times in the past.

 

Well, you have to admit.
The more advertisement you give a game, the more unsightful people will find out. Then they would ruin the experience for others.
It's not my place to say, but I would prefer it being passed on by word of mouth, as the user and choose who to tell, rather than just let anyone on the bandwagon.

 

That's right, but I don't think that it is neccessary to go into detail, we now they are busy developing and that they are entitled to have time for themselves. I rather like to know that the development is getting along good then have them wasting time on estimating a certain percentage number to appease us.

 

It's not a waste, Not one bit. It should only take a couple of hours, and it shows us how much they have left to do on the game.

 

This i have to disagree with. I don't like or promote the elitist or exclusive mentality at all. More people for starbound is more money is more ability to do more for the game. Also, since this is not one universal server they can in NO way hurt your experience of the game. All they can do is talk on the forums, just the same as you are now. Also, keep in mind the people you think would be bad for the game could possibly impart some idea or concept the devs or anyone else may not have that would increase the enjoyability of the game. So don't ever try to keep anyone from a game. If you don't want them on your server, that is absolutely your call as it should be. But not beyond that.

 

Eh, I don't subscribe to that sort of elitism. Starbound will not being any less of a game if all of the Justin Bieber fans/Twilight fans/<other annoying faction here> also played it. So what if everyone else and their dog likes what you like? If it's good, like it, if not, don't, nothing else matters.

 

A couple hours is alot of time. But in the end it all depends on their opinion when it is the right time to release information or not. We should settle with that and give them all the space they need. I know that's just my opinion, but I hate the idea of developing a certain expectation towards a dev team and then voicing this expecation over and over again, basically pressuring them into something they do not want.

 

The only expecations I have are when they actually say there's going to be an update at a certain time. And a couple hours is probably the longest it'll take. Who knows? It might only take an hour or so.

 

May i ask, as someone who is going into advertising and would know more than i, would either of these two situations be different in terms of benefit?:

1: All people who will be playing the game, press, youtubers, players, streamers, etc. all get the game at the same time, no early copies. All of them still do what they would have done, but now as the word gets around the people who learn about it are able to buy the game once they see these "advertisements".

2: All of the above people get their early copies and put out some lets plays, streams, whatever and everyone who learns of the game this way come to the site to buy only to see it's only available for pre-purchase, not able to play now.

Would there be a difference? I only speculate from personal experience that the second one pisses me off greatly. But as an overall, would one be more beneficial than the other?