Marketing Starbound

As much as i am excited for Starbound, ive come to love it by following it and watching and reading everything i can on it, but to be honest the only reason i ever spotted it was because at the time of playing terraria i was googling something and because people often compare starbound to terraria, this is the only reason it popped up for me and gained my interest.

And what im getting at is (unless im completely blind) ive just not seen any marketing what-so ever in relation to starbound, not even an ad space, (Not inc their FB page ect)

Now this could be many reasons inc the devs might not have had time to market it simply. or a money issue.
well the money issue is now solved due to preorders as a portion of this could easily be used for marketing which is a good time to start. whether it be website banners (tho imo i ignore these) or youtube ads is def a good one (unskippable ones) even if they wanted to go so far as to to a TVC, or advertisement in cinemas??

Just throwing this around, im sure it has been on the Devs minds but id like to suggest these all the same. Maybe others reading this can also post other suggestions for the devs? or maybe you work in some kind of marketing agency that can help the guys out? do a deal for them ect?

 

I think the first thing they need to do is make a trailer (Which they are already working on). The main problem I find with Starbound is I can't properly explain its potential to people. If I had a trailer to show, it would blow minds.

Once a trailer is made, it will spread and things will get big. If it doesn't work then resort to other forms of marketing.

 

Yea, and its not so much of an issue now adays but there are people (mostly whiney kids) that look at something as awesome as starbound, but go.... no its crap...cause its got crap graphics...
To which i then roundhouse kick them in the face

 

I think that putting Starbound on Steam with a pre order option would get the game more attention and fans and more buyers!
But yeah I agree that kids are annoying when they say "IT SUCKS BECAUSE OF THE GRAPHICS".

 

Spread the word people. Venture forth like a plague and infest the internets.

 

I think other indie games suffer from more of this problem than Starbound. While I agree it is an issue, we've got a massive fanbase, here, and there's a lot of word of mouth going on. YouTubers have also been doing their part in promoting the game a lot, and there is a lot of relations going on between the Starbound team and devs for other games (Star Command and Minecraft being two examples). Now, if you look at the example of Cube World, that game has pretty much no marketing and no constant update feed, no official website nor forums. That is actually really bad marketing, so I am thankful that the Starbound team has such great output to the fans and so many ways to be connected to the world, so to speak.

~ockpii

 

many newspapers have talked about starbound the result is seen by the large number of preorder I would say that is more than good in a game that is currently in development

 

Word of mouth about a genuinely enjoyable game is far more effective marketing than paying huge quantities of money, that they don't really have, for adverts etc. Once there's a proper trailer and the beta is out, there's more reviews on big sites online; and people can actually start playing the game; I imagine they'll be no shortage of people playing!

 

900.000 USD in preorders so far*. I think we're good. Either way, the trailer will be out soon enough and there will probably be more marketing closer to release.

 

I think the thing is that the devs don't have the money for more than one big marketing campaign.
So if they are going to market the game with advertisements and such my guess would be that they do it once there
actually is a game to play, like beta release or full release, otherwise a lot of people would be turned away and it would be a waste of money.

 

900,000? curious where you got this figure from... i thought on the preorder page that the "Backers" where the amount of preorders... i may be mistaken...if i am then what are the Backers :O

 

I think he's referring to the almost $900k that the preorder achieved.

I really don't think SB needs to advertise in any way at all. As others have already said, we've got a huge fanbase, and once the game is released, there will be actual gameplay videos all over the internet. It will get reviewed by big gaming magazines/web blogs, and its reputation will grow even more. No, there's really no need to advertise.

 

Yeah, I think the Spongebob guy doesn't really have to go and talk about it on every forum to make Starbound become a good success. Even if it would help somewhat, maybe. Well, enough joking around. Starbound doesn't need advertisements because of numerous factors, such as the somewhat sizable fan-base, the fact that it will probably be featured on the Steam store's frontpage for quite a bit and the probably numerous reviews wich will undoubtedly follow the release. Also, I bet that fans of the genre will come flocking once the game is finally released.

 

he may not know that preorders and all the money we be rollin in is only from a week of being live and were currently mid week 2 id say that were doing pretty good with our advertising ive got guys who havent preordered yet as they havent been payed yet but there standing buy it immediatly once they get dem chex

 

Oh shit. Did I write 900,000 preorders? I ment 900,000 USD earned. ._. Sorry.

 

Adverts on TV, in cinemas, on YouTube etc. are ridiculously expensive, especially considering they can make just a big of an impact by making a trailer, putting it on YouTube and getting some gaming websites to feature it.

 

I think that after the trailer is released they will make 2.000.000 US or more but will be difficult to explain a such complex game in one trailer .(this is blowing my mind just thinking )

 

To be fair since over 900k worth of pre-orders have been sold, a lot of people are going to have this game. Chances are about half will make videos on starbound and of these a few will become really popular and easily spread the message. Rest assured the fan base will spread the game all over the world within a few months. just my opinion

 

In my opinion, the graphics in this game are amazing, I don't know what those "other kids" are thinking! Lol

 

There is just the hugest difference between technically good art and art that is designed well. No matter how much money you funnel into graphics, it's either designed well or not, it depends on the artist instead of the money. Starbound has good artists :>