Try to pretend your a Steam player, unfamiliar with Cardhunter, and viewing the AI Video, in the #2 Video Slot advertise Cardhunter, for first time. Pretend you, like an prospective new players, want to try to decide if you want to try install this F2P game and give it a fair chance: Click here to view the AI Video Keep in mind, people becoming increasely weary of rip-off free-to-play game, so, in my opinion, trying to gain their confidence with the following, out of context lines, is a bad move: "Are you experienced but not unexpendable?" "Do you own your own Sword? Because we don't want to pay for that!" "Do you crave wealth, but so little that you are willing to give us 70 - 80% of it?" I don't think this makes me think: "This is game that has a better F2P model than most of the bad F2P games out there. This is a reasonably priced game that respects me as a player. I suspect it will give me good value for my money and won't try to rip me off." I've shown it to about 8-10 people in World while asking that. All but one person thought it was a horrible video with respect to marketing the game due to being out of context. It doesn't say it's for the AI video, it's just the 2nd Cardhunter promo-video and presumed to be part of the "introduction" to why you should install Cardhunter. It doesn't explain very well it's just for the AI expanision, and even if I'm wrong about that, they really don't know, and probably don't CARE what the AI expansion is until they've installed the game and started plying. But Sir Civil doesn't thinks fixing or removing it "would make any difference at all." Any explaination for the discrepancy? Why do I and other players I've asked think it's at least a little bad, but Sir Civil doesn't? Note: The main reason I'm keep mentioning it is because I think the change is one-of if not the-most obvious and undeniable ways to market Cardhunter just a little better. And without better marketing, I don't see how it's likely to increase it's revenue base enough to offset the new developement.... and that would add up to a "more likely to be shutoff in the future" than if something to improve marketing (or reduce costs) were done. Also note: I never passed with suggestion onto Blue Manchu, or more specificly Jon. Blame me for that if you like, but because I didn't suggest it to him, we can't assume to know how he would have reacted if I had.
I looked at it with fresh eyes thanks to your suggestion. I concluded it's hilarious and good marketing. It follows the money-grubbing line immediately with recruitment lines for a comically fake-sounding company, "now expanding our operations to" a comically fake-sounding country that could only exist in the game being advertised. It's super, super clear it's all tongue-in-cheek—and that the money-grubbing in particular is purely in-universe stuff, having zero to do with real-world transactions. I wrote other stuff in another thread before I saw this post. Regards,
I think the hard part is trying to look at with a "fresh pair of eyes." I also think so groups have more difficulty with sarcasm and abstract thought than others. Just realized part of the difficult is that veterans on the forums page, are, in my obsevervation and estimation, much much smarter than the average person on Steam who might install from an Steam queue or ad. So you need to try to look at it through THEIR fresh eyes. Maybe try asking your friends from FPS's, or maybe Yugioh Masters, which just hit like #50 or something on Steam most player within weeks or a month or what of it's introduction. Still, isn't there anything better? Is that the 2nd best ad we can place there? Is anyone thinking about how to advertise better? With a typical population of like 90 to 130 people in World, it seems unlikely the game cane make much money from that few people. I've started logging off a lot, but with 23,0000+ hours, it used to be that one of those 90-130 was usually me, and one was Cynthih. So not a lot of people there. The actual AI adventure is confusing as hell. 'I'm here about the Job." So I can't kill you? I can't fire you? WTF? But that doesn't matter, most people won't make it that far. I think a bigger thing is to try to get people into PvP quicker, but in a way which will let them drop back to PvE rather than quit if they hate it. Pretty sure PvP has much better retention and spends a lot more $$$ of DD on RR in the long run.
Perhaps the new major expansion (with rebalancing ontop that) from the company newly invested in bringing life to the game will result in a new Celestial Forge -themed video ad that'll bump the older AI-themed ad down the line a little—after the devs believe the game is ready to have marketed attention brought back to it. $:^ ]