Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

What do you want to see in Armagetron soon? Any new feature ideas? Let's ponder these ground breaking ideas...
johnny.nbk.
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Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by johnny.nbk. »

Hello Fellow Tronners.

Johnny here


I'm posting on behalf my myself and some other tronners (~R~noodz), who are interested getting Armagetron on Steam with the hopes that it might stand out from the 1000's of new games released monthly and maybe get some new players interested in joining us on the grid. Maybe add some steam achievements for the game, first core dump and what not..



Not entirely sure what the process of putting the game on steam would entail or if any adjustments to the ?code? would need to be made.

If we got the approval from (you) the developers, there are several people that have said they are willing to help set it up and cover the $100 fee.

Thoughts?



Youtube, how to get game on steam direct? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9cMYnddQMk

--> arma on Steam topic from 2012 viewtopic.php?f=4&t=22693&start=15
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by compguygene »

If you pour through the old topic that Johnny posted, you will see that the challenge is not to get Armagetron on steam. That can be done. The challenge is to create a marketing plan to get attention. I will post more on the idea of a marketing plan later..... Marketing is what I do nowadays.
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by Z-Man »

I'd have no problem paying the 100$ to get a steam direct spot. There are potential benefits. Auto-Updates of the client being my favourite. However,
bebad wrote: with the hopes that it might stand out from the 1000's of new games released monthly and maybe get some new players interested in joining us on the grid.
That does not happen any more on Steam. If you just put out your game on Steam and do nothing else, no matter how good it is, it just drowns in the flood of new releases. Like compguygene says, a successful Steam release needs to be accompanied by a publicity push. And then, if the "launch" is successful, Steams almighty recommendation algorithm may help keep a game afloat.
Helpful video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WycVOCbeKqQ (it's for games that cost money, but still helpful)
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by Rnoodles »

Hi there, looking forward to hearing some of comps marketing ideas. Some of the guys on discord thought maybe we could put adds on some of these free gaming websites, something such as miniclip. Another idea was twitch, there are twitch streamers with huge reach. In particular streamers that play League of Legends. Apparently alot of league of legends players/streamers have to wait 20-30 minutes to find a high elo game. Its very common for viewers to recommend free games to these streamers and they play these games while they wait. When you send a donation of any quantity, you can write a message to the streamer and it pops up on their stream. Im going to try this a few times next week with small donations and see if i can get one to jump on tron.
I believe Karas told me something similar, he said a while ago when he was streaming he would play tron as he waits for a match of league to start, at times he said there would be up to 300 viewers all asking about the game and quite a few downloading it.
I've been streaming tron on twitch every now and then since ive been back but i think the most viewers ive had was 7 haha ><

I've got no idea if any of that would help but there are still a few of us who are keen to help how ever we can. Tron is such a satisfying game to play, it has a really high skill ceiling and its social. Everything a game needs to succeed. Everyone that has played this game knows it has great potential and I believe getting tron on steam would have to improve its current player base even if there was zero advertisement.
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by Intelligence »

a promo video on youtube would be good. I say we fullsend it and get this game on steam!
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by compguygene »

What's needed is a full strategy, not just individual but uncoordinated actions. Armagetron used to rank for any tron game searches on the first page in the first 5 results, because of the backlinks that had naturally been built over the years. A new website with carefully chosen title tags and h1 tags, and lots of articles could get the site back up in the rankings. So, as has been stated before, we need a new website. I know that the devs seem to hate on the idea of a Wordpress site, because of the kind of code that Wordpress creates. However, there would be quite a few advantages to using Wordpress as a platform for the main website. The two most relevant advantages would be a better ability to optimize both on-page and off-page SEO, and the ability for others to submit articles that the evil triumvirate could approve of, or not. Also, I could submit general guidelines for the writing of articles that would target relevant keywords to rank for in Google, etc.
Also, as has already been mentioned, youtube videos would help. But, they would need to be an actual channel. Also, in the video descriptions you would want to link to either the main Armagetron Website or an appropriate article there. We should also have somebody constantly growing the channel with videos of gameplay in fun servers and competitions to really show what can be done with good commentary.
Of course, these two things alone won't be enough, but if the community is willing to put the effort in, then we would have a base to build from and do more. The goal is consistent growth, every month. There are a number of other strategies to pursue. But we first need to start with the basics. This will not happen quickly. If we come together as a community and actually do the work, we could really shine a light on this game.
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by Rnoodles »

Well i'm going to be pretty much useless when it comes to contributing anything to do with coding. But I can record game play footage for youtube videos, the only issue i'm having is most of the time I jump on tron there is no one online, i'm really only able to get a 6-8 man game of sumo or 2-6 man dogfight going on a weekend for footage. To really show off tron we might need to dig through some older footage that you guys have or get people who have uploaded videos to re upload with better tags?

Im worried that we are going to have a fair bit of stuff to get done before the devs allow tron to be uploaded to steam and not enough people with the free time or capable of helping =(
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by Lucifer »

Rnoodles wrote:before the devs allow tron to be uploaded to steam
It's an open source game, released under the General Public License. You don't need our permission, as long as you comply with the GPL.
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by aP|Nelg »

Lucifer wrote:
Rnoodles wrote:before the devs allow tron to be uploaded to steam
It's an open source game, released under the General Public License. You don't need our permission, as long as you comply with the GPL.
I think I would prefer if one of the active developers upload Armagetron to steam rather than some random guy who might disappear and never update the steam tron.

I should admit, I have no clue how steam works.
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by Rnoodles »

I think everyone in the community would agree nel
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by Rnoodles »

Hey Compguygene I was wondering what the best way to contact you would be? i cant seem to get private messages working on these forums.

Also I had a look at the free games listed on steam and there are only 8 pages, 112 free games. Way less then I thought there would be o_o
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by Z-Man »

Another relevant video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIqz5xmQKnc
A talk by Jason Rohrer comparing the fates of games on Steam roughly five years ago to roughly now. Aside from the obvious difference (more games released daily now), he has interesting findings comparing two of his games. The older one got a big push on release day, mainly driven by reviews. Then the sales curve quickly dropped. Let's call that Shape L, because it looks a bit like an L.

The newer one practically didn't get any release day push and much smaller day one sales, but then grew and grew and found more players in total. Let's call that Shape A.

He attributes the higher success to the changed ways in which players look for games; the missing articles aren't actually that important any more, but Youtube Letsplays were a big driving factor, and also word of mouth; the newer game is a type of game you play over a longer period of time, it sticks to your mind and you are likely to talk to your real world friends about it.

Armagetron would be that kind of game, simply because it's a light on content multiplayer game. And we had our A shape sales graph. We had an incredibly high peak years after initial release (of 0.2.8, even) That's great! But it also means that before you try to rekindle community growth, you have to identify why the word of mouth advertising doesn't work as well any more. Any step in the ... infection may be to blame. Let's list them.

1. The user downloads the game. Possible obstacles: the download is too big (hardly), servers are too slow, download site looks dodgy (hi, SourceForge! Slightly better now.)
2. The user installs the game. Possible obstacles: installer is ugly (don't think so), installer is slow (nope), installer does not immediately launch the game (I think we do that).
3. The user starts the game. Menus are ugly (yep!). User can't find out how to start a game. (possible). User can't find out how to change own name (likely). User can't find online games to join (currently: yep)
4. So now the user is in an online game. Maybe they get insulted right away (likely). Maybe they don't find out how to play fast enough (also likely).
5. User needs to tell friends about the game. How? An "instant share" button would be great here.
6. Friends are directed to the game's home page and maybe restart at 1. Possible obstacle: The homepage may look uninviting.

The obstacles in 3. and 4. boil down to "the game is just not good enough." That's certainly something to work on, but out of scope here. But indeed, just being available on Steam would help with steps 6, 1 and 2. Step 5, too! Does Steam do video capture for sharing? It does screenshots, that's at least something, and it tells all your steam friends what you're currently playing, and I just stumbled upon a "games your friends played for the longest total time" page.

Following the infection model, it is also insignificant when a Steam launch would be. The launch itself will not generate any significant push.

Also following the infection model, it could be that a large portion of potential players is already immunized. Maybe they played Armagetron once before and didn't like it, maybe they have other gaming 'obligations' on their plate already.

And there's the possibility that no matter how much you optimize the parts around the game, the game itself simply may not be good enough in today's ecosystem. There are some mighty big fish in the Free (to Play) pond. Not all on steam :) Still, I think I'm going to do some more research on how the Steam Direct process works, what release files they expect and stuff. Can't be too fancy, I had two crappy horse games for Z-Girl install themselves into the same folder last week.
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by compguygene »

You could always add me on Facebook, Gene Bernstein, Valley View, Ohio. Just let me know in a friend request that you are R Noodles, and I will accept, and then you can messenger me anytime.

I couldn't agree more with Z-man in regards to how things are on Steam, from what I have read and seen. I do think that we could drive more organic traffic to download the game if we had YouTube videos that talked about things that people my search for on Google or YouTube to find a game to play. I will look into that further to find stats of keywords that might actually work. I also think that if we had a website that had more dynamic content, and just more content period, we could rank very high in Google search results for relevant keywords that would actually attract new users to download and play the game.
Armagetron: It's a video game that people should just play and enjoy :)
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by aP - Cake »

I agree with what Z-Man, the game should look more welcoming for new players. I don't think there's much to do about the community being nicer, there's always that kick-poll and that's all there is to do, because there will always be trolls no matter what pretty much.

An in-game tutorial would definitely welcome players more, I'm not sure to how the tutorial would look and how exactly it would teach the player, since there are many game modes online (sumo, high-rubber, etc...) but a quick general one would make a difference like, "Watch out for your rubber, if it reaches it's maximum, you'll explode", something like that.

The game should definitely be put on Steam BY THE DEVELOPER(S), that we can depend on. Anyone right now can upload the game and just disappear indefinitely. And maybe before being put on Steam, it needs the changes that were already stated.

~ More welcoming.
~ Convincing ad-campaign whether be on YouTube, Steam ,(etc...).
~ An active developer/programmer/coder to work on bugs, and work on the game generally on their free-time. (Nelg)

Oh and I may donate 10$ if needed in advertising/steam fee, it might not be much but the Egyptian currency is drowning. (1$ = 18 EGP) but I'll try my best.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by aP - Cake »

I made a reply but somehow it didn't go through and I cba to re-write it all.

~ I agree with Z-Man 100%.
~ Upload on Steam is a *GOOD* idea.
~ Before uploaded needs some things {
> A more welcoming style (welcoming menu, welcoming tutorial, etc...)
> An active developer, if not from the actual game developers it can definitely be *Nelg*
> Needs to be uploaded on Steam BY *AN ACTUAL DEVELOPER*, not by a stranger who can disappear indefinitely.
}

~ A good ad-campaign, like these ads that when you'll see you feel like you have to try it out (I'm not sure what's the word for that, addictive, magnetic?), whether the ad-campaign will be on Steam, YouTube, gaming forums.

~ I may donate 10$ for advertising/steam fee if I can but it'll be a bit hard since the Egyptian currency is drowning. (1$ = 18 EGP)
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
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