[Chris]

Hello all.

The Armor Critical staff met last night to discuss several important issues. The main topic was advertising and how to make the best of it. We have a concrete plan in place that will attempt to bring is as many new users as possible, and I want to be as transparent as possible in that process. Here is the general outline:

1. We are going to send a mass e-mail to all old email accounts from here and from Spark. This email will include important information and attempt to bring some old players back. Increased activity just before an advertising push will be very helpful. This list is well over 10,000 strong, but yes, a good bunch are fake emails. We will eliminate as many of those as possible.

2. After doing this, we are going to spend (our own) money on advertising. At first we have to test the waters and see what brings about the best results. Once we do a lot of data analysis, we can use the top methods or avenues and pour money into them. It's important to understand that this will be a gradual process. Once it begins, you won't see 50 new people in a day. We have to do it methodically so that we use our money most efficiently.

COMMUNITY HELP IS NEEDED

The most important things for the community to assist with are simply understand why we are doing certain things and help out where possible. For instance, one of the biggest obstacles to getting new people to stay is currently CTA. Don't get me wrong, I think CTA is great, but if every one of our available players is in a locked CTA game, a new player will just leave. We have to provide an active arena for a new person to enter into so that they can play the game. Therefore, it is likely at we will temporarily suspend CTA games at certain peak advertising times and organize fun public games so that new players can enter and play. I know this may annoy some people, but please understand the reasoning behind it. It won't last forever. We want our money and efforts to work. This is our chance to bring this game out of the pits and into a bright future.

The bottom line is: WE NEED YOUR HELP TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN. It will not happen without community involvement. You are all here because you love playing this game so I really have a lot of faith that everyone will be on board. We all want the same thing. If haxball can get 244k likes on facebook, why cant we get 500 active players again? The answer is: we can.

Other ways the community can help:

• Create helpful content like video tutorials.
• Share the game with friends.
• Keep a positive attitude and assist new players when you see them.
• Defend new players in games so that they aren't demolished quickly.
• Give suggestions on anything mentioned here or anything that could help.
  

If we can do these things as a community, I am absolutely certain this game will grow. Your Operations Team has been horrible up until this point, but we are extremely motivated now and I hope some of that can be seen. We are much closer than ever before to significant improvement and promise to keep working hard to achieve that.

Thank you

[hybridx]

can we please coordinate something with reddit?

you can actually sponsor submissions so they show up on top. but if we all decided to pitch in and upvote a post, it could gather attention on its own.

i think if we could somehow get this game's attention on a site like that, we'd see thousands of users come in. i've seen far shittier games garner a lot more users than they deserved.

[Chris]

We need leaders for projects. It sounds like a good idea, so if you'd like to own that please go ahead. You can coordinate the timing with the advertising push.

[cyro]

I have some projects I have started that I could use help on if anybody on here has Graphic Design or Video skills. I also could use someone who is willing to record some audio for game tutorials.

[Turbo]

^ /find Radar

[tengo]

What's good, free software for making videos?

[hybridx]

you won't want free software.

fiya i guess talk to me about what you're doing.. i am still pretty capable for editing

[LineOf7s]

I know I'm just a curmudgeonly old troublemaker these days, but why don't you wait until you get your car fixed up nicely before you start actively trying to sell it? At least get half (?) of the technical to-do list sorted before waving the flag too obtrusively.

[Night]

(04-24-2014, 09:08 AM)LineOf7s Wrote:  I know I'm just a curmudgeonly old troublemaker these days, but why don't you wait until you get your car fixed up nicely before you start actively trying to sell it? At least get half (?) of the technical to-do list sorted before waving the flag too obtrusively.

This particular mechanic doesn't want to spend a lot of work on a car without sensing some sort of demand of people wanting to ride in it. No one is asking or expecting for us to obtain thousands of people overnight. I for one just want some sort of influx of players (tens?) making this game worth investing time and resources in.

[Chris]

(04-24-2014, 09:08 AM)LineOf7s Wrote:  I know I'm just a curmudgeonly old troublemaker these days, but why don't you wait until you get your car fixed up nicely before you start actively trying to sell it? At least get half (?) of the technical to-do list sorted before waving the flag too obtrusively.

We have a car that runs and has some good features. There are a lot more things to do, but it's not so busted that the riders can't enjoy the ride. Why leave it sitting in a garage when we can have it used while fixing it up at the same time?