Maniaplanet Forum

Hello Team Nadeo & community!



The lack of Ads for Shootmania is worrying me for a very long time now. Please read my thoughts and tell me if I'm wrong...and excuse my horrible English haha.

Ubisoft is our publisher and on top of that one of the biggest >>INTERNATIONAL<< publishers in the games industry. I don't get why Nadeo is not willing to put more time into making the game more known worldwide. A trailer here and a TV commercial there and the community would grow again.

A typical 30 seconds commercial during a primetime TV show can range from 100.000$ - 500.000$. Sounds like a lot of money, right? NO! Do you have any idea how many people are watching primetime TV shows? Millions.

Let's say only 1 million people watch a Shootmania commercial, if just 1% of them would check it out that would be 10.000 new players! And this is just a random commercial. I'm not even talking about demographics and target audiences.

Keep in mind that Shootmania is mainly attractive for teenagers, young adults and adults. They watch shows like South Park, Family Guy, The Big Bang Theory, NCIS etc.

I guarantee that magazines will not publish anything about Shootmania. For them it's "old" now unless NADEO releases the next Add-on. Then they will write articles about it again.

You need to focus on your demographics. Do some research or ask your publisher. Ubisoft already has some high-value studies about target audiences that you can use.

People saying NADEO is a small developer and needs all its resources for development is absolutely correct. But now think again. The target audience for Shootmania is probably 24/7 on the internet. We have social media, the greatest achievement in free advertisement. Use Youtube, gaming sites & forums, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and more.

It's fast, easy and less pricey than a big TV commcercial (you don't reach as much people though). You need the Americans, Europeans and Asians for this game to play in the same league as LoL or DOTA. It's a good looking game, it's a fun game and with Beta 3 it's even more beginner-friendly but still with a big learning curve.

Do you remember the MMORPG "EveryQuest II" released in 2004? That game was dead until they started with F2P TV commcercial (no primetime) here in Germany. Now the game is flourishing again. 9 years after its release!! It's never to late when it comes to advertising something.

We all know you try to bring all the TrackMania fans over to ShootMania. That isn't as smart as it seems. TrackMania is TrackMania and ShootMania is a totally different cup of tea. ShootMania has to survive on its own, on its own community and fanbase. There is nothing wrong with connecting both games. You just have to stop treating your game like it's for the TM community only.

You want to sell your product and Ubisoft wants to make it popular. Stop working on "Questmania", stop hosting 100.000$ events when no one cares yet and focus on the things that are important right now. Listen to us from time to time. We are one.

Please reply NADEO and tell me what you are planning for the future.

hiro wrote:[...]

A typical 30 seconds commercial during a primetime TV show can range from 100.000$ - 500.000$. Sounds like a lot of money, right? NO! Do you have any idea how many people are watching primetime TV shows? Millions.[...]

Couple tournaments per year with a tasty prize pool (50 000$ or more) will do a lot better job at telling people that playing Shootmania is cool than any ad on TV.

That's true, ShootMania AND TrackMania need more ads.

hiro wrote:[...]

Do you remember the MMORPG "EveryQuest II" released in 2004? That game was dead until they started with F2P TV commcercial (no primetime) here in Germany. Now the game is flourishing again. 9 years after its release!! It's never to late when it comes to advertising something.

[...]

This will not work for SM as good. While anyone bored can hop in some free MMO to kill time, a lot less people are willing to play competitive FPS and pay for it.
Good competitive players don't need an ad on TV for 500 000$, give them tourneys with good prizes and they will follow. Less competitive players will come from streams and by word of mouth. And the rest is not interested in this genre anyway.

Thanks for replying Alexey.

Alexey85 wrote:Couple tournaments per year with a tasty prize pool (...) will do a lot better job at telling people that playing Shootmania is cool than any ad on TV.

I see where you are coming from Alexey, unfortunately there are some faults in your logic. You want to advertise SM via constant tournaments? Who would be interested in these tournaments? Answer: People who are already into the game. You remember the 100.000$ tournament? That didn't work out as planned. Currently you can't attract a wide audience with tournament prize money. How would they know there is a tournament if they are not already into the game or ESL?

If there was a big breakdance tournament in your town, only breakdancers would know about it, right? But if you advertise that competition properly you will know about it too and maybe check it out and MAYBE become inspired and become a breakdancer yourself^^

Casual Gamers (Money & Publicity) > Hardcore Gamers (Competition & Underground)

Hardcore gamers are not the kind of people we have to win over for this type of game. We need the millions of casual gamers to become competitive over time. TV ads are not supposed to be for hardcore but for all the people who might want to give it a try. It's easy.

Alexey85 wrote:This will not work for SM as good. While anyone bored can hop in some free MMO to kill time, a lot less people are willing to play competitive FPS and pay for it.

Elite is free to play as far as I know. The good thing about Shootmania is that it is CASUAL & COMPETITIVE. Everyone can download, install and start playing around. For everyone else they start to learn the moves and maps and become competitive. SM is seperated into beginners / advanced players as you know.

To make SM casual & competitive was clever of NADEO.

Advertisement always works (even negative Ads haha). Why do you think it's so expensive?

Alexey85 wrote:Good competitive players don't need an ad on TV for 500 000$, give them tourneys with good prizes and they will follow. Less competitive players will come from streams and by word of mouth. And the rest is not interested in this genre anyway.

"Not interested", yet. Everything becomes interesting the more people start taking part in it. That's the "Sheep Effect".

This is not South Korea. The number of people watching gaming streams in America & Europe at the moment is too small to even be considered relevant.

A mix of TV ads, tournaments and sponsors would be ideal.

The Shootmania situation is worrying me really hard. Less and less people playing.. I can say that right now its even hard to find a praccy in the evening ( at the beginning when the game wasnt even released, I remember full irc pages of players looking for practice), teams playing are always the same and more and more are lefting..

Come on NADEO

Yes, it is worrying, not only for Shootmania, but for ManiaPlanet as a whole.

http://mania-actu.com/eng/articles/view ... Statistics

As a whole, all envis peaked last week avg. +/- 1200 players online, SM +/- 500, TMS +/- 350, TMC +/- 180 and TMV less than a 100.

As a comparison, TMF still avg more than 5K players per. 24 hours.

Something needs to be done for sure

hiro wrote:[...]You remember the 100.000$ tournament? That didn't work out as planned.[...]

The problem is it was just one tournament. Many who might be interested didn't know. I bet after the show viewers would tell their friends about it. More people got interested at least to watch, but there were no tournaments anymore.
If they split that tournament on two and split the prize accordingly considering organazing expenses to stay in the same budget, they would get a lot more viewers.

hiro wrote:[...]
Elite is free to play as far as I know. The good thing about Shootmania is that it is CASUAL & COMPETITIVE. Everyone can download, install and start playing around. For everyone else they start to learn the moves and maps and become competitive. SM is seperated into beginners / advanced players as you know.[...]

My point is advertisement for free MMO works well, because there is wide audience of all ages that wants to be entertained and MMO do a great job at it. You have interesting world, quests, bosses, etc., etc. While SM is purely skillbased FPS, you want to constantly improve on your play, you need quick reflexes, you get frustration from loosing a lot, etc. There are lot less people interested in this.

hiro wrote:[...]
Advertisement always works (even negative Ads haha). Why do you think it's so expensive?
[...]

Sure they work, maybe they will bring several people in. The point is if to choose whether to spend money on tourneys or on TV ad, tourneys will work far far better.

hiro wrote:[...]
A mix of TV ads, tournaments and sponsors would be ideal.
[...]

With this I agree completely if we talking about trounaments with actually interesting prizes.

Anyway this is all obvious and I am curious if Ubisoft and Nadeo are not doing this because they see a big risk in investing money in tournaments and promotion, or they are planning to do it in the future.

Alexey85 wrote:The problem is it was just one tournament. Many who might be interested didn't know.

I agree. SM needs sponsors for more high prize tournaments though. Neither NADEO nor Ubisoft are willing to give away so much money again. Remember NADEOs financial crisis a few years ago. A company that had its back to the wall once is very sensitive when it comes to money investments. A tournaments main function is to keep the game & scene alive. Attracting new players is just a side effect. Sure maybe after some cups a few thousand more players will join, but this thread is about real advertisment to attract millions of new players.

Alexey85 wrote: ...advertisement for free MMO works well, because there is wide audience of all ages that wants to be entertained and MMO do a great job at it...While SM is purely skillbased FPS, you want to constantly improve on your play, you need quick reflexes, you get frustration from loosing a lot, etc...

Yes I agree. MMOs are definitely designed for thas mass market to attract more players. When it comes to all the game genres we have out there (like RPG, Shooter, Racing, Beat'em up and so on) they have there audience. Shootmania has its millions of players to stay alive and grow, it just needs to get their attention. That MMO part I talked about was just an example to show that you can always re-release a game.

Alexey85 wrote:With this I agree completely if we talking about trounaments with actually interesting prizes.

Yes.

Alexey85 wrote:Sure they work, maybe they will bring several people in. The point is if to choose whether to spend money on tourneys or on TV ad, tourneys will work far far better.

I don't agree with this statement. Advertisement is a really good way to bring new players that didn't know the game existed. But tournaments are important to keep the player base.

But to make tournaments Nadeo will need sponsors. The sponsors are only interested in a game with many players and supporters. So putting money in advertisement is more important imo.