Outreach on Megaglest: Let's say "thanks"!

[tomreyn]

Hi,

while I'm relatively new to this game and forum and I like the game a lot, just like most if not all of you but I cannot contribute to the game by helping programming it. So I was thinking about other ways we could return a favor to the authors and came up with an idea:
I think we should let more people know what a great game Megaglest is.

For the developers, this will mean their names become more known and, where freelancing, they may get hired more often or paid nearly as much as they deserve. But this will also have nice side effects for us 'users': there will be more players to play network games and remaining bugs will be found more quickly. It could even mean that new programmers and graphics/maps developers find their way to Megaglest and add to the development team, speeding up development on future releases!

So how do we go about making the game more known? There are a couple steps involved in this:

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1. Create a fact sheet which lists the properties of the latest release of the game.

2. Collect (at least) five email addresses of authors and locations (URLs) of game news submission forms of on- and offline media which report on new PC games, preferrably (but not limited to) Free Software/Open Source game publishing, both for english and other language media

3. Write up an english language game introduction based on the fact sheet (incl. references to similar games and other Glest based games)

4. Take screen shots (few but good - each screen shot should show by itself why this is a good game) with text description (single sentence) and trailer video (no more than 3 minutes), prepare high resolution game logo

5. Translate the game introduction, fact sheet and screen shot descriptions to at least spanish, french and german language

6. Assign native language contacts for each language (there can be a lead contact plus additional supporters for each language) to handle incoming media requests (for information/additional screen shots etc.) - all they need to do is to regularly (twice daily would be good) check an email account and relay + translate incoming media inquiries to an internal forum; alternatively, they can respond directly if they feel like it (but they absolutely don't have to)

7. Set up email accounts for native language media contacts and test them; set up central download location and make all media available there

8. Prepare localized press releases based on the translated game introduction text, fact sheet, media contacts, providing the central download location for additional media (complete press releases in several languages as PDF, screen shots, game logo, video trailer)

9. Send press releases

10. Each native language media contact reports (to the public forums) on media feedback they become aware of (URL/print release/tv+radio airtime).

I know, this looks like lots of work. But I think we can do it, it really does not take as much efforts as it may seem on first glance, and we can all share the workload. Much if not most of the information and data we need already exists in one or the other way and we just need to bring it all together and brush it up a little.  After all, the upcoming release is going to be a great feature-rich and stable release and this game simply deserves more attention.

I'll happily serve as coordinator and german language media contact, so we just lack the media contacts for english, spanish and french. Where any IT resources are lacking, I can provide them (Wiki, mailing list/newsletter software, email addresses, hosting of other services). If it turns out this is going somewhere I will also sponsor a domain name for a year or two.

Here's a draft for the first step I just made up. You are welcome to extend on it in further posts on this thread.

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• genre of the game
• functionality of the game
  
  • factions provided by this release
  • maps provided by this release
  • tilesets provided by this release
  • languages supported by this release
  • available add-ons (number of publically available, fully compatible and easily installable extra factions, maps, tilesets, languages, ...)
• unique features of the game (concise, feature only comparison to other Glest based games)

• Master Server
• Improved network gameplay compared to game/version XYZ
• # additional factions compared to game XYZ
• # additional maps compared to game XYZ
• # additional tilesets compared to game XYZ
• # additional languages compared to game XYZ

• minimal and recommended hardware (GPU, CPU, RAM, disk I/O) requirements, known incompatibilities
• operating system/driver/software requirements, known incompatibilities
• ...

I will appreciate your additions here, since I do not know the game very well, yet, and most of all I can hardly compare it to the other Glest based games and modifications. Please contribute below, I will update this post with any additional information you can provide.

What do you think about this initiative in general, the suggested approach and most of all:

Are you going to volunteer? (And for what?)

[ElimiNator]

Well I make art for the game and maps. 

[ultifd]

Thanks. I always say that...though.   

the upcoming release is going to be a great feature-rich and stable release and this gamesimply deserves more attention.

I agree, it will. But with the other upcoming features after that, it is more worth of it to spread the word on megaglest after those features have been added... 

while I'm relatively new to this game and forum and I like the game a lot, just like most if not all of you but I cannot contribute to the game by helping programming it.

Compared to others, it seems like you actually could...a bit. Haven't you already? 

It could even mean that new programmers and graphics/maps developers find their way to Megaglest and add to the development team, speeding up development on future releases!

Anyways later in the year, hopefully I will spread the word, and make better videos. I'll try to upgrade my video card, that is the only real part about it. Hope my comp has space... One thing we could do is to update all the download sites for games...even CNET's download.com is still on 3.1 Vanilla Glest. 

Thanks for the ideas, surely we will work on this...but not all of it, the other parts are for later,  .

Thanks.