Advertisments for Sins?

I keep waiting for banners for people to place in their signatures on other forums. I tried to start a competition but no one responded - sad truly. I think a large part of the success of this title will be based solely on the backs of the beta testers (read as gorilla marketing) and their efforts to promote the game. I know I have been doing my part. I think I can account for well over two dozen sales at the moment and many more in the near future if things go well.

yeh, i have tried too, but to no avail. the only 'computer based' friends i have either cant afford it, or dont have the net to get it. it would help alot if there were more ads ect, to re-enforce my 'promotions'

TV ads for Sins have been ruled out a long time ago, as I remember - costs too much

bah...

there is no TV ad that can replace or beat good old word of mouth - specially in our beloved universe of world wide web...

if this game delivers - i wont worry at all about community growing on daily bases...

also - keep in mind that when it comes down to user base - its way more important not to LOSE players rather than rush and get 1000s of idiots via TV ad who will complain about stupid things - ruin the game - and then leave and play CSS over and over again...

trust me!

I agree "word of mouth" is the most efficient for getting people interested. That coupled with community based promotions or as I stated in my prior post "gorilla marketing" make a powerful combination.

For what it is worth I finished the first batch of banner ads. You can get them here

I plan on making a couple dozen more with different styles such as ones featuring the races and in game imagery.

I started a thread for this here but the thread was trashed with juvenile posts.

Actually we've already allocated six figures to Sins advertising (as much as we spent on GC2 which was considerable), though online campaigns won't begin until the game's available. If you check out the latest issues of PC Gamer or Games for Windows, you'll find 2-page Sins ads in the first few pages of both, and there's a 2-pager in Maximum PC as well.

I hope some marketing attention will be payed to good old Europe as well since UK and specially German RTS market is huge!

All sounds good though and as i said in previous post - deliver the stunner and rest of the puzzle will come together naturally - like domino effect...

The funny thing is, and Yarlen posted about this a while back, the Euro market has been the worst for them because even though the publishers there think the game is interesting, none of them wanted to sign on to distribute because it's a completely new formula for an RTS and they're wimps afraid it won't do too well.

Yes, that's some paraphrasing

Screw paraphrasing!

If its all like what you said - they are WIMPS!

eeeeeeeeee

We (Stardock) probably won't be advertising in Europe at all. However, we're in negotiations with a publisher for the game in Europe and they have outlined a robust marketing plan for the title.

I found out about this game in PC gamer and didnt really chek it out till i got bourd and found it on the internet. Really glad i did

Let me also point out that "word of mouth" advertising is starting up, but can't really take off untill we can say "hey, come buy this game guys, its great!".

Word-of-mouth FTW!

I found out about this game from email from stardock! I am soo glad i signed up for that!

I occasionally mention the game to some people...

Regarding the banners a couple people asked about hosting them. There is no need I have them on one of my servers so all you need to do is to simply copy the image URL and place it in your signature on other forums and all should be golden.

I'm sorry they are not so great looking but I'm not a real artist or graphic designer. I hope when I finish the rest of the sets, they will be more visually appealing. Of course if others who are more artistically inclined what to get involved and help that would be awesome.

Here are a couple samples:

Spartan, i dont know if you are able to do this (given some time and paint.net and my computer back, i could) but are you able to make the phrases (eg.are you a sinner?) the same silvery-bluish tinge that the title is up top? when i think a sins title, it is usually red (planet) and black. but the part that stands out the most is the title, because it is a colour that doesnt fit in with the background. all im saying is that the yellow doesnt 'feel' like sins. see if you can make a gradual change from light blue to silver, bottom to top, witht he text, justlike the title. also, the background is slightly stretched, see if you can un stretch it. if its stretched because the banner needs to be a certain width, then just copy and paste the edges and add them on, to make the picture wider. hold on, ill see if i can download paint.net to this peice of junk laptop (it doesnt even deserve that title, maybe 'glowing junk') and show you.

Yeah I have to full Master Suite for Adobe so I can try the gray. Sadly enough I buy lots of software and never really use them. I always tell myself one day soon I'll learn this program - I'm so pathetic. Anyway, I did the yellow because it was a highlight for the planet so I figured a simply bright pallet would be most striking.

I also spent hours looking at fonts and sadly I could not find one I like and I have over 2000 of them. Nothing really felt right. The closes was Starcraft's font but I figured best not to go there.

Regarding the stretching, I had to do that to get the silhouette in to any recognizable degree. The dimensions for the banner lend themselves well to ships however.

This is some random thing i did, dont think its the right size to be a banner, but can you see what ive done? i havnt streached the image, and the text is grey on bottom, white on top. i could have done better, but thats a five minute job...

banner needs to be smaller....

Not bad at all. However sadly enough as kosc pointed out, it would need to smaller and more horizontal for most forums.

BTW: call me crazy but I always took the gray & white text to simply be not finished since it is so "raw" looking.

ill see if i can make it the right dementions, ill make other ones too, maybe with a bit more imagination, rather than stealing someone elses. i might cut up screenshots and make one out of that...

eh hate to burst the bubbles of those here in the USA, but UK,Germany etc all have a large pc gaming consumer population then the US does. This was known a year ago when sales for the year came out. While in the US, consols rule now, pc is subpar all of them beyond the WOW sales. While I am all for pc here in the US, it is what it is, not marketing in the UK and beyond would be a bad thing. However as Yarlen said, they have something lined up so thats cool. Just pointing out, don't think the US is in top sales anymore of PC, if you do, your sadly mistaken at the actual markets now.

here, made the right sized one, its very plain, but at least its not as blurry. could do better though...

Great! That was what I was thinking. The lay out of the text on the "dead space" is most elegant and reasonible.