I know there are incentives for people to get thier friends to join BYOND, but how exactly is BYOND advertising?
How are we growing the community? I understand that games bring people in , but how is BYOND (or are they) promoting the company?
Currently, I have yet to find BYOND on any top 3 pages google searches.
Here are some suggestions:
#1) Offer a PR/Marketing position for BYOND so you guys can do what you do best and the people who can bring people in can do what they do best. Heck, if money is tight, I'll do it for free!
#2) Google Ad Words -- while this is expensive, it does bring traffic to websites. Pay per click and you can set your own budget.
#3) Get a facebook fan page and twitter account (with regular content updates from BYOND)
#4) Video blogging, one video relating to BYOND is the similar to 20 web links directed to BYOND and moves you up in the search engine ranks. This could be highlights from specific games or just random things to learn about from BYOND (game in a day would have been a good one!)
#5) Team up with people like THIS GUY: http://chris.pirillo.com/ Has a community and does live broadcasts
#6) Get on more stories like THIS http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10251921-2.html
The point I am trying to make, is that it is nearly impossible to find BYOND online. Also, maybe some SEO (search engine optimization) for BYOND. Seriously, BYOND is now 10 years old and I really want to see this baby grow.
Tom, this message is directly posted for you.
ID:132818
 Oct 2 2009, 5:03 am
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Oct 2 2009, 5:32 am
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SuperAntx
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I don't think #5 would work too well until the Linux version of BYOND had a working graphic mode.
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As far as I know BYOND still relies on users to spread the word. Advertising simply isn't feasible right now; for one, BYOND is still working on major changes that would probably best not be advertised until polished. For two, it costs too much to do any realistic advertising, BYOND isn't exactly rolling in money.
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Hi Sariat,
BYOND isn't doing active advertising because we don't have the budget for it, and the ROI is pretty bad for banner ads and such (a user pre-tested this for us via Google and we barely got any hits). We have made two passes at SEO for the site. We get relatively good returns for: make multiplayer games (#1) make free games (#16) and make online games (#18) but not for any of the really common searches like "make games", "play games" "free games" etc (the RankChecker plugin is useful to see this stuff). I think the only way to really improve those is to get major related sites linking to us. I was hoping that the referral program would drive users since our biggest asset is the existing community, but BYOND mostly exists in its own ecosystem. As far as I know (and site statistics show), not many are actively trying to promote BYOND in other communities through banners, sigs, etc. We made an attempt at a facebook app that would send messages to facebook friends when BYOND users played games, but ran into some technical issues and it seemed like the end-result was just going to be a spammy application. However, that is worth another look at some point since facebook is so huge and most BYOND users already have accounts (and thus could advertise to their friends). Twitter might be a good way to broadcast BYOND news and such, although it also strikes me as self-contained; existing BYOND users can subscribe to get news but how do their friends find out? Ultimately, I think our fate hinges on the advertising of BYOND games (but not BYOND itself) off-site, to get people hooked. From our stats it looks like we lose the majority of our visitors right away; could be that the community is unappealing or the need to download the software is a turn-off (or maybe this is just how it is with all sites). So I'd prefer having those users visit through the games, and then possibly stick around to play / make other games. The ideal case of this would be having an inline flash client (with potential to run off-site), since again the need to download stuff just to try BYOND is a huge barrier to retaining users. So that's something I've been researching recently. That all said, if you feel like you can help us out with advertising or SEO, I'd love to have you on board. Even just getting someone reputable to write an article about us (so spamming journalists / tech writers until they give in) would be great, since we can't even get on wikipedia until we are considered newsworthy. On that note, maybe someone should take a crack at writing an unbiased wiki entry (and convincing the mods there not to scrap it) since I'm not supposed to do it, having a vested interested in BYOND. We'd need some outside links though. | |
Hey Tom,
Thanks for the response. Trust me I know all about keeping expenses low in the business world. I am a business man myself. I will contact and put the word out there about BYOND to try and get some articles written about us. I managed to get myself on national television -- hopefully I can get BYOND's word out! And as far as Twitter you can "retweet" any "tweets" to your friends list. It also helps with your webpage ranking. So let's say BYOND updates me about something I can then "retweet" that to all of my people and they can "retweet" that to all of their people and so on and so on. I do think BYOND should make a "highlight" reel to put on the main page in video format. Showcase what exactly BYOND can do. Videos captivate people's attention and make them curious and want to explore the rest of the site. There are a lot of sites like these that list games for PLAYERS. http://play-free-online-games.com/ http://www.onrpg.com/ http://www.omgn.com/ http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/ Here are some great sites to get DEVELOPERS: http://www.gamedev.net/ http://www.gamasutra.com/ I would love to volunteer any services/knowledge I can to grow your clientele. EDIT: And yeah, the BYOND client thing might be a discouaging point. | |
Sariat wrote:
I would love to volunteer any services/knowledge I can to grow your clientele. Thanks, that would be great. Getting us some kind of press would be particularly helpful. Submitting us to game listing sites would also be useful, although be forewarned that (in my experience) the effort doesn't garner much returns. I've tried to get us on various websites but almost invariably emails go ignored. Even recently, when another user pointed out some smaller educational sites that might have an interest in BYOND, we didn't get a single response to the inquiry. Gamasutra and gamedev (and indiegames and some others) are great communities with a lot of active developers. The problem is it is difficult to advertise on them without appearing spammy. That's why I was hoping any active members of those communities and BYONDs (there must be some overlap) would advertise BYOND in their sigs and posts. I've made accounts on them in the past and posted in the various "announcements" sections but those don't draw in much traffic. I wasn't aware that Twitter worked like that. That could be useful, if BYONDers encourage their friends to try stuff out (maybe embedding the referral?) It wouldn't be that hard for us to automate a twitter feed based off the news or anything else we might want to post; or in the meantime someone could even do that manually to see if it's worth anything. We had similar aspirations with our BYONDTube youtube group, but that never took off. You really have to actively maintain these social networks for them to be worth much. I love the video idea... just have to get it made :) | |
In
...I also posted Tech Tree on my IGN blog for a year, but even less people read those things. | |
Tom wrote:
I love the video idea... just have to get it made :) What specifically do you want it to contain? A few different games, some developer stuff and a bit of the website? And how long do you think it should go for? | |
I'm sure if you made a few videos with pure gaming, maybe even a review, you could get them submitted at machinima.com, which does game videos. On there it could recieve a fair amount of views. If they believe it is good enough they can post it on their youtube channel. Which recieves thousands of views within minutes.
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This is actually a particularly great idea. Video reviews for good, fun BYOND games on mainstream games site are bound to generate lots of new users if the video manages to get them interested in the game.
In fact, the effect would be similar for random videos showing interesting gameplay on BYOND games on YouTube, provided the video is good enough to get the person interested (enough so that he'll download BYOND to try the game out). Some people have been doing that already, but not enough. The advertising of BYOND is indeed really weak which is a major problem. Much lower-quality sites are more popular than BYOND, I doubt the main reason for BYOND's relatively small community is problems with BYOND itself (e.g. games aren't standalone), rather than its advertising. People simply don't know that it exists. Users indeed need to become more involved in advertising BYOND... perhaps an official program or announcement of some sort could be made to encourage this and stimulate people to advertise more? Although the referral program didn't appear to do anything. :\ | |
Kaioken wrote:
The advertising of BYOND is indeed really weak which is a major problem.... I think the major problem for advertising for BYOND is accurately representing it. BYOND is impossible to truly advertise for unless you show 100 pathetic rips for every 1 original game. And most of those original games don't have game-play interesting enough to bring in outsiders. The development tools themselves may work as a decent selling point, but they'll target a much smaller community. If they would actually clean up the hub (and stick with it for once) and prevent any new rips/fan-games from being added then it might be a venture worth looking into. But as it stands right now, making a video of the top 100 rips won't exactly bring in the masses, and probably wouldn't be the smartest legal move. As in pretty much every scenario that has come up: BYOND needs to follow in the footsteps of Steam. Either they need to develop some epic game that will represent BYOND, and appeal to countless people by themselves, or acquire an official team to do it for them. What draws people to Steam to begin with? CS, Half-life, Portal, etc. Then once they're there, they see the 100,000 other games for sale, and how easy it is to access all of them. Not to mention the SDK that countless people use to make mods, and a few use to create their own games entirely. Having a mod community isn't necessarily a bad thing (if that's what you want to attempt to classify rips as) they should just be clearly marked as such, and separated out from the worthwhile titles. Probably in a sub-section of the original game's hub. | |
SuperAntx wrote:
Instead of copying Steam, why don't we just get BYOND games running on Steam? Can you elaborate? You may be onto something here. What would we need to do to make this work more seamlessly? I've admittedly kind of blown off these dmb2exe discussions because I figured that the tools in place did essentially the same thing (and no one uses them), but if improving the standalone distribution could get us on a widespread network, obviously that's another story. | |
Adding non-steam games to steam.
https://support.steampowered.com/ kb_article.php?ref=2219-YDJV-5557 That's pretty neat Steam injected its "pager" into the byond game. I wonder how plausible it would be to make the pager into a messenger. Sort of like AIM, MSN, Pigion,... but with byond support. A good messenger with built in byond games sounds like fun. Also if it could update your status on these services it would be a good form of advertising. | |
Tom wrote:
What would we need to do to make this work more seamlessly? I've admittedly kind of blown off these dmb2exe discussions because I figured that the tools in place did essentially the same thing (and no one uses them), but if improving the standalone distribution could get us on a widespread network, obviously that's another story. Well, for one I like the way dmb2exe lets me package my game along with BYOND so there's no need to unzip or download anything. The built-in make exe is really more of a downloader, not an installer. I'm not saying downloading is wrong, I'm just saying downloading should be completely optional and only available when there are updates. In some instances (removing fullscreen) a developer may not even want the player to have the latest version of BYOND. Another thing dmb2exe has in its favor is the ability to launch a game from an exe without having to start the pager. It's really cool you can run games without the pager now but the built-in make exe doesn't take advantage of this feature. The main flaw with dmb2exe, besides the messy installation, is the inability to link the exe to a hub page. Because of these flaws, dmb2exe is really more of a quick fix to a more complicated and long term problem. In my mind the perfect make exe would pretty much work exactly like dmb2exe, only it would install BYOND normally in Program Files and my game in the BYOND\MyHub directory. It would be much cleaner and multiple games using the same install method would all use the same BYOND installation. It also needs the ability to check for and download updates. Some big things which are missing from both methods is the ability to place a shortcut on the desktop, start menu, and quick launch. There should also be a way to create a key without launching a web browser when the installation is finished. -- As for running on Steam, the current built-in exe works just fine. I chose to use dmb2exe in order to run the game without the pager. | |
SuperAntx wrote:
Well, for one I like the way dmb2exe lets me package my game along with BYOND so there's no need to unzip or download anything. The built-in make exe is really more of a downloader, not an installer. [...] Yeah, we should get the option to already package the EXE with a BYOND version of our choice, and also choose whether the installer checks for a newer version than that or not. Another thing dmb2exe has in its favor is the ability to launch a game from an exe without having to start the pager. Should also have the option of that, though it's actually the pager that interprets the byond:// URLs so they'll need to come up with a "trick" to pull that off. The main flaw with dmb2exe, besides the messy installation, is the inability to link the exe to a hub page. I'd say the main flaw with it is that there's no actual proper BYOND installation, which breaks several BYOND/DM features. Besides, I don't get what you mean by "link an exe to a hub page" anyway. What, include a hyperlink to it in the installer? You can always do that in the game itself anyway. In my mind the perfect make exe would pretty much work exactly like dmb2exe, only it would [work like BYOND's built-in EXE packaging] ;) That's what you said, though you just want a few changes made to that. Some big things which are missing from both methods is the ability to place a shortcut on the desktop, start menu, and quick launch. Not so big, but they should be there. The installer indeed needs to be more installer-like... also, does it actually ask the end-user where to install BYOND? It should, rather than dumping it immediately in C:\Program Files or anywhere else. There should also be a way to create a key without launching a web browser when the installation is finished. Agreed. As for running on Steam, the current built-in exe works just fine. I chose to use dmb2exe in order to run the game without the pager. That's just having a shortcut from Steam to run the game though, isn't it? Not so much as anything actual that's 'running on Steam' or whatever. | |
Kaioken wrote:
Besides, I don't get what you mean by "link an exe to a hub page" anyway. What, include a hyperlink to it in the installer? You can always do that in the game itself anyway. With the normal make exe command you link the exe to a hub path (SuperAntx.Decadence) rather than including the game files in the package. You can't do this with dmb2exe so there's no way to check for updates. You're either completely online or completely offline. There needs to be a mix of both. does it actually ask the end-user where to install BYOND? It should, rather than dumping it immediately in C:\Program Files or anywhere else. It should check to see if BYOND is already installed. If there's no BYOND installation then the default installation path should be C:\Program Files\BYOND with the option to change it just like with any other installer. That's just having a shortcut from Steam to run the game though, isn't it? Not so much as anything actual that's 'running on Steam' or whatever. It's pretty much just a shortcut. You can't add dmb files to Steam so you have to package your game as an exe. You also have to launch them from Steam in order to get the shift+tab features. I had to use dmb2exe because the built-in make exe doesn't let you run the game without first launching the pager. It's not absolutely necessary use dmb2exe, but without it BYOND just seem like adware when launching out of a Steam game like that. | |
SuperAntx wrote:
Well, for one I like the way dmb2exe lets me package my game along with BYOND so there's no need to unzip or download anything. The built-in make exe is really more of a downloader, not an installer. I'm not saying downloading is wrong, I'm just saying downloading should be completely optional and only available when there are updates. In some instances (removing fullscreen) a developer may not even want the player to have the latest version of BYOND. Well, I certainly don't want to encourage downloads of older versions, which may have security holes etc. However, I do think there's merit in being able to transport a working install without requiring net access. Another thing dmb2exe has in its favor is the ability to launch a game from an exe without having to start the pager. It's really cool you can run games without the pager now but the built-in make exe doesn't take advantage of this feature. You should be able to launch games directly in DreamSeeker via the Make EXE. Just append ##guest to the url to bypass key login. There should also be a way to create a key without launching a web browser when the installation is finished. It seems to me that if you are distributing a game, rather than BYOND, having a BYOND key is not so critical. You'd rather players just boot the game directly (no pager) and "register" their identity with the game, rather than BYOND. I may be looking at this wrong, though. As for running on Steam, the current built-in exe works just fine. I chose to use dmb2exe in order to run the game without the pager. Having never used Steam, I'm curious to what exactly you've been able to do with BYOND games there and how we might expand on that. | |
Tom wrote:
You should be able to launch games directly in DreamSeeker via the Make EXE. Just append ##guest to the url to bypass key login. I tried that now through start->run, and it doesn't work. The ##guest is ignored as if it's not there; it's not documented, either (there was an article that explained the byond:// URLs after all). It opens as normal and asks if you want to play or host, so might as well use ##local. I don't see how a byond:// URL could directly start DS anyway, as the protocol should be registered to byond.exe as I understand it. But it would be possible to start the pager in hidden form, then immediately have it start DS and then close itself, though, which would be just as good (of course, if the pager was already started before then it shouldn't close itself). It seems to me that if you are distributing a game, rather than BYOND, having a BYOND key is not so critical. You'd rather players just boot the game directly (no pager) and "register" their identity with the game, rather than BYOND. I may be looking at this wrong, though. I also think it's not critical, but it's a good option to have because even though you can login to a game as a guest, several BYOND features require you to have a registered key (like keeping track of scores (not sure on that one), medals and subscriptions and more). Basically a user might not be integrated enough in BYOND without a key. Having never used Steam, I'm curious to what exactly you've been able to do with BYOND games there and how we might expand on that. Well, what he has done is just a shortcut to the game EXE from Steam. To actually put up games on there and such and have them distributed through Steam would of course take more complicated measures, including applying for that, if even possible. | |
Kaioken wrote:
Tom wrote: It works fine for me. Also, ##guest (and ##local) is documented at http://www.byond.com/docs/publish, which is linked from the "Make EXE" creation screen. By default, the pager is setup to use Guest for logins when applicable (games that use ##guest or launched directly in DS); however, you can configure it to always require your key for login. That is the top checkbox in the pager Preferences/Games. Do you have it unchecked, perchance? I don't see how a byond:// URL could directly start DS anyway, as the protocol should be registered to byond.exe as I understand it. But it would be possible to start the pager in hidden form, then immediately have it start DS and then close itself, though, which would be just as good (of course, if the pager was already started before then it shouldn't close itself). You are correct that the "Make EXE" launches byond.exe, but if you do ##local##guest or ##remote##guest it is effectively hidden since it only exists (in the taskbar) until DS starts up. Well, what he has done is just a shortcut to the game EXE from Steam. To actually put up games on there and such and have them distributed through Steam would of course take more complicated measures, including applying for that, if even possible. We'll have to check that out to see if that is even an option. | |