[ND_Istvan]

Don't worry about marketing for Jumpgate Evolution. Though underground marketing is always going to be valuable, Jumpgate Evolution's mainstream marketing isn't going to be the piddly stuff that we could afford when Jumpgate Classic's real publisher went bankrupt and failed to do their job. NetDevil has already retained a professional marketing and public relations firm to cover all our current development projects. We expect and intend that Jumpgate Evolution will have reasonable news coverage, market research, and funding, all backing its release. We're also going to try to avoid some of the expensive mis-marketing that occurred with Auto Assault (priced mainstream magazine adverts lately?), which costs fortunately were borne by Auto Assault's publisher as part of their responsibility for launching and supporting the game.

Example of research: EVE has banners EVERYWHERE. How? Why? They aren't paying the advertising costs you'd expect. Those banners are everywhere because EVE has an affiliate program which they use to track the source website of their new subscribers. They pay the sites for people who subscribe through those banners, not per-time for running the banners directly. It becomes the interest of independent websites to run the banners at no cost to CCP. It's an excellent program which is obviously working well for them.

For reasons we like to think we understand, the "hype-meter" for Jumpgate Evolution on www.MMORPG.com (one of the largest general online game fansites for Western gamers), already gives us about a 7.0 rating (+/- 0.1). That's pretty exciting considering we have only about 120 votes, while most games with similar hype values have 2200-5500 votes, there's been public knowledge about them for years, and have huge communities and followings and are often backed by big-name publishers. The job of the marketing group is to keep that momentum up through spreading the word and getting more info about Jumpgate Evolution released through various outlets. While that is happening, Scorch has mandated that Draker, Striker and I keep the faithful from the Jumpgate Classic community informed here at JSR and other pre-Jumpgate Evolution fansites, with info and exclusives that will appear here before Jumpgate Evolution-based resources get them.

[Jump]

Oooh, affiliate links. Jump wants one.

Affiliate links are good. All my other sites pay for themselves this way.

[Jonboy]

That's good to know, Ist.

[netburnr]

While I like the idea, and cost savings of what you just explained, I still think it is a very good idea to take out at least a small amount of adspace at very large traffic sites even if it costs a little more. I remember back in the day when you guys were really pushing to get more people and you broke down and put an ad on fark.com

I know for a fact that worked, as the very same day there were newbs signing on and when I asked them how they heard about the game, they all told me fark. A couple other great nerdy sites that would do very well would be digg.com and slashdot.com.

I'm not sure how the ads are set up on digg and slashdot, but I think they are either using google adsense or microsoft's version.

A nice thing about using adsense is you can set your own rates, so you can strech your money a little easier as long as you arn't trying to compete for first view. I don't know if you understand the way adsense works, but you put in your ad, and a price for how much you will pay for the impression $00.001 per 10 impressions or something, and then some keywords. Then when a site with that keyword on it requests ads from google, it will pick the people willing to pay the most. So you might not be the first ad but eventually you will get your impressions out once the other people use up all their money. So a small amount of money put in can give you as many impressions as you set it up depending on the cost per impressions.

[Eraser55]

just make the best space game ever! it will sell it self.

(chuck norris would be a big help tho..)

[Odiche]

As long as i can get into beta....I'm happy

[LadyDracoe]

I've also seen that word of mouth works. U get one person interested and they can and might do the same . Thats how I got hooked

[netburnr]

Originally Posted by LadyDracoe

I've also seen that word of mouth works. U get one person interested and they can and might do the same . Thats how I got hooked

Me too, I worked at CompUSA at the time I first heard about jumpgate. I was a hardware salesman, and one of the upgrade center techs told me about this game he had been playing. "Jumpgate, what the hell is that" "well its a first person online space game, etc etc" Just be what he told me about it I was hooked. So we walked over to the software section, couldn't find it on the shelf, went over to the terminal and looked up the name and found it was N66 (discontinued) and we had like 5 in stock, I went over to the 9.99 bargain and found only one copy, box was all beat to hell and looked like it was straight from the 80s. I questioned him, and he said do it, the rest was history. I was instantly hooked, and spent years enjoying the game, not bad for 10 bucks

[ELPIRATA]

And you never got to know his Jumpgate handle? i want to know hahahahaha.

Reminds me of Gunny and Dogzilla's story a lot different but funny.

ELP

[netburnr]

Sadly he quit shortly after I started playing and I never saw him in game.

[ELPIRATA]

Who.. Gunny or Dogz.... cause they are always SORTA around. They come, they leave to Jumpgate, they return, they leave, they return, go separate ways and now I dont know where they are

ELP

[netburnr]

Originally Posted by netburnrol

one of the upgrade center techs told me about this game he had been playing. "Jumpgate, what the hell is that" "well its a first person online space game, etc etc" Just be what he told me about it I was hooked. So we walked over to the software section... questioned him, and he said do it, the rest was history. I was instantly hooked, and spent years enjoying the game, not bad for 10 bucks

Originally Posted by netburnrol

Sadly he quit shortly after I started playing and I never saw him in game.

Thats who