I was browsing through some gamesites when I notices one of them had posted a top 10 "I can't believe there indy-games" video. These were amazing looking titles built with small budgets/dev teams. Planetary annihilation was not on the list. In fact this website did not even have an entry for Planetary annihilation. News about the game doesnt seem to get much further then the community. (And facebook posts, for people who already like it) My opinion of gamejournalism in general is mixed at best. But still I'm sad our games doesnt get more attention outside the community here. What are Ubers plan on this front? Is there anything we can do?
There was a decent amount of hullubalu during the actual Kickstarter. There's probably gonna be another round of ruckus when the game is officially released. As for what we can do? Tell all of your friends who like these things. Share it on social networks. Upvote it whenever you see it on reddit and stuff like that. http://www.reddit.com/r/planetaryannihilation https://www.facebook.com/planetaryannihilation?ref=br_tf https://twitter.com/UberEnt
I've noticed it as well. Right now I think Star Citizen is mainly grabbing the PC-Indy gaming scene. However I think that if we act as the marketing department(as many people are doing with SC) then we can push PA into the news again! That or we could look into collectively paying off some of the news sites(not sights) to run the story...
I think Uber will will prioritize advertising the game soon, probably within the next month. There main focus is getting all the units in, balance and debug. It make sense they want to advertise a game that has all the (polished) units showing in the game play footage.
I dunno about next month. But they'll probably beef up the publicity when the game releases. I'd love to see an uber dev or some of the uber devs to an AMA on reddit.
I am honestly perfectly fine with the low profile of the game in its current state. Right now it is not in a very polished shape and major changes happen quite regularly. Any coverage of it that is not continuously updated to reflect the changes in the game is bound to be unfavourable and probably even misleading. Since Uber don't seem to be in desperate need for money to finish the game I think there is no need for them to entrust the perception of their product to people they have zero influence over in terms of how accurate and up-to-date their coverage is and - most importantly! - will be. TL,DR: There is only one first impression.
I don't think it would be all that popular - at least not on /r/iama. They hate marketing AMAs. It might, however, go down quite well on /r/games with a title similar to "We helped make Total Annihilation and our spiritual successor comes out tomorrow"
For me there are only two big titles this year. PA and D3. But from those two, only one got my money pre-release
Sadly, I would feel more despair about it if I knew for a fact that they knew what PA even was and still opted not to mention it. They probably didn't do full on research, just followed trends their friends told them about like DayZ and Rust and all that nonsense. They aren't really hidden gems if they aren't really hidden, and indie games aren't really hidden anymore. Which is good, I like that. Point is, I would bet they didn't mention Renegade X either. Either way, both those games need to be spread by word of mouth, and also this game is beta and might get better news mentions when a nearby release date is set up for it. BTW, there should be a "Planetary Annihilation in the News!" subforum, where players and devs post links to any online site mentioning Planetary Annihilation (much like if PA made a list like that and were described in short detail) ALSO: http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/2a2pg4/gt-countdown-top-10-can-t-believe-they-re-indies If it is this link you refer to, then this entire thread you posted is merely another "graphics aren't call of duty real" thread, as that video heavily and openly bases the entries as graphic-powerful ones. This game is intentionally not. Give it a few months after release, someone will reshade remodel and retexture everything to look more realistic, like Minecraft did.
I have the seen the game featured in a number of random articles and news stories. The only one I think of right off the bat is this article from WIRED magazine. It essentially goes over the largest funded kickstarter games and where they are in their various states of development. They talk a little about the 'problem of over-funding' which is an interesting issue and not as glorious as one might think. mo money can equal mo problems http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/10/gaming-kickstarters/
It would be a good idea if we all participated in generating a bit of hype before release. This can be done by writing to gaming journalists, posting on blogs and social networks etcetc. Of course, more can be done from the developers' side, since they have the power to send out review codes, maybe organise some launch events and whatnot. I'll happily volunteer a bit of time later on towards organising a little launch party in London. Even if it's just a fan meeting. And I have access to a whole warehouse of AV gear, so that helps.
It's worth remembering that it's been about a year and a half since all this kicked off with the Kickstarter in August 2012. Back then, PA was making the rounds and have a lot of articles and such going for it, naturally with nothing that is actually news-worthy to share right now it's not surprising that there hasn't been much visibility on it. Also considering that I don't think a lot of the articles and such from during the Kickstarter Period wasn't really "solicited", but as we get closer to release you can bet that Uber is get the hype train rolling for real. Mike