Kill the Hype for Our Own Good

Ok, this might look stupid, but we could try and keep PA to these forums for a while. It might be more conducive to massive interest in the game if it pops out of nowhere at release. This not being an open-ended game, its feature incompleteness will more likely drive customers away rather than draw them in with future potential, since such potential is not really as visible or obvious. Essentially, we don't have a current known aspect of the game that would drive people to slave upon it like what happened to Minecraft or Kerbal Space Program. There won't be potential for major reviews and proper gameplay footage for quite a ways into Alpha, which might cripple the game's public view. Then again I might just be overthinking public reaction, but I've learned never to overestimate the average gun**nk lover's IQ and comments. I just want the game to be free of mud stains it doesn't deserve.

TL;DR: Don't hype the game, people will make it look bad 'cos Alpha-blind.

I'd say: Hype it and show off how the game develops over time. At least in Beta. Showing off how it crashes and burns a lot in alpha might be not the best idea. Dunno.

any publicity is good publicity

Yes, because clearly an article bashing PA for being unstable and crashing while being ignorant of it's Alpha nature and essentially misinforming everyone who reads it is "good".

Don't be so naive, like the rest of life things are in shades of gray, not black and white. Obviously we want PA to have hype and get known and really blaze a trail of innovation in the RTS genre, but we can to be smart about it, usinghte Alpha for hype might work, but it can backfire greatly, it's better for us to wait, once Beta gets rolling along we'll have a much more solid product we can hype about and our hype will be much more effective.

If it's one thing we've learned here on the forums and Live streams, it's that people for the most part still don't fully understand(if at all) how game development actually works/happens. Neutrino can preface his comments all he want about pre-aplha this and not finished/WIP that, but it doesn't matter, just look at the questions people ask and the answers that are given....

This is why I still advocate putting the Alpha under a NDA-like agreement to now showcase it publicly, not because the game isn't ready for that(it isn't, but still) because the PEOPLE aren't ready for that kind of exposure yet.

Mike

Oh dear.

There's a reason polarizing politicians are the most well known (and often most successful). Uber should focus on making a good game not managing impressions, and I would assert that approach will cede more constructive feedback.

Yes there certainly is a danger of distraction and misinformation as a result of incomplete or misunderstood work, this will die in time and should be a secondary concern (see: gameplay complaints after every livestream). I'm not advocating showing PA Alpha footage in a negative light, rather an honest light. There will be a time to manage impressions, that time is not Alpha though. Look at games like Path of Exile, they are deep into the development process and have been rather transparent through out development. You can still find Alpha footage with poor graphics and flawed concepts.

I also wouldn't advocate ignoring misinformation or ignorance, quite the opposite. The more Alpha footage available the less misinformation and ignorance there will be. When I said in so many words that there is no such thing as bad publicity I meant that people talking about PA, whether good or bad things, can only be a good thing.

I don't reject your concerns I just have a different take on the matter.

Didn't they make documenting the creation of the game one of the stretch goals? They've already started showing pre-alpha stuff, I don't think they're going to stop now.

But if it wasn't one of the stretch goals, I'd actually be all for skipping the documentary live streams so they could allocate 100% of their resources into making the game.

I imagine the documentary is something that we'll see after/as the game officially launches. These Livestreams are not the "documentary" that was a stretch goal. They are just brief updates. I'll bet the documentary will show a LOT of the stuff we can't see or what Uber chooses not to show us yet.

Yes, but the Documentary won't be out until it's done.

As for things like the live streams, those are completely within thier control, if the know something doesn't work they don't show it(which is pretty much why we haven't seen any naval yet, it's not ready) and Uber doesn't have that control when Little Timmy posts a compilation of bugs to youtube and get gets 50,000 views and people formulate thier opinion based on that.

Obviously not every video is harmful, good people put in the foot work to add context for the video, but so does Neutrino every live stream, but so many people still don't get it.

Mike

Exercise in futility.

That's why I'm here!

Just remember: you do not play an alpha,

• you report bugs and faults.

that only works for politicians and any other group you don't trust and expect any good news from anyway.

Essentially try to avoid selling PA to friends and family purely based on hype. Make sure they KNOW wtf an alpha is and what to expect in the future. Another way of putting this is if you are talking about PA say on a stream or youtube channel make sure not to focus on hype without first letting viewers know ALPHA is ALPHA is ALPHA!

Any form of NDA will probably be useless.
Way too many people involved.

However, a good idea could be a not skippable splash screen (or similar) indicating some of the main limitations of the current build at every launch :

Code:

Careful, this game is still under heavy Development.
You WILL encounter bugs and problems.
Please connect to the technical forums http://urloftechnicalforums for more information.

Or whatever similar.

And regarding the Hype, let it spread.
More people = more money.
Even if the forums will certainly be SWARMED by hordes of completly ignorant and out of "scope" people. Money is money.

From what i understood, the base of the game will be stabilized for Alpha, and Uber will be adding things in each build. We should not see too many gamebreaking things (bug, crashes) if the process is done right.

Well I'll be prefacing all my videos with 'this is just an alpha at the moment', I also think the excitement of people making alpha videos will really shine through.

Unless Uber are going to really be up on monitoring and DMCA'ing every alpha video that comes out I don't see how restricting alpha videos will be feasible.

Considering Uber already does the whole "It's pre-alpha, nothing's finished" every single livestream and people STILL don't listen to them I think it's a lost cause.

Tangentially related;
This is one of my favourite analysis' of the human condition, captured in film: Link

Hype or not... PA has an unique community as we do not have alot of 10-year old emo people on the forums. The players who have paid for the Alpha (including me ) are all to aware what the Alpha is and will give comments based on that. I am not expecting a "full review" of any of us on Youtube over 2 weeks, treating the Alpha as the full release.

Also, Minecraft was in Alpha a long time and yet I did not read any bad comments about the state of the game. So I guess the hype will happen, not due to Uber ads, but because we (the community) play the Alpha and love it for what it is already and what is yet to come

give it time

True.. then again this game will not appeal to anybody with an attention span of 10 sec

That is just stupid. For example, 'nobody' thought that the Earth was flat, that's a common myth.

And even if they did, so what? That is 100% irrelevant to what you're trying to say. For example, we know that our knowledge is incomplete. We also know that our laws of physics and such are massively wrong. And yet, we still use it and teach it, because we don't have anything better.

People in the past thought that the Earth was the centre of the universe. That was logical. Then they found out it wasn't true. And presto, most people nowadays believe in a Heliocentric model (although we don't have definitive proof of one way or the other). And before someone brings up the fact that Galileo was executed, that wasn't because he went against the Bible with his Heliocentric model.