Promoting maps

[WaterKnight]

Since this question appeared before me today again and I did not find proper tutorials covering it (project management tutorials are rare anyway), I would like to ask the community how you effectively promote your maps to be played by other people and what factors do you think pushed the popularity of today known maps?

 

[Lifee_72]

Bugless map
Good terrain
Fun and interesting gameplay
Fast map updates
And i don't know what else...custom spells with eyecandy effects and stuff like that

 

[Aeroblyctos]

For what purpose you're asking? Do you have a map coming?

 

[WaterKnight]

Would like to know it in general because the question keeps popping up and there is discontent about what maps actually get played. I myself am working on some maps but they are not about to face this problem in the near future yet.

 

[Lifee_72]

I hear very often people looking for new rpg's to play with save/load system,and im currently working on one.

 

[Aeroblyctos]

You just need to update your map frequently that way your map will get a lot of attention eventually.

For example here's one fail story about promoting your map: I was working on a massive single-player RPG called Mystery of Friza for half year. When I finally completed the game I released and I uploaded it to here. After uploading the map I started doing other projects and probably updated the map one or two times only. The map never got much attention and eventually the map was forgotten.

The standards weren't back then great and this map probably was one of greatest single-player RPGs(I'm not talking about campaigns here). The map was made at 2006 and even today occasionally people send me emails saying it was a great game to play. Now the game is too old and there are some many flaws. I don't see a reason anymore update such as old map.

So what to learn? You should promote more your map, make a thread what you're doing, update your thread time to time, tell what you've done, ask for feedback and when the project is ready enough let people test it. That way you'll get a lot of feedback and motivation continue working on your project.

 

[Vladadamm]

You can have an hostbot which host in chains the map. You can also do a website for your map, it's apprecied sometimes (and better than a thread in many cases)

Also, you can post videos of your map on youtube or others ^^

 

[WaterKnight]

@Lifee_72: I take the map's general quality as a requirement but you have addressed a point that I also think is benefitting in specifically being attractive to the audience without actually making up the map. Call it fan-service: Flashiness of effects. There are quite a few videos on YouTube presenting such spells and the comments were rather impressed of some exaggerated effect spam without actual gameplay use.

So what to learn? You should promote more your map, make a thread what you're doing, update your thread time to time, tell what you've done, ask for feedback and when the project is ready enough let people test it. That way you'll get a lot of feedback and motivation continue working on your project.

I guess there are a lot of projects doing this. Blogging in a thread is a really basic method. Still, the very minority gets games hosted. Let's take Softmint's Rise of Winterchill as an example: An innovative AoS with adequate terrain (most played maps have bad terrain), gets updated now and then, extended deliberations are exposed in the forum thread. However, I never see it hosted by publics.

@Vladadamm: You can surely do a lot but I am asking what's REALLY effective and why. YouTube videos won't be seen unless you possess a greater channel with dozens of subscribers. The same applies to websites. Nobody would regularly go there unless you already have a small community that fanatically wants to play your map.

Well, yeah, I think bots are very effective but also illicit and exactly the reason why non-botters have problems to create their own games/test play and the map market contains low variance because of it. It falsifies the demands.

 

[Aeroblyctos]

Yea well single-player and multi-player maps are a little differently promoted...