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Previews! Votes! Come and join!

Amarth 15 years ago

Just thought I'd throw this out here, in case some people visit the forum but not the main page...

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.monkkonen.net/2009/11/driftmoon-is-a-finalist-at-2beegames-vote-now/">http://www.monkkonen.net/2009/11/driftm ... -vote-now/</a>

This is one of the easiest and best ways to support Ville, so go read his blog post, play the preview version of the game and VOTE for Driftmoon!

Anne 15 years ago

That's really thoughtful of you, Amarth, thanks!

Driftmoon is doing nicely at the competition so far, but it's quite tight (we're at 20%, the next guys at 18%). The game developer of the second-runner-up has a big fanbase to support them, although in my humble, if not also slightly subjective, opinion our current non-finished Driftmoon is just a better game and much more fun than that Kablooey (no offence to the developer, I'm sure he's a talented coder as well)! And if you consider the fact that I've already done quite a lot of testing with all the earlier versions of D, and I still like it, it must be quite alright.

(I noticed some of the other guys were doing a whole lot of advertising for votes - but, we are doing our share as well, and it was the instructions of the organizers, so that seems to be the way of the game...)

AND, to remind all of you of an important thing regarding the competition: There are MULTIPLE ROUNDS. That means even if you already voted this week (thank you for that, btw), we still need your vote NEXT WEEK, and the week after that. And even though Driftmoon truly is the best of the lot, as I think, we really do need your votes! Thanks, all of you!

Anne 15 years ago

Oh yeah, and you are very welcome to spread the word in facebook, or what ever media you prefer!

If you like, that is.

(Writes Anne-the-game-widow, while waiting for her husband to finish his daily after-work Driftmoon-coding-session. Changing the sound library seems to be a big&frustrating operation, judging from Ville's expression...

)

E_net4 15 years ago

Well, I just added an entry about Driftmoon... in mah blog.

"Anne" said:
(Writes Anne-the-game-widow, while waiting for her husband to finish his daily after-work Driftmoon-coding-session. Changing the sound library seems to be a big&frustrating operation, judging from Ville's expression... )

Ouch.

Anne 15 years ago

"E_net4" said:
Well, I just added an entry about Driftmoon... in mah blog.

Thanks E_net4, nice of you! As you might have noticed, the second round of the competition is on, and it is extremely tight: We are currently on the divided first position with our old friend Kablooey, but the gape to the followers is small. All of your votes and potential advertising help (facebook, twitter, etc?) are warmly appreciated!

We are happy to have gotten this far, but are of course hoping to make it to the last round next week (this is not certain yet, though it looks quite promising). When&if we get there, do remember to use your voting fingers especially the coming week, for it's gonna be one tough fight!

(Writes Anne again from the side of her love, who is - yes, you guessed it - again coding the night away...)

Amarth 15 years ago

It might just be my idea, but I don't think Driftmoon is actually that well-known among the indie community when compared with, say, Tower of Heaven or Kablooey! With the way you are going in the competition, you really should get into contact with tigsource, bytejacker, those things. I think the indie scene is closely following this competition and not having heard of Driftmoon before will hurt your ranking.

On the other hand, if you keep up the current scores, the indie game news sources will probably just come to you eventually. Though it never hurts to have some PR. Get the word out on their forums and get some new fans!

ville 15 years ago

You're right obviously, it wouldn't hurt to get more people to check the game out either. Which sites do you think are the major ones I should start with?

Amarth 15 years ago

You might want to get acquainted with the following few, and then see which you like to contact:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.tigsource.com/">http://www.tigsource.com/</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://indiegames.com/blog/">http://indiegames.com/blog/</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://jayisgames.com/">http://jayisgames.com/</a> (though it's more casual gaming focused)
<a class="postlink" href="http://playthisthing.com/">http://playthisthing.com/</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/">http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/</a> (which is more mainstream but still accessible I think)
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.bytejacker.com/">http://www.bytejacker.com/</a> (indie games videocast, recommended if you want to keep up with the scene)

As with anything on the internet, it's probably better to first take a look around and sniff the general atmosphere. People (both editors and visitors) are usually friendly (and slightly crazy) on those sites so I guess you'll find your way around quickly enough. Good luck.

Anne 15 years ago

We are - as of now - in on the last round of voting, hurray! Thanks everyone! The second round was tough, especially towards the end. The other contestant pulled a lot of advertizing stunts towards the end of the week (in-game adds, very popular sites, etc.), and we didn't have a lot of time for that yet - but I guess we have to whip something together and soon, to make the name Driftmoon more familiar to people. We want more of the voters to actually try Driftmoon, and find out what a great game it is!

I am quite optimistic, that if voters really played all the finalist games, we would bring the prize home!

Amarth already posted some sites, thanks for that! If some of you come up with other good sites (preferably rather popular ones) or other ideas, they are warmly welcomed by us! (Our time for skimming through the net searching is very limited because of our active one-year-old.)

Idiota 15 years ago

I've been following this strangely, on the main site (Which is odd considering I've had a bookmark directly to the forums for well over three years), rather than the forums. I didn't realise there must have been some kind of thread about it until now. :p Anyway, I've spread the word to a lot of my friends on campus about the competition, so I hope that we'll be able to at least overtake Kablooey again soon.

Narvius 15 years ago

Yay, you're on tigsource :3

ville 15 years ago

Yes, Anne's been very interested in marketing Driftmoon. She's managed to get us into many Finnish places, magazines and radio. Actual game sites who would respond are few and far between, but I think it doesn't take that many to start the snowball. And we're definitely gaining underground momentum, my server logs show a good amount of increase in traffic from smaller sites, from people's homepages and blogs and the like.

Anne 14 years ago

Thank you so far, people! The percentage of VC rose from 35% to 59% in less than half an hour. This is truly remarkable, I must say... :S Well, it might be that they have really hit the spot at the front page of some amazingly popular site?

Anyway: Let's not let this discourage us in the least (I'm serious)!!

The vote is still on!! We have gotten a whole lot of votes, and are doing quite well, all things considered!

ZeXLR8er 14 years ago

I pushed a plug for the poll into all the viral versions of every game I have out there and it just went nuts. There were probably over 1000 votes in half an hour so I actually just turned them off to avoid a complete bloodbath.

I guess that explains things. Online games were always going to have a big advantage; ahh well.

Anne 14 years ago

"ZeXLR8er" said:
I pushed a plug for the poll into all the viral versions of every game I have out there and it just went nuts. There were probably over 1000 votes in half an hour so I actually just turned them off to avoid a complete bloodbath.

I guess that explains things. Online games were always going to have a big advantage; ahh well.

Hmm.. I've got to say, I find the tactique a tad unfair. And it raises a few questions: Did the voters have a chance to also not vote - if they wanted to start/continue playing, or quit normally? At the ultimate worst, it could probably even be possible for the game to vote for VC automatically (But I really do not think the developer of VC would have resorted to such tactiques)?

Well, in any case! I still would like to get as many people as possible to play all the games in the final (not just one of them) - and then vote for their favourite! That would be the fair way to do it.

Idiota 14 years ago

"Anne" said:
Well, in any case! I still would like to get as many people as possible to play all the games in the final (not just one of them) - and then vote for their favourite! That would be the fair way to do it.

Sorry, unable to comply. :p I think the snowball will get a lot bigger if you guys finish 2nd place (Considering the unfair advantage that VC has atm) rather than 3rd or 4th, so I've been telling people (Even people who don't even play games :s) to just vote for Driftmoon. But when I think about it, when it comes to people who really don't have an obligation to vote for anything, you're right.

Anne 14 years ago

"Idiota" said:
Sorry, unable to comply. :p I think the snowball will get a lot bigger if you guys finish 2nd place (Considering the unfair advantage that VC has atm) rather than 3rd or 4th...

Can't argue with that: naturally second place is better than 3rd or 4th - not that those are that bad either. And of course those people who do not care for playing, but would like to vote, are free to for example check the videos for the games (even though our's is a bit old).

I'm just saying that if I were able to choose how the voting would go, I would rather have had all the voters really play the games from the beginning, in the name of fairness. I think we might very well have finished first, were that the fact. But I'm an optimist, and the biggest Ville-fan (heh).

And yes, I do realize that the all-voters-trying-all-games -idea is actually closer to a utopia than a real possibility.

(Oh yeah, and I don't like the way people have been dragging the other games' star reviews' down, when the competition has gotten tougher - that is just not the way it should be done either. I have also noticed that some competitors have promised prizes for people who rate them with five stars, but don't want to point any fingers.) Well: All in all - I guess this is how many public vote-based competitions work.

E_net4 14 years ago

Have you seen the poll lately. What the heck is with "Vector Conflict: The Siege"'s?

Pete 14 years ago

Played it for half an hour. Sorta reminds me of Cholo. Its not bad, but there's nothing that special about it.

EDIT: And the reason for it being a mile ahead:

"ZeXLR8er" said:
I pushed a plug for the poll into all the viral versions of every game I have out there and it just went nuts. There were probably over 1000 votes in half an hour so I actually just turned them off to avoid a complete bloodbath.

I guess that explains things. Online games were always going to have a big advantage; ahh well.

Anne 14 years ago

The final results for the 2beegames.com community vote:
1. VC 49%: VC came down a lot towards the end, but won the vote. Congrats to them for the prize! The game wouldn't have been my personal pick, but I'm sure some people really do love this type of simple aim&shoot games.
2. Driftmoon 30%: We gained a lot after VC's huge jump (see Pete's quote above), and can be very happy for our silver! Thanks to all the voters!
3. Kablooey 16%: Congratulations to Kablooey as well! I personally considered them to be our biggest competition in the final voting - and I hope David takes this as a compliment, if he happens to read this.

4. Turba 6%: Congratulations to the team behind Turba as well!
In addition, the 2beegames -panel chose a game called Climb to the Top of the Castle as their favourite for porting into a console.

So, no prize for us - but all of this was definately not in vain. A lot more people know about Driftmoon these days! And especially considering that Driftmoon is still heavily under development, I think we did very well indeed! Thanks for your support - and now, back to work!

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