The best way to effectively promote Freelancer is getting pc magazines to include Freelancer on their packaged disc(s) IMHO.

Though Im not seeing this becoming a reality since Microsoft has pretty much abandoned FL in any way. The only ones making money out of it are 3rd party resellers that sell Freelancer as a budget title among other titles.

Its really sad how FL has ended, because FL is actually a very high quality game that deserved more support and marketing.

M$ at its best.

i wont want this to turn into a how M$ should have done it thread but the only thing that let FL down WAS the marketting, it was so shite did i see a single advert for FL? no. how did i hear about it? a friend how did he hear about it? garage sale. lol.

but yea PC magazines is our best bet

I’ve tried emailing PCGamer and have heard no response from them. Guess I’ll have to wait and see the next month’s mag.

We may want to email as many gaming newssites and magazines (PCG again, PCG UK, GameSpot, Gamesradar, IGN, GameSpy, Gamasutra, 1UP, etc) as we possibly can. I wouldn’t believe NONE would heed our call for help. Heck, someone could arrange going into those video chats we see on G4’s XPlay or something. We need to get some sort of word out, and it really seems like everyone who could have a certain interest in helping us is just not caring at all (Ubisoft, Microsoft, Valusoft, etc).

We can really only gain good things out of doing this, if it is done correctly that is, I’m pretty sure if we brainstorm here, we can come up with something proper, at the minute we have a few ideas and such, now we gotta start building on them hehe ^^

Okay, ill stop talking now, ill go sleep, and stop drinking :D:D:D (THANK GOD FOR SPELL CHECKER)

I want to find a ‘Advertising’ team to help me contact all these sites/magazines etc listed.

If you have a flair for words and want to try and help me contact these guys, drop me a PM

May still have the email address to contact a gentleman who worked at Gamestar.de magazine.

They included Evo on a cover disk of their mag for game mods wayyy back in 2004 I think it was, January. They also sent me a copy of the magazine too

It may yield nothing - it may be a good idea to try this sort of tactic though? Get in contact with magazines who do this sort of thing (they had 4 cover disks full of games mods for various games, including Freelancer mods evo, flmm, massive addon and another one I think) and let them know that not only FL is still alive, but it’s got some great mods that are doing well in MOTY or whatever it’s called.
Sadly I never kept him up to date with how we got on despite promsing to do so… as it took us so damned long to put the next version out, and then we kinda stopped.

The worst that could happen is silence or nothing. Best, maybe they shove those mods in and it makes people get nostalgic and play it again. The game didn’t sell too badly after all, and if they’ve got a cover DVD of mods - chances are there is space available, and they will happily fill it with anything

The best method is to coordinate everything from one point. IMO, theres one shot to get it right, if its good then it will work again, however, half done or fragmented it wont have the impact.

There needs to be a decision as to how it is going to be presented, whats going to be offered and content. Then there needs to be a strategy for the what the FL communities can do as a result of the pr.
The “package” and the writeup needs to be prepared so the only decision they have to make is what edition it goes into. Making them do any work will lead to the possibility of it being delayed, edited in a way we dont want or shelved.
We pretty much know the format, the amount of text etc. they write about the included free software etc. so all we need to do is do it all for them and present them with it. Until that point, I dont think its wise making contact with these people. Once we have a format, content etc. it can then be mailed/sent to all pc related games mags/online sites as a Freelancer Update, not a site/mod or individual thing.

ITS ALL IN THE PREPERATION.

My suggestion is to set up a working group or party to coordinate this. The people involved should have some experience of advertising/marketing, Someone who can put together artwork in an advertising/marketing environment style and representations from FL MP communities (Any large communities
The post ad strategy is very important. Just putting stuff on a disk and some nice text/artwork is only part of it. The followup/call to action and peer acceptance is equally key to encourage non FL people to try it.

Agreed,

Hence I said I want to put together a ‘team’ so we can work on this. Not just everyman go out on thier own and try something.

What about podcasts?

Blogs?

Flash Adverts?

Maybe going as far as Radio adverts?

Only problem is, it needs money,
Which some people don’t want to,
Or as in my case, can’t due to age and such.

I’ve had two people approach me that are willing help to start to put a plan into action.

Remember, the best way to do this is from a planned coordinated approach.

If you are interested, please send me a PM and we can get to work.

Thanks,

R.

Try 2 involve the players.

The players love Freelancer, as we do.
And i think they are glad 2 help.
But what 2 post?
And a little motivation never hurts.

That’s what we try atm.
–-------------------

**Ok pliots - here is the deal:

You announce WTS on a gaming or pc site or forum or where ever it might be of interest
and earn a $ 100 milla in the game + a possible bonus.

And be aware:
that doesn’t mean recruiting from other Freelancer communities or servers,
which will not be tolerated and might get you 2 bans (there and here).

So here is my idee for an announcment
which is just 2 give an idee and a resource 4 possible posting:**

If you played Elite by Acorn and WingCommander by Origin System,
you will have heared about the award winning
3D space game Freelancer by Microsoft Game Studios / Digital Anvil.
This game is still on of the most outstanding games,
featuring one of the best graphics of this genre after years
and you will find a very active community,
which stretch and modded this game beyond it’s limits.

–-- cut --------
WTS 4.17 Modinfo
---- cut --------

Give it a chance, find your old Freelancer copy or get a new one for
lower the 10 $ / Euro and get the WTS client mod 4.17
& the Mod manager needed to install mods for Freelancer.
Register yourself at WTS World forum to learn more
(especialy how to connect to the WTS server since the global game server is down)
and join the WTS Teamspeak at IP: 88.134.152.5:8767:8767
Also give the Freelancer Community Network and http://the-starport.net/ a chance,
where you can find other cool mods and priceless informations.

======================================

**Earn the money by providing a link
to your announcment under this topic.

It might be an idee, to google 4 “freelancer” and/or “game” and/or “wts”.
Even sites, where WTS is annouced might need an updated.
One of my “favorites” is “Awesome Freelancer MOD!!! WTS 2.0 - Star Trek, Star Wars & Babylon 5!”
Who makes it to start a new topic with “WTS 4.17” in the titel there 1st
gets a “Puddle Jumper - cloak typ” as a special bonus.

PS. You can also post in other languages.
PPS. zum Beispiel in Deutsch**

–-------------

Some players have been very creativ
and mailed PC magazines etc.
The refered post at the battleclinic was
updated from 2.0 to 4.17 within 30 minutes.
;D And 2 funny: the first attempt had a link 2 “The Starport”
but not to the WTS site.

PS. Feel free 2 use that and change anything of the above announcement 2 your needs.

Yeah the difference is, link building is different from marketing. Getting players to link is ok at a local level, however, you have no control on what they post and how the message is delivered. This is the problem.

When you have kids trying to build links by offering the above, unfortunately, you allow them to market your server. Marketing your server with bad typos, poor grammer etc. is worse than having a link in the first place. Normal link building is fine.

As I have mentioned you need to have a set format, so the message is clear, concise, uniform and interesting.

Most of you have your own banners and buttons, this is because you want your server promoted with that graphic, its the same for the text.

My suggestion to you F!R, is to get some text set out and say to your people, heres the link, heres the text and heres the graphic, use these when building links for our server. Let them add a bit to the start and end, but keep the meat uniform.

… that’s what we do. suggesting a text 2 post.
(Maybe clearer after color update and the WTS mod info is left away here)

Besides:
1. The kids grammer can’t be much worse than mine.
2. I like 2 get things done - even if it’s not perfect - better, than getting them discussed.

@WTS World forum: http://the2ndweb.com/wtsworld/showpost.php?p=5616&postcount=1
result (example):
http://www.battleclinic.com/forum/index.php/topic,23280.new.html#new
http://stargate-project.de/stargate/forum/showthread.php?p=500316#post500316
http://www.sg.hu/listazas.php3?id=1042794664

How about writing a email to magazines like PC Games etc.
They could provide Freelancer as full game on one of their CD they provide with the magazine.
This could also be good for MS cause they would earn a little cash with it.

Only a idea i just had in my mind

One important side note. If your pushing to include Freelancer MOD’s and utilities on any Gaming Magazine CD or DVD, some attempt must be made to deal with the basic error of Microsoft not patching many of it’s older products for Vista. Any potential new players do not need the frustration of stumbling around in the dark unable to connect due to the odd ball qwerks of Vista. Most will not know to connect to a Freelancer forum and ask for help, they might connect to the Gaming Magazine Forum where odds are no one will have a clue, or they will simply toss it aside and move on unless there is some type of documentation on the disk explaining the problem and possible workarounds.

TBH you guys, the first thing we need is the MS software for the global. The biggest problem FL has is new people NOT knowing how to connect to this game. It’s a big problem. We at the Starport, have hammered MS for the software, but to no avail.

I, myself personally have email Ubisoft numerous times, asking for a mutual link exchange to support FL. I spammed em from the top on down, they have numerous contacts all over the world, and half of the emails came back with invalid email address and no reply from the rest. I’m not giving up on that, next is a formal letter sent by snail mail, maybe it will bring light to the ‘right’ person at Ubisoft.

Unfortunately for gaming companies, FL is dead, atleast because it is no longer a huge money maker for them.

I am and always have supported this game, but we need to come up with something that will be attractive to new players. Before the global was taken down, FL had almost 1800 players, STILL playing the game. MS saw fit to take the global and we are lucky to see 500 people still playing this game.

So the focus should start with figuring out a way to lure new players to an old game. That’s the first step.

it will be very hard to find new players even if you get a new GLS online
and i dont really have a solution for this since there are many other Space sims out there meanwhile (which seem to be more attractive to players than FL is)

But you could try to contact old players
many have stopped playing because of the GLS loss or because of other reasons and then they forgot about FL

i assume that the old LR db contains emails
if so its going to be very easy to put them into a newsletter script and send a newsletter out to remind those ppl that FL is not dead yet…. that there are ways to connect to servers… that there are incredible developments
the old LR had about 25000 members… if you get a reaction from just 1% of them you would noticeable raise the activity in FL
(just an idea - an idea which did work very good for SWAT in the past years)

There is a fine line there OP, between disturbing someones privacy. By that I mean ‘spamming’ an entire forum listing.

You can bet that some people will be offended by an email, others won’t be, but some will.

I really don’t know what the answer is, only that we need to do something, but what that is I don’t know.