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| General Altitude Discussion Discuss anything Altitude related that doesn't belong in another forum. |
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#2
11-15-2010, 06:04 PM
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That's not good.. too bad tec is mia
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#7
11-16-2010, 05:26 AM
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 Haven't seen maimers face around here in a while... hehe head chef
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#9
11-16-2010, 04:25 PM
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#11
11-16-2010, 10:10 PM
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#12
11-16-2010, 10:33 PM
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It won't happen for a multitude of reasons, the biggest of which is money. Lam and Karl will fix something if it's broken, but don't expect any new feature updates until they start making a [large] profit from Altitude.
see: this post by Karl (sad) Quote:
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#14
11-16-2010, 11:27 PM
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Its perfectly fine. In business, you dont continue to invest in a company when revenue stops. That is when you can't invest sometthing to get more revenue. If aieral freeze tag made revenue, they would make it. That wont get new cliental unless they advertised the specific game mode on various websites and redecued the price to 8 dollars and made the demo expire in 2 hours, assuming they still do that. Even if they don't make the mode advertising never hurts Last edited by York; 11-16-2010 at 11:32 PM.
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#15
11-17-2010, 12:05 AM
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Just to be clear: Altitude has always been primarily a labor of love -- we're not going to abandon it just because revenue has slowed. Financially, Steam has been a major revenue source and allows us to invest in future projects without dependence on external funding sources (e.g. publishers or day jobs). Don't read too much into gloomy or pessimistic statements from Karl -- he prefers to look at the glass as "10% empty".
That said, we're happy with the current state of Altitude, so future changes will focus mostly on community needs (ex: server tools for the admins behind the ladder and APL, support for new map development with map-making contests and test servers, etc). We are always looking to increase the player base (via advertisements, community points, etc -- suggestions welcome) both for the health of the community (as players ourselves), and for the obvious financial benefit to our company. Why no Aerial Freeze Tag? The primary reason is player base fragmentation. While Altitude has always had a healthy community, we're small enough that we need to keep a careful eye on critical mass issues: if there are too many modes it can spread the existing player base too thin, with not enough players to fill up servers for any particular mode at off-peak hours. With our current numbers, we'll focus mostly on issues that appeal to new and existing users without creating new divisions. In the future, once we've grown our player base a bit more, we can take another look at fresh modes like AFT (which I'll happily admit sounds like it'd be lots of fun).
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#16
11-17-2010, 12:16 AM
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Someone mentioned in another thread that he showed altitude to his friends but they didn't buy it because they said that 3 hours is not enough to really see what's going on in the game.
I'm curious to know if you plan on changing this 3 hour demo limit ? If I recall correctly it was initially introduced to make the master server survive the Steam introduction. Is this criteria still valid today ? I actually kinda miss the demo loopies and bomber flying around ...
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#17
11-17-2010, 12:34 AM
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We are planning to experiment with some alternative demo models. My biggest problem with the old demo style was the skewed usage stats (so many bombers and loopies), but there are definitely some other ways to do it. Suggestions welcome!
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#18
11-17-2010, 03:02 AM
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Now heres the dilemma. Altitude's competitive players are the most important players, in terms of loyalty to the game and in terms of providing reasonable suggestions. But, the non-competetive gamers have a bigger player base, and quite frankly, have earned you more money than us competitive players have. The problem with this is simple to understand, but easy to fix. A competitive gamer will have no problem spending $10 on the game even after only an hour of demo. There are also plenty of gaming communities out there who would spend $20 on this game without ever trying it, fully for the aspect of competitive gaming. However, there are hundreds of players out there who only play for fun, and won't buy a game like this before trying it. So what do you do? What I would do is reduce the price slightly. No, $10 isn't a lot, but there are players who would buy a game for $5 before every trying it. But $5 isn't a lot of money at all, even at a large scale of buyers. So how do you attract competitive gamers, but still grab the casual gamers? You advertise in competitive gaming communities. I am not sure of any communities because I am not really a gamer, this is the only community that I am apart of. But what you do is you ask a few people to build a advertisement for competitive altitude. You get a few members to record the serious business aspect of the game. Then you make a deal with a few communities to advertise your game. The gamers will see it, and just decide to start playing. This has multiple benefits. First is you build the player base. This helps our community and also gets you more money. If the community had an influx of even just 6 more teams appear, the future of Altitude isn't even imaginable. Now with this bigger player base, you reduce the price of the game. The real time gamers won't get bothered by this because after all, they aren't here for fun. I was furious when I found out that I had spent $20 on this game, when others got it for $15. But once I was introduced into the competitive scene, I didn't mind at all. The new gamers wont be bothered. With the lower price, you can start small advertisements in a lot of places. This attracts a bunch of casual players, because most of them play games from a bunch of websites. I'm talking about websites like addictingames.com and things like those. People won't have a problem spending $5 on a computer game, when some spend $3 on an iPod app. Now I am just a 16 year old boy from Long Island. What do I know about business? It's not like my dad manages 4 different companies and my uncles are both salesmen. It's not like I buff my school schedule with business classes that count for a college credit. This is just YorK's opinion.
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#19
11-17-2010, 03:17 AM
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Hahs its true.. york comes from a long line of successful bussiness men.
Not only is revenue coming from new players but also old players. Some players have a second or maybe even a third account. I think that the system is working pretty well but yes, I think advertising here and there would help a lot.
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#20
11-17-2010, 03:20 AM
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Edit: ah, here it is..maybe karl was overreacting or something, but still, doesn't sound good :'( Last edited by leggomyeggo; 11-17-2010 at 03:23 AM.
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#24
11-17-2010, 11:35 AM
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Why not just program it in so that demo accounts have all planes and perks open from the get-go? Then start the leveling bit when they buy the game. Makes sense to me if the demo account is time-limited anyway.
I've had a few people try Altitude here and there and the plane that attracted their attention the most was Miranda... they didn't even care about the other planes. They only got to try it because it was on my purchased account, they never would have had the opportunity on a regular demo account.
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#25
11-17-2010, 01:45 PM
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Yes.. it seems that miranda is the most attractive plane to new players. When i first bought the game i was obsessed with miranda, as was my brother.
I have talked about the game to a few friends and 2 or 3 of them bought it. I think a big thing that us players can do is actually tell our friends who might actually be interested in it.
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#26
11-17-2010, 02:39 PM
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#27
11-17-2010, 02:58 PM
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How would they know what gameplay is like if they're forced to flop around on pubs with tracker rubber loopy and then LOL DEMO IS OVER BUY THE GAME OR GTFO. I know I wouldn't have bought it had I only had 3 hours to get into the game. Another problem is the lack of exposure of the competitive community. If we could get some videos out that showcase the best of competitive Altitude, then the game would look much more compelling to buy. Also, CCN do more color commentaries with us. Last edited by [Y]; 11-17-2010 at 03:00 PM.
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#28
11-17-2010, 03:42 PM
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Also, if it weren't for $E introducing us to competitive altitude then we would prob not have the game..
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#29
11-17-2010, 07:35 PM
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This thread about AltBouncer really came a long way. I never realized my comments would spur such a discussion. I was only half serious when I said I was "waiting for Aerial Freeze Tag mode." It was supposed to be more of a joke than anything. Altitude is a game that I played for a looong time. I was playing it since back in the beta and was something like the 220th person to have an account. My account has something like 1000 hours of play time on it. That might not be a lot compared to some others now, but in general, that's quite a bit. If the Altitude community were to grow enough for Lamster to expand the game and create new features then sure i would come back to check them out, but I fully understand the situation they are in and totally agree with what Lamster said.
Last edited by nesnl; 11-19-2010 at 06:43 PM. Reason: maimer is a hater (there I deleted it)
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#30
11-18-2010, 05:24 PM
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Deleted all the annoying posts since this thread actually has useful discussion going on.
We have discussed several different ways of trying to increase the Altitude player base... In game advertising for "demo" users. The problem with this is there isn't any advertising company that has an infrastructure set up to do this. Only flash programs have this ability... Google needs to release an adwords for standalone programs or something. Unlimited demo account thoughts: limit them to one custom config and a plane of the day config... problem is why would they ever buy the game? This would be nice if we could do in game advertising. Anyways we all wish we could increase the Altitude player numbers... Lam and I haven't figured out to do it. We've tried and thought about a lot of things.
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#31
11-18-2010, 11:59 PM
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I don't think time-unlimited demos is the way to go. A few people here are saying they played the game on demo accounts for hundreds of hours before buying the game, but I suspect they may be a 'vocal minority', so to speak.
I know I myself purchased the game after less than 10 hours of game time, (and I was hooked after about the first ten minutes, to be honest) and I think that's the case for most people who try demos in general - if they're not sold on the game within the first hour or two, rarely will they ever be. And what's worse, on time-unlimited demos, if they find themselves content with loopy or bomber, then they never buy the game (or wait an excessive amount of time before buying). Dangling a carrot is one thing, but you gotta pull it back at some point... Regarding perk unlocks, well ... if they've bought the game, okay... but asking a demo user to do all that is ridiculous. On my first run, unlocking all of the perks (lvl 60) took about a week, a serious amount of game hours. People need to be sold on the idea of purchasing in an hour or two. Quote:
I remember myself taking up the 'under $5' mentality during steam Christmas sales, too ... grabbed up about $20 worth of games that were under $5 each (some just $1) and didn't try any demos for said games at all. This is kinda rare for me, tbh, since I usually have a 'demo or bust' attitude. Last edited by silent skies; 11-19-2010 at 12:01 AM.
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#32
11-19-2010, 12:47 PM
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As has already been stated - if people like the game they will buy it. No amount of extra pushing will make a game more likeable without seriously changing the game dynamics (and that's just as likely to make the same amount of people not like it any more). If you can't make more people like the game (and thus progress from demo to full purchase), you just have to widen the net and expose more people to the demo /game because the percentage that like it enough to buy it isn't going to change significantly. So you need to increase the number of total potential customers which will increase sales with the same percentage of "conversions". To me, the only ways to do that are to advertise it more (which is incredibly specialist and unlikely to have a massive improvement for a game that's already on Steam), get more people to see it (e.g. build on the Facebook things to encourage people to share the game / link with their friends), or increase the number of places it appears (e.g. ports to other platforms). I think getting into Steam deals as often as possible is probably the best way. Many people wait for Steam deals, especially pre-Christmas ones, so they can hold off and save themselves some money on the games on their wishlist. Never sell on the Steam deals at less than profit for yourselves, though, and to be honest even a Steam deal with £0.50 off the normal price is likely to boost sales just through being on the front page. If you can get into the pre-Christmas sales, good, because the nearer-to-Christmas-holiday-sale isn't normally enough time to gift the games to people (but don't pass it up because of that - just don't rely on ONLY the sale over Christmas). How about a Christmas bargain push on the front page / Facebook starting now? A new Christmassy logo graphic and a Christmassy skin and the game on (slight) discount for Christmas gifting? How about a bundle of Christmas-themed maps to go with it? A way to send people the app (not through Steam) with a nice "Here's your present from X" email? (Same principle applies to Halloween, Easter, etc.) Ports to other platforms also seems obvious but is more long-term and an investment rather than something that can be knocked up quite quickly. I don't know what platforms Altitude is available for but it looks on a quick glance like only Mac, Linux, Windows despite being written in Java. No phone version (even a singleplayer thing in Java would be fun)? No possibility of a Wii version, in the same way that World of Goo do? Various smartphones? Aiming towards really niche platforms (the ones that are easy to aim at) could help - certain communities for handheld consoles that aren't common in the EU / US are large enough to push sales just because of a "new" game being available for their "niche" console (things like GP2X, Canoo, Dingux, Pandora, etc.) and many of them are just ARM Linux in a box with SD cards for storage, 320x240 or higher graphics and joystick inputs for buttons. Even just mini-games, single-player versions, etc. would boost addictiveness for the game feel and thus could lead to a sale eventually. But I think there is no "easy" way - you need to get people who haven't already played the game / demo to play it. Those who are already at that stage have a choice to buy or not depending on their own situations and price-gouging can only help a little there. It's a matter of getting more eyeballs more than anything else. Strangely, catering to the customers you already have is unlikely to see much in the way of profit (and I am one of those customers) - you could produce novelty Altitude wristwatches and you'd probably sell a few but never enough to make it worthwhile. You just need more eyes and more demo-plays, and that comes about through word-of-mouth or people seeing something they didn't see before. So you're talking platform ports, Steam sales (theming as necessary to catch new attention because of "logo fatigue" - if someone's seen the Altitude logo a million times but never clicked it, it might just be because they are used to seeing it on the page, so attracting attention with Christmassy theming or something new is likely to provoke "Yes, what *is* that game that keeps popping up?" thoughts), and things to entice people in (e.g. a Christmas competition, a special Christmas version - even if free, because the announcement will attract new attention, etc.). I'm probably going to buy someone a copy of Altitude this Christmas but I'm looking *now*. If I could order a version online to be delivered on the date of my choice with a nice Christmassy email, etc. (outside of Steam) then that's an avenue that I would consider myself. I do fear though that development of Altitude feels a little stagnant since I bought it - that's not a terrible thing but even the release of holiday-theming or holiday-themed maps would have made it feel more active and alive. I run a server. How about "server credits" for running particular servers with particular settings that attract a certain number of people? Add them up to buy myself a new skin, or something along those lines? Then *I* have an incentive to invite people to the game and keep my servers popular myself! Just a load of ideas. I have run my own business and I know how tough it can be to find new sales. Well done for getting this far.
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heresy
Linear Mode
