Life is Feudal Official Forum

[Eltopo]

Introduction
First of all I'd like to say that I'm really proud of u guys, and LiF success thus far. The game was released on September 19th and almost immediately hit Steams Top Ten Best Sellers list. It has remained in the top ten to this day, and is doing very well against some stiff competition like Civilization: Beyond Earth and other major discounted games. Remarkable considering the $40 price tag, no marketing other than 3 days on the Steam stores front page, and the games current alpha state. I think it really goes to show how much people have been waiting for a game like Life is Feudal. There have been a handful of attempts, but nothing that really comes close LiF level of realism and simulation. At least on paper anyway, as u guys still have to prove its possible.

Having said that u guys still have a lot of work ahead of u to maintain your current success moving forward. The following is a detailed list of suggestions on making that happen.

Communication and Dissemination
Communication and dissemination is the fundamental cornerstone of any successful gaming project. Without a dedicated level of communication with your audience projects tend to fade away due to lack of faith. Without the proper level of dissemination to news/information outlets developers fail to build or grow a audience. Both of these fundamentals work together to make projects successful.

Communication between a developer and its audience can best be described as a parent/child relationship. In some cases a child/parent relationship, as sometimes the games audience has more to teach the game developer than the other way around. In the best cases the games audience is emotional invested in a games success. In such cases the games audience believes in a project enough that they stand behind and support it. They will help the developers fix the game and expand the customer base, and correct any false or negative perceptions about a game.

If communication breaks down or promises are unfulfilled the games audience becomes a obstacle to overcome. Its important to note that building trust with your audience is one of the hardest things to do as a game developer. Regaining trust once it has been lost is almost impossible. That is why all communications must be truthful, even if that means delays and bad news. If u are sincere in your communications your audience will understand the setbacks. Speaking lies and telling half-truths will only get u blacklisted, and if that happens u are fucked. News and information outlets will pick up on a audiences disappointing and run a story. Things will spiral out of control and put the game on a crash course to failure. Unlike Bungie, Bioware, or Gearbox u guys don't have past success or a gaming pedigree to fall back on.

Lucky for u guys I believe the general consensus among gamers that have tested LiF is rather positive. They see the potential and are very much willing to support the project. Right now u have to maintain that support via communication and dissemination.

Here are all the possible communication tool u guys need to make LiF a success:

1. Frequent Information Updates
Pretty much everything u would think a player would want to know about a games development from upcoming patches to things like early systems testing, and development progression. The best way to put out information updates is via weekly posts or blogs. No matter how small the update its important to keep a audience informed. If the updates are irregular the audience tend to loose interest. If this happens players tend to move on, if they don't play the game daily. Any leakage of players must be prevented for a game to reach its full potential.

2. Frequent Community Updates
Any time a developer can acknowledge community events or player contributions they are fostering player growth and trust. Going back to the parent/child relationship, its important that the child feels acknowledged when they do something that is beneficial to the community or the game itself. Much like information updates its best to make these a weekly post or blog. This will breed a prosperous and healthy community, and not a venomous and destructive one like seen in past games. Nothing is worst than a community that bash rather than help new players.

3. Frequent Patches and Patch Notes
This one is a pretty simple one and hugely important. Some customers base purchase decisions on the frequency of patches and how successful they are at fixing issues. Especially for an early access game like LiF. Detailed patch notes is also very important as it indicates that previous gamebreaking problems are now fixed. Patch notes should also be detailed and leave nothing out. If there is a stealth nerf players will find out, they always do, so no sense in hiding it. If a patch goes bad its important to get a hotfix out as soon as possible before costumers give up on the game due to unplayability.

4. General News Updates
Any time there is a significant update it should be posted as news for the general gaming public. Besides positive word of mouth, general news updates are one of the few ways to reach a larger gaming audience. News about a games success perpetuates more success. Some people only read gaming headlines, so its important that those headlines be as impactful as possible. You want to grab as many potential customers as possible. The 65k LiF sold copies on steam was a good headline, but it wasn't promoted to enough news outlets. This has to get better in the future. Creating a large press mailing list is necessary for this game to succeed.

5. Direct Press Interaction
Setting up interviews, guesting on podcasts, or live streaming the game to the press is a good way of introducing the game to potential new customers. It also puts u on the radar of major gaming news outlets. These kinds or articles or interviews create news feeds on their own that gets shared among the press.

6. Community and Forum Interaction
Setting up community events is a good way of showing your support for the players. The game content they create from these events only helps the game. Maintaining a developer presents on the forum is key to the communities confidants in the project and where its headed. A developers absence on the forum can only lead to no good.

7. Fansite and Database Support
Helping fansites or database websites get the information they need is a good way of further building a larger community. Not to mention it offloads some of the work onto the players themselves. Something that dedicated players are happy to do and share. These sites are also great tools for building knowledge within the community about the game, which is something often necessary with complex games like LiF. Having these sites reduces the amount players who leave the game in frustration.

8. General Media
Everything from concept art to videos can be used to generate interest. Any time a video can be created that spotlights new features or systems is a boon to maintaining future interest in the project. Players generally can do the rest of the work in terms of tutorial and guides.

9. Social Networks and Media
Its important to get connected to facebook, twitter, youtube, and other social media. Its a good way to keep in touch with your customer base when they can only access their cellphone or other portable device. Some of these have already been used, but things can always be improved in this area. Social media has proven itself to be a successful marketing tool, and something to take advantage of moving forward.

LiF Marketing
Right now the only direct marketing that can be done is within Steam, supportive fansites, or on this very LiF site. Other than that Bitbox (developers of LiF) have other low cost options like indirectly marketing via social media platforms. This is something I'm happy to see Bitbox is already taking advantage of currently.

1. Steam Marketing
a) Steam Store Page Advertisement
When the game came out on September 19th it was advertised on the Steam Store Page for the following 3 days. This had a very positive effect on sales. The only other indication that the game was being sold on Steam was the news announcement on the 02/09/2014 it was finally on Steam. Also following its release the game had links on the Top Ten and Popular New Releases page, which helped its continued success.

As I said above its still in the top ten to this day, however that is going to change with the holiday season fast approaching. Holiday sales and new releases will surely push the game out of a viewable location. Its important that the developers acknowledge this slow decent by spending the money to put it back on the front page. The extra sales will make this a very worthwhile investment in the games future. Its also essential the Bitbox come up with a plan to keep the game on the top sellers list. I'd suggest a front page advertisement every other week. This seems to be a very successful model used by other developers to go effect.

b) Steam Sale
An alternative to front page advertisement is a LiF sale. A lot of people are still on the fence about the game, and others are interested, but aren't sure the game is worth the price. A Steam sale would help encourage these potential customers to finally put their money down. While I can't put a number on the extra customers attained via sales, I can say that the only thing holding a handful of my friends from buying the game is the price.

Furthermore this price issue has been a sticking point with a segment of your population, and I feel a sale will address this issue.

Now before I continue with this marketing discussion I'd like to point out a few things:

1. A customer is always right as long as his/her points are legitimate. The above case is legitimate in my opinion.
2. You are not selling games in a vacuum, so acknowledge your competition and market aggressively as well as intelligently.
3. Consumers only buy a few games a year, so make sure that one of them is yours by offering a worthwhile product at an agreeable price point.
4. In this economy consumers don't have as much money to spend on a risk, so any chance of minimizing that risk is essential to growth.
5. Happy players means more positive word of mouth, and recommendations is key to the acquisition of new customers.

If u follow the above 5 rules u are on the road to success.

c) Offer More LiF Purchase Options
The alternative to a sale is offering a cheaper version of LiF without the MMO part included, and price it competitively. A LiF:YO Lite version if u will. Much like with a sale, it will entice customers on the fence or low on funds to buy the game. Pricing at $19.99 to 24.99 would be ideal, as then u can sell a MMO upgrade for $19.99 or 14.99, and essentially get your money in the future. Without options u are really minimizing your player base to early adopters.

Speaking of early adopters u can take advantage of LiF's group orientated focus, and offer a 4 player pack om Steam. There is always someone in a group of friends that is willing to buy the other 3 players a copy of the game. I count myself as one of those people. With the pricing on the Lite version at $19.99 u could reasonable sell a 4 player pack at between $60 to 65 dollars. The discount is incentive. Those friend now take their 3 copies and upgrade them to the MMO version on their own. Everyone should be happy in the end including Bitbox. The more players u have the better marketing potential your game has for the future.

Also its much easier to giveaway a cheap $20 game on Twitch and Youtube on a daily basis with Steams built in gifting system.

2. Twitch and Youtube Advertising
a) Twitch
One of the great things about Twitch is it offers an opportunity to expend on a games initial interest via other outlets. It offers a direct opportunity for viewers to interact with the player streaming the game, and ask questions in real time. A good amount of customers head to Twitch to see if a game is worth their money or can keep their interest. Especially since edited footage of a game can be very deceiving and might not be representative of the full product.

There is no real guide on how to successfully market on Twitch, but a good start is getting popular streamers interested in streaming your game. Thankfully Bitbox have taken advantage of this, and are slowly contacting these players to stream the game. Take any popular Twitch game, and its obvious that there is disproportionate amount of viewers from the top streamer to the lowest one. Right now in DayZ GoldGlove has 5,970 views while the next highest only has 672. It takes awhile for a streamer to gain a following, and a lot of hard work. Sometimes all it takes is giving these gamers a free copy of the game to test out, and show their audience. However sometimes that could only mean an hour or two of free advertising. In most cases streamers are more interested in growing followers and gaining more subs and donations to supplement their income. Without extra incentive like free giveaway copies they will completely abandon a game. In other instances a game like LiF might be to complex for streamer to grasp in a short period, and they eventually give up never to return again. A large part of being a good streamer is deep knowledge of the game u are playing. That is why its best to acclimate a streamer to the game before they start streaming it, much like what was done with Rhinocrunch.

As a developer u can also stream the game yourselves, as has been done in the past, and talk to interested gamers directly. This seems to be getting more common with Sony and Trion taking advantage of this form of self marketing in conjunction with the news announcement to direct traffic to their Twitch channel. Thus generating potential new customers.

b) Youtube
In the case of Youtube the content is more diversified as good editing and marketing is fundamental to success. The fact that u can search for specific game topics, and find what u need is a tremendously useful tool in not only finding guides, but also finding objective previews and reviews on games.

Much in the same way as Twitch personalities draw viewers, so to do Youtube content creators. However on youtube even a video with a low view count can generate more sales than a video that has 10 or more times the views. From a developer standpoint its best to focus on the big names for marketing purposes. It also best to work with creators that have a more eclectic audience like TotalBiscuit or someone like Rhinocrunch that has a more singular focus on the games he likes to play. In ether case u just hand them a free copy of the game and hope their objective opinion leads to interest and sales. As someone who spends a lot of time on Youtube I tend to watch more than one video before I can form my own opinion on a game. Luckily for u guys there has already been a number of videos created since even before early access. A large part of the LiF Community Hub is filled with user Youtube content for Steam users to browse. That is a tone of marketing already without any work necessary.

It was due to early Youtube videos on Dayz that it exploded. You can say the same thing for Rust, and to a certain extent The Forest along with a few other games. The magic formula for generating sales from youtube videos is diversified content. You have to have everything from the guides, to the full play sessions, followed by alpha review/previews, and ending with the downright hilarious outtakes.

Currently the Lets Play series that a lot of Youtubers do seems to be very popular. It also seems to be very useful as a marketing tool. A lot of new youtubers tend to play cheap newly released games on Steam to build an audience. That is why its so important to offer a cheaper version of LiF. Not only is it easier for content creators to buy, but also easier for them to giveaway.

There is a nice discussion video on TotalBiscuits Youtube channel HERE talking about Steam and social media marketing. As well as a speech at Steam Dev Days Conference, which talks about TF2 and Dota 2 game economies HERE.

3. Cross Marketing
One thing that the above TF2 economy video points out is the opportunity to cross marketing between two parties. For example creating a LiF helmet for the TF2 economy and maybe getting some free marketing time on Steam. Maybe exclusive deals with gaming with other companies to increase traffic both ways. I'm not sure on how much traffic or what the benefits are, but its something that should be looked into as a low cost marketing opportunity.

LiF's Half-Life
Like any other alpha game LiF has a half-life, and while it currently is having a lot of success, its still only a crafting and building sim at the moment. Only the most dedicated of players will continue playing past the castle phase of the crafting and building game. To prevent that from becoming the case new content needs to be added or fixed.

1. Combat
The crafting and building part of LiF is amazingly rewarding and realistic despite some obvious logical inaccuracies. Combat on the other hand is kinda basic and broken. Its extremely necessary for that to be fixed as soon as possible. Combat is essentially the other half of your game, and its pretty clear that potential customers have noticed its not up to par. One of the main reasons my friends aren't playing LiF other than the price is the combat. Fix the combat to a playable state, and the game can be marketed more effectively. Granted it can be funny to hack on a moose and watch it get up again and again, but not everyone is laughing. I think u guys see that as well, and have made it your first priority after these first few stability patches. I can't wait to see the roleplay videos players put out with a working system.

2. Hackers and Admin Abuse
Right now hacking and admin abuse isn't really a problem. The game kinda sets a mature tone, and generally the LiF community is very nice and helpful. However with increased popularity the game is bound to get a few intrepid hackers that could damage the game almost overnight. If that happens it could put an negative stigma to buying the game, and anything that stops forward momentum is a bad thing. Luckily DayZ and Rust have given us the worst examples of this happening, so they work as a good reference in dealing with the problem. Hopefully u guys have a plan in place to overcome possible future hackers.

The other problem that has been made super easy with new server admin tools is admin abuse. The fact that a admin has so much power is nice, but also scary at the same time. There is really only one fix for this, and that is community blacklisting. Unfortunately u can't prevent this problem. Some new players will be lost to admin abuse, and that is a sad fact. I remember when I played the DayZ mod and the admin on my server would teleport all players to the edge of the map and kill them all. This happened over and over again on different servers until I found one that was legit. In Rust the same thing happened with server admins controlling the server or giving their friends an endless supply of items. It got so bad in Rust that a friend had to buy his own server to prevent abuse. However even then we had to deal with hackers daily.

Its essential that these problems be dealt with as soon as possible for the game to maintain a level of success and trust among the community. There is nothing worst than being branded a hacker friendly game.

Success and Moving Forward
While the injection of extra cash from sales is nice, its certainly not a lot currently. Hopefully the cash flow keeps rolling in, but nothing is guaranteed. With that in mind spend your money wisely. You have a lot more to gain by reinvesting it on the project than on yourselves.

1. Hire Professionals
Its pretty clear that u guys are understaffed at Bitbox (especially for an MMO team), and I suspect the multitasking per employee isn't ideal. No one wants u guys to burnout at the peak of your success. Hiring more staff is a good way to speed up development. In some cases its not a quick fix, but certainly over time it will payoff. There must be a ton of talented people in Russia to hire, and maybe u can finally fill an important position on your staff. Alternatively maybe u can finally pay your freelancers to work full time. Ether way its money well spent.

To certain extent u can hire non paid staff from the community to deal with the dissemination of information. I'm sure u guys have some candidates u can delegate some work to for free.

2. Buy Hardware and Software
I wouldn't know what that would be, but certainly other projects are some indication of what is the best thing to spend your money on here. Speed Tree comes up as an example, but certainly not necessary in LiF case.

3. Invest in Marketing
There is always low cost options like Youtube and Twitch, but you guys might want to go beyond that at a certain point. Most assuredly not now, but certainly sometime in the future when the game is more polished. Epic trailers and videos can defiantly do a lot for sales. Hell sales can do a lot for sales. Take an income hit to expand the community, and u will get paid back in the future.

2. Releasing LiF Source Code
Releasing the source code could have a huge impact on the game and its development. Taking innovations that players have found and applying them to your game is huge in terms of speeding up development. Player created content is also a huge selling point, all u have to do is look at the success of Minecraft. There is also new ways to use these systems to create content like in Everquest Next: Landmark. Think of what it can do for LiF:YO. Now having said that it might not be the best thing, as releasing source code can have negative effects as well. Personally I wouldn't know, I'm just making the suggestion.

LiF the MMORPG
While u guys aren't really working on the MMO currently its always important to tease its existence. A lot of people are really looking forward to it, and LiF:YO is a brilliant way of generating interest for it. Its kinda the appetizer before the main course. However LiF:YO shouldn't be overlooked as its own game. After all some people prefer the DayZ model over something more larger like an MMO. I think once u get LiF:YO sorted out the possibility for expanding the MMO are very good.

1. Future Proofing
Now while the MMO development is a given if everything goes well, I feel u guys can still make additions to the feature list with the support of something like a kickstarter campaign. Maybe that is a year down the road, but its a good thing to start thinking about. Especially since it requires a lot of pre planning. Currently the MMO LiF doesn't really support the addition of Ships, and I think that's something that needs to be looked into. Water travel shouldn't only be relegated to the edge of the map, and boats should be a signification part of the game.

Alternatively the modular building system can be expanded to the individual construction of houses ala Rust, rather than premade buildings. The terraforming system can work in conjunction with this modular housing system to add basement levels to houses under construction. I feel the game has some hidden potential in this regard. If this feature were added u could give Shroud of the Avatar a run for their money.

How about a weather system that is based on actual seasons rather than area changes. A weather system where winter actually lasted a month in game, and players had to stockpile food and leather to survive. It would mean that u couldn't go out in metal armor and expect to travel far. You had to wear leather or fur, and due to this fights would be more bloody and brutal. It would actually be a weather system that enforced trade, and actually increased the games realism. I think we are all tired of weather systems that are only a visual addition to a game, and not something more innovative.

These things would be a great additions to both LiF:YO and LiF:MMO. There is plenty of room to expand here, you just have to put a little forethought into it. There is a lot of competition in this market segment and its imperative that LiF standout in this over saturated marketplace as unique and different.

I think over time u guys can show the public that LiF does have a future, and u are committed finishing the project.