FreeOrion

As the release of 0.1 comes nearer, I think there are some actions to be taken.
Firstly, as release will attract more attention to project and forums, I think it's a good idea to open a new board, or specify general discussion board more clearly for user feedback, game usage, and discussion about the game from non-developer/design perspective. Luckily we have quite good FAQs ready for those who want to contribute.

Secondly, advertising. As we need more talented people to our team, instead of word-of-mouth method, It's better to write nice press-release about 0.1 and then post it to moo-sites, game sites and relevant forums to quarantee good amount of publicity. One person should be responsible for handling this to avoid conflicts and to answer questions, so, who's our marketing department?

.Miu
FreeOrion Graphics Team Lead

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Difference between a man and a gentleman is that a man does what he wants, a gentleman does what he should. - Albert Camus

Tyreth and I have discussed this several times; while we're not officially 'the marketing people' (and I would hope never to have an official title with 'marketing' in it), it is of interest to us.

As I see it, we get one shot for publicity just because of who we are. The minute we announce ourselves to, say, Slashdot, we're going to get a horde of people, 80% of whom will not contribute to the project, 10% of whom will contribute, get bored, and leave, and another 10% of whom may actually be useful. We must be adequetely prepared for this, needless to say.

So my question is: Do you think we should use our one shot for v0.1? I'd prefer to wait until the dev team is really clamoring for more hands; v0.3 is probably not going to be a huge jump assets-wise from v0.2 (it's basically the research tree, so a lot of graphic placeholders, but the graphics themselves don't need to be done; it's mostly design work). v0.4 is really going to be the kicker, and so what I'm thinking now is that we hold off announcing anything until we release v0.2 or v0.3.

Also because, as cool as v0.1 will be, it won't be all that fun to play. It'll be pretty and functional, but it's not really a game, per se. :>

You could have a more optimistic look that says, because we're FreeOrion, we can maintain public interest for a while and so should steadily issue press releases and such as we progress. I can be persuaded to this viewpoint, because we've had a significant level of interest even before v0.1 (namely, all of you!). I tend to err on the side of being conservative, though, or at least not trying to fix a problem that isn't there.

-Aq

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

I basically agree with this. I think we should wait until after v0.1 at least, and maybe until after v0.3, as Aq says.

I agree. While v.1 will be one giant leap for Moo-kind, it will still only be a small step as far as the actual game is concerned. Were I less knowledgable about the project I would still call FO Vaporware. So definetly wait to hold an "official" announcement until we actually have a "game" per se.

(But do make sure we can download a Windows build when v.1 gets done )

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Aquitaine is my Hero....

Gimme a minute and I'll post about FO on gamefaqs.com I love that site. I am gonna post on the programming board. Some pretty good C++ programmers there.

I think it's actually a good idea if we leave recruiting to the team leaders. We can time it with releases when we need people most. We really don't want to do it prematurely, so I'd ask you to hold off from doing that.

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

oo, a PR department. Cool.
lol

i.e.
Aquitaine in 2 months: "We never started the rumour that our game is going to make MOO1,2&3 look like a pile of rigellian slime-juice..... No, the fact that that tid-bit originally came from my own e-mail account is irrelevent".
lol

Everyone just _loves_ PR departments.

Yes you're quite right, that was overhasty. No good to create any hype yet and the those who are interested, will find information about this and main fan forums will have coverage anyway.
Regular pressreleases/status reports on website would be good though.
I will be doing active recruiting around, if everything goes well, we should have more potentive graphics team in few weeks.

We'll be back on this when 0.3/0.4 draws nearer. But good that this got discussed anyway.

Miu
FreeOrion Graphics Team Lead

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Difference between a man and a gentleman is that a man does what he wants, a gentleman does what he should. - Albert Camus

I can neither confirm nor deny those allegations, Moriarity.

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

Yeah, what aquitaine says (in his long post).

One problem with waiting until 0.2+ is that another may happen upon our project and announce it to slashdot apart from us.

Which means a press release beyond our control. If we dedicate to waiting till 0.2+ then we need some way to control this, which may be difficult - or just hope for the best

I sort of doubt we'd get slashdotted for v0.1, since there won't be much there to write about or to play.

I want to test FreeOrion 0.1. Where can I download it?

It's not out yet, but it won't be long! Only a few more weeks probably.