Suggestions for Getting People Pumped

We've been thinking about what we can do that's cool, controversial, or in some other way likely to get people to sit up and take notice and (naturally) link to us.

Here are two things we're planning on doing, to give you a sense:

1. A chat on whether or not games are art, including Henry Jenkins (MIT professor and the best known US game academic), Jesper Juul (one of the smartest of the European game studies academics), Eric Zimmerman (co-author of Rules of Play, CEO of GameLab, and desinger of several IGF finalist games), and Santiago Siri (who runs the blog Games Are Art! and is the designer of Football Deluxe, one of the games we carry). This might become a regular series of IRC chats.

2. A Photoshop contest in which people are encouraged to provide us with images that make fun of the 'boxopoly'--either their logos or of particular games. (I'm thinking in particular of Katharine Neil's "EA Slaves" image--see her blog, scroll down a bit.)

Other suggestions people have made, uh, some of which are pretty much out of the question (but some not):

3. A video 'podcast' featuring a hot chick in which we make fun of bad games from the boxopoly and feature cool indie ones. I'm opposed to this, on the grounds that this plays into the unfortunate stereotypes about gamers (hot chicks, hurr hurr)--unless, of course, the 'hot chick' is something like Jane McGonigal or Jane Pinkard, who is articulate, smart, knowledgeable about games, and representative of all the -good- things we like in gamers (of either gender). (Not that I think either would be interested, for that matter.)

4. Holding an event in Manhattan where we burn bad games from the boxopoly. I have a copy of Daikatana on order, but... nah. And anyway, John Romero has suffered enough.

5. Having a weekly "best of indie games" column (RSS feed, naturally), that would by no means be exclusive to games we carry.

6. Heaving a brick through the front of EA corporate headquarters and being noisily arrested.

In general, we're looking for things to do that:

a. Get attention from the blogosphere in particular, but potentially other media as well (3 above would have the virtue of being something we could stick on YouTube, for instance, which would be interesting, but, well.)

b. Ideally are somewhat funny.

c. Don't require huge amounts of money to do.

d. Make more complacent gamers look up and say "Huh, maybe something is screwed up about the industry, and maybe I should check this indie game thing out."

e. Work into the viral meme-spreading aspect of the Net.

Any thoughts?

How about if Manifesto supporters started going into flagship Electronics Boutique stores (in major cities around the world) and stickered game boxes with content warning stickers (saying something clever along the lines of warning people that it's corporate rubbish, "buy indie" instead, etc).

OK Manifesto Games itself would of course never condone such behaviour, but Manifesto can't control where fans put its stickers, right?

During the EASpouse thing I was considering doing that with EA games, but with stickers saying "Made with 100% sweatshop labour" or something like that.

I like it as a tactic because it's easy for anyone to do discreetly, and quite agressive while not *exactly* vandalism. Also it's an idea that's been used successfully heaps before (eg Banksy, anti-sweatshop activists, etc).

It couldn't hurt to make a short documentary featuring both gameplay footage of fresh indie games and live interviews with the gaming intelligensia (so a clip of McGonigal, but also a clip of Ian Bogost, and whoever else you think can put good words to an empassioned face). You edit the thing with Eisenstien/MTV-style jump cuts, give it a real crunchy pace, five minutes in length, and you can catalyze traffic using standard OGM tactics.

One of my best friends is an aspiring filmmaker who'd be happy to do the editing for a small stipend. I also know a guy who does OGM for 15 an hour, so sixty bucks could get you a thousand views of the video, which would be enough volume for the thing to fan out on blogs ect. on its own.

I like Kipper's tactic, but some have found offline promotion to be ineffective at driving traffic. However, the inflammatory nature of the tactic is interesting, it could turn into a bigger media thing, so I say giddy up. But, you know, thats what I always say.

Bring the message, the war stories and some of the controversies, to the masses. Exposure on CNN would be great, but so would interviews/spots done on PBS and NPR. They have a different take on entertainment, the arts, tech, etc., and NPR has a widely varied and mature audience. A Fresh Air interview with Greg and the Manifestians would be terrific, and obviously you'd make a great band.

The problem I have with 2,3,4, and 6 is that they don't give me any reason to buy from Manifesto. The fact that the other guy is bad does not make you good, it just makes him bad. Also, who is bad and who is good is a matter of opinion. There are a lot of people who will not agree with the idea that EA's games are bad.

The arguement that big budget development restricts creative freedom is a fairly sophisticated one. I happen to agree with it, but plenty of people who buy games, and might buy games from Manifesto, may either not undestand it or simply not care.

Marketing wise I would spend the dollars getting customers, not trashing other vendors.

I would look hard at guerrilla marketing tactics. If you want to influence the blogsphere give the bloggers a free download or two but ask them to write about the game they choose in return.

If your going to make the "games as art" argument you can either do it with a small panel, or your could try recruiting in the broader arts community, give opinion leaders access to a few games that you think really are art, and see what happens.

The wargaming guys have built a successful niche, you might want to take a close look at how they did it. Same with Skotos and Iron Realms in the text adventure space. None of these are new to you, but looking at their marketing is different from looking at their games.

One thing that Matrix games did successfully was get access to some games that had gone out of print but still had a following. I am not sure if that is an option for Manifesto but it might be worth looking into.

It might be possible to gain some traction in the university environment, but there is a big problem there because students tend to steal IP instead of pay for it.

Well, I don't think going negative is necessarily bad at this stage--we need to make noise, however we can. But in general, food for thought, and thanks.

I agree with that...at this point, any publicity is good publicity. Just getting the word out in general comes first, then we can think of ways to refine things.

Go places the others don't/won't go.

Btw, will Manifesto participate in traditional game cons around the country/world/solar system?

Anything you can YouTube is the absolute right way to go - you say you're looking for things that work on the viral-meme spreading aspect of the internet. I think hte suggestion to do a short video piece featuring cool indie games is a great idea. Make it short - maybe festure two games, talk with one cool person (could change regularly) but release them on a once a week, once overy other week basis - allows people who passed it once to come back, and gives time for the video meme to grow. Offer it for download on the site, and on YouTube. Brand it with Manifesto Logo/link at the end. If a few early episodes get picked up and watched, future episodes will have a growing regular audience and drive traffic back to the Manifesto site.

You could pdocast, and you already have blogs, but none of these are as viral as video currently, and none lend themselves to stunts - and weaving stunts into a regularly appearing video piece will help grow and audience. Its where you use some of the suggestions from the top (or at least versions of them). Its how you slag off the competition (if you deem it necessary). Not to plant ideas, but a short video of Greg, dressed like Che, punching a man in a Mario outfit outside the Nintendo World Store would get a few hits. And if it happened to profile an indie game or two, and feature the Manifesto logo, so much the better.

"a short video of Greg, dressed like Che, punching a man in a Mario outfit outside the Nintendo World Store"

I second this motion :D

Question: Where are the t-shirts? It might not be the most effective way of advertising, but it's an instant bit of cash for the cause. You could keep a tab on the apparel revenue, and use that for whatever form of advertising you might need to pay for?

Just slap the Manifesto logo on it and drop in some decent quotes. I guarantee you'll get at least one sale :)

P.S. If you've already got t-shirts, that's cool, just point me in the right direction. I'm new, you see.

a short video of Greg, dressed like Che, punching a man in a Mario outfit outside the Nintendo World Store

personally i wouldn't choose mario, because nintendo is the one big game company doing considerable efforts toward high quality, and fresh gameplay. i wouldnt say innovative because it seem that is becoming increasingly hard, to use that word, to talk about gameplay. joust a comment.

next, maybe you have already thinked these, maybe you are already doing some, but aniway, here some random thoughts:

manifesto games is born to feed the need of creative fresh gameplay from gamers. well, go full machine toward that.

- take a month to write a vibrant incendiary essay on that topic: remember how sucessful was your famous rant at the GDC

- try to expand and ellaborate on the above every month.

- create a catchy slogan, on the topic, and put it everywhere on this site.

- start to build manifesto own games personality: identify indi games that are on development right now, and that seem promising, and start promoting them with previews and interviews. build hype.

- fund at leats one killer game, a give a generous demo free: this one its difficult, if you dont have the capacity to identify killer games, or the money aniway. perhaps if you could identify some brilliant young designers, and convince them to realise their creative vision instead of giving their lives to the machine. if you can't help with the money, at least give coverage on your site to their production process, perhaps on exchange of a more generous demo to manifesto if not exclusive rigths. perhaps if the development is made on third world countrys, some amazing things may be done with surprising little money.

- make a crusade to win the independent games festival with manifesto branded/sponsored/hyped games: i think that would be exiting.

- guerrilla marketing has his risk, but is delicious: many people may end hating manifesto, and some may love it. some investors may be frightened, but those that can be frigthened, arent already by your marxist themed site? also, i differ with the above that talked on this. saying that others are bad, dont make you good. yes, maybe true, but people loves to heard others being trashed. people loves controversy, as hollywood and music heavy industries perfectly know. maybe some EA fan would anger if hearing you trashing EA, but aniway in the end was him to be a manifesto target client? i think not many.

- if you dont want to go the full controversy route, you may at least do it partially. make rants and acid critics in your articles and conferences.

- create false roumour: for example announce manifesto games is preparing a portable console to compete in the market. think the amount of free marketing that "the phantom" console, vmlabs got, to end releasing a crappy keyboard, or something so. that may have the bad effect of damaging your image when people realises that it was false, but you may try to convince them that was real initially, but circunstances changed yor plans later. personally, i would go this way, i think credibility is gold.

thats for now...

What drives a viral wave is a strong host that get's into contact with a lot of people - make it a top priority to do lobby-work to convince these specific individuals that promoting manifesto games is a good idea.

The easiest people to convince are those who themselves have been in manifestos situation, and who in turn have been successful; they know the importance of this method, and if they sympathize with the concept, they will lend a hand.

But Manifesto games needs blingbling. It is easy for one indie muscician to convince another to help promote him; they do not rely on sales, so they just send over an mp3. Similarly, Manifesto needs something more than a blog for purely promotional means.
That said, the blingbling could be a gamevideo, a recorded interview of some sort, a recorded event, a hot free game download...anything of the sort.

Now, once that is in place, the people your lobby-work should target are the people who are themselves indie's surviving on internet popularity:

Exhibit a: Jacques of www.questionablecontent.net

Indies of any genre, whatsoever, but this guy in particular is interesting because his full time job is drawing a comic and selling the clothes the characters in it wear. It also helps that a main theme of the comic is indie music, so he's promoted a number of bands.

Generally speaking, appealing to webcomic creators is a good idea, since massive amounts of traffic float through their pages on a daily basis.

Those are the ideas I've got. (I wholly agree, however, that you do not want to dumb down your criticism of commercial games to a childish level; yes, it is overhyped, and yes, a lot of it is crap, but if you do not keep your head level and calm you will not earn the respect of the people who will ultimately become the strongest hosts in your viral marketing campaign, and that's just not acceptable in the long run)

some suggestions, may be good or bad, joust to trow more ideas:

• create a logo and put it on your site, with a message to make indi gamers feel cooler. something like "only indi culture games", or "no casual crap" or both, or somethig similar. something in the line of famous "intel inside" logo, or "only for nintendo" supernes's logo. it would be better, if this is shared among all the indi gaming sites.

.

• putting all the indi games in the same pond, tend to make the best ones suffer, and consumer general idea about indie games degrades. i suggest establishing three mayor categories names, deviced to avoid harming prides:
  .
  • indi AA - top quality indi games
  • indi A - good quality indi games
  • indi B - normal quality indi games

  .
  this will guide consumer, to better know what they are talking about. again, sharing this among all indi gaming sites, would be great

.

• make marketing alliances with others indi gaming sites. it can be created an ad shared among multiple indi portals, where the subject advertised would be the indi scene, signed by the many portals. the link may point by turn to each site participating in turns. this would be interesting, could reinforce the indi scene image, and show the indies as a more powerful force. the negative of this, is if bigger sites would be willing to appear joined wih smaller ones, but some agrement may be possible.

.

• maybe its joust me, but, while i think that the site design is great, and congratulations to the designer, i dont feel positive about the image it projects. specifically the rough parts. consumers want their favorite site to be the best looking one. these changes has my vote:
  .
  • better polished the rough background of the manifesto logo
  • remove the OperatSystems logos, or at least make less preminent, from the top menu categories bar. you dont want to dirty the manifesto logo, or diminish its preminence, with these crap logos near it.
  • consider polishing other rough edges. dont want to project the image of rough graphics in games. indi games dont deserve that image. many of them have great graphic even if not the most ellaborated

  .

• offer the developers a full service to maximice profit on their creation. since there isnt a perceived leader site of indie games, you may offer developer to handle for them, the negotiation to put their creation in all the casual sites, and all the indie sites, for a cut in the royalties. or some strategi similar. possibly putting the manifesto logo on the games. or something so. you may profit, from your knowledge of the market

ooh, number 6! brick! brick! brick!

I've got some fresh-out-of-law-school friends who don't have any (decent) jobs yet and need something to waste their time (and give them experience). I'm sure we could use them to tie up EA's lawyers... but then EA would probably pay their employees even less as they cover the legal expenses. hmm... tricky situation.

Time limited shoestring budget game contest?
All entries must be Manifesto-publishable quality to qualify.
Winner gets (insert something poor developer needs).

Some other sort of themed contest?

-Brendan

Quite simply Greg, ask Jerry (pennyarcade) if he may write a piece of you, after that, you might as well been slashdotted as the effect be similar.
___________
Black Sky
We'll breach the 2D game engine conventions yet!

I like the short documentaries idea. May I suggest a series of them? For instance, Starcraft vs. Mudcraft, Final Fantasy 6 vs. Aveyond, or whatever other comparisons are obvious. They don't even have to be negative toward the game they are comparing the indy game with, they can put a funny angle on it. That way when people search YouTube for "Final Fantasy 6" or "Starcraft" they would occasionally come across these comparisons and watch them out of curiousity.

Radical Poesis Games & Creations