Their followers don't get access to the game lol.
You need to think of streams and influencers as commercials, not as people playing the game early. We live in a new age of marketing.
Streamers are playing the full game after the embargo lifts on the 20th?
- Thread starter Insaniac99
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
- Status
Their followers don't get access to the game lol.
You need to think of streams and influencers as commercials, not as people playing the game early. We live in a new age of marketing.
Except people subscribe to them, which costs money. And they solicit viewer contributions like public radio/TV channels. The combination doesn't make sense to me.
It's not the same thing as commercials but it functions the same way for the game provider, in that it exposes the game to a group of people you would want to purchase it. It helps both to convince people to buy it (and since BattleTech seems to be getting more or less universal praise from influencers, that's likely) and to spread word of mouth about the game. The business model is different from commercials because developers and publishers are not paying influencers to play their games, and instead influencers have to make the money on their own, but the end result is the same as commercials.
I agree it is marketing and useful. Pre-release reviews and previews are good. But you wouldn't want your previews and reviews to post entire movie synopses or plot summaries. Trailers that give away too much can in fact hurt ticket sales. I know it is a bit different for interactive media, but neither do I see an advantage to full campaign release, so why play with fire?
Edit: If there is an advantage to doing so please clue me in.
Edit: If there is an advantage to doing so please clue me in.
Last edited:
But your scenario only works for people who actively follow certain people in twitch, myself and my circle of friends avoid twitch like the plague, your making it sound like twitch is a television commercial or radio station when it is far from that and only will touch a small overall percentage of people.
Than there is only one conclusion you can draw from this...that you are not the audience for this marketing. You need to realize that a significant portion of the under-30 market makes frequent use of Twitch. These influencers have hundreds of thousands of subscribers (and millions in total if you combine them). It's not a small overall % of people. The vast majority of potential consumers for this game will not reached by television or radio advertisement, and instead you'll waste a lot of money on people who will never in a million years buy your game.
What's your alternative for how the game should market itself?
Continue what they were doing pre embargo is what most of us were asking for, lift the story embargo on the actual launch day.
its like a 3 hour movie trailer showing the entire film for free on youtube it makes no sense...
This forum is not a good representation of the market, so even if the majority of the people on these forums were asking for that (they're not), it wouldn't be the majority view of all potential consumers. And the embargoed streams were a problem for marketing purposes because difficulty is locked behind story progression. Having people playing the game beating up on lower difficulty enemies because they're not very far in the story but have played for more than a full games worth of time is not representative of what the game is like.
Don't watch it then if you don't want to be spoiled lol? I've watched less than a couple hours of streams and have no plans to spoil the game. You can make the choice not to spoil it for yourself. Others want to, and it may influence their decision to buy the game.
Honestly, the people against the streams are indirectly against HBS making more money off the game. This is how you get the word out about your product now. I'm sorry if that bothers people, I want to play the game too, but I also want HBS to make as much money as possible off BattleTech. And streams like this is how you do it.
Personally I think kickstarter backers should've been given first crack at the game, a lot of backers (me included) streamed the BETA. I understand that this is how Paradox (and other publishers) do things nowadays but it's inconsiderate towards the people who made this game possible through funding. I have no problem with streamers playing the game before release, I do have a problem with them being able to play the game before the people who backed the kickstarter.
I hope HBS and Paradox decide to agree with me and distribute the product keys out to the backers like they should've done when the first round of streamer keys went out.
I hope HBS and Paradox decide to agree with me and distribute the product keys out to the backers like they should've done when the first round of streamer keys went out.
It's risk management. It's a lot easier to keep an eye on a handful of contractually-obligated streamers than it would be to ensure that any of a few thousand backers don't put the DRM-free client on file sharing services.
There we go. That's a pretty good answer as to why full playthroughs are useful. Determining end game difficulty is a sensible request. I still think full playthrough is a bit extreme of a response to it, but I can understand the impetus now, so thank you.
As for the other half of that (endless side missions beating up on early game opfor is not representative play) I think the better solution was to limit hours, not just story progression. But I agree that even at 33, I'm not the intended audience for this marketing. Overall, I like younger folks, but 20 something gamers specifically I tend to have issues with. Too used to hand-holding.
It doesn't affect just the person who watches the streams. People will talk about the spoilers on these forums, and some of those will not bother to mark spoilers and ruin it for people who are just reading the forums.
So to protect yourself from spoilers you have to completely disengage from the community for the better part of a week while a bunch of people play the game you've paid and been waiting for two and a half years for.
Having watched the early stream, Now i am out ,,i can wait ...thinking happy place , Want to see the new changes for myself 
Even if my brain is telling me , just one look it cant hurt ? ..a tiny look ?
Even if my brain is telling me , just one look it cant hurt ? ..a tiny look ?
I'm 41 and I've been glued to twitch for like two weeks after work, cursing at sidestrafe.
=)
Nope. Just release it to everyone then. 4 days of pruoroty streaners will not increase sales more then 1million people playing it and talking about it. Anyone whomis waiting on a review or there twitch guy to recomend it will not be affectwd by early release. And if they were truly worried about drm free they wouldny have as option.
There seems to be a common misunderstanding amongst all the KS backers of any product, that they bought the product. You have not bought the game, as KS is not a shop. Therefore you don't have the same rights as when buying from the shop. In fact HBS could at this point say "no keys for the backers until 24th" and there is nothing you could do, because of the way KS works.
HBS and Paradox are trying for BattleTech to be a bigger success than just amongst the core BT fanatics that played the TT for 15+ years. To do that they need to show the game to a wider population of gamers and this is what they are trying to do right now. If it is successful you, the hardcore fan, will surely reap the benefits in form of updates and DLC marked as "in success". In your place I would be keeping fingers crossed that this marketing strat succeeds, rather than moaning about it.
Clearly you have not followed the various court cases that have circulated around Kickstarter. You are still promised a product and it is due to you. It is a purchase.
But the thing you and others making the same argument as you don't understand is that it isn't even about legal rights, it's about treating your faithful customers right.
Treating the people that showed the most faith in you as nothing but money bags breeds contempt and ruins a lot of good will.
Making them have to dodge spoilers while a bunch of other people play and talk about the story is a not a nice thing to do and people are entirely justified in being upset about it.
Kickstarter is another thing I don't get. You are basically acting as an Angel Investor without the accompanying share of the proceeds. I'm glad people backed this, but in an industry that includes products like Godus I don't see how people can do it.
If there was a Kickstarter like platform that functioned more like an IPO I could see it. Otherwise a pre-order is as far as I'll go, I don't even do Early Access any more.
For what it's worth (again, nothing) Im a non-backer who wouldnt mind if backers got it. Seeing as the Embargo is over it seems like just widening the pool of potential streamers/ last beta testers.
I don't see any moral or legal need for HBS/Paradox to do so, but yeah. But then we would have threads complaining that's unfair, so Idk.
If there was a Kickstarter like platform that functioned more like an IPO I could see it. Otherwise a pre-order is as far as I'll go, I don't even do Early Access any more.
For what it's worth (again, nothing) Im a non-backer who wouldnt mind if backers got it. Seeing as the Embargo is over it seems like just widening the pool of potential streamers/ last beta testers.
I don't see any moral or legal need for HBS/Paradox to do so, but yeah. But then we would have threads complaining that's unfair, so Idk.
- Status