Why isn't it immediately obvious this game has so many possible block shapes?

[crypticworlds]

@MinerDiggerMan

Marketing Teams are responsible for accurately and effectively promoting their products strengths. The fact that after watching the trailer and reading the Steam Store Page I was still unaware there were so many block combinations isn’t my fault in any way.

Agreed. It isn’t your fault.

@MinerDiggerMan

It wouldn’t take more than 10-20 seconds on the trailer to show a block quickly cycle both in shape and color into all the different possible shapes there are very rapidly, with big bold letters at the end announcing the total possible block combinations in the game. It would have a huge impact marketing wise to see the depth this game has.

I’ve done enough video production to know that 10-20 seconds is A LOT of time in a trailer you’re trying to minimize how long it is and keep it as short as possible to get the highest possible viewer retention on it that you can. The shorter the video the harder it is to do on top of figuring out how to allocate time for everything you want to show. It’s exactly why movies that are created from books typically leave out hours of video content that would have been made. It simply would cost way too much to make.

A Boundless trailer that covers everything the game has to offer could easily be 12-15 minutes in length. No thanks.

@MinerDiggerMan

Most people don’t spend more than a few minutes looking at a game’s information anyways. How many do you think even bother to go to a game’s webpage? Or a developer’s forum? If the trailer doesn’t convey this information in what would only require 10-20 seconds of a cool block cycling sequence, that’s a huge oversight and is going to cost them sales this September.

I don’t think anyone really knows exactly how much time the average person spends reading up on a game before moving onto another source of information up until they decide to either pass on buying it or make the purchase. That kind of information would require some sort of researching by actually going around and gathering the data from a massive sample size and from plethora of games to really come to any solid conclusion.

So to really answer the question of how many bother to read the website: it’s impossible to know but to make the website updated as possible with all the basic information for anyone who decides to actually read it and refer back to it is important.

I seriously doubt that people are not going to buy the game because they didn’t see in a trailer that you can chisel blocks to create floating spheres out of blocks that emit light and emit brighter light when more of them are connected to one another. You’re also making this assumption that people who find games on Steam aren’t also looking in other places to get more information.

@MinerDiggerMan

What…? No player would have to pause, just cycle through every block rapidly for a total of 10-20 seconds, so the player can see all the diverse block combinations there are. It would add a maximum of like 20 seconds to the current trailer.

You do realize there are now 255 different colors of blocks in addition to there being dozens of different blocks made out of different materials.

Just taking Bricks as an example being possibly 255 different colors with 3 different textures of bricks, That’s 765 different things flashing in front of someone’s eyes in that 10-20 seconds. I bet that would take the full allowed time you’re giving as an example and probably much longer than that. If someone doesn’t know what they’re looking at then what’s the point of even showing it? Having a select few of some of the community’s favorite colors of certain blocks (deco wood, bricks, metal, gem, gleam, lanterns) can serve to drive the point home.

That isn’t even going into how many different shapes you can chisel the blocks into. So just taking the brick example I gave you and show casing them all in every single different chiseled form and look would be over 35,000 things flashing in front of your eyes. You don’t have the physical ability to even process that in 20 seconds.

It simply isn’t practical and has to be limited down to a very specific and selected number of options. Worlds aren’t generated as only square blocks so they’re going to see some of the different chiseled block forms and looks with very basic materials right when they log in anyways.

@MinerDiggerMan

Don’t underestimate the importance of marketing. The block diversity in this game is absolutely a major selling point, and yet, they barely marketed it. The game needs players, and to get players you have to market the game’s strengths, right now it’s not doing that, I would argue few things are more important than altering the trailer to show off all the block types.

Otherwise you just get people who go, “Oh, another Minecraft clone, big deal…”

It’s definitely important and a lot of it can be done through pictures on Steam rather than placed into a trailer cause it’s very unrealistic to show every block in every chisel form and color in even a minute. It’s just not realistic or even possible. Even if someone pauses the video, it’s going to be frustrating to catch anything of interest because if flashed within a millisecond in front of their eyes. If they blink, there went thousands of blocks.

@anon73404375

And now here we are, and you’re taking someone who’s still on the fence about the game, and you’re… openly antagonizing this person. “Look harder next time.” wut

That isn’t even remotely what I am doing. If he thinks I have, he can PM me and him and I can talk about it. I actually have said publicly that I am willing to possibly give him one of my free launch keys at launch if he really wants to try the game out. So yeah, really antagonizing him.

[MinerDiggerMan]

So because we can’t show 755 combinations, show the basic shapes quickly, some of the fancier colors, and then say, “OVER 755+ COMBINATIONS POSSIBLE”

Sizzle reels frequently show all the possibilities in a game flashing by really fast, it’s nothing new to marketing, and helps to show the depth of content a game has.

[Barneylee57]

@crypticworlds

That isn’t even remotely what I am doing

@anon73404375 in all fairness i beleive the issue here with @crypticworlds (and everyone else who has ever used a forum/discussion board… hell… even a mobile phone/chat channel/in-game text etc will understand) you cannot - read - context Maybe @crypticworlds was out to troll (no offence, example only!), maybe he said something that was misunderstood? Maybe @MinerDiggerMan misunderstood what was honestly implied? Maybe you yourself @anon73404375 could not understand something in the converstational context?

The point is you cannot “read” context

---

But @MinerDiggerMan - I do not know you so don’t know if this would be the case… but it sounds like you dont do videos? or you don’t do them often? But… as a streamer/recorder myself i can tell you anything done in a 20 second clip NEVER takes 20 seconds… it could take hours just to line things up in the recording… not to mention the minutes/hours it would take to edit and then render and then upload… so those 20 seconds of trailer actually took 3 days (loose example)

[crypticworlds]

I am not trolling or trying to be malicious. If I was… I wouldn’t be holding back and I’d get banned in the same day.

I actually want MinerDigger to play this game. I wouldn’t be responding to everything he said knowing he doesn’t play the game and trying to explain things the best I can or sharing my opinion on stuff he’s bringing up.

He has been bringing up valid things. Full stop on that one.

If someone has a problem with me, they should bring it up with me in a PM. /shrugs

[Barneylee57]

sorry… i knew that would happen, that’s why i said i was using it as an example ony… (i was making a point about context)

[MinerDiggerMan]

I’d really like to know if this is going to be introduced/implemented into the launch trailer, because if not that seems like a serious oversight.

As I said, me, as a casual buyer who has visited the Boundless Steam Store Page and watched the trailer a few times, never noticed it had such a massive amount of block combinations.

I doubt I’m the only one.

@crypticworlds

The person looking at the game and trying to decide whether or not to buy it has a responsibility as a consumer to look more into the product before making the purchase.

Hearing things like that is pretty frustrating. And yes, since I’ve been here for 2 days I’ve been very critical of the game, but I’ve not said anything that isn’t without some good reason and arguably valid in some way, but instead I’ve been alluded to, or flat out called a Troll multiple times. If this game launches, you’ll have to deal with FAR worse people than me criticizng the game, and they’ll be leaving glowing negative reviews too, so if people here don’t want to bust down a hornets nest with new players they need to be a lot more accepting of criticism, even from possible “trolls”.

I want this game to succeed, but there are a whole lot of things going against it right now, the launch feels extremely rushed, and as much as other things might take priority, I cannot overstate the importance of correctly marketing something so all the builders and diggers of the world can see just how much depth this game actually has.

Look through my first posts here, my questions about digging and mining. I had no idea there were so many block possibilities. A voxel game is BUILT on the depth of blocks and variety is has, to not advertise that clearly in a sizzle reel is, as I said, an oversight in my opinion.

[the-moebius]

you wright its big deal for me the chisels
the new enchanted diamond chisel that autoswitch between bricktypes(many other things) epic
i would love to see a advert that shows all the special stuff this game has instead off a big city with static npc’s

[anon73404375]

So there it is. @crypticworlds, when you say something that comes off the wrong way, no matter what your intentions, people aren’t going to pull you aside and say, “Hey, you kinda hurt my feelings.” They’re just gonna get pissed.

And throwing around free copies of the game like you can’t get rid of them fast enough is also a way to diminish the value of the game in people’s eyes. If you can establish value for the person, and they agree that it’s worth something, then you might want to consider discounts, trials, etc. Otherwise the conversation really boils down to:

“I would never pay $40 for a box of elephant dung.”

“Don’t worry, I can hook you up with a free one.”

You have to convince them that it’s not a box of elephant dung first.

[crypticworlds]

I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s multiple trailer videos showcasing different things in the game. That’s a pretty common practice to do. Maybe they’ll do that. /shrugs