Friday Facts #293 - New remnants 2 & 1.0 Marketing plan

[Klonan]

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-293

[Allaizn]

One idea that came to my mind when reading the marketing thing:
I have seen multiple streamers doing what amounts to "paid" streams, where they play a specific game as a promotion for it. This of course doesn't mean that this is always a good choice - you don't want them to just say that the game is awesome because you paid them. There are however also those that only accept such deals if they themselves actually think that the game is good (say after some playtesting), and that their target audience would also like the game. I think getting those people to play & stream the game for 1.0 would be a nice marketing strategy, but the choice is of course yours

[Earendel]

Thanks for the forum post with details of the mod-breaking changes early. I had updated versions of the mods ready to go as soon as the new release hit. It made whole whole process of updating much easier and less stressful. There were so many things to update it would have been quite a panic otherwise.

[deef0000dragon1]

Cool to see the new remnants. Any chance that there will be linked belt remnants? like, if a section of several belts was destroyed next to each other as compared to the individual dot-esque remnants? I know that it would probably be a pain more than anything, but it would be SUPER cool.

[glee8e]

So I guess there will (hopefully) be no 0.19?

[<NO_NAME>]

So I guess there will (hopefully) be no 0.19?

Year 2050: Factorio is still early access, version 0.58. Players are still hyped.

[Klonan]

So I guess there will (hopefully) be no 0.19?

0.14 0.15 0.16 0.17 0.18 will definitely be the last release before 1.0!

[promaty]

In my opinion remnants should be at least faded in some way. It will be very difficult to quickly distinguish between objects that are still functioning and the ones that are destroyed in all that mess.

[Xeanoa]

It's still very difficult to notice destroyed belt tiles under a fully backed up belt. Maybe this could also be addressed with the remnants update?

[FlynnFact]

For marketing, I would reach out to anything related to Engineering and Science.

Popular Mechanics, Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, Discovery are just a few. Explain and show them why Factorio is more than a typical game. How it massages active problem solving skills, can be used to teach logic, how it encourages that kind of rigor and rewards it, often without you even realizing it. I like how this video explains it. I hope the author won't be mad at me for using them as an example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5r26fXTbA8

For young minds that have a logical and curiosity bent, Factorio feeds that need and rewards them often.

[CaptOuzo]

I can tell you how this game was marketed to me, and based on that I might suggest repeating the process

I found out about this game when Sips and Lewis made a YouTube series for it several years ago. Despite being "20 shades of brown" at that time (their words, not mine), I thought it looked great, and I bought it. I've put nearly 1000 hours into the game since.

YouTubers and Streamers can promote games in ways that no other medium can. To some extent, they'll do this for you, particularly if the game is polished and has some Stream-friendly (shorter/expedited) modes and/or scenarios.

Other options are giving keys to streamers as an invitation to play your game, but I don't know how you feel about that tactic.

In any case, watching YouTubers play the game certainly worked on me (as well as many other games...). Aside from Steam featuring your game on release day/week, it's probably the next best thing.

[dito49]

I'll second paid promotions for streamers or content creators as a good way to market. I personally have found a lot of the games I love (including factorio!) from YouTubers and Twitch streamers, and Twitch has a new system ("bounties") for this kind of advertising that a lot of streamers I watch take advantage of regularly. I don't think that there's any requirements on the content creator's side other than playing the game, so there isn't as much stigma as though they were promoting the game, rather just them trying it out.

[MrFaul]

Jo I would buy a really expensive limited special edition with a high quality hand made hard cover book that includes:

• All accumulated Friday Facts up to this point
• Art work
• Maybe Popular blueprints with description (and a exchange string QR Code)
• Tips and tricks
• Factorio dev history
• Lore
• 3-5 keys to gift to friends

I just imagine this really thick in scarred brown leather bound book on your shelve with its gold glistening embossed lettering "Factorio" on its back.
I think this game, its story and their developers deserve this kind of recognition.

[BHakluyt]

Regarding the marketing: Its really refreshing to see people with integrity and values still in this day and age.

I would suggest sending a final copy over to PC Gamer and other gaming magazines/sites for them to review. For many years this was the way I found new awesome games.
Also have someone make a few "Check out this awesome new game" and similar posts on 9gag, that site gets a lot of views. I've seen Factorio on there before though.
Part of what helps is your DRM free approach. Its thanks to a 'pirate' copy of the game back in 0.12 that I found this awesome game and bought it so that I can install mods and update without waiting a week for a pirate site to update latest experimental. Also playing multiplayer is a good reason to actually buy it.
Reach out to gaming YouTubers that haven't played the game before. That way you are sure to get some exposure too.
Why not get some YouTube ads? People who watch YouTube gets shown ads whether or not they wanted to. Might just catch a few eyes and divert them to something great.
Buy billboards in big cities across the world if you got the money...?

[ZET]

Maybe free keys for educational institutions?
It will attract media coverage and will give the chance to explain in which way Factorio is a good tool to teach some concepts of Production Planning/Scheduling/etc.

[Wakaba-chan]

Regarding media, I'm personally don't read any magazines nor gaming sites atm.
I found Factorio few years ago in Steam just with scrolling by "railway"/"trains" tag or something like that. I love trains and was looking for some train simulator like OpenTTD.
And so here I am with >2000h in Factorio now.

Regarding marketing plan for Factorio though I have some clue for you. It's not any way of major strategy, but some side way to make money. I deeply share your concerns of fair play in capitalism, like you should suggest people something they would like to have to ask money for, right? One pretty fair way to do this that Factorio avoid atm is merch stuff. Like, you have right now only T-shirt at your shop and I wear it right now, writing this message, all great. But it's kind of... not enough? Look at Klein, for example. They have tons of plushes and other stuff for their Don't Starve game. Not to mention the whole Japanese gamedev.

Not like we have tons of cute aliens you may want make plushes of in Factorio, but just looks at this guy https://www.etsy.com/shop/VariousKnitKnacks - I love his splitter keychain a lot: https://i.etsystatic.com/10369983/r/il/ ... 9_sgk8.jpg But I don't buy it since it's not official and I want to support exactly you for making my favorite game. His designs are not flawless, but can just give you some ideas for you own merch, I believe.

Sorry for not direct answer to your request, but I feel just like I must share this concerns with you, since you bring up marketing topic.

[ixnorp]

Have you considered talking to the noclip people on youtube?

[Mike5000]

Frankly, as long as mods keep working I prefer 0.16 to 0.17. It's not even close.

[zigarot]

I'd probably recommend putting the game up on keymailer and woovit, they distribute keys to content creators on your behalf. The other side is you're gonna have to clue these content creators in on your game, usually either through some kind of advertising.
If you get get people who are into things like rimwold, minecraft factory etc., just similar genre and style, knowing about your game, and give them a free game, you'll find your mid level streamers with 20-500 viewers per piece, will pick it up for a stream or a few (like satisfactory did). good investment for just a key IMO, but I'm biased as a twitch Partner.

On the other side, twitch has their bounty board, if you can get on it and pay a nominal amount for guaranteed coverage, that's pretty popular for NA/EU.
I personally love factorio, I'm already fixing to run a squad stream on 1.0 with a few like-minded individuals and my community.
Would be cool if you reach out to your loyal content creators (KatherineOfSky for example) and give a few give-away keys to get that hype going! Good Luck!

[GlorifiedToaster]

Hello!
I wanted to mention a magazine & website that I have a bit of experience with, called "popular mechanics". It sticks with your capitalism beliefs in that it doesn't forcibly place ads across the website and their magazines, rather just provides a hub for articles that may interest the reader.

Have a nice day.