Plan "W"

[JWBullfrog]

Good Evening all,
 
I'd like to bring up an idea that might sound a bit premature but perhaps it is something we need to be thinking about.
 
This idea is based on the premise that a new person, or group of people, aquire everything they need to continue/restart City of Heroes. As has been mentioned before, this will most likely be expensive and will lead to reduced development for some time. These people (whoever they may be) will need to devote what money they have to operating and maintaining the game.
 
This is where we come in.
 
It's a fact that City of Heroes never had a major advertising budget. Perhaps that led to our current situation, and that can and will be debated for some time but WE the City of Heroes community can do something about that.
 
The same devotion and skills and passion that we have shown in our attempt to preserve the game will need to be turned into a campaign to PROMOTE the game.
 
We will need to spread the word to those players that have left the game and let them know that they can come home. We will need to let those people who have just learned about our game know that they can come see what all the fuss was about.
 
We will need to let the world know that the City needs heroes again and everyone is welcome.
 
Like I said, this may be premature. There are too many factors in play right now and all we can do is keep refusing to go quietly. But, once we have succeded, we will need to do everthing we can to make sure that we do not win the battle only to lose the war because we decided that we've done enough.
 
This is my proposal. Plan "W", for "Welcome to City of Heroes."
 
 
--JWB
 
 

[DrakeGrimm]

Pretty sure a good portion of us are already thinking about such things, but quietly making notes in note books or in notepad files on computers until the time is right. It's just too early, in my opinion, to devote any real energy just yet.

[castorcorvus]

Yes, but no one wants to start a game that might die in a couple of months, let's wait on that and keep trying to lure in the support of old fans and the fans of other games that were shut down by NCsoft.

castorcorvus, out

[Atlantea]

Hi there! First post here, just got registered!

Here's my crosspost from the old forums where you crossposted this:
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I'm a little confused, here. I get that we'll need to promote a resurrected City of Heroes like crazy. But as you say - isn't this a little premature?

Or is there something you had in mind for us to do right now? Is there, perhaps, a way for us to promote the game to other publishers?

I'm no advertising guy - but I would assume a "pitch" to a publisher like Steam (just to use a recent example) would be different than advertising the game to the public?

I remember Ascendant saying that he tried to make the core of his character concepts, like Ascendant or Doctor Crom, come from what he called "The Elevator Pitch".

It's called that because the idea is to pitch the idea of a TV series or movie to a studio executive in the amount of time you have while you are traveling between floors on an elevator. You have a "captive" audience at that point, but very limited time. (There's a classic story - unknown if apocryphal or not, that Gene Roddenberry sold "Star Trek" on the basis of pitching it as "Wagon Train to the Stars" to a network executive. That's a classic "elevator pitch" if ever there was one!)

So, I suppose my idea here is - can we develop an "Elevator Pitch" for City of Heroes targeted at a publisher?

Remember - you have to time it out: Write something out and then read it aloud. Assume your maximum time is 30 seconds or so. (You've gotten lucky and your elevator is going straight to the ground floor with no interruptions/people getting on.) But 10-15 seconds would be ideal.

So that's my take. I don't have one ready and I'm not sure I can do it. But I thought I'd throw the idea out there.

[Victoria Victrix]

It's not violating NDA to say that I already have a promotional campaign mapped out for myself and the resurrected City of that I sent to Brian, and he likes it.

[dwturducken]

This might be premature, but hardly a wasted effort. See Plan Z in the City Sunset Forum.

All ideas are welcome until an Admin says it's time to redirect our energies. Or until we invoke Godwin's Law.

[JWBullfrog]

Hi there! First post here, just got registered!

Here's my crosspost from the old forums where you crossposted this:
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So, I suppose my idea here is - can we develop an "Elevator Pitch" for City of Heroes targeted at a publisher?

Given the way the recent announcement about the refunds was phrased, it's probably safe to assume that NCSoft isn't planning on continuing with the game. Now might just be a good time to start thinking about something like this.
 
Even if we're not pitching directly to an executive, something like this can be used in the media. Just a few short sentances about why aquiring the game would be a benefit to a new publisher.
 
I had something like...
 
A profitable, established, award winning game with thousands of loyal fans is being discontinued by it's current publisher. You might have heard about this in a recently trending topic all over the internet. The creators and players of City of Heroes are looking for a new publisher to help this game continue and grow. You, as the head of <<insert name here>> can guarantee yourself a loyal fanbase by agreeing to take up the reins of Paragon Studios and City of Heroes....
 
It's not perfect. In fact, it's kind of ugly. But it's a start.
 

[Scott Jackson]

I'm neither the first nor the last to agree wholeheartedly that a reenergized CoH, or Plan Z, will need some cost-effective advertising to the public.  Glad to hear that VV's already put a plan out there, I trust it is a good framework that can be tweaked to fit any player-supported business model.


The elevator pitch probably already exists - and any game publisher with the money and brains to properly run CoH is already aware of the CoH brand and its subscriber/revenue history.  Brian and/or TonyV have almost certainly prepared such a pitch to use on first contact with any interested publisher.  I'd suggest asking Tony about it directly before trying to form one here, by committee.

[JWBullfrog]

I suppose I got off topic on my own topic.
 
I'm pretty certain that others have already thought about this. I really hope they have since this is not my area of expertise. I would like to get the playerbase thinking about this sooner rather than later. I don't want to see all of this fall apart simply because of the very human tendency to pat ourselves on the back and think "Well, done. That was easy. Now what's on TV?"