Marketing/packaging suggestions for Packs
by Stephen Zepp · in Site Feedback · 01/06/2005 (4:08 am) · 6 replies
This post was in part initiated by comments made by Eugene in this thread
With the advent of the "pack" marketing concept, Torque is quickly becoming somwhat tricky in some configurations to keep integrated. Additionally, as more and more packs come online, initial purchase decisions for first time TGE users can be somewhat confusing.
I would like to suggest a combined marketing/packaging/integration idea that I think would not only benefit existing TGE owners, but especially help first time purchasers make wise initial purchase decisions.
First, a purchase web wizard of some sort should be created, which steps the purchaser through different decisions, asking them questions about what type of game they wish to make, as well as their general experience level and role. This would allow the shopping cart to make suggestions as to which packs to purchase along with the stock TGE, either for immediate purchase, or placing them on a "wishlist" for later purchase.
An example might be an artist that also has some development experience, and wants to have the best models they can place into TGE. (We're ignoring TSE right now until it is more appropriate for packs).
The shopping cart wizard might ask questions like:
"Would you like to purchase contact packs that can help guide you along in the generation of bipeds?" Yes--BraveTree's Girl Pack is added to the list, or a list of all figure content packs as they are added is created.
"Are you interested in a selection of example scenes, structures, and environmental textures?" Yes--brings up list of Timothy's Content Packs, FruitBat's content pack when it's done.
"We highly recommend the Torque Show Tool Pro package for (all the good marketing and usage reasons here). Would you like to add it to your list?" Yes/No.
A second example would be for a team/experienced developer that pretty much knows what type of game they want to make:
"Are you the primary purchaser for a team of developers (all of which require licenses for code/content packs?" Yes--input box for the license requiring team members (of course, they need to register first). This would be used for bulk "purchase order" style purchases.
"Are you interested in starter packs for various game genres?" Yes brings up selection steps for the various packs:
"Do you plan to have elements of the "RTS Genre" in your game?--RTS Pack
"Do you plan on developing a Massively Multiplayer (dedicated server) game?" Starter.MMOG when it's done.
"Are you interested in enhanced lighting, shadows, and real time (more marketing stuff for SLP)?" Synapse lighting pack.
I think that's enough to get the idea across--while some of these things might not make sense to an initial "what's TGE, and how do I make a game?" purchaser, as TGE and GarageGames are becoming more well known, we are seeing quite a few experienced game developers coming from the commercial world, as well as teams moving from competitor's game engines, and this type of process would really assist their purchasing decisions by making known to them all of the packs and functionality that is available. Currently, people tend to discover various packs through the forums only after their initial purchase, and that sometimes means that they are having to integrate packs to code that has been developed/modified already, making the progress a little bit more difficult.
With the advent of the "pack" marketing concept, Torque is quickly becoming somwhat tricky in some configurations to keep integrated. Additionally, as more and more packs come online, initial purchase decisions for first time TGE users can be somewhat confusing.
I would like to suggest a combined marketing/packaging/integration idea that I think would not only benefit existing TGE owners, but especially help first time purchasers make wise initial purchase decisions.
First, a purchase web wizard of some sort should be created, which steps the purchaser through different decisions, asking them questions about what type of game they wish to make, as well as their general experience level and role. This would allow the shopping cart to make suggestions as to which packs to purchase along with the stock TGE, either for immediate purchase, or placing them on a "wishlist" for later purchase.
An example might be an artist that also has some development experience, and wants to have the best models they can place into TGE. (We're ignoring TSE right now until it is more appropriate for packs).
The shopping cart wizard might ask questions like:
"Would you like to purchase contact packs that can help guide you along in the generation of bipeds?" Yes--BraveTree's Girl Pack is added to the list, or a list of all figure content packs as they are added is created.
"Are you interested in a selection of example scenes, structures, and environmental textures?" Yes--brings up list of Timothy's Content Packs, FruitBat's content pack when it's done.
"We highly recommend the Torque Show Tool Pro package for (all the good marketing and usage reasons here). Would you like to add it to your list?" Yes/No.
A second example would be for a team/experienced developer that pretty much knows what type of game they want to make:
"Are you the primary purchaser for a team of developers (all of which require licenses for code/content packs?" Yes--input box for the license requiring team members (of course, they need to register first). This would be used for bulk "purchase order" style purchases.
"Are you interested in starter packs for various game genres?" Yes brings up selection steps for the various packs:
"Do you plan to have elements of the "RTS Genre" in your game?--RTS Pack
"Do you plan on developing a Massively Multiplayer (dedicated server) game?" Starter.MMOG when it's done.
"Are you interested in enhanced lighting, shadows, and real time (more marketing stuff for SLP)?" Synapse lighting pack.
I think that's enough to get the idea across--while some of these things might not make sense to an initial "what's TGE, and how do I make a game?" purchaser, as TGE and GarageGames are becoming more well known, we are seeing quite a few experienced game developers coming from the commercial world, as well as teams moving from competitor's game engines, and this type of process would really assist their purchasing decisions by making known to them all of the packs and functionality that is available. Currently, people tend to discover various packs through the forums only after their initial purchase, and that sometimes means that they are having to integrate packs to code that has been developed/modified already, making the progress a little bit more difficult.
#2
This could also help label the code better, identifying aspects of each pack and being able to grab certain aspects, rather than the entire thing, if chosen.
and of course as Stephen said, this would greatly increase Torque's marketability as an expandable development platform
01/06/2005 (6:20 am)
I agree comletely ... would make things much easier and smoother as well as letting the author/developers of such packs to create the merging process, rather than leaving it up to the user, which we all know working with someone else's code can be tricky.This could also help label the code better, identifying aspects of each pack and being able to grab certain aspects, rather than the entire thing, if chosen.
and of course as Stephen said, this would greatly increase Torque's marketability as an expandable development platform
#3
Historically, TGE's market has been the low to very low budget aspiring game developer, and the vast majority of it's current market is exactly that. This type of marketing/sales approach doesn't really fully apply to that market, because there is an inherent assumption that a budget exists for the purchaser that includes more than just the concept of "I'll buy TGE now because I have $100, but will have to scrape up cash over a (period of time) to buy the next pack, rinse and repeat". The above system just doesn't apply to that market.
However, if GG is considering targetting a slightly higher target price point market such as "pros turned indy", or established teams with average to strong visions for their projects, I would suggest that this would be a hugely attractive functionality for that market...I know that it would have worked wonders for my particular project.
01/06/2005 (7:11 am)
Part of GG's marketing due diligence regarding this concept is of course assessing and evaluating the market target it would benefit.Historically, TGE's market has been the low to very low budget aspiring game developer, and the vast majority of it's current market is exactly that. This type of marketing/sales approach doesn't really fully apply to that market, because there is an inherent assumption that a budget exists for the purchaser that includes more than just the concept of "I'll buy TGE now because I have $100, but will have to scrape up cash over a (period of time) to buy the next pack, rinse and repeat". The above system just doesn't apply to that market.
However, if GG is considering targetting a slightly higher target price point market such as "pros turned indy", or established teams with average to strong visions for their projects, I would suggest that this would be a hugely attractive functionality for that market...I know that it would have worked wonders for my particular project.
#4
small-mid level teams that either have a small source of funding, or grants could benefit greatly from this.
The same with me and my team, we are approaching our first attempt at a game and its slow going, very intimidating choosing through the content packs and trying to decide if we can use it, if its truly worth it, or how much trouble it will be to implement or extract a feature.
01/06/2005 (8:03 am)
Very true...small-mid level teams that either have a small source of funding, or grants could benefit greatly from this.
The same with me and my team, we are approaching our first attempt at a game and its slow going, very intimidating choosing through the content packs and trying to decide if we can use it, if its truly worth it, or how much trouble it will be to implement or extract a feature.
#5
On the need for merging multiple source-code based products... one good thing is that a lot of this stuff will get simplified when the component system comes out.
For example, the RTS Starter Kit should migrate to being a bunch of components, along with some drop-in changes. So, to integrate RTS w/ either the LP or TGE (or TSE, eventually), you'd just have your RTS components, and some new drop-in files. Done. Maybe we'll have to ship multiple project files to make it as easy as possible, but that's about it.
Same thing for an RPG Starter Kit, say, and for any 3rd Party components. Likewise for editors and stuff that people might do.
Essentially, the integration part of the problem shouldn't be too tough to figure out. And if there's a little merging that needs to take place in some crazy combination of products, we can either provide patches or write a guide that'll make sense even for inexperienced users.
Also, watch soon for a nice system for documentation that'll handle stuff like this coming soon too. :)
Now, the sales tools side... yeah Torque products have a lot of features, and there will be more and more Torque products, so getting people to figure out what things fit them best will be a challenge. But, hey, it's a great challenge to have. :) I think your idea of a sales wizard could be helpful. Personally, I wouldn't make it the default sales experience on the site, for various reasons. But the idea of an active / interactive catalog could be a nice helper. I know Jeff, Jay, Benjamin, etc have a lot of really powerful ideas on how to structure the sales stuff too.
01/13/2005 (3:14 pm)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Stephen. You make some good points. We're thinking about this stuff in the office too. On the need for merging multiple source-code based products... one good thing is that a lot of this stuff will get simplified when the component system comes out.
For example, the RTS Starter Kit should migrate to being a bunch of components, along with some drop-in changes. So, to integrate RTS w/ either the LP or TGE (or TSE, eventually), you'd just have your RTS components, and some new drop-in files. Done. Maybe we'll have to ship multiple project files to make it as easy as possible, but that's about it.
Same thing for an RPG Starter Kit, say, and for any 3rd Party components. Likewise for editors and stuff that people might do.
Essentially, the integration part of the problem shouldn't be too tough to figure out. And if there's a little merging that needs to take place in some crazy combination of products, we can either provide patches or write a guide that'll make sense even for inexperienced users.
Also, watch soon for a nice system for documentation that'll handle stuff like this coming soon too. :)
Now, the sales tools side... yeah Torque products have a lot of features, and there will be more and more Torque products, so getting people to figure out what things fit them best will be a challenge. But, hey, it's a great challenge to have. :) I think your idea of a sales wizard could be helpful. Personally, I wouldn't make it the default sales experience on the site, for various reasons. But the idea of an active / interactive catalog could be a nice helper. I know Jeff, Jay, Benjamin, etc have a lot of really powerful ideas on how to structure the sales stuff too.
#6
01/14/2005 (2:43 am)
Josh, gosh you make me wanna dance... ;-) 
Torque 3D Owner Stephen Zepp
Since GG has moved internally to Subversion as their source management system, a lot of the capabilities of SVN can be used to pre-merge various packs that are selected via the wizard, and provide a custom installer to the purchaser.
We already do this with SVN on my project, and it took less than 2 days for my Lead Dev to put together a set of scripts that checks out working copies based on input parameters, creates a staging directory to perform whatever tasks are needed, and then wraps them up into a platform specific installer.
With the input provided from the purchase wizard, you could pretty easily script out a set of SVN commands that would check out the primary TGE source working copy, and then merge the external modules (each of the packs) into one source/content tree, and then package that up into a single installer for download.
I can't really describe just how strong the benefits for the purchaser as well as the publisher (GG obviously) would be with this type of implementation--purchasers find out very early in their purchase process just what is available, and don't have to worry about the (sometimes difficult for those not experienced with diff/merge) concept of selecting several packs, and then merging them into their source tree. With the purchase of several packs, this can quickly become non-trivial.
For GG, this puts all of their packs up front to a new purchaser, and gives them a functional way to step through the features and advantages of each pack and how the packs apply to their project needs. Obviously, for those purchasers with a planned budget, they will be much more willing to spend that budget if the information is provided in a shopper friendly manner, and especially if they are given an integrated code base from the beginning.
I would suggest that this could be a huge benefit for new community members, and most definitely an excellent marketing/sales tool as well!