Promoting the gaming tourney (e.g. how to get it dugg?)
I dedicate this thread to the discussion of further ways of promoting the gaming tourney. We don't have very much time anymore as the voting and sign ups should end in about 6 days, so whatever we do more we better do it fast. 
The first idea that comes to mind is one which we've so far failed at, but it was just one submission of mine of what is basically just a pre-announcement, an announcement of preparations.
We've already established that digg has a rather strange culture when it comes to voting submissions to homepage. As free-zombie in a funny way pointed out this is the title that would very likely get us dugg:
OMG ! UBUNTU users can bash each other in the 10 best FLOSS games AND MORE !
So.. lol.. yeah. :lolol:
The problem with this is we aren't just about Ubuntu, although we do include Ubuntu users, for sure, in the tourney. 
So we basically have two potential options:
- Do something Ubuntu specific that will justify putting Ubuntu in the title of our digg announcement.
- Find an alternative diggable buzzword that we CAN associate genuinely with the tourney.
Frankly, the first one is kind of lame, but hey.. if it can be done with sufficient dignity I guess it wouldn't hurt. Second is, however, ideal. We need to find a diggable buzzword, that is diggable phrase that can be associated with the tourney.
So this is sort of a riddle. How to describe the Free Software gaming tourney we are about to hold in a way that would appeal to the digg crowd so much to digg it to the homepage? It's not really "cheating" as much as it is finding the right way to communicate the value of this tourney to the masses of geeks that happen to be swarming around digg.com, the right "language" so to speak.
Vista seems to be one of the buzzwords on digg as well and it is probably the biggest example of truly proprietary and restricted software that there is, exactly the opposite of Free Software (games) that we are promoting. So maybe our title should mention Vista as an antithesis to what we are doing in a clever way.
Or maybe we should just form a team that will be competing in the one of the tourney's games and call it "Windows Vista" and another team called "Ubuntu" and then announce on digg:
Windows Vista vs. Ubuntu match up in a Free Games tourney!
Or maybe we should just issue a call to diggers like this: A Free Games tourney seeks Windows players for a Vista team! because I think we have a shortage of Windows users in the tourney (cause most games we'll play run on Windows too).
How about that? :-D
Anyway, ideas are welcome.
Do the servers maybe run Ubuntu? If not, does anybody need to know? ;-)
"Ubuntu-servers power free software gaming tournament"
I doubt they do (and my VPS is on Debian). But it's a nice try I'd say.
Btw, I'm attaching a new banner for the tourney so if anyone wanna use it for promotion feel free to. I've already put it on Libervis.com.
OMGWTFBBQ!!! 42!42!42!42! 1337! Roxorz! FOSS Gaming Tournament! Free! Better than Halo 3! On Ubuntu, Vista and if you can PS3, Wii, Xbox360! WoW! Wesnoth instead of Starcraft 2!
Ok, that's not very helpful... ^^'
I submitted the news to Ubuntu gamers arena, but they never put it up.
Maybe I should have PMed Artificial Intelligence instead of sending a mail, I don't know...
And the forum thread got drowned. Feel free to bump it if you wish...
Now that I think of it, there are still the gaming wikis on which it could be advertised:
http://linux.strangegamer.com/
http://libregamewiki.org/
I don't have time to do it right now, so feel free to do it.
Heh its on linux-gamers.net
It's already on libregamewiki, but I'll check ot the other ones you posted.
EDIT: Submitted to linux.strangegamer.com news as well.
Thanks
Thatguy from irc.cluenet.org suggested doing viral marketing using a video. At first I thought this would take too much time we don't have until it crossed my mind that some games have in game recording features so I could just shoot everything in games and then put together a nice collage with some cool music and use that as an advertisement for this tourney. This could even get us dugg (we'd host the vid on youtube so it shouldn't bring our servers down).
So I'll try this ASAP. However it would be nice to have a redundant plan in addition to this. It is possible that the video alone wouldn't be dugg so would be nice if the announcement would in its own respect as well as its title contain what diggers would find attractive relative to the tournament.
Cheers
Ok I tried making some videos from OpenArena and I did a few successfully, but it took quite a bit of time, mostly because it exports demos to real video very slowly. I'm not even sure yet how to do this in Nexuiz and other games so I'm not yet confident this video could be done in time..
Anyway, I'll look into it some more and we'll see.
Alright, still no guarantees but I made some progress (and darn it stood awake till 6 AM again!). I know how to do videos from OpenArena, Nexuiz and Tremoulous which already covers most of the important games we'll play. Just to nail bzflag, wesnoth and such and I think I'll have enough diverse material for the video.
I just gave kdenlive another quick test and all I can say is THANK YOU developers for it. It's one tool which I can actually use.
I just, in a matter of mere minutes, added a text with a nice fade in transition to an already recorded nexuiz demo video. It seems I can easily add music of choice to it as well so the basic functionality I need is all there. The rest is just in choosing the clips, music, text and then cutting and positioning it all in the right places...
I guess something will come off it then, but beware, it's my first video ever. I may have been creating electronic music, but no videos (edit: actually I've been making some animations long ago so I'm not a total noob to putting things together into a sequence, which is after all, required for music too).
Still.. how hard can it be.. The idea is to just have video shots from various games continuously show one after another and possibly accelerate by the end to a frantic beat culminating with a sort of an explosion or a flash or something which reveals the slogan inviting people to the tourney. But this is a simplistic version for now and ideas are welcome.
Note that since we have only about 4 days until the current deadline for voting and sign ups that I'm considering extending this for a few days if we get on digg so that we take advantage of the added publicity. A few days more (up to a week) shouldn't kill us while it may make the tourney even bigger.
Cheers
Here is a first mockup of this video, so far with only tremulous video clips in it.
http://www.memeverse.com/misc/tourney_promo_tremsequence.ogg
Basically at the end where there is this white transition instead of the logo we'll have OpenArena and then Nexuiz and probably a small shot of Battle For Wesnoth too, just to mix it all up, but Tremulous will apparently have the biggest part being maybe the most impressive in terms of visuals and activity (and we have slow motion in there).. The video is basically a collage of clips from the most popular games in the tourney and then will finish with a tourney logo and an invitation, perhaps adding a slogan of some sort in the process.
Comments are welcome.
Thanks
The video is done. You can watch it here or on YouTube. It's the first real video I've done, but it might prove useful for boosting the promotion of our tourney and Nuxified.org (and Cluenet.org).
So.. please comment.
Now we are up for an announcement of the tourney, last before the sign ups close, which will point to this video and then after the promotional burst passes (if there will, hopefully, be one) we close the sign ups and get down to organizing the last details.. Actually some threads are already opened about that.
Everyone who signed up can expect an email reminding people that it's still alive and that they are invited to discuss the details of how the tourney will work. It's community powered, remember?
Cheers
Danijel
Apart from the fact that I never really liked the word 'tourney' (now I come to think of it, it can sound a bit like tournée), it's a good vid !
Thanks.
I used tourney mostly cause it takes less space as it's a smaller word, and I see it as a shorter synonym for tournament.
Cheers
Only Tremulous in the video...
Maybe you could have used some of the already existing game trailers like the one for Wesnoth.
It would be cool if it was possible to store replays in FOSS games.
That way, we can have something to show for an eventual second gaming tournament. ^^
If only Starcraft were a Free game...
edit: oops, there's Nexuiz too. But some RTS was definitely missing.
Oh and as for the gaming, I'm currently having a problem with direct rendering, so if anybody knows a solution:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=563130
There is OpenArena in there too!
But I agree.. I even shot something from Wesnoth, but it ended up a bit too tight and it wasn't a very good shot. The only way to export videos from a game like Battle For Wesnoth is to have a screencast program record it, but they were all too slow or buggy on my current installation. So the inability to record videos in game from such games is mostly why they aren't in.
As for using existing material from the trailers I wanted to use only material I recorded myself in this case.
Anyway, someone mentioned that for now it would be good to focus on FPS games, not that we actually are with the tournament itself, but since that's where we have most of the impressive stuff to show, it seems fitting for a promo video.
Btw, Wesnoth isn't an RTS (rather turn based strategy), and most RTSs I tried on my machine don't even work well.
I know it isn't an RTS, but it's still a good strategy game.
With that I agree.
Btw, about your problem, I've read the thread, but I'm short of answers.. You say it's Gutsy so it might be some instability issue that will be fixed with its final release.. I suppose it's a card supported by R300 drivers (I mean within the R300 to R430 or so range), right? Anyway, we can continue in another topic with that issue if you'd like.
As for RTS, Boson comes to mind. ;-)
I'm considering making another video with everything the same except the games sequence and maybe music. Then I would try to put bzflag, wesnoth, armagetron advanced and such..
Thing is.. this is gonna require some trying (in terms of video export) and would consume even more time, but I'll see if I can do it today to get both videos and the announcement up by tomorrow. Then I hope we rock the digg.
Yes, it's Gutsy because I like trying out the latest stuff. The problem is that sometimes things break.
I have no idea which driver supports my card. I just always used what came with Debian or Ubuntu.
My card isn't even listed on the ATI official website!!!
If you need any more info, I can give it to you. But I think I've covered quite a lot with the logfiles already.
Downgrading just the necessary packages might solve the problem since it was caused by updates.
The problem is that I don't know what to downgrade.
In the worst case, I'll just reorganize my partitions somehow (because Debian still works correctly) or reinstall Feisty.
problem 1: I don't have an Ubuntu CD at hand. But I do have a Debian Etch CD. (but I could get an empty CD and burn it of course)
problem 2: I currently don't have my external HD with me, so I'll have to back up everything on the Ubuntu home partition (shouldn't be a lot) if I want to reorganize the disk.
My current setup:
I think I could eventually remove Ubuntu (except /home) and extend the Debian partition there to install games.
The problem is of course that this requires me to reinstall a lot of programs again...
I would really prefer fixing my current Ubuntu.
Other solution is to install games in Windows.
Anyway, I'm quite sure I'll find a way to play when the tournament begins.
Note: I will never again separate / and /usr. It was a very bad idea! ^^
Even separating /home isn't always good when you only have 40GB...
I've managed to record the necessary material for BZFlag, Armagetron Advanced and Battle for Wesnoth after all.
So we should have that second promotional video by sometime tomorrow and then we go on with the final announcement and a reminder for all who signed up.
The second video is done. It's using the same music, but the second part of the track.
http://www.libervis.net/misc/freedomware_gaming_tourney2.avi
http://youtube.com/watch?v=3-9ZqkzEqoM
Stay tuned.
And why not fusion both of them together now?
Great work on both videos!
Music isn't my favorite, but it's ok. Wouldn't know a better one anyway.
I was thinking of fusing them too, but in the end gave up. Kdenlive is annoying me to be honest, too unstable. Oh well.. I might yet do it after all.. We'll see..
I was looking for a different track for the second video, but couldn't find anything really suitable. This one just seems to fit so well..
Anyway here are the OGG Theora versions!
http://www.libervis.net/misc/freedomware_gaming_tourney.ogg
http://www.libervis.net/misc/freedomware_gaming_tourney2.ogg
Can't go without them on a Free Software support site!
The final announcement is out, videos are released and it's on digg: http://digg.com/linux_unix/The_first_Freedomware_Gaming_Festival_warming_up_videos_available
If you'd like to spread the word, please digg it!!
Thank you!
Eew! Boson! Warzone2100 'd be more reasonable
AI from the Ubuntu forums contacted. We should be on UGA news by tomorrow.
It seems PMs are more efficient than mails. ^^
Awesome! Nice job.
I think things are shaping up nicely after all. Once the new site gets done, the web shop is released and a new shiny logo is done (expecte land0 to come over to ask for feedback on that one), I think digg will be in our palms too! Maybe even slashdot!
Talk about another nice round around the news sites!
Well, it's on UGA now.
Altough I think he could have made the effort of writing an article for it... :/
If I had known it would just be a copy of the latest article, I would have written one for him. ^^
But at least it links to the official site. Quick somebody update and finish it!
What's needed:
-link to the sign up pages:
http://www.nuxified.org/topic/sign_up_here_for_the_tourney
http://www.nuxified.org/topic/i_will_maybe_join_the_gaming_tourney
-link to the poll:
http://www.nuxified.org/poll/which_games_should_be_selected_for_the_upcoming_tournament
-link to game servers:
http://www.nuxified.org/topic/game_servers_for_the_festival
-link to the game proposals:
http://www.nuxified.org/topic/multi_player_games_to_be_considered_for_the_tournament
-link to discussions related to this Gamefest:
http://www.nuxified.org/topic/modes_of_play_for_the_tournament
http://www.nuxified.org/topic/promoting_the_gaming_tourney_e_g_how_to_get_it_dugg
http://www.nuxified.org/blog/freedomware_gaming_festival_is_about_fun_not_numbers
-link to news related to this Gamefest:
http://www.nuxified.org/article/nuxified_and_cluenet_prepare_a_gaming_tourney_you_are_invited
http://www.nuxified.org/article/the_first_freedomware_gaming_festival_warming_up
http://www.nuxified.org/blog/tux_project_gets_behind_the_freedomware_gamefest_2007
It would be nice of course to have all this on the official site itself, but having the links should be enough.
I've added the links in a "quick links" list on the official site for now. It's rough, but it's better to have something than nothing. The site clearly states that it is under construction (in bold now).
Hopefully we'll soon be able to put the full site there.
Thanks for helping out!
Cheers
Gamefest info posted on the french ubuntu forums: http://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/viewtopic.php?id=153214
News also submitted to linuxfr.org. Waiting for moderator approval.