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Eye Candy
Thinking of putting together a media release post for your mod? Check out these recent examples to see how it's done.
Posted by stenchy on Mar 28th, 2008 digg this super bookmark
I'm taking the time to post this excerpt from the latest ModDB newsletter (what, you mean you haven't subscribed yet?) to highlight some of the great work put into recent media releases. While these posts aren't perfect, they definitely set the standard for the kind of content that is effective in attracting attention. Mod teams looking to achieve the same effect should take into account not only the quality of the media, but the accompanying text and overall formatting as well.
Quote:Now we know all you gamers out there love your eye candy and some mod/game teams actually put a lot of hard work into providing that eye candy for you. This section is dedicated to the best media release posts that hit the front page of ModDB.com each month. Click on a banner to view the related post in its entirety.
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© 2002 - 2008 DesuraNET Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 1050 modders online.
So.. there're examples, but how about a general outline of what you think works and what these media releases demonstrate?
In a nutshell...they show finished models, ingame.
MEC2's (btw thanks for mentioning us stenchy) rule for updates is to never show unfinished models, untextured models, or even non-ingame renders of models.
smart.
Yes... this can attract more people to this community :)
but you have been :P
sorry wrong comment box
its not always that, its more well planned well written news, as long as its something important and its not just a help wanted add.
I tend to get careless and either show work way too early or not show it at all.
Still looking for that happy medium.
i just think that these posts are a little more credible when the moddb staff themselves actually mod, which very few do
The ones who do mod (myself, Henley, Wraith) are the ones making posts like these. Not only that but we are in touch with a lot of developers and sort through a lot of 'media release' posts on a daily basis. It's not rocket science, a lot of it is just promoting your mod in a way that makes it as effortless as possible for anyone to obtain information about people's mods. This includes not only the general public, but other media outlets and professional developers.
It's difficult: in order to attract new people you need to make some media updates, but if you do it too early, you might not have anything to show for a long time after.
I guess my recipe is to start having media updates, when you are about 30% done with your mod's features. That way you have some more content you can show, yet aren't that far in development, to make change impossible. Media updates are one way to get good feedback from the community and see how much interest there is in your project. However - there are some problems.
At the moment our team is lacking Environmental Artists and Concept Artists, while we have a lot of modellers, two animators, and so forth. Without producing more concepts and some maps for show, no new people are going to join, but at the same time, we are lacking the necessary content for a satisfying release. So, the question is: should we release media, if it shows untextured WIP or B/W sketches, when it still isn't like we imagined it. Or should we keep in silence, until we are able to make a bigger media release with the things we find show-worthy? I'd really love to be able to have the luxury of showing only finished models and ingame renders, but we need to recruit some more people in order to help create this material first; so you could say it is a vicious circus. Only slowly, we are breaking free from it by doing jobs ourselves, we'd rather let someone more specialised in on (concepting, mapping).