We've been big on giving back to the community for a long time now, but until recently we had to rely on custom hacks like Modbot and couldn't integrate it with the site proper very clearly. No doubt many gaffers didn't even know it existed, but many, many games found a good home that way.
You may or may not have noticed over the last few days, up on the header navigation (between What's New and Watched Threads) we now have a Giveaways tab. No purchase necessary, though some giveaways will be restricted by your current NeoGAF usergroup status level (void where prohibited etc.). The instructions and restrictions will all be made clear in the details when we get more simultaneous promotions up, but mostly any restrictions in place will be to discourage spam entries and keep eligibility to the active userbase.
But Why?
You matter to us, and we want you to enjoy your experience here. I've allocated a budget to general giveaways; not sponsored by publishers, just out of pocket for members of the community
In some cases, too, separate (perhaps...premium) giveaways will be set aside for users identified and usergroup promoted to top contributor status (great posters; people who put time into official thread creation; news hounds, sales fiends etc.). We're working on finalizing that system and identifying our first set of top contributors. You help make the community great, and we appreciate that.
We're rolling out official giveaways provided by the administration first, but we'll be bringing back user-to-user giveaways as well, which were extremely popular and a great way to spread good will between users. Stay tuned for updates on that as our top sysadmins continue crunching code on your behalf.
Indies
NeoGAF has always had a special relationship with indie game devs, and we want to strengthen that bond, provide better visibility to upcoming promising indie games since mainstream press sucks for that, and we want to do it ethically (i.e. indie devs won't be paying us for the "privilege" of being highlighted this way; we'll curate the selections and have minimum key distributions to the community, but that should be all) and without undermining our firmly independent and neutral position here with NeoGAF.
Through organic word of mouth on NeoGAF, some of the biggest indie game successes in history have resulted. From DayZ going viral, to Bastion, and Rocket League, Indies have cited NeoGAF exposure as significant for taking off as they did. Numerous Kickstarter successes have cited inbound organic traffic from NeoGAF as disproportionately significant to their fundraising outcomes. NeoGAF obviously cares about good indie games, not just AAA blockbusters. It's tough out there being an indie dev, but gamers want to know about the good stuff too and it's arguably increasingly difficult to find. Let's help fix that right here on NeoGAF, where some of the biggest indie successes have made it purely through word of mouth on our...also indie, for life...humble little video game message board here.
Most of us like a good indie game, yeah? Finding good games on Steam is kind of a shitshow these days, though (sorry Gabe). Getting coverage from streamers or viral talk on boards like NeoGAF or Reddit can be rough with the marketplace as saturated as it is, and in our case very strict rules about where self-promotion can take place on the boards to prevent spam and astroturfing, and breaking into the public consciousness can involve anything from payout to dubious exposure-promising services or hopeless spam runs on social media.
With that in mind, one of the goals with deploying this giveaway system is to regularly identify and curate promising and potentially underexposed independent games which are at or near completion that have the mojo to make it but not necessarily the marketing dollars or viral buzz, and use our Giveaway system to distribute a selection of keys for those games to our users, which can kickstart organic interest in your game substantially (especially if it's, y'know, good). We're intending keys from participating indie devs to get distributed a balanced mix of regular active gaf members, officially acknowledged standout contributors who will be encouraged to provide (uncensored, but fair) impressions, and verified live-streamers who can stream and record the games in action (side note: we're working on letting you show a clickable badge when you're livestreaming a game on twitch -- and maybe other services -- that users can click on when they see you post on GAF to take you straight to your livestream, as part of a NeoGAF Streamer community initiative).
Obviously we'll be handling this all in such a way that NeoGAF remains neutral, without corporate leverage exerted against us or bribery, etc., but we think something like a weekly indie spotlight giveaway+impression thread where some keys are distributed, the devs get some exposure and talkback organically and without pandering or payola, and administratively we curate the process fairly (maybe a mix of top-level selection and community voting, depending on feedback and trial runs) would be fun and rewarding for NeoGAF's users, as well as a valuable, free (aside from the necessary key allocation of course) avenue for exposure for those hardworking indie devs out there looking to get the exposure they deserve for their years of hard work.
Interested dev/team? We're not rolling out this aspect quite yet to the newly live Giveaway system, but the necessary components and protocols are in active development and should be coming soon, so send details of your project, steam page or equivalent if possible, its state of completion and intended release date, why you think your project would be a good fit for the initiative, and anything else of note to our secure email and we will add you into consideration and follow up with further instructions at the appropriate time. Thanks! Note: for consideration, we expect a minimum of 50-100 keys or so to be a necessary allocation if selected, but none of this has been formalized yet. Just expect to be giving out enough keys such that regular users can have a chance at drawing one (regular users are important!), top contributors will get them and can weigh in thoughtfully, and verified streamers can load your project up on Twitch et al and stream about it.
User/dev/streamer feedback welcome below. What do you think?
You may or may not have noticed over the last few days, up on the header navigation (between What's New and Watched Threads) we now have a Giveaways tab. No purchase necessary, though some giveaways will be restricted by your current NeoGAF usergroup status level (void where prohibited etc.). The instructions and restrictions will all be made clear in the details when we get more simultaneous promotions up, but mostly any restrictions in place will be to discourage spam entries and keep eligibility to the active userbase.
But Why?
You matter to us, and we want you to enjoy your experience here. I've allocated a budget to general giveaways; not sponsored by publishers, just out of pocket for members of the community
In some cases, too, separate (perhaps...premium) giveaways will be set aside for users identified and usergroup promoted to top contributor status (great posters; people who put time into official thread creation; news hounds, sales fiends etc.). We're working on finalizing that system and identifying our first set of top contributors. You help make the community great, and we appreciate that.
We're rolling out official giveaways provided by the administration first, but we'll be bringing back user-to-user giveaways as well, which were extremely popular and a great way to spread good will between users. Stay tuned for updates on that as our top sysadmins continue crunching code on your behalf.
Indies
NeoGAF has always had a special relationship with indie game devs, and we want to strengthen that bond, provide better visibility to upcoming promising indie games since mainstream press sucks for that, and we want to do it ethically (i.e. indie devs won't be paying us for the "privilege" of being highlighted this way; we'll curate the selections and have minimum key distributions to the community, but that should be all) and without undermining our firmly independent and neutral position here with NeoGAF.
Through organic word of mouth on NeoGAF, some of the biggest indie game successes in history have resulted. From DayZ going viral, to Bastion, and Rocket League, Indies have cited NeoGAF exposure as significant for taking off as they did. Numerous Kickstarter successes have cited inbound organic traffic from NeoGAF as disproportionately significant to their fundraising outcomes. NeoGAF obviously cares about good indie games, not just AAA blockbusters. It's tough out there being an indie dev, but gamers want to know about the good stuff too and it's arguably increasingly difficult to find. Let's help fix that right here on NeoGAF, where some of the biggest indie successes have made it purely through word of mouth on our...also indie, for life...humble little video game message board here.
Most of us like a good indie game, yeah? Finding good games on Steam is kind of a shitshow these days, though (sorry Gabe). Getting coverage from streamers or viral talk on boards like NeoGAF or Reddit can be rough with the marketplace as saturated as it is, and in our case very strict rules about where self-promotion can take place on the boards to prevent spam and astroturfing, and breaking into the public consciousness can involve anything from payout to dubious exposure-promising services or hopeless spam runs on social media.
With that in mind, one of the goals with deploying this giveaway system is to regularly identify and curate promising and potentially underexposed independent games which are at or near completion that have the mojo to make it but not necessarily the marketing dollars or viral buzz, and use our Giveaway system to distribute a selection of keys for those games to our users, which can kickstart organic interest in your game substantially (especially if it's, y'know, good). We're intending keys from participating indie devs to get distributed a balanced mix of regular active gaf members, officially acknowledged standout contributors who will be encouraged to provide (uncensored, but fair) impressions, and verified live-streamers who can stream and record the games in action (side note: we're working on letting you show a clickable badge when you're livestreaming a game on twitch -- and maybe other services -- that users can click on when they see you post on GAF to take you straight to your livestream, as part of a NeoGAF Streamer community initiative).
Obviously we'll be handling this all in such a way that NeoGAF remains neutral, without corporate leverage exerted against us or bribery, etc., but we think something like a weekly indie spotlight giveaway+impression thread where some keys are distributed, the devs get some exposure and talkback organically and without pandering or payola, and administratively we curate the process fairly (maybe a mix of top-level selection and community voting, depending on feedback and trial runs) would be fun and rewarding for NeoGAF's users, as well as a valuable, free (aside from the necessary key allocation of course) avenue for exposure for those hardworking indie devs out there looking to get the exposure they deserve for their years of hard work.
Interested dev/team? We're not rolling out this aspect quite yet to the newly live Giveaway system, but the necessary components and protocols are in active development and should be coming soon, so send details of your project, steam page or equivalent if possible, its state of completion and intended release date, why you think your project would be a good fit for the initiative, and anything else of note to our secure email and we will add you into consideration and follow up with further instructions at the appropriate time. Thanks! Note: for consideration, we expect a minimum of 50-100 keys or so to be a necessary allocation if selected, but none of this has been formalized yet. Just expect to be giving out enough keys such that regular users can have a chance at drawing one (regular users are important!), top contributors will get them and can weigh in thoughtfully, and verified streamers can load your project up on Twitch et al and stream about it.
User/dev/streamer feedback welcome below. What do you think?
, I’m not a Dev I just play games but yeah great thing for the site and for smaller Devs to get exposure and focus
We'll be developing the best approaches to these issues as we build out the main Giveaway/Contributor/Streamer functionalities. Contributors and Streamers will likely both be account ID linked on Steam and Twitch respectively, which should address most concerns there about fair play with key rewards.
