AGDQ 2012 promotion

2011-12-13 03:57:41 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that PCF is awesome and emailed every single donor from the last AGDQ, so if you donated, don't be surprised if you get an email.

Breakdown

2011-12-13 10:48:09 pm

Haters gonna hate

Put some general guidelines/tips in the second post. Might help somebody hopefully.

Some good ideas so far, keep them coming!

Chrno

2011-12-14 08:23:30 am

WOW.

Quote from mikwuyma:

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that PCF is awesome and emailed every single donor from the last AGDQ, so if you donated, don't be surprised if you get an email.

I'm so excited that I now have a .jgp of your signature!

mocliamtoh

2011-12-14 09:42:12 am

My name is unpronounceable

As a suggestion, you might try contacting Ars Technica. They aren't a gaming site per se, but they have a number of gaming articles. Now that I look at it, they're promoting the new humble bundle, so this is probably something they'd help out on. http://arstechnica.com/site/contact-ars-technica.ars

mikwuyma

2011-12-14 10:16:03 am

My feelings on The Demon Rush

Okay Chrno and Mocliamtoh have some good sites to contact, but haven't added them yet because it's my birthday, and that's my excuse for being lazy for a day. Tongue

DJS

2011-12-14 10:17:15 am

torch slug since 2006

Happy birthday, happy 5000th post etc.
I also just thought about SEGAage (basically same thing as nintendoage, but for sega). But seems like both sites have the same owner, so if he sees the nintendoage one, maybe he will put it on Segaage too....

Sir VG

2011-12-14 01:03:56 pm

Fucking Weeaboo

Happy Birthday Mike! And go ahead and be lazy. Smiley

mikwuyma

2011-12-15 02:47:43 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

Okay Darkwing Duck edited the press release and cleaned it up a bit. It's not much different, but I think the wording is a bit better, and it looks cleaner. If people agree, I'll replace the current press release in the first post with DW's.

Quote:

Hello, it's Speed Demos Archive, the leading source of speed run videos, with speedruns of over 650 games from players all over the world.

From January 4th through 9th, 2012, we will be holding a video game marathon called Awesome Games Done Quick 2012 (AGDQ). Approximately 80 members of our site's community will gather together in one location to play through over 100 different games non-stop as fast as they can. Our speedrunners take great pride in honing the skills necessary to beat their games quickly and consistently, spending hours practicing amazing and entertaining tricks, which makes the marathon a must-see event. The entire event will be streamed live via justin.tv on our front page (http://speeddemosarchive.com ). Our purpose for the marathon is to take donations and raise money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation (http://preventcancer.org ). For more details about the event, please refer to our marathon website at: http://speeddemosarchive.com/marathon

Our list of games, ranging from the NES generation the present generation, includes Portal 2, Super Mario 64, Super Mario Galaxy, Halo Reach, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Mario Bros. 3, Resident Evil 4, along with many others. A full schedule where you can find all the games we will be playing can be found here: http://speeddemosarchive.com/marathon/schedule

We will also raffle off prizes for our viewers who generously donate during our marathon. A Legend of Zelda Master Sword, a Super Meat Boy tenderizer, games (including a boxed copy of Earthbound!), a Sonic comic collection, perlers (bead art), and plushies are only a portion of what we’ll be giving away!

We invite you to come to our front page at http://speeddemosarchive.com from January 4-9th to take part in the round-the-clock fun.

A couple of other things:

That 1-up email is bad. I tried again today and it bounced. I'll try to find an alternative way to contact them, or someone else can. Any help you can put in is appreciated.

I edited the first post with Chrno's and Moclaimtoh's sites to contact, thanks guys!

-Bad news for one game company. Nintendo rejected us. Sad

I'm not sure why, the response just said something along the lines of regretting not supporting a good cause.

-Has anyone else started contacting the gaming sites? The marathon is going to be in less than 3 weeks (I know, it's crazy close). And while we don't want to do it all at once, one or two people contacting the sites isn't exactly a wave.

Okay Darkwing Duck edited the press release and cleaned it up a bit. It's not much different, but I think the wording is a bit better, and it looks cleaner. If people agree, I'll replace the current press release in the first post with DW's.

[quote]Hello, it's Speed Demos Archive, the leading source of speed run videos, with speedruns of over 650 games from players all over the world.

From January 4th through 9th, 2012, we will be holding a video game marathon called Awesome Games Done Quick 2012 (AGDQ). Approximately 80 members of our site's community will gather together in one location to play through over 100 different games non-stop as fast as they can. Our speedrunners take great pride in honing the skills necessary to beat their games quickly and consistently, spending hours practicing amazing and entertaining tricks, which makes the marathon a must-see event. The entire event will be streamed live via justin.tv on our front page (http://speeddemosarchive.com ).  Our purpose for the marathon is to take donations and raise money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation (http://preventcancer.org ). For more details about the event, please refer to our marathon website at: http://speeddemosarchive.com/marathon

Our list of games, ranging from the NES generation the present generation, includes Portal 2, Super Mario 64, Super Mario Galaxy, Halo Reach, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Mario Bros. 3, Resident Evil 4, along with many others. A full schedule where you can find all the games we will be playing can be found here: http://speeddemosarchive.com/marathon/schedule

We will also raffle off prizes for our viewers who generously donate during our marathon. A Legend of Zelda Master Sword, a Super Meat Boy tenderizer, games (including a boxed copy of Earthbound!), a Sonic comic collection, perlers (bead art), and plushies are only a portion of what we’ll be giving away!

We invite you to come to our front page at http://speeddemosarchive.com from January 4-9th to take part in the round-the-clock fun.[/quote]

A couple of other things:

That 1-up email is bad. I tried again today and it bounced. I'll try to find an alternative way to contact them, or someone else can. Any help you can put in is appreciated.

I edited the first post with Chrno's and Moclaimtoh's sites to contact, thanks guys!

-Bad news for one game company. Nintendo rejected us. :( I'm not sure why, the response just said something along the lines of regretting not supporting a good cause.

-Has anyone else started contacting the gaming sites? The marathon is going to be in less than 3 weeks (I know, it's crazy close). And while we don't want to do it all at once, one or two people contacting the sites isn't exactly a wave.

Emptyeye

2011-12-15 09:46:41 pm

Talk to the Hand

It's not a gaming site, but has anyone contacted Ryan north of Dinosaur Comics? He's done at least one comic about speedruns in the past, and occasionally posts on his front page about causes that he likes/supports.

If not, I could do it some time this weekend.

Cool Matty

2011-12-15 11:10:14 pm

Crawlathon WR, get down on my level.

The only thing I have to say about the press release is the fact that the purpose for the marathon isn't mentioned until the end of the second paragraph. For anyone reading, it starts off as if we're just having a good old time speedrunning games, and looking for free advertisement. If you could somehow insert the fact that it's a charity marathon near the top, that would be more effective to anyone who would be skimming through them (aka, most gaming websites, publications, etc).

ZenicReverie

2011-12-15 11:22:55 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

Most press releases I've read follow this format:

What's happening
History of why/how it's happening
History/Introduction of the parties involved

I know not very helpful, but I'll try to give it a go this weekend if no one else does. Main points I'd focus on is making the first line specific to the event and charity, not SDA. Move the information about the charity to the first or second line in the next paragraph, and add some information about what SDA and PCF is.

Some examples:
Indie games: http://www.gamerelease.net/releases.view.php?pr_id=621
Mainstream games: http://spong.com/press-releases/
Digital cinema: http://dcinematoday.com/

Molotov

Edit history:

Molotov: 2011-12-16 08:29:02 am

2011-12-16 08:26:54 am

A shameless plug/mostly ghostwritten example too, if you like. (Sorry, I saw the opportunity and took it.)

Anyway, I just spent a little time trying to rearrange things and this is a rough draft of what I came up with:

Quote:

Hello, it's Speed Demos Archive, the leading source of speed run videos, with speed runs of over 650 games from players all over the world.

From January 4th through 9th, 2012, we will hold a video game charity marathon called Awesome Games Done Quick 2012. All donations will go to Prevent Cancer Foundation (http://preventcancer.org ), an organization dedicated to funding promising treatment research. The entire event will be streamed live via justin.tv on our front page (http://speeddemosarchive.com ).

Approximately 80 members of our site's community will gather together in one location to play through over 100 different games non-stop as fast as they can. These games range from NES classics such as Super Mario Bros. and Mega Man 2, to recent titles such as Portal 2 and Halo: Reach. For a list of all 100 games and estimated start times, check out http://speeddemosarchive.com/marathon/schedule

During the event, we will also raffle off prizes for our viewers who generously donate during our marathon. A Legend of Zelda Master Sword, a Super Meat Boy tenderizer, games (including a boxed copy of Earthbound!), a Sonic comic collection, perlers (bead art), and plushies are only a portion of what we’ll be giving away!

We invite you to come to our front page at http://speeddemosarchive.com from January 4-9th to take part in the round-the-clock fun.

I know it's not much different, but I agree that we need to put Prevent Cancer up front. I tried to cut back some of the horn-tooting so that there's more focus on "why you should care." I think that's the best way to go, but maybe it could use a little bit of it? Probably more important to get the party interested in this news item and then let them decide whether to compliment us when they repeat this information to others.

Press releases that I've seen tend to involve at least one quote, but I'm not sure that really works in this case. If Mike or someone else on staff can think up a short paragraph that captures the whole picture, it might be worth adding toward the end. If horn-tooting has to happen, this would be the place to do it.

Other than that, I just tried to remove some of the passive voice because it's evil and wrong for things like this (or so I've learned). This is just my take on the draft, but I hope someone can use this to think up something better.

Anyway, as for unique places I can contact, I'll probably try Serenes Forest again this year. It's not likely to pick up anybody because it's just a small Fire Emblem fansite, but it can't hurt to try. Also, if I could find sshplur (or Psychochild, but that's a longshot), I could ask him to promote us on Phantom Babies. We're running God Hand, Devil May Cry, and Bayonetta, so they'll definitely be interested in this event.

[Edit]: By the way, if you're going with the Associated Press style guide, you don't need to provide the "(AGDQ)" part after you mention Awesome Games Done Quick the first time. I thought it was weird too, but that's what the 2011 edition says.

[url=http://www.lfcc.edu/about-the-college/news/news-releases-and-media-advisories/10404.html]A shameless plug/mostly ghostwritten example[/url] too, if you like. (Sorry, I saw the opportunity and took it.)

Anyway, I just spent a little time trying to rearrange things and this is a rough draft of what I came up with:

[quote]Hello, it's Speed Demos Archive, the leading source of speed run videos, with speed runs of over 650 games from players all over the world.

From January 4th through 9th, 2012, we will hold a video game charity marathon called Awesome Games Done Quick 2012. All donations will go to Prevent Cancer Foundation (http://preventcancer.org ), an organization dedicated to funding promising treatment research. The entire event will be streamed live via justin.tv on our front page (http://speeddemosarchive.com ).

Approximately 80 members of our site's community will gather together in one location to play through over 100 different games non-stop as fast as they can. These games range from NES classics such as Super Mario Bros. and Mega Man 2, to recent titles such as Portal 2 and Halo: Reach. For a list of all 100 games and estimated start times, check out http://speeddemosarchive.com/marathon/schedule

During the event, we will also raffle off prizes for our viewers who generously donate during our marathon. A Legend of Zelda Master Sword, a Super Meat Boy tenderizer, games (including a boxed copy of Earthbound!), a Sonic comic collection, perlers (bead art), and plushies are only a portion of what we’ll be giving away!

We invite you to come to our front page at http://speeddemosarchive.com from January 4-9th to take part in the round-the-clock fun.[/quote]

I know it's not much different, but I agree that we need to put Prevent Cancer up front. I tried to cut back some of the horn-tooting so that there's more focus on "why you should care." I think that's the best way to go, but maybe it could use a little bit of it? Probably more important to get the party interested in this news item and then let them decide whether to compliment us when they repeat this information to others.

Press releases that I've seen tend to involve at least one quote, but I'm not sure that really works in this case. If Mike or someone else on staff can think up a short paragraph that captures the whole picture, it might be worth adding toward the end. If horn-tooting has to happen, this would be the place to do it.

Other than that, I just tried to remove some of the passive voice because it's evil and wrong for things like this (or so I've learned). This is just my take on the draft, but I hope someone can use this to think up something better.

Anyway, as for unique places I can contact, I'll probably try Serenes Forest again this year. It's not likely to pick up anybody because it's just a small Fire Emblem fansite, but it can't hurt to try. Also, if I could find sshplur (or Psychochild, but that's a longshot), I could ask him to promote us on Phantom Babies. We're running God Hand, Devil May Cry, and Bayonetta, so they'll definitely be interested in this event.

[Edit]: By the way, if you're going with the Associated Press style guide, you don't need to provide the "(AGDQ)" part after you mention Awesome Games Done Quick the first time. I thought it was weird too, but that's what the 2011 edition says.

Cool Matty

2011-12-17 09:35:46 am

Crawlathon WR, get down on my level.

I like Molotov's version a lot more, if it matters.

sinister1

2011-12-17 10:35:00 am

sinister1

so pro u don't even know

I used Molotov's version in my Youtube promo vid description.

mikwuyma

Edit history:

mikwuyma: 2011-12-18 04:34:48 pm

2011-12-18 04:18:12 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

Molotov, on top of the people in this topic, Breakdown and I agree your press release is better, so I put yours in the first post. Thank you for taking the time to edit it and make it more straightforward and to the point.

I'm going to contact some more sites tomorrow, and so should other people!

Emptyeye: That's a good idea. If you could contact Mr. North, then that would be really helpful. Or if you think it would be better if I contacted him, then just ask me

Emptyeye

Edit history:

Emptyeye: 2011-12-19 05:03:46 pm

2011-12-18 07:01:33 pm

Talk to the Hand

I have no problem with doing it, although I'll probably modify the press release a bit to personalize it and whatnot.

EDIT: And done as of about 2 minutes ago (Just about 7PM EST on December 19th)

Emptyeye

2011-12-20 03:47:31 pm

Talk to the Hand

Double-posting for good news: Got a positive response from Mr. North! I just have to remind him the morning-of that it's starting. I'll shoot him an e-mail the morning of the 4th before I head to work (I'll be in work when the marathon actually starts).

mikwuyma

2011-12-20 03:53:44 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

Awesome Emptyeye! Maybe I should give people gold stars when they do some successful promotion. Smiley

mike89

Edit history:

mike89: 2011-12-21 12:19:41 am

2011-12-21 12:17:45 am

SEGA Junkie

As far as the major sites go, my amateur detective work suggests that we're wasting our time promoting the marathon right now. Throw "charity marathon" into the search bar of your site of choice (joystiq, 1up, kotaku, etc) and you'll find that most of the writeups for marathons are those that are already ongoing at the time of writing. If not that, then perhaps the day before.

Not to mention that letting people know as it's ongoing would be more likely to draw viewers anyway, since anyone interested would immediately join the stream rather than having to remember for a couple of weeks that it's going on.

I personally think the morning that the marathon is about to start would be the best time to spread the word to these sites. Maybe even as the stream is about to start. I'm not even kidding.

(The information in this thread is all still really useful though!)

mikwuyma

2011-12-21 12:27:13 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

You do have a point, Mike89. I will make one last effort to contact the sites on either the setup day or the day of the marathon.

neskamikaze

2011-12-23 06:04:34 pm

I got the guy at my local retro game store to put up the marathon ad and he said he would tell people about it, it's not much but it's something.

mikwuyma

2011-12-23 06:39:09 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

Hey that's something nes, it never hurts.

mocliamtoh

2011-12-23 06:45:18 pm

My name is unpronounceable

Quote from neskamikaze:

I got the guy at my local retro game store to put up the marathon ad and he said he would tell people about it, it's not much but it's something.

That's a good idea. There's a local game store I go to where they specialize in retro games. This should be right up their alley. When I visit before the marathon, I'll make sure they know and ask if they'll advertise on twitter and facebook.

neskamikaze

2011-12-23 07:17:50 pm

He gets to pawn off his shitty n64 games on me, he was willing to be nice to me Smiley

dballin

2011-12-23 07:29:17 pm

Balls jerky

Maybe I should try that since I buy all kinds of dumb shit that this store would otherwise never sell