I am looking to rent a gaming server for UT 3 (release date next month) as a way to bring traffic to promote my independent film, which is similar (but not affiliated) with the game’s genre of horror/sci-fi. The film and the game’s demographics are very close in nature so am considering this as a marketing strategy. I am interested in a 12-16 slot server with TS or Vent for $2-3 per slot. I am not interested in a dedicated server at this time. I am also not ruling out co-op sponsoring. I am located in the DC area so I am more interested in the DC and NY server location area for ping and traffic. My goal is to bring gamers to my website to purchase my movie via download or DVD.

A few questions and concerns:

1) Would someone recommend a reliable game server company that allows this type of advertising on their servers?

2) Is the “per slot” cost realistic for a new release game and my needs?

3) Is there a way to replace the Teamspeak log-in audio which the name of my film? Example: Instead of voice saying “New Player” it says “Fresh Meat.”

5) Can I check unique traffic to my rented server? Total player time? How often my rented server is being used?

6) What is a realistic length of time to the film name to discretely appear on the screen during game play? Every 5 minutes? I want to be effective but no too annoying.

7) Does anyone have clients that promote a business using their gaming servers? How successful has this approach been for them?

8) Outside of marketing, what type of upkeep and maintenance should I expect by renting from game server company? Is it as easy as setting up an account, inserting my movie name and track traffic to the "my" server?

9) Is it difficult or viable to switch from public to private back to public again? For contest offers.

10) What did I leave out?

Thank you.

5) Can I check unique traffic to my rented server? Total player time? How often my rented server is being used?

6) What is a realistic length of time to the film name to discretely appear on the screen during game play? Every 5 minutes? I want to be effective but no too annoying.


In these questions, I would say it would depend upon the mod support that they are offering / or allowing clients to create. I think for the question 5, you would need to consider a statistical mod. As in counter-strike source, you can use HLstatsx and it will tell you the amount of time, amount of unique players, and tons of information (I think even "geographical" information.. based on IP so its not alway correct).

As far as question 6, some games actually have a messaging problem like your saying built in. Others sometimes require that you add in a mod.


8) Outside of marketing, what type of upkeep and maintenance should I expect by renting from game server company? Is it as easy as setting up an account, inserting my movie name and track traffic to the "my" server?

9) Is it difficult or viable to switch from public to private back to public again? For contest offers.


These should not be extremely hard. You will probably want to look for some guides on maintaining and learning to know your game server better. As far as difficulty, I think you will learn these are easy over time.


7) Does anyone have clients that promote a business using their gaming servers? How successful has this approach been for them?

10) What did I leave out?


You advertising strategy could be good, but there are a few things that you need to consider. As if you surf any game, you will find that there are tons of empty servers! You will need to consider the amount of time you will have to spend in maintaining the game server, promoting the game server, and dealing with your business. To be honest, if you really are wanting to advertise in a game server, maybe you should consider finding a popular one (once the game comes out and is established), and trying to buy advertising rights on some1's server. This way you can eliminate the maintaining and time it takes in promoting the server? Plus you might be able to get it for a lower budget (30$ as opposed to 40-50$). In maintaince I would include keep hackers out, making sure the server is up and running, keeping people from exploiting, and just general upkeep.

For stats keeping, all newly released Unreal titles usually use nGstats... so it should keep track of individual servers.. but it is purely temporary, the stats database will only be available for a couple years until a new games come out.. then someone will have to write software to use ngstats output from the game...

Im not 100% on the teamspeak saying a different message when entering, I have never heard of that before.

Public/Private configuration is not hard at all, but setting a server up to do as your saying to do takes general game server knowledge... like editing INI files... Typically you will need to stop your server, download the ut3.ini (It may be called that) and edit one line, typically: GamePassword=

To change it back to public, make sure no password is next to it.

As for the cost, 3 dollars *may* be a possibility... until Game Server Providers get their hands on it, determine network usage/server resource usage and set the bar for pricing, I dont think anyone will be able to answer that question.

Pretty much every Game Server Provider I have ever heard of does not restrict how the user configures their server, so you should be able to advertise whatever you want, on the frequency you want.

For advertising, you can display a message every 5 minutes if you want, that sounds perfectly normal, for our Unreal Tournament 99 server we have ads displayed every 2 minutes. But there is alot of gameplay there so its OK to do that. But make sure you have different messages displayed, not the same one every 5 minutes.

Its easy to create an account with MOST GSPs, tracking traffic may be harder to do, as it is a brand new game so again, stats software may not be available, but some companies may have GameTrakker installed but again im not sure if it will be compatible with this new game..

What did you leave out? You should consider doing this to help the community grow from the beginning, offer discussion forums on your website... People are going there to play, you always need to remember that, I am not sure how effective it will be to market a product that has nothing to do with gaming itself.

I do wish ya the best of luck, let me know if you need anything else!

Thank you for the replies. It has definately given me a few things to think about.

Can someone recommend a GSP that is reliable and offers in-game advertising, like server name sponsor or ingame messaging?

Thanks for the reply. I am currently looking for a server location in NY or DC.

I am still having difficulty finding data to back up the effectiveness of in-game/GSP advertising.

I really don't think you'll get the kind of traffic you want. The problem is that gamers have to either remember or write down the URL to check later, and then remember to actually check the site out. And that's even if they want to check the site out to begin with. In my experience, anything that's not related to the server directly (like the website for the clan that runs the server) doesn't get a whole lot of traffic.

As long as you're not expecting a miracle, then go for it.
Thanks for the reply. I am currently looking for a server location in NY or DC.

I am still having difficulty finding data to back up the effectiveness of in-game/GSP advertising.

After searching for UT3 servers through google and yahoo the main game hosting company I have seen on their listings is (umgleague.co*). Hopefully that can help with what you are looking for.

-OldAge

they are based out of chicago...

he is looking for servers on the east coast from the sounds of it... dc or ny...

Ha, I didn't see that. Age is catching up with me.

If you are looking to advertise your video I am sure you could get in touch with the Admins at umg and be able to get something worked out.

After doing some searching I have come to find they seem to get traffic on their gaming servers.

-OldAge

I would recommend UnitedFrag.com,

I have a UT2003 and CS1.6 server with them and it is really good. They just changed ownership of the company and the support is really good. I submit alot of support questions to have mods installed on my server, and they reply right away. You can also call them and the people are really nice on the phone and they help me with any problem.

I can also submit a lil bump for Xieserv and UnitedFrag :) I worked for them since February, but in the past week or two have left the company (on good terms) due to having no time to spare with them, and opening my own company.

I can assure you that everyone there knows what they're doing. They really do know their stuff!

The road is a lil bumpy for UF however, as if I remember right Arbi (CEO) is having hardware upgraded/changed (don't quote me on that) and is also adding more locations. Support tickets are answered in a decent and timely manner too.

If you wish to speak with arbi directly, his AIM is XieServ Arbi or if you have questions about their company, I can try to answer them to the best of my abilities :)

I allways talk to Amar, he is really helpful. I dont think he sleeps lol, he responds to my ticket no matter what time of the day/night it is.

I think he has them forwarded to his phone lol. He's a good guy to work with too :)

Yeah, i think that they are all good to work with. I think there going to be wayyy up there in the future.

I think he has them forwarded to his phone lol. He's a good guy to work with too :)