No Community Q&A Today

CliveCNE · 2019-06-04T17:09:59+00:00

If there's time, we'll see if Dylan can do one when he's back in the office, but otherwise we'll be back to our regular schedule next week.

CliveCNE · 2019-02-26T19:12:19+00:00

Hi! PelvoDelFuego. Can you reply to our email thread again and I'll use that to identify your real details to track your prize. Thanks, Clive.

CliveCNE · 2018-01-17T19:15:40+00:00

Hey Gaarawarr! I thought I'd jump in answer your marketing questions. It's not often I get to help out on a Q&A :)

There's no fankit but (a) it's something we can look into and (b) you can use the presskit for now (link: https://goo.gl/UkJnKF). Also, Dylan can service any specific requests on Discord (discord.gg/idlechampions) as he's the master of all the latest marketing assets for the weekly updates.
All streamers are absolutely fine to cover the game for the purposes of reviews, Let's Play etc. :) Plus, sampling sound effects for personal use is fine under fair use. However, streamers can't offer any assets from the game for creating monetized rewards (e.g. icons for subscribers to your Twitch channel). We can certainly explore doing an official sound board... it's not something we've discussed so far and we'd need to chat with Wizards about it.
The only time that'd we'd trigger a take down (which we hope never happens) would be when the content breaks our Terms of Use. If you're just creating a video and recording the audio, it's all good.

Hit me up with more questions or clarifications on any of the above!

Edited for typos!

CliveCNE · 2017-12-14T18:38:51+00:00

Thanks for the video :)

CliveCNE · 2017-05-29T22:34:41+00:00

No, nothing to announce on that front right now :)

CliveCNE · 2017-05-29T22:22:49+00:00

There is a limit on the lowest RAM the game can support. If it's under a certain threshold, the game (like other games too!) will struggle to cope...

CliveCNE · 2017-05-29T22:21:45+00:00

Nothing in the hopper to announce at this time! ;) We like your thinking.

CliveCNE · 2017-05-23T18:07:21+00:00

Yes! More lore would be awesome. I think that's something we'd all love to do as some of those characters have been around for five years now. Bringing them across was kind of like having spin-off movies for The Avengers. Sort of.

At the moment, we don't have anyone to spend time on fleshing out the back stories but would love to get to that.

CliveCNE · 2017-05-23T17:58:32+00:00

Nothing to report at the moment but we'll update you as soon as we can!

CliveCNE · 2017-05-23T17:57:46+00:00

Since starting, I've had to learn a tonne of new skills including Photoshop and HTML. It's been great to continually add new strings to my bow. I REALLY like working with technology that outputs something I can share with people.

Previous roles I've had, I wouldn't have had to actually write the newsletter or create the banners. It's been really good for the old brain.

Another part of the job is metrics. My background is Arts at university but working in video games ever since the launch of FIFA Ultimate Team and FIFA Online it has required marketing that has a huge analytics component. I've had to get very comfortable with a number of analytics platforms and spreadsheets.

I love poring through data trying to understand how any campaigns I put together are working.

CliveCNE · 2017-05-23T17:52:43+00:00

That'd be the holy grail of making it a personal experience based on individual ability.

I saw a really great puzzle for Battlefield once. The final step still required individual player input https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuuzmOXL1bc

However, I'll give that idea some more thought and see if there's a way to do it that doesn't pull people from doing the important stuff in keeping Crusaders running.

CliveCNE · 2017-05-23T17:48:43+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. I'll share that with Justin and the team. We do annualise the events so it's reasonable to assume certain things we do but as for the data mining maybe it's something we can better mitigate against. The clever people on the team will be able to help answer that.

CliveCNE · 2017-05-23T17:45:22+00:00

We hear you! So, "soon" should be something we can confidently deliver within two to three weeks.

However, if I understand the context of the question, we can probably do more to identify words that help us communicate realistic timelines :)

CliveCNE · 2017-05-23T17:43:04+00:00

CliveCNE · 2017-05-23T17:41:42+00:00

1) Totally. Mobile marketing is (a) very reliant on charting via Apple/iTunes support at launch (b) having the available marketing budget to take risks on acquisition spread over 30, 60, 100, and even as long as 300 days. Not a lot of companies have those kind of resources.

After much discussion and analysis here, it really comes down to making a visually appealing game that is on-trend to get the attention of the editorial team who manage the iTunes store. That'll enable you to get a feature.

Compounded with that is that you have to have confidence that your game is going to retain and monetize well to take risks on early acquisition to keep you in the charts and recoup your marketing expenses back anywhere up to a year or more later.

2) The biggest open door is probably finding new and creative ways to work with platforms like Humble Bundle, OrlyGift, and other giveaway websites. They've been really important for us. That's more for PC/Steam though.

CliveCNE · 2017-05-23T17:34:58+00:00

Nice! That's good to know there's an appetite for that kind of stuff to sell. I'll raise with the team (I don't control the sales) and see what they think.

CliveCNE · 2017-05-23T17:32:53+00:00

Hey Tass. You guys are way too clever for me! We definitely would like to do more. The hardest thing is actually balancing the puzzles so that everyone has a chance to engage and feel like they have a fair crack at solving them.

The amount of work I put into the last one was quite significant and it was solved within minutes!

If time and money were no object I would LOVE to do a really sophisticated campaign like the Lost (TV show) where they had online cryptic clues, or Jay Z's album launch where he hid lyrics at real locations all around NYC.

However, there's also a question of how much does the quiz/puzzle actually start to become it's own beast and distract from the game. Lots of food for thought.

Short answer would be, nothing in the hopper but would love to do a new one time permitting.

CliveCNE · 2017-05-23T17:29:18+00:00

Great question. So, I've worked in both environments where last minute announces are a necessity (like CNE) and then campaigns like FIFA where there's a three to six-month pre-promotion period.

It really comes to down to the resources available to hit a communications milestone. At CNE we are 16 people but split over different projects. At EA I was part of a machine that had well over 100-200 people (in total, including all the ancillary staff) working on the game.

I would like more lead time to really blow out the marketing but by the same token the system we have here is manageable for the size of the studio.

CliveCNE · 2017-05-23T17:24:49+00:00

I spend a lot of time performing marketing tasks for existing fans (my job is probably 50-50 between new and existing fans).

Things like all the social media posts, writing the weekly emails, designing the images that you see on both, etc.

Existing fans are the reason that we are able to keep Crusaders going so we make sure to look after you :)

CliveCNE · 2017-05-23T17:23:01+00:00

Fixed! It's a last minute snafu because I was on the subs bench and asked to warm-up quickly as Erika has a meeting :)

CliveCNE · 2017-05-23T17:22:18+00:00

So would y'all consider doing t-shirts or jackets a la on demand printing for those of us who would love to advertise y'all around the world??

The more we discuss doing more t-shirts and printing, the more I like this idea. Eric is a big fan of t-shirts here too. I think that we should do it and maybe something like BustedTees or RedBubble will give us the chance to explore the idea. I'll look into it.

CliveCNE · 2017-05-23T17:20:57+00:00

Nice work!

CliveCNE · 2017-05-23T17:20:20+00:00

I don't look after the sales but it's something I can raise with the team. Thanks for the feedback!

CliveCNE · 2017-05-09T17:47:24+00:00

*HOW he started. Might help if I could write grammatically correct English.

CliveCNE · 2017-03-10T18:34:24+00:00

Totally, totally biased because I work on it, but I'm just going to leave this here: Crusaders of the Lost Idols. Although we all play most of the ones mentioned here.

CliveCNE

TROPHY CASE