Account Giveaway

Frosty · 2015-05-14 00:45:48

Hi everybody,

I want to do a small Cordial Minuet account giveaway to attract some more players to the game. I deposited $40 in my account and contacted Jason. He will create 20 new accounts preloaded with $2 that will be given away for free.

I'd like to do this in the form of a small contest over the course of the next 3 or 4 days (4 * 5 accounts, or maybe 3 * 6 accounts + 2 as a bonus ^^). I thought about something along the line of answering questions related to the "satanic" background of the game. Or something creative like writing a short "satanic ritual" or even drawing a small "satanic" picture.

However, to get the most out of this, I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas about the following:

- How to announce and describe the contest in a good way (headlines, description text, layout, screenshots, links).
- What kind of questions should be asked / what has to be done to enter the contest.
- Where to announce the contest. (maybe Reddit or with a new review/article about the game)

Any help would be appreciated!
Regards,
Frosty

Dan_Dan84 · 2015-05-14 01:07:52

Oh wow, what a lovely thing to do. You have my respect.

There is already a lot about the game on various gaming websites (e.g. Kotaku, Eurogamer), so you probably don't need to describe the game itself-- just a link to one (or more) of those articles.

For the contest itself... Hmm... I suppose a headline along the lines of "Play Jason Rohrer's new game, Cordial Minuet, for FREE" would be good. I remember reading in the comments section of some of those websites that some players said things like "Oh, it's an interesting concept, and I like JR's work, but I don't think I'd actually like to get an account and deposit money." That headline might grab people like that's attention.

To enter the contest... probably not something too laborious. The creative ideas are nice, but I think the average person who hasn't yet tried out CM would be like "Meh, too much effort." I think questions would be the better way to go: the answers can be found relatively easily with Wikipedia and Google, but will still require some effort. Maybe some sort of gap-fill, like "Minosons ensures winning in all __________."

Anyway, it's a really cool thing you're doing. Sorry I can't be of more help.

jasonrohrer · 2015-05-14 06:54:39

I'll throw my two cents in here...

So many people (Kotaku, etc.) are all "Satan Satan Satan" when it comes to talking about this game.

None of the occult research I did around this game has anything to do with Satan.

Demons, yes. Black magic, yes. 666, absolutely.

I think that many of these things are misinterpreted by Christian society as being "satanic" or "devil worship" or something like that. Even the number 666. But in ancient magical traditions, 666 is the number of the sun (the CM magic square being the "sun square"). 666 is a very numerologically special number, being the sum of the numbers between 1 and 6x6.

I'm not saying I have anything against Satanism (LaVey's or others') or devil worship. I just feel like those two terms are more often used to perpetuate baseless fears than anything else.

This game, and it's thematics, are instead about well-founded fears!

The PR department requests that all occurrences of the character sequence S A T A N be replaced with the sequence D E M O N.

Professor Chin · 2015-05-14 07:30:48

-1 for the monotheistic and intolerant Satan
+1 for the more subtle and fascinating Demon

.. · 2015-05-14 10:52:21

Cool, I was actually thinking of giving away accounts on some forums, except I'm cheap and would only provide 20-50 cents per account, heh.
But my reaction is also "What does CM have to do with Satan?" No more than than secret societies and card reading and Hebrew numerology.

If you want to have people do something creative to get an account, it would be cool if they each created a small piece of some 'fan-created content' around the game. Like, do you see how the Time Cube page is an endless sequence of nonsense (an inspiration for CM's website, actually)? If they generated a nonsensical on-topic paragraph or image each someone could paste it all together and voilá!

Frosty · 2015-05-14 12:31:54

Thanks for the ideas and hints guys. As requested by the PR department, "Demon" it is.

I decided to post the giveaway in http://www.reddit.com/r/RandomActsOfGaming/. It has around 40,000 subscribers.

I'll write a short text this evening and will post it here for some final feedback before it goes live.

Last edited by Frosty (2015-05-14 12:32:17)

jere · 2015-05-14 12:43:52

I feel stupid. I had indeed lazily assumed that Satan was at least part of a grab bag of demonic motifs surrounding the game. I figured most of the demons came out of like Dante's Inferno or related works. I dumb.

Re: the contest. While I would love to see some CM fan art, I don't think asking the uninitiated to make some would work. I tend to agree that the bar should be set as low as possible.

A lot of giveaways these days work by asking the person to do 2 things. 1) Promote said product somehow and 2) Explain why they should win the product. For example, the rules could simply be: The participants have to retweet an official tweet about the contest and they have to say why they want to play CM or why they deserve free CM money.

Another idea is to ask people to pick an interesting number and explain why it is interesting (the game is about numerology after all). This is somewhat like "I'm thinking about a number 1-100", but here the numbers themselves are actually interesting. You can provide a few links as starting point. Only the top 20 most interesting numbers/descriptions will win.

If you need some assistance, I might be able to help with a splash page. I still think this little mockup I made is cool and could be reworked into a contest page. Also, if you want to bump up the prize amount (maybe $5?), I'd be willing to throw some money in the pot.

Frosty · 2015-05-14 15:41:48

Good suggestions, jere. It would be great to use your mockup, it looks awesome. However, I'm not really sure how to use it for the contest (I'm totally not a design person ). If we post the giveaway on /r/RandomActsOfGaming/ we can't use it directly, since all giveaway entries have to be kept inside the reddit thread (if I understand the subreddit rules correctly).

I like your idea with simply picking numbers and describing why they are "interesting".

Also, thanks for your suggestion to chip in some money. This would be great! But I'm unsure if we should raise the prize amount with the added money or add more accounts with the old amount.

Last edited by Frosty (2015-05-14 15:55:05)

jere · 2015-05-14 15:58:27

Yea, I guess if it's getting posted on reddit, you don't need a landing page.

Let's say it was 50 accounts at $2 a pop. Would this be really tedious for Jason as opposed to 20 accounts? Also, do you think you would even get 50 respondents? If both of those questions are answered, I think 50 would be fine.

Or maybe 30 at $3?

I'm still wondering how this could best be leveraged for marketing purposes? Like what if the winners were determined by upvote count, assuming that's allowed (the number thing would still be part of it but upvotes determine who has the best answer). You might get people bringing their friends to upvote it? I dunno.

Frosty · 2015-05-14 17:19:16

jere wrote:

Let's say it was 50 accounts at $2 a pop. Would this be really tedious for Jason as opposed to 20 accounts?

I don't think it would be much trouble but Jason has to answer this.

jere wrote:

Also, do you think you would even get 50 respondents? If both of those questions are answered, I think 50 would be fine.

To be honest, I have no idea.
Maybe we should just start out with 20 accounts and $2 and see how the response is. We can always add more accounts later on.

I just had the following idea for determinig the winners.

- Each participant has to choose 6 numbers from 1 to 36 and simply post them as a row (e.g., 29 30 21 1 24 6).
- The sum of these 6 numbers has to be 111.
- On every day of the 3-day-giveaway one of the 6 columns is chosen as the winning column. No column is chosen twice.
- The 6 participants with the highest number in todays winning column receive a free account.
- If 2 or more possible winners have the same number in todays winning column, 1 of them is chosen as the winner at random.
- Every participant can only win once. Their remaining numbers are ignored after winning.

Does this make any sense? Too complicated?

jasonrohrer · 2015-05-14 17:27:01

Frosty and Jere:

When you guys settle on how many accounts and how much, please email me with the final instructions (like how much to withdraw from each of you to fund the accounts, how many accounts, etc). Then I'll make those accounts and send Frosty the email/key list.

jere · 2015-05-14 17:49:28

Ok thanks, Jason.

Frosty, because the outcome is essentially random, I think you might as well ask them to pick a random number 1-666. This seems pretty standard for RAoG anyway and it brings in the theme slightly (make sure to mention why of course). Maybe this is the best solution.

I'll contribute $60 and then we can say "$100 in Cordial Minuet credits (real money gambling)" which seems pretty enticing. I'm cool with 50 accounts at $2. You can briefly explain how one player (Jeopardy Alcohol) was able to turn their $2 into $500! That's gotta be exciting.

Maybe we can get a little twittering of the thread by Jason. Maybe.

Frosty · 2015-05-14 18:59:54

Yeah, you're right. Ok, let's do it this way. I'll send Jason an Email.

Here's a first draft of the post. However, this obviously needs more work.
For example, the whole demonic theme and the "666" is not explained yet.
Should the "(50 x $2)" be in the title? If it is left out it feels a little "clickbaity".

Any other additions, improvements or corrections?

---------

Title: [Giveaway] $100 (50 x $2) in Cordial Minuet credits (Jason Rohrer's new REAL MONEY gambling game)

Text:
Hello /r/RandomActsOfGaming. We would like to give away 50 accounts for Jason Rohrer's new game Cordial Minuet (Website-Link).

Each account comes with a starting deposit of $2 and can be used to win even more REAL MONEY and even REAL GOLD (Link).

Do you have what it takes to turn pennies into thousands like others have (Link1-"Jeopardy Alcohol", Link2-"Jere")? Good luck!

How to enter the giveaway:
Simply pick a number between 1 and 666 and post it as a reply.

How winners are chosen:
The giveaway will last for 3 days. Each day around X:00 p.m. (UTC+1) winners will be chosen randomly.
Day 1: 10 winners
Day 2: 15 winners
Day 3: 25 winners

jere · 2015-05-14 19:19:56

Eh, isn't X in prizes a common thing in giveaways where it's implied that there are many prizes? Either way is fine. I doubt many people will avoid clicking because of the small amounts.

I have just a few tweaks, but they're suggestions.

Hello /r/RandomActsOfGaming. We would like to give away 50 accounts for Jason Rohrer's new game Cordial Minuet (Website-Link).
Each account comes with a starting deposit of $2 and can be used to win even more REAL MONEY and even REAL GOLD! (Link).
Can you really win lots of money in this game? YES YOU CAN! One player turned $2 into $500 (here's his recent profit graph (JA link)). Another player has won over $7,000 (link to Kotaku story).
How to enter:
Simply pick a number between 1 and 666. Yes, the game has a demonic theme.
The giveaway will last for 3 days. Each day around X:00 p.m. (UTC+1) winners will be chosen randomly.
Day 1: 10 winners
Day 2: 15 winners
Day 3: 25 winners
Good luck!

Oh you may also want to specify in the title or body that the game client itself is FREE. People might otherwise assume they first have to buy the game.

Last edited by jere (2015-05-14 19:27:47)

Frosty · 2015-05-14 19:41:04

Thank you! Looks and sounds much better!
I'll just wait for Jason to reply to my email and then I'll post it.

Frosty · 2015-05-14 20:22:24

Added the links, made some minor improvements and added a sentence about the whole thing being FREE/without costs.

Hello /r/RandomActsOfGaming. We would like to give away 50 accounts for Jason Rohrer's new game Cordial Minuet.
Each account comes with a starting deposit of $2 for FREE and can be used to win more REAL MONEY and even REAL GOLD!
(FREE as in: no additional payment or registration is required! Even if you lose the whole starting deposit, there will be no costs for you!)
Can you really win lots of money in this game? YES YOU CAN! One player turned $2 into $500 (here's his recent profit graph). Another player has won over $6,000 (Kotaku article).
How to enter:
Simply pick a number between 1 and 666. Yes, the game has a demonic theme.
The giveaway will last for 3 days. Each day around 11:00 p.m. (UTC+1) winners will be chosen randomly.
Day 1: 10 winners
Day 2: 15 winners
Day 3: 25 winners
Good luck!

Frosty · 2015-05-14 21:50:23

And we are live:
http://www.reddit.com/r/RandomActsOfGam … its_jason/

Let's hope for the best.
Thanks for the help and for chipping in so much, jere!

Last edited by Frosty (2015-05-14 22:04:36)

jere · 2015-05-14 22:01:51

Looks good!

Btw, browsed your history. One more data point that EVERY SINGLE PERSON that plays CM is a programmer. LULZ.

Dan_Dan84 · 2015-05-15 01:25:23

I must say, this is an awesome thing you two have done.

Looks like some people have started picking numbers (I like the one who chose 333).

One person, however,

some reddit user wrote:

Ocultist themes, promises of great money, gambling to some point all in one
Nope. Big nope. Smells like scam.

thought this. Which is of course what it all looks like (though I doubt he even bothered to click on the story links).

But you don't want your contest reported as spam.

jere · 2015-05-15 01:49:14

I responded to this person....

jere · 2015-05-15 02:28:36

Odd... it says there are 14 comments but I only see 7.

jasonrohrer · 2015-05-15 04:42:03

Sadly, when I created these accounts, their last_action_time got set to the time of creation (as usual for new accounts), but this is polluting the active users stat measurements used to make these graphs:

http://cordialminuet.com/gameServer/ser … sers_graph

I looked at fixing it, and it's pretty messy, so I'm going to leave it.

Frosty · 2015-05-15 06:58:23

Good response to this guy. This should do it.
Yeah, it says 20 comments for me now, but I only see 13. Don't know what's up whit that... But at least we already have enough people for day 1. ^^

Professor Chin · 2015-05-15 09:47:22

Great reply!

Thank you Jere and Frosty.

jere · 2015-05-15 14:06:29

Only 16 entrants so far. Kind of amazing how hard it is to give away free money....

CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

#1 2015-05-14 00:45:48

Account Giveaway

#2 2015-05-14 01:07:52

Re: Account Giveaway

#3 2015-05-14 06:54:39

Re: Account Giveaway

#4 2015-05-14 07:30:48

Re: Account Giveaway

#5 2015-05-14 10:52:21

Re: Account Giveaway

#6 2015-05-14 12:31:54

Re: Account Giveaway

#7 2015-05-14 12:43:52

Re: Account Giveaway

#8 2015-05-14 15:41:48

Re: Account Giveaway

#9 2015-05-14 15:58:27

Re: Account Giveaway

#10 2015-05-14 17:19:16

Re: Account Giveaway

#11 2015-05-14 17:27:01

Re: Account Giveaway

#12 2015-05-14 17:49:28

Re: Account Giveaway

#13 2015-05-14 18:59:54

Re: Account Giveaway

#14 2015-05-14 19:19:56

Re: Account Giveaway

#15 2015-05-14 19:41:04

Re: Account Giveaway

#16 2015-05-14 20:22:24

Re: Account Giveaway

#17 2015-05-14 21:50:23

Re: Account Giveaway

#18 2015-05-14 22:01:51

Re: Account Giveaway

#19 2015-05-15 01:25:23

Re: Account Giveaway

#20 2015-05-15 01:49:14

Re: Account Giveaway

#21 2015-05-15 02:28:36

Re: Account Giveaway

#22 2015-05-15 04:42:03

Re: Account Giveaway

#23 2015-05-15 06:58:23

Re: Account Giveaway

#24 2015-05-15 09:47:22

Re: Account Giveaway

#25 2015-05-15 14:06:29

Re: Account Giveaway

Board footer