More Contests

Started by WAS, November 06, 2018, 01:49:18 AM

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WAS

Planetside Software should host more contests. Maybe 4 a year to divide up the quarters with a annual "big show" being one of them. I've been going over the forums, and data I can find online regarding traffic online and it seems a lot of activity coincides with contests. But, with one contest a year, that said contests subject matter may not peak the interest of everyone to partake, or even really take a look. More contests + subjects = more peak interest in TG software.

It's really clear when you start searching about Terragen, a lot of reference on Google comes with past contests, winners, and subsequent interest by other websites making an article about TG because of a contest going on that brought them there.

Dune

Even with a modest amount of contests and huge prizes there are only 25 entries, so I wouldn't expect much of 4 a year. For users to spend enough serious time in a contest you are almost obligatory to offer prizes. I don't think many companies would do so. So I'm not very enthusiastic.

WAS

#2
Quote from: Dune on November 06, 2018, 01:53:30 AM
Even with a modest amount of contests and huge prizes there are only 25 entries, so I wouldn't expect much of 4 a year. For users to spend enough serious time in a contest you are almost obligatory to offer prizes. I don't think many companies would do so. So I'm not very enthusiastic.

Art communities regularly host contests, though, while not even being a company and all at personal expenses of those running them. I've host several myself on my own art communities of the past such as The Platinum Zone and AniShack.

The contests doesn't need to be serious (as I indicated) but that one anual. Most companies don't do contests because they are a large corporate company and literally don't give a crap. Not a company still trying to stabalize it's supports in the field that should take advantage of any and all means of public interaction, especially being perceived as fun and relatable



No offense to TG but it tries to come off as too Enterprise/commercial without even having a hold in the field or exposure. I talk about the lot with my artists friends and always have to remind them what it even is. Lol and some of these chaps are in the movie industry which is almost embarrassing when they are like "Ok what is this?"

Also those 25 entries are based on the whole exposure of TG to begin with which is the point of this post, where TG is only trending during contests, and than drops off the radar. Simply not enough people even know about it to try it, and than those few that do are overwhelmed. So naturally you just need ways to draw in more people in whole and hope some stick around. Community interaction is the way to go if you have no promotional budget.

WAS

#3
Heck, since the Cliff Contest the most trending results for Terragen come not from Terragen, but NWDA on Facebook. That means there is such low traffic to the website that even updates don't cause a buzz...

And most the traffic (and interest on Google)... is from me.... as I don't see D.A. on the active list that often.

I mean, I spend more time on this server than Matt or Oshyan. Lol

Additionally, the majority of the trends not relating to me, NWDA, or rendering software searches... come from a website I won't mention here, illegally distributing copies. At least pretty sure they are considering the nature of the website.

And when you compare TG to almost anyone else, TG flatlines...

Dune

Yes, it's too bad all TG related activity has gone to FB, while this is (for me) the main area to be regarding TG. Maybe host a contest on FB, but you MUST post WIP's here  :P

WAS

Yeah, I was thinking of doing a contest on FB as there seems to be "other" users there, but I also wonder if they're on legit copies due to what I discovered earlier.

It's funny looking at the trends though, You can literally see a flatline around July when I got a new game that I was addicted to over the summer (PUBG). I didn't do much but some like texture stuff which didn't challenge me to lookup anything.

Matt

Everyone knows Facebook is the internet.  ::)  j/k.
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

Dune


WAS

Quote from: Matt on November 06, 2018, 04:27:49 AM
Everyone knows Facebook is the internet.  ::)  j/k.

This is literally how a lot of my friends operate these days. Some of my friends have even gone full-time Facebook for their businesses, ditching hosted solutions.

Oshyan

Don't worry man, it's just that nobody cares about world building in general. ::) Terragen is fine vs. the competitors in the space. Heck I'm surprised we score that well against World Machine, it's definitely got a bigger footprint than we do. Which probably just suggests this is not that great a measure, i.e. the data isn't that accurate.

- Oshyan

WAS

#10
Indeed, though quotes interfere with results and are taken literally. Google has stopped omitting special characters and stuff like "and", "or", "the" etc and now is a phrase search engine. Including all the special stuff like inputing formulas and conversions.

Even analytical results show World Machine and World Creator above everything else, because, movies, games, etc. Every kid is a full on game developer these days cover every aspect it seems like... I do textures. Lol

Even including terms or searches for pageviews regarding Heightmaps dwarfs TG. In contrast, the World Creator FB, people deliberately searching on FB Groups is already at 135 members for an alpha software.

Oshyan

... do you not see the absurdity in your examples? World Creator and World Machine without quotes are way more popular because... those are normal words that people use all the time, and are likely to occur on the same pages together way more often than when people are actually referring to the products. Do you seriously think World Creator is more popular than Substance Designer?? Let alone 3DS Max? (oh except you put "3DS Studio Max", should be 3D Studio Max OR 3DS Max, not both)

If I search World Creator *without quotes* in the regular Google search, literally the 4th result on the 1st page is *not* the World Creator we're talking about. On page 2 the 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th, and 10th results are not World Creator either.

You seem to misunderstand how Google and keyword searches work.

- Oshyan

WAS

#12
Quote from: Oshyan on November 07, 2018, 01:13:11 AM
... do you not see the absurdity in your examples? World Creator and World Machine without quotes are way more popular because... those are normal words that people use all the time, and are likely to occur on the same pages together way more often than when people are actually referring to the products. Do you seriously think World Creator is more popular than Substance Designer?? Let alone 3DS Max? (oh except you put "3DS Studio Max", should be 3D Studio Max OR 3DS Max, not both)

If I search World Creator *without quotes* in the regular Google search, literally the 4th result on the 1st page is *not* the World Creator we're talking about. On page 2 the 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th, and 10th results are not World Creator either.

You seem to misunderstand how Google and keyword searches work.

- Oshyan

These are search phrases, again, not keywords. They aren't taken individually on trends. No one is just arbitrarily searching "World Creator" or "World Machine" except Minecraft users for World Creator, which PC users have literally dropped to historic lows due to the DMCA "attacks" back in the day that basically killed the modding community outside of their new modding API.  Also not sure that map editor has even been updated in years.

When I search "World Creator" the first result, is World Creator, same for World Machine.....

Web Development, SEO optimization, and design (on-top of whole server management) has been my career my entire life, I've only had 2 IRL (one with servers) jobs, and I'm pretty good at it.

Wouldn't be a good system if it's just Keyword hits. It's a trending system based on modern search engines that don't just work of the most popular key word, but the most relevant results to the phrase searched. Which is why you can actually use Google to do research now by full phrases, and sentences. And mind you my phone blocks ads at the hosts level through over 1,000 entries, plus Ad Blocker on the phone and computer which block just about everything there could ever be. These are just normal Google results.

And again, we have to use trending phrases people actually use on Google, otherwise you're willingly creating bias in your data.

Additionally because of relevant phrase matching, when you search "World Creator" you're literally looking for quoted phrases, like we've been doing in this topic such as: "World Creator". You'll notice by doing that you start bringing up articles quoting World Creator, tutorials, toooons of youtube videos, and such rather than links from the site.

Ah I see why so many videos come up when you quote, the author is World Machine on Youtube.

Oshyan

Yeah, I know what you do for a living. Yet your data contradicts your assertions. There's no way World Machine is more popular than Substance Designer.

I also know how to use Google. Quotes are used for exact matching, whether a phrase or a single word, so the term as-written must be included in the results. Without them your search is less precise. Period. The algorithm is not smart enough to guess you mean World Creator the software and not someone going on a religious rant about "the creator" making "the world". Both pages will include the words "world" and "creator". That's why when I search for World Creator without quotes I get 451 million results, and even *with* quotes I get 269,000, and we both know not all of those are for World Creator the software (hint, if you combine "world creator" with numerous other words that identify it as software, such as the word "software" or the word "program" or "windows" or "terrain", then you get about 1/5th of the hits).

Google Trends works the exact same way: https://support.google.com/trends/answer/4359582?hl=en

- Oshyan

WAS

#14
Thing about google search is it doesn't take into account peoples routes to them a lot of people could be just visiting support.allegorithmic.com like I do when I visit the forums here, directly. But I search google often for Terragen related info because of SMF.... Substance Designer has an amazingly comprehensive documentation so far....

Also, if you have an account with KWFinder or visit another alternative, SD only has 1-2k more PV than World Machine a month. These results are based on search engine order ranking that calculates the ratio of PV. Searching trends coincide with the software too with a pattern of "World Machine" "World Machine 2" and "World Machine 3" being the most popular trends... before stuff like "World Machine Alternative" lol

Also, World Machine is a HUUUGE Unreal asset still. Again, gamers, movie producers, down to indie, use World Creation software.

Almost every major game employs procedural generated terrain.

Oh I also forgot to add that "Substance Designer" is more of a Unicorn, or "hard search" than World Machine is. That is, "Substance" and "Designer" both relate to far more together than "World" and "Machine" do together. Substance is an affiliated term with Designers and art, used in critique and appreciation. Substance,  and Design(er) will come up  in far more searches whether by phrase (the software) or keyword relation in pages (or meta).