Well technically speaking, we aren't [u]official[u]. If we were official, we'd be getting nifty things like money, information, etc from NCNC. We don't. What you see weekly (and a special forum section where we can make sure the layout works with the forums) is pretty much the limit of what we [u]can[u] get in terms of support.
In other words, no url unless we pay for it. The "scoop tracker" as you put it is put together by one of us (and most of us have had so little time that the index is on the back-burner).
Actually there were two fansite kits, one from the CoH page, and one from the CoV page. I know, I used both above. Still, I agree that it would be an excellent time to update, add, and unify both fansite kits.
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Okay, I would not normally submit (hence this being my first post ever) 
, but I figured I'd give this a try for you guys. Here was an ad I came up with for The City Scoop. I would never submit this to the devs without your rubber stamp. If you want to use it, you have permission to do so. It is the 256 x 256 size.
http://i318.photobucket.com/albums/m...ityScoopAd.jpg
Echonis, that's pretty cool.
"If I fail, they write me off as another statistic. If I succeed, they pay me a million bucks to fly out to Hollywood and fart." --- George A. Romero
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Wow, that's beautiful, Echonis. Nice first post 
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I hate to say this, but in cases like this I would think "screw immersion". I mean the point of the ads is to increase awareness of a product and/or service. But awareness of said product and/or service does nothing if you do not know where to get it from. And in this case, you need to break in-game immersion to tell them. I know what you guys are getting at and understand, but there are times that you just have no other option and this is one of them.
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Of course there is another option. Not breaking immersion.
There are plenty of ads in the world that "tease" - that give limited information about a product in order to entice the viewer to learn what it's about for themselves. Suggesting (in-game) that the City Scoop is a completely in-game news service would still increase buzz about the real life, out-of-game Scoop.
Think about Positron for a second. Matt Miller is not a computer-generated guy in an armored suit ... but he is still Positron. Yet, in-game, Positron isn't a game designer. Nevertheless, when my heroes are in Steel Canyon looking at the guy who dispenses his Task Force, sometimes I think of the lead designer. And when the lead designer posts here on the board, I see his name and think of the radiation guy in Steel Canyon. Yet no one could say that the guy in Steel Canyon somehow breaks immersion. Why can't in-game ads be built on the same principle?
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thing is Positron the NPC isn't supposed to be something that leads you to Positron the Dev and vice versa. Sure you may draw a correlation between the 2 entites, but that's only because you know the real life Matt Miller uses the name Positron for his handle on the message boards. He uses the name because he created the character and he likes it so much that that's the name he wanted to use. That and it helps reinforce the idea to the posters at the boards that he works for the company and on the game. The latter reason is the reason that a lot of the devs use character names as well.
But if you use the name to someone who does NOT frequent the boards often (or at all) if you say to them "Back Alley Brawler changed the animation of Energy Transfer in a ptch curreently on Test" or "Positron said that City Vault is nearing completion, but still isn't ready yet." you'll get a "Huh?" or "What the heck are you talking about?" because they only know of them as NPCs. Thus you will have to stop and explain to them that there's a developer that uses that NPCs name on the message board for when they post. So while the name did the job for you because you frequent the boards, but all it does is create confusion for those that don't unless someone else explains it for them. Which for advertising is generally a BAD thing.
Now, like I said, I can understand your need for immersion. There are many that do not want to be reminded that they are playing a game while playing a game. And the majority of in-game ads will be able to do that as they will be for products or services (like shoes, clothes, food, or drink) that they know they have to get at another website or at some store or restaurant. And you can easily justify that the game world has similar services. But the point of the city scoop ads is that they want to bring attention that they exist and where to read it. And presenting themselves as an in-game newspaper will not serve the purpose that they are paying their own hard-earned money to pay for the ad.
If they don't even mention the fact that they are on a message board or forums all it will cause is for the people that do not know about teh City Scoop is wither think that it's just another generic billboard or they would have to ask someone else and that person know what the heck it is. And that's assuming they WILL ask someone else.
So to sum up:
<ul type="square">[*]The City Scoop is buying this ad with their own money to increase awareness of the "newspaper" to people who doesn't know it exists.
[*]To do so, they have to mention that you have to go on the internet (either the message boards or the Issue Tracker page) to read it. If they do that it would be nothing but a "nudge, nudge, wink, wink, Say no more" to the people that already know of it.
[*] Thus to do what they want to accomplish (which, again, is increase awareness), they have to "break" immersion slightly or the money they have to pay for the ad basically goes to waste.[/list]
You make a strong case! Don't have time to rebut in depth, so how about if I call for this compromise?
A URL isn't terribly immersion-breaking. After all, you'd expect some kind of contact info on a "real" ad. That I would have no problem with. That would direct the consumer to the product handily, I'd think.
But having text saying stuff about "go to the forums for this video game you're playing right now!" is out.
Deal?
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Version 5:
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g1...illboard_5.png
Opinions? Did anyone want to do do an Billboard for the Scoop?
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Find someone to do a quick demo, and see if they can capture a model of Statesman and Recluse doing /em newspaper to put on this.
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http://i318.photobucket.com/albums/m...ityScoopAd.jpg
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Okay, this one wins for me. I love it. It says what it needs to for both sides without breaking immersion. The only better thing for immersion would be blue news, red news. But I am cool with it as it is.
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Okay, I would not normally submit (hence this being my first post ever) , but I figured I'd give this a try for you guys. Here was an ad I came up with for The City Scoop. I would never submit this to the devs without your rubber stamp. If you want to use it, you have permission to do so. It is the 256 x 256 size.
http://i318.photobucket.com/albums/m...ityScoopAd.jpg
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This
That looks awesome Echonis. Great job.
-Stygian
I agree. I think I had mentioned in my first post about including the URL. It's not immersion breaking since the internet should be commonplace with Paragon. Now, if the City Scoop had its own URL instead of being part of the forums (www.cityscoop.com instead of boards.cityofheroes.com/...) then it would much more immersive while still getting the message out.
"If I fail, they write me off as another statistic. If I succeed, they pay me a million bucks to fly out to Hollywood and fart." --- George A. Romero
"If I had any dignity, that would have been humiliating" --- Adam Savage
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My name is Areyu. I approve this advert.
Very nice! Feel free to submit it.
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You make a strong case! Don't have time to rebut in depth, so how about if I call for this compromise?
A URL isn't terribly immersion-breaking. After all, you'd expect some kind of contact info on a "real" ad. That I would have no problem with. That would direct the consumer to the product handily, I'd think.
But having text saying stuff about "go to the forums for this video game you're playing right now!" is out.
Deal?
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No deal. We don't get ANY cash for this, and I don't expect anyone to pay for a domain name. There comes a point where you have to lay down the Roleplay.
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[ QUOTE ][*]The City Scoop is buying this ad with their own money to increase awareness of the "newspaper" to people who doesn't know it exists.
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All fine points, but I want to mention that we are not paying for the ads, but they do have to be approved just like any other fan submission.
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I agree. I think I had mentioned in my first post about including the URL. It's not immersion breaking since the internet should be commonplace with Paragon. Now, if the City Scoop had its own URL instead of being part of the forums (www.cityscoop.com instead of boards.cityofheroes.com/...) then it would much more immersive while still getting the message out.
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We don't. We exist solely on these forums. Sorry if that breaks immersion for people but the fact remains that we are here, and ONLY here.
I think it is a bit prejudicial (and more than a bit hypocritical) that people want to reject the ads just because they exist in a place that is tied to the game when they'd accept anyone else ads (and urls) in game.
Edit:
And the shortest actual forum url I can do is:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/postlist.php?Board=info
Which drops into the announcement section.
The goal is to drive people to the forums. Without being able to mention the forums the purpose for these ads is LOST. So for those that are put off about the fact that the scoop is on the forums, and that the ads mention the forums, all I can say is that everyone can't always be satisfied.
Seeing that the forums and the Scoop are tied together, I am not going to completely drop all references to the forums.
This wasn't directed at Kheprera, but all those saying that it will break immersion.
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Version 5:
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g1...illboard_5.png
Opinions? Did anyone want to do do an Billboard for the Scoop?
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Find someone to do a quick demo, and see if they can capture a model of Statesman and Recluse doing /em newspaper to put on this.
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I'm pretty confident I can do a demoedit of that without help
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Edit:
And the shortest actual forum url I can do is:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/postlist.php?Board=info
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http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...umber=11226135
Will do the trick.
Edit: but only for the current edition. So just forget I even spoke 
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I can't do an on-going ad, besides I wouldn't know the 2-3 weeks ahead of time which post number to link to.
More attempts:
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g1...illboard_7.png
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g1...illboard_9.png
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g1...llboard_10.png
(Eight doesn't work very well.)
Oh, for those interested, here is what #4 and #6 looks like in-game on my pitiful video card (then again blowing up a 512x256 image to the in-game billboard size is bound to pixelate the images):
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g1...1-20-07-42.jpg
And a close up of #6:
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g1...1-20-08-06.jpg
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Immersion, shimmersion. Any ad that a company would buy to show in the game is going to be a real-world ad, not anything for an in-game only product. That's a no-go'er. Anyone *that* into burying their mind in the game will have the ads turned off, anyway, since none of the products are in-game.
For those with some imagination, directing people to "the forums" does not necessarily mean a mental exit into reality - just imagine that, in game, there may be an internet, too!! With super-powered my-space pages! <gasp> 
Just go with something that looks good and clean, without too many words (people's attention spans being what they are). I like the #6 one, and the one Echonis did is cool, too.
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4 is way to wordy - you need the important informataion to stand out - 6 works fine for that. If you want to keep everything on 4, you have to make what it is and where to find it jump out more - bold, larger font - though like DarkEther says, attention spans aren't great, probably less when you're out street sweeping or whatever.
The url idea ia fine except for that attention span thing - how many people are going to remember that url? stop to jot it down? Since you can say "the forums", which entails people coming to the main index and looing around for it, can you simply use the boards.cityofheroes.com url, or is that not allowed?
Yeah, 4 is too wordy. I used Leandro's Splasher to test the ads out in game.
Yes, I should be able to use boards.cityofheroes.com, but I thought that just saying "the forums" or "the community forums" would be easier to remember.
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Snow,
Have you asked our local NC reps if it would be possible for them to have a redirect setup? So that something like "www.cityofheroes.com/cityscoop" is just a redirect to the link above?
I know getting an actual domain name is a bit prohibitive for a non-profit publication, but even a redirect like that would be better.....
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To my knowledge, the local NC reps cannot do any more for us than they are currently doing. They have to get approval to even include us in the updater. They are allowed to post the Scoop to the announcements section (their responsibility), but that seems to be the limits of what Lighthouse and Ex can do for us.
Edit:
They can't even assure us that any ad we do submit will be approved.
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<QR>
In this case, the heck w/Immersion. This would be considered a player-related thing, shesh....
As far as to what's been presented...
I like #3, #6 or #10 personally. These seem reasonable clean to readable. I also didn't really care for Echonis' ad attempt. It just seems too busy.
Thank you for the time...
@Travlr (Main) / @Tymers Realm (Test) 
I would suggest instead of "everything in game and on the forums" to put "everything in Paragon and on the forums"
Doesn't break immersion and still clearly advertises.