| VGCW Suggestions and Feedback; Ideas welcome! | |
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| Topic Started: Jul 29 2015, 03:07 PM (57,536 Views) | |
| FoxyStalin | Feb 25 2016, 12:49 AM Post #211 |
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Ladies Love it.
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I can't speak for the veiwership, but I do think the lack of forum activity is due in large part to the Instant Message communities that have sprung up amongst the regular crew. Previously, If I had some off-the cuff thought about Ganondorf in VGCW, I'd post in his thread. Now, I mention it to the BWA chat, or the Fantasy Chat, possibly both. |
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| pyrrhickong | Feb 25 2016, 02:55 AM Post #212 |
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I agree that the entirety and onus of this is that we, basically, need a PR team that can handle that level of things while the main creative team can continue forming its content. We need shows and platforms to make it seem like a true event, speculation and podcasts, people talking and those things being whored out, stupid fan videos like the Mortal Dongbat from BotanicalSage which got us a great spike for a little while there. I do think that there's also a bit of insularity in just our roster size - we just threw out super recognizable DK and Wario for FAR less identifiable Reyn and Sho, for instance, and no matter how much we've grown to love him, no one is gonna know who the fuck Arino is unless they're part of a really, really specific subsect. VGCW HAS always been insular. At Home, hilarious as it is, was made out of in-jokes, and that's permeated into the series proper - it took me forever to understand why Froggy was dead and why Duke was dating Mama and why people suddenly Boo'd Waluigi because he broke Table-san's heart or something? SNST was developmental, and all of the shows other than BWA still kind of cling to their histories, especially EDBW since it can now FINALLY do that with the advent of plot. But when you hear about VGCW on other people's podcasts, like GiantBomb or the Best Friendcast, they're more like "guys Zubaz is gonna wrestle TOAD and SABIN and TRAVIS TOUCHDOWN and that's gonna be SO COOL" or "KEFKA WENT GOD MODE JUST LIKE WE WANTED" rather than whatever story we want to weave. And I love VGCW's stories, they're fun as Hell. But the longer we've gone on, the more we've drifted from Dracula being evil and Dragon Balls and more THE GREAT IMBALANCE OF GABE NEWELL'S EVIL and THE CORRUPTED FORCE OF GLITCH BOMB DONKEY KONG SHARK MAN CONTROLLED BY SHO MINAMIMOTO. It's a LOT more insular, and with that, we've seen a much more devoted, but also much smaller fanbase. I do think we need to band together. I pitched a podcast idea to the creatives board after Infinite Summer and it never got traction, likely because it sucked and this was after I'd had a drink and decided "fuck it imma edit music and talk shit about nonsense", but I do think something of that angle would really help out. Opinions, something people can talk about. Wrap-up shows that could be easily whored out and shared through the youtubes and the twitters, fan promos, hell, promo packages in general are an AMAZING way to spread the word. It takes a lot of work, and a lot more manpower, but we can figure out a way to get it out there. Everyone who's stuck around long enough to be bored of 2K14 probably cares too damn much about this show to let that get to them, and it hardly matters when Waluigi can still win matches, Dr. Wily can get a career turnaround, and the invincible Bowser can tumble into the midcard. We've become comfortable in this bubble, we need an opportunity to branch out of it. Hold events where if you take the most pictures with VGCW alumni at a con you get a prize, I dunno. A lot of cute ways of doing this. We have the unique edge of having very unique fanbases. Also, just as a general note... I'd hire more popular people. I really don't mean to step on toes or anything, but the most recognizable face in VGCW, from an "oh, I know him" perspective is Sonic, followed by Snake, Bowser and Scorpion and then maybe Red, Knuckles, Vegeta, and Waluigi. From there, we have a LOT of obscure games and side-characters as opposed to main characters. Hell, we have fucking RAIJIN on the roster. I love Raijin as a wrestler, but that is like the E-List of video game celebrities. VGCW just needs the more general appeal it had in its earlier days, where Mario showed up to fight Wreck-It Ralph whose movie had just come out and The Hulk was there and Link showed up and everybody knows Link and everyone can sing along to the Pokemon Theme Song, and THEN we had these cool unknowns we grew to love like Arino and Segata. I'm not saying fire the existing, I'm just saying a sudden push to get a cheap pop from someone suddenly popular? A scummy tactic that's very tragically effective. Bazza was MASTERFUL at this when he had the Charles Barkley signing promo, and little things like "Rolfe Wrecks Ralph". Tiny highlights that made people WANT to see this shit. We don't need to play better. You guys are great and we love you. We need to play smarter. Also invite me to a chat I've been so alone for like three years ;_; |
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| DongyKonga | Feb 25 2016, 04:03 AM Post #213 |
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Sounds Like A Bodacious Time
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Another thing that kind of hurt us going into this season was Twitch fucking up and featuring the wrong channel for End Game X1. It linked to Bazza's channel, not VGCW, so we missed that giant influx of people who find us from Twitch front page on the night of End Game. |
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| Soundwave | Feb 25 2016, 04:10 AM Post #214 |
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I honestly have no complaints. Zero. I still love VGCW, I still love 2K14. I can't watch it live anymore but I always watch the VOD. I got into VGCW in Season 10, and before I watched a single live episode I watched all the old episodes and got completely caught up on the storyline. If you're not willing to do that then I guess it probably is hard to get into. EDIT: I guess how outsiders feel about VGCW is how I feel about BWA. Gave it a shot but I don't understand it and its way too memey for me. I'm interested in storylines, not so much what goes on in the ring. Edited by Soundwave, Feb 25 2016, 04:11 AM.
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| MaxOfFewTrades | Feb 25 2016, 04:41 AM Post #215 |
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Pyrrhickong was right about a few things but what I wanna focus on is that "Character Recognizably" thing. I'll be the first to say that I'm a weirdo and know everybody on the roster as well as possible, but something I've learned recently is that I am not the standard. I was talking with a friend of mine who I wanted to get start watching the show (It worked by the way), however when I showed him the roster for the show I had to explain to him who Groose, Armstrong, Ezio, Sho, Ebisumaru, Arino, Haggar, Demoman, Illidan, Flint, Travis Touchdown, Asura, and Raijin all were. So, there was that. Then add onto the fact that most people know even less of the roster, guys like Octodad, Guybrush, Vyse, Goemon, Kefka, Sabin, TJ+E, Kanji, Duke, Ryen, are all ether in one game or have been long forgotten by the general public. More people will likely be able to name a Pokemon then they are Red or Gary. Dracula gets a pass but only because people who don't play Castlevaina will still know who Dracula is as a character. And theres the fact that we have more side characters the main ones on the show, more people will know who Cloud and Mario are before they know who Barret and Waluigi are. Let me get this straight, I LOVE our roster, but from an outsiders perspective about 60% of our roster are niche characters or running jokes among us here on the forum. I understand why they aren't here anymore, but when people come to this show expecting to see people like Mario, Luigi, Link, Cloud, DK, Ryu, Little Mac, and the like and never see them but instead see a bunch of characters they've never heard of before, I could see why they would stop watching and forget they ever saw it to begin with. But its not like you can just fire 30 members of the roster, that would be insane. I honestly don't know how you could fix this issue without MASSIVELY messing with what the show is right now. Also the "In-jokes" stuff like Duke and Mama, Terra's monster truck, things like that are really freaking confusing and it took even me a while to figure out where this stuff was coming from, and for most people, keeping up with three separate shows is just too much for people. Edited by MaxOfFewTrades, Feb 25 2016, 04:43 AM.
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| Cran Rightia | Feb 25 2016, 05:26 AM Post #216 |
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Director of Kitties
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The character set that we wound up with has a lot to do with the general gravitation of wrestling and wrestling fans more than anything, though. People like Link, Mario, and the like are so notable and prolific in gaming, but at their core, they are small silent protagonists who don't carry any of the general qualities that are associated with American style professional wrestling. The general solution is bringing in people from the same franchise to absorb the notability who still have the general qualities of a wrestler. That's why a big, hulking pottymouth like Barret succeeded in the medium where Cloud Strife would have had a harder time, and why a relatively unknown guy like Raijin gets by on his sheer excitement to be employed where no one has really clamored for Squall. This isn't a strict rule in any sense, of course. Any character has a chance if the writing, the circumstances, and the crowd are in a good mood that day. But it's one of the weird reasons that the roster has become a mishmash of what I would call diverse roles being employed, rather than just franchises - an act 2 villain, Sho Minamimoto; a secondary playable character who is a tank, Reyn; a Japanese as fuck joke gone memetic, Tingle. The roster's lack of predictability on that front is one of the first things that drew me in as a fan, but that's my taste. |
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| AaronTheBaron | Feb 25 2016, 10:04 AM Post #217 |
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Yo, it's me. It's me. It's A.T.B.
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Actually, a podcast or wrap-up show idea, as long as it isn't as long as the actual show it's covering, might not be too bad an idea. I mean, for WWE there are tons of shows that cover results and opinions of the show in the aftermath of the show, why not try that out with VGCW? It'd be a way for people to get quick opinions/results out to people who may have missed it and who don't have time to watch the show on YouTube after the fact. Plus with Podcasts, people can listen to it in the car and such, when they can't watch. |
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| pyrrhickong | Feb 25 2016, 11:11 AM Post #218 |
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I agree entirely, but there comes a time where novelty does have to supercede practicality for something like this to work. I'm THRILLED we have fan-favorite Kanji over boring Yu Narukami, and Tryhard Toad over Mario, and Groose over Link. But there's a different kind of punch when you go to share it with your friends and go "dude come on MEGA MAN and HIS BROTHER are wrestling THE GAME GRUMPS" as opposed to "dude THAT DANTE THAT EVERYONE HATES is wrestling THIS GUY FROM 90'S SEGA SATURN COMMERCIALS and they BOTH HAVE BOOBS!!!!" We can raise stars in the VGCW community from nothing - Arino is the poster child of going from "literally who" to "I LOVE THIS MAN" - but the main strength does come from novelty. I know I was lured here when I saw "Champion - Dr. Eggman" on a thread title, because holy shit seeing the Eggman wrestle? And he's GOOD?! Sign me up for some of that. That, I feel, is something we can always ride on. These are just ideas I thought of while failing to go to sleep last night, but capitalizing on wrestlers who are popular with the general gaming culture to get promos out to advertise the show could be great. Look for channels that are really big on Pokemon and give 'em a Shadowmoon Ball Valley exhibition match with "Red and his Gliscor", pump it up. Whore out Sans and Papyrus while they're still hot, give Shantae promos as Half-Genie Hero comes out. These would be outside of the regular show, but Youtube videos are SUPER easy to share and get attention from. We gotta start playing the long con if we're to get new blood - attract 'em the same way we did at first, the hook of THOSE GUYS YOU LIKE with EERILY ACCURATE CAWS doing THE BEST WRES. Off the top of my head, Gary, Zubaz, Bowser, Knuckles, Waluigi, Tom Nook, Papyrus, Grunty, and R. Mika could be great at this. Also, with the roster as big as it is... I think we need to start injuring people, or giving them breaks to TEMPORARILY (and let me emphasize TEMPORARILY) take them off the main roster. Guys who either have shot momentum or just haven't been able to capitalize. I can think of two great examples of it working: The Dragons and Little Mac. Scorpion COULD have had this, but came back to fight Ganondorf pretty quickly. I'm not talking a half-season, I'm talking a good six to nine months of them not showing up or being mentioned in any capacity, and then coming back into action. Gives us a great pop and then we can go like "RETURN OF THE KING" as Duke comes back after forever and people will go "what who is this what is this that everyone is whoring out" and then BAM Duke Nukem sick-ass promo link. Helps out in-universe and from an advertising standpoint. |
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| ancara22 | Feb 25 2016, 12:02 PM Post #219 |
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I played The Game and got stuck with Dunn for a month.
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I think a lot of what has been said likely summarizes the current situation well. Although to add to it, I think there's something that VGCW has lost a bit the more we keep going into these storylines and plot threads and so forth: That element both of true variety and randomness that drew tons of people in. It's no secret at all that VGCW used to be the hot new thing that people from places like /v/, SA and so forth loved to go to. And that's due to I think three things: The "as long as somewhat vidya, they're allowed in" huge variety of wrasslers (Obama, Hitler, the Grumps, Hulk, Doom, I could go on for days here) that allowed for everyone to have muh favorites to root for, the pure chaos of "anything could truly happen here!" that rumble, ladder and title matches brought to the table, and "let's put these characters together in different match types and see what happens for fun/laffs!" that led to some of the more memorable moments of the early season. I think as we kept going deeper and deeper into focusing on trying to run it as an actual WWE-like "wrestling" show, we all forgot that, for a lot of people, they came because "Oh man, Obama is fighting Hitler in a wrasslan ring? The Grumps are fighting these guys? There's Sanic, and he's jobbing? Gabe Newell is destroying everything? I gotta check this out!", and also because....well, let's be honest here, WWE13 provided a TON of hilariously dumb/glitch-filled moments we still remember today. I think the more that a lot of us focused on making things go towards all these storylines, plots and so forth, and the more people kept focusing on every bit of the actual game's mechanics, the more serious and convoluted and so forth it got (Season 8 got hilarious stupid with that at that point), and the less "ANYTHING CAN HABBEN IN THE DUBYA DUBYA EEEEEE" things became. And whilst it's not bad at all per-say, I think for quite a lot of people who once watched it back when guys like Edgyroth, Wesker, Agent 47 and their like were around, it could feel a bit foreign to them and strange to see it all end up like that. Honestly, I'm not saying to go full "NUKE EVERYTHING START OVER" here with the show. But I think a few things could perhaps help to get that old feeling VGCW had back that got people to first tune in for The Night to begin with. Perhaps some more variety in match types for each show could help spice things up (lord knows it's been a long time since we had a proper I Quit, Inferno or so forth match that wasn't a PPV-only thing). Perhaps finally having a new Rumble to show off the roster and allow fate to decide what happens next for excitement. Perhaps even do like what happened with DK and Scorpion, or Jensen and Gaben, or other such things: Put seemingly different wrasslers together in teams or other stuff, and see what happens. One other thing of note: I think a LOT of the reason that 2K14 seems somewhat stale by now is a massive elephant in the room of all this: The issue of submission moves. I'm unsure when they were exactly taken off of everyone, but it feels like it's one of those things that used to cause tons of excitement back when they were allowed. Hell, Gaben was basically half known for being the man who you don't want to have hug you, and for good reason. Perhaps it's due to lolgamemechanics, or some other reason, but I feel like it's something that perhaps now-a-days should be tested again, perhaps with tweaked settings to help keep #2kwality from rearing its ugly head to ruin things to see if they can work properly enough to help breath in new air to matches. That's just how I view a lot of this, and I dunno how everyone else will view such/see it, but I wanted to at least finally say my $0.02 on the matter. I do love how the show is going so far indeed, but I did want to at least say some concerns above on where I think a bit of work may need to be done to help get butts in seats again, as a man once said one wants to do to ensure large crowds for muh entertainment. |
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| GirthIgnorer | Feb 25 2016, 12:28 PM Post #220 |
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Lets buy a TNA commercial. What's it cost, five bucks? We've gotta be at least making FatFarmersMeet money. |
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| Potatosaurusrex | Feb 25 2016, 12:53 PM Post #221 |
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In some regards, I like the community enough as is. Not saying that I wouldn't love it to be bigger, but I also wouldn't want us to do something crazy, like a publicity stunt or something to attract a ton of viewers that ultimately ends up harming the overall quality of both the roster and the show, with those viewers only invested in a single portion of the show who will ultimately stop watching as they realize we've got an entire show to book around. It's important to really make sure that we're promoting more than one person at a time, because we've got 50 people to balance out on a roster, not everyone is going to be showing up frequently for various reasons. That's just how a wrestling promotion works. Some wrestlers are in plot programs, some get in a title race, but ultimately you'll have some people bumbling around in the midcard or being bounced around in a line of infinite singles matches or they'll have a fatal fourway, then a triple threat, then a singles, then a triple threat, and then a fatal fourway, all of which mean nothing. You're going to have people that are relevant, and you're going to have people who aren't, and if we do any sort of promotion we have to keep that in mind. This being in response to everything that's been said in the thread thus far about promoting the show. |
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| Captain Rodriguez | Feb 25 2016, 01:58 PM Post #222 |
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The early appeal of VGCW came heavily from the casualness and sheer randomness of the streams. Generally new viewers would enter during rumble matches, which not only showcased a large percentage of the characters but were generally hype and easy to understand. Nowadays, while the in-depth storylines are fun and a natural evolution of the medium, it can be off-putting to a new viewer. I mean, could you imagine somebody who has never seen a VGCW show in his or her life tuning into the middle of the Shadow Lady plot from Breakdown 6? VGCW and its affiliates have been consistently pumping out shows for three years, and between the amount of lore and in-jokes I think anyone trying to get into the shows and the community would find it very hard to fit in. Unfortunately, I think a consequence of wrestling as a medium is how difficult it can be to get into unless you've been there since the start. When you first start watching, say, WWE, or even if you just take a break for a few years, there's a ton of people, storylines, events, and other information that you have no choice but to catch up on. Ultimately, I feel that drastic measures like having a rumble every night or rebooting VGCW as a whole would only hurt the overall product and would honestly come off as desperate attempts to regain relevancy. |
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| AaronTheBaron | Feb 25 2016, 02:47 PM Post #223 |
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Yo, it's me. It's me. It's A.T.B.
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But even with WWE, you can take a break and catch up through numerous recaps, podcasts, etc. That could help you get back into it, maybe not with full understanding but with basic understanding of what's happened. I think that having a recap/post-show for VGCW could be a good idea, just something that someone could miss a show or two, but still stay/get caught up on the storylines. Something that's at most an hour to hour and a half long, that can be played when they can't watch. A post-show could break down the matches/plot involved and provide opinions on it, and a fuller recap could come before/after major shows and seasons that recaps the major happenings that led up to the event or that happened in the season. Either that or we go full DC and do a new universe reboot every few seasons, but that's a terrible idea. |
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| pyrrhickong | Feb 25 2016, 02:51 PM Post #224 |
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I don't mean to erase the current trends, and I'm sorry if I came off that way. I'm just saying, we have an advantage over traditional wrestling because we don't need to let people know who John Cena is, we need to just get them out to see Mario. I'm saying we throw Undertale fans the bone bros they need, hit up the Zaibatsu since we thank them every episode and ask if the team could help with/contribute to their Rustlemania with exposure being our main goal there (or just in general - ahead of time planning is a great thing to have and leads to more opportunities. In my time as an actor/sound editor, getting yourself out there and keeping yourself there REALLY helps gain a foothold and opens opportunities the more you go for it), and just use the tools we have with built-in fanbases to attract those fanbases who WANT to see more of those people. We have tools to use outside of the spectrum of the VGCW plot, and to be honest, it's easy to follow belt chases. Even if we just have a bunch of people to tune in to see the Zubaz fight, look at how many of those people have stayed and become great parts of our community. I don't want to change the show, I want to add to it. Get that auxillary material out there, get some popular promos because if the people want Hogan we should probably give 'em Hogan to SOME extent to attract. We have an incredibly quality product that we love, and I DO believe that people will stick around and watch what we all love once they breach through that entry barrier. We just need to make that easier, more inviting, and more than just once or twice a week for an explosion of interest. Sorry to repeatedly spam this segment, I keep dwelling on it today. I'll try to shut up from here on. |
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| GirthIgnorer | Feb 25 2016, 04:37 PM Post #225 |
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I don't think a podcast or recap show is a good answer to getting new viewers, though it'd be fun for those of us who already take it seriously. I do agree with the point about the community being way insular, though. |
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