Screencasting
As most have noticed, Iron Realms has begun to use new formats to enhance your experience with our games. For example, we are using UStream.tv to let you meet and chat live with our producers, Facebook and Twitter to communicate with players, and we have improved our newsletter to deliver concise information. Not to mention we also started this wicked cool blog!
Our next step is to begin delivering tutorials for the game in the form of screencasts. Our intent is to create simple videos that allow players to quickly learn how to do things in the game. Additionally, we may use them when rolling out new systems, so players can learn how it will work beforehand. Personally, I have found it easier to watch a 2 minute screencast on how to do something, then to slog through help files or learn by trial and error.
We have created a few and would like feedback as we move forward. These mainly deal with how to do different things in clients.
Here is a sample.
Here is a list of a few more.
- How to Create an In-Game Alias
- Creating an Alias in the IRE Nexus Client
- Creating an Alias in the CMUD Client
- Creating an Alias in the Mudlet Client
- Creating a Trigger in the IRE Nexus Client
- Creating a Keybinding in the IRE Nexus Client
- Creating a Trigger in the IRE Flash Client
- Creating a Basic Trigger in the Mudlet Client
Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel so you can be informed as we continue forward. http://www.youtube.com/user/IronRealms
Please post your feedback in the comment section below on what you think, what we can do to improve, and what topics we should cover in screencasts.
March 4th, 2010 at 4:47 am
Excellent! I should probably do some of my own video tutorials on the same topics for MUSHclient. It never occured to me, but I do have a microphone…
Also, WOOT for Google Chrome!
March 4th, 2010 at 4:51 am
I have actually contacted the MUSHClient guys, so you will start seeing some stuff using them as well as some better support with their client.
And I love Chrome.
March 5th, 2010 at 10:02 pm
This is great! It will be very helpful for newbies. I just switched to mudlet so I’ll be looking forward to more videos to see what I can really do with it!
March 5th, 2010 at 10:24 pm
Good to hear. We are trying to add a few new ones every week.
March 9th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
I love the modern IRE and how you experiment with new channels to reach your audience. Hopefully, this will net more players for our favorite games!
That said, I would look over the Twitter strategy if I were you. It’s not a network solely for broadcasting. Take some time to listen and reply to your followers.
I recommend checking CoTweet out if you need a tool to help with that.
March 9th, 2010 at 3:14 pm
Ha, that is funny. I had just watched a marketing screencast about twitter saying the exact same thing yesterday. I will certainly be needing to do that.
March 9th, 2010 at 7:04 pm
There goes my one negative criticism.
Rock on!
March 17th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
This concept is great, as are the interviews. However, I really need to emphasize that there is a surprising number of gamers who pick MUDs because of limited resources, disabilities, or other things which hinder today’s “normal” gaming experience.
The screenshots would benefit greatly from subtitles and, if possible, transcripts/summaries of the webcasts would be really appreciated. In Aetolia, for example, there’s been liaison discussion, with the majority of the admin commentary made based on the assumption that players were able to view the webcast. I, personally, am hindered by broken sound on my computer (and my work bans most anything non-text), another person had the streaming part blocked by his country’s firewall, and there is ALWAYS the issue of the hearing impaired – if we’re going to be “behind the curve” by not watching these, please help us catch up by providing transcriptions or summaries!
March 18th, 2010 at 3:00 am
Yeah, I have considered working on captions for the screencasts. Of course, that is a very, very time consuming process at this point. I will explore it for the next one however.
March 28th, 2010 at 1:21 am
I just wanted to come back and say that I really do appreciate the work that is going in to help novices learn coding, especially as there is apparent resistance to it from the admin levels.
Today, during a discussion about attack lines, and how some of them are too hard for people on Nexus or with basic clients to even capture patterns for, one of the game’s coders gave this gem:
(Liaisons): *** says, “Actually we hate the idea of making it easier to make AIs, the only reason
we’ve moved that way at all is because we’re sick of you guys bitching and moaning all the time.”
It is good to know that (I hope) this viewpoint doesn’t extend all the way to the top – nowadays it is vital for players to have systems, and I am glad that at least part of IRE is working to help new players with this, so combat returns more to actual skill and tactics, instead of who is better at coding.
March 28th, 2010 at 1:40 am
Oi! We are not against people using scripting to do things. Heck I was huge into it when I was a player. In fact, I spent many fun hours doing just that. It was just as much of the game to me as anything else.