Go commercial started

[billywoods]

The only cost-point I really see is that you need to rent cameras for some time. That's it.

I think we're rather spoilt by how well-made and professional everything we see on TV is. Your cameras need to be good, and so does your editing software. $8000 probably covers their basic costs and nothing more. I'm quite glad that they're essentially doing the work for free.

(On the other hand, I was very annoyed when The Surrounding Game went from asking for $15,000 to asking for $55,000. I'm very happy that they're taking their free time to make something awesome - it does look like progress is still underway even though they only(!) received $35,000 - but still, I'd very happily have given up my free time to go jet-setting around Asia on other people's money too.)

[mohsart]

Ok, good to hear that the project is alive.
Weird though that they don't update the webpage

/Mats

[swalther]

Hi all,

sorry for not updating for some time. The most important things:

The project is alive.
We won't update our budget.

Thanks to moyoaji, who totally summarized information according budget. Actually, we will publish some kind of report on how we used the budget in the end, but moyoaji quite got it. Two other important items are equipment (light and everything) and locations (not everything is for free).

Another anouncement: European Go Congress is about to start this weekend. We will publish the first spot in time. The website will be updated until then, too.

Regards,
Sven of playmorego.com

[swalther]

Hi all,

we proudly announce the release of the first (main) spot.

Regards,
Sven

[Splatted]

Still no replies? This turned out much better than I expected and I'm looking forward to seeing the others.

[amnal]

Really nicely made, I like it.

Is it intended for any particular distribution? It seems quite long for a normal advert - not necessarily a bad thing or I could even be wrong, just felt that way.

[matthiasa]

Well done, looks awesome!

[p2501]

Thats pretty awesome!

[Bonobo]

Very cool. Makes me want to see the others. ALL of them. NOW.

Thank you

[Mage]

Very nice !

[anoek]

Very nice production quality indeed Very promising


The critique side:

I might note that if you didn't already know what the game was, I'm not sure you could recognize it after the commercial, which is a little unfortunate. There were references that existing go players would pick up on, the white stone the guy was holding, the traditional bowls, the profile of the go board on the table, but unless you knew what you were looking for I don't think you'd even take note of them. There were no shots of the game itself anywhere.

That, combined with the summation of the voice which when listened to literally says: "This is not a game ... it's blah blah blah.... you up for it? go". I'm no marketer by any means, so I might be full of crap here, but I don't know that this instills a solid message in the viewers brain that helps take them to the thought of "Hey that looks like an interesting game, I'm going to go check it out!"

tl;dr - Message is too subtle

Just my two cents


On a different topic, when these are done, what's the release strategy, and how much control over where they get placed do you want? If go servers out there want to use these commercials as a teaser/intro to the game, say on some landing page, can they do that?


- anoek

[billywoods]

I might note that if you didn't already know what the game was, I'm not sure you could recognize it after the commercial

I got that impression too. I guess the adverts are meant to be sequential. At first I thought just shouting go at the end without explaining was a bit odd, but it's clearly intentional, and after thinking about it, I guess it's intended to stick in people's minds and get them talking (a kind of "what the hell was that advert that told us to 'go' all about?" tactic), before being revealed in its entirety. (The bowls and stones are definitely a not-very-subtle hint to a go player, but I doubt a non-go-player would even notice they were there.)

[moyoaji]

Overall, I liked the teaser. It seemed very engaging and interesting. It generates a lot more questions than it answers (as a teaser generally does) and so I'm going to wait until the other spots before giving a critique of this campaign.

As for just this teaser -
What I liked best: The shots of peoples faces across the board. It felt very engaging.
What I liked least: The over-intensity of the announcer during some of the statements, i.e. "It's a feeling."

[swalther]

Hi all,

as the spots are finished, I won't comment on the critical feedback - but I am definitely interested in it!

For the spreading: pick your favorite one and spread wherever your want. The spots are released under this [1] license, so please share. If you are in doubt (because you run a commercial site), just ask us.

Regards,
Sven of Play More Go

[1] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

[swalther]

Hi all,

the next one is out.

Enjoy!