Merchandising: Ideas to help Graal
 

Oh, good then. (Of course, it's the Hubworld thread that has all the meaty technical bits...a true Global Server would require a handful of tools that, to the best of my knowledge, don't Yet exist)

Regarding "Shirt=Dum!": While your opinion is valid and has been noted, it is not relevant. You won't wear a shirt with a Graalian on it, Moonie will. Thus, there Is a market for the shirt, and it isn't you. Thus, your opinions on what the shirt you won't wear looks like, etc. is a scoch counterproductive...it's like an amish person having an opinion on the privatization of the internet, if you're not gonna use it you really oughtn't vote on it.

So your saying its for the parents and grandpas of the the 13yearold players? Im sure most people who play wouldnt be caught dead in one.

Appealing to a small market instead of the general populus is not a way to make money.

I want a coffee cup too....I drink lots of coffee! ;)

People make their own t-shirts all the time.
They need to start acting like a business if they want to make money, that's all I have to say.

I think the problem with the Graal store merchandise is that it's too amateur looking. The images are far too complex for a Graal t-shirt. You need something simple like this:

http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/1627/snap1av0.jpg

It's really crappy gfx and badly put together but the general idea is there....

Instead of just slapping some gigantic ugly character or a screenshot or something on the shirt... just make it a little logo with simple colors and some text. (I don't have Graal's font so deal with it) I just think it's the whole idea of having a shirt with a cartoon character on it that turns most people off.

This is coming from a guy who has a domokun shirt and a shirt of shigeru miyamoto's face. You can still use characters they just can't look like cartoons. :p

edit: The only way you'll get me to wear a shirt with a cartoon character is if the artwork is simply amazing. I have a Trigun shirt but the art is so badass that it's okay that it's a cartoon drawing. It looks like a piece of art and not just some colored doodle.

This is a double post but this is something totally different from what I just mentioned. Different idea:

Contests. Again I think contests would be so great for Graal. There is so much potential there. If you REALLY want to get some great t-shirts and stuff for Graal, why not hold a contest giving anyone with a gold account a month to make a t-shirt design (front and back) and then submit it to the contest. Then after the month is up, all the submissions would be posted on the site and people could vote on which ones they like best. The top 2-3 designs get made into shirts... the winners get free time added on their account.

Not only did you just get someone else to make your new shirts, but you made sure that the community liked the design, and all it would cost you is some time added to a couple of accounts... Everybody wins.

You'd just need to make sure the voting system was set up for 1 vote per image per gold account.

It encourages people to upgrade so that they can participate in the contest or vote for the finalists. Of course, these types of contests would have to be held often... not just one time. (not the same contest, but contests in general)

I agree with this by what people have said. I don't think I have talked to a teenager yet on this game that would wear those tee-shirts. The images on them now do not even look like Graal, except the screenshot of classic (which is why I wanted that particular item). The images put on the tee-shirts and other merchandise should be what attracts teenagers, and from different playerworlds, such as Zone. The only way to know this would be from input from the players. What kind of images would you like to see on Graal merchandise? What would make you think about buying merchandise? What would attract you to the merchandise? What kind of merchandise would you like to see? I am 41 years old, there is no way I could even begin to tell you what would attract a teenager to buy merchandise from Graal.

Me? I would buy a bumpersticker, a keyring perhaps, a coffee mug (which they currently have), a tee-shirt with my character and nick on it, perhaps a license plate with my character and nick on it, things like this I would buy, but I seriously doubt that a teenager would be interested in any of this.

I seriously doubt many people would

Well, what WOULD interest Many People?

How is a World of Warcraft shirt better than a Graal shirt? Just because it's in the news?

Maybe the problem is we're trying to compete with the big boys - we're an indie company, and should behave like it. Why not come out with a retro shirt, one that looks like someone found it at a garage sale, one that looks like it was printed in the 80s (or reprinted at Hot Topic)? Think the "Choose your weapons" shirt with the (either Castlevania or Zelda) weapons images...or the "Blue wizard needs food badly" shirts, something like that...
*shrugs* It's an idea.
Get a newbie running away from a baddy, yelling "Where I get ying-yang in a box?!"

Hmm...Well, for one, you can use a Smart Resize/Vector program to enlarge the Noob Head without pixelating it, but I'm not sure I'm getting which edge of the razor you're on - should we get a really good artist to come up with a really good artistic rendering, as per your trigun shirt, or should we stick to your guns and go pixelgraphic?

Make them yourself ^^
The main problem with that, is that teenagers (your largest demograph) would not use them so much.

So - a TShirt designed to be used by teenagers (your largest demographic) would not be used so much by teenagers? Crazy talk! Why not? Are you claiming it's impossible to market Graal T-Shirts to teenagers?
Mainstream, I'll grant - we're never getting the jocks, the rockers, etc. But there's ALWAYS that one indy kid at school, the one who likes the german band nobody else has ever heard of, the one who can tell you why the Betamax was better than VHS, the one who still owns a DIVX player he found for just $3 at a garage sale, the one who's trying to track down an authentic Volkswagon Schwimvagon just so he can see it - you're saying Graal has less indie cred than, say, those puppets on NPR that said "Borrowin' without askin' is stealin'!"

I doubt it would be cost effective to produce them before you sell them, since demand for them isn't high.
Maybe if you only had them made after the purchase was made, although this would make it take about a day longer to process.
Which isn't that long, but people connect longer processing times for shipment with a lower quality business, and they may not trust it in the future.

Merchandising: How to Save LifetimeClassic
 

(There have been objections to me calling all these things How To Save Graal, as though it's a foregone conclusion that the death of Lifetime Classic is the death of Graal. I figure it is, some figure it isn't, so)

The advertising thread spawned a new branch - Merchandising. Moonie made a homemade Graal bumper sticker for her car, there's been talk that the shop needs to be updated with less "Anime rendition of five characters that don't exist on Graal, BUY ME NOW!" and more "Your character here", etcetera...I don't have the alternate designs handy. T-Shirts, Mugs, Bumperstickers, Book Covers, etc; the ideas have pretty well run the gamut.

There's also been a big push towards "TShirts are dumb, you'd have to pay me to wear a Graal TShirt, I'd never accept a sticker in a million years" - though these people have (largely) yet to explain themselves beyond "Lolz u=dum".

Is it possible to make merchandise that will appeal to Graal's players?
If so, how - by making really good mass-produced artworks? Commissioning an art contest, winner goes on the shirt? Customizing each shirt: They all say the URL, but have your character with your name saying your slogan? You walk into a room on Classic to take a screenshot? Or perhaps get artistic renderings of the standard-issue body and heads, then paperdoll-composite them? Ditto the bumperstickers and mugs? Market it as a retro game, or try and keep it mainstream?
Sell it for profit, or sell it at cost to get the word out? On the latter, Post the images on the website so players can print their own?

I don't think a whole lot of people are buying merchandise from any MMORPGs.

As I stated in your other thread, unless they had them ordered only as soon as they got the order, and don't get any more (order them as you sell them), they will be fine.
But this will not generate a large profit, and it will take time.
It's something I guess :\