Well, they had the teaser site that went up, I don't know, 30 days or so before the big announcement. And so we already started generating some excitement back then. And there was no effort on my end to sort of proactively push that out. We just sort of let it grow organically. And I think that's an indication of how excited and prepared the community was for this information, for all the news.
What is a media relations guy? People say PR a lot, but I think media relations is a better descriptor because I deal with the media. So all of the big outlets, and even the not so big, I'm dealing with them on a regular basis. There is a lot of interest in Star Citizen and Chris Roberts, and I'm dealing with outlets every day. I mean, I'm getting questions. Can I talk to Chris? Can I talk to Eric? Can I talk to other people on the team? Are you going to PAX? Are you going to E3? How can I set up interviews? What can we do? Can you get me on your mailing list? Keep me up to date on what's going on. So it's a daily sort of relationship building type of job really more than anything.
TL;DRSwofford says the project relies on media relations and community rather than traditional ads, so magazine cover stories, such as in Germany, reach audiences that other channels may not.
Well, we don't have traditional marketing. And I mean traditional by putting ads, banner ads, ads in magazines. We do depend on a lot of media relations and our community. Those are our two marketing sort of vehicles. And so what I'm always constantly doing is looking for ways to sort of spread that net and get our message out to a wider audience. So when we go to GameStar in Germany, which is one of our big markets, and we do a cover story, that's important because they reach an audience that maybe we can't reach through our other marketing means. And of course, Germany is almost sort of the most passionate fans anyway. They're wonderful. So when I get press inquiries, they're not just English speaking. There's a lot of the German, Italian, Spanish magazines also who are interested. So, yeah, I'm not dealing just with the U.S. I'm dealing with all over the world. And I'm like a one-man band on that.
TL;DRSwofford says he works with community manager Ben Lesnick, passing contacts back and forth and keeping messaging consistent so media outlets and the community spread the same message together.
We do. And of course, we have a community manager, Ben Lesnick, who everyone knows. And so Ben and I work sort of in conjunction on a lot of things. And so if someone reaches out, Ben may pass them on to me, depending on where they are and how I can help out. And then I make sure that Ben knows, because he's dealing with the community on more of a daily basis than I am. But what's very important is that Ben and I keep our messaging consistent. I need to know when Ben is sending something out, because then I can send it out to all my contacts in the media. And so we get the hit and all the community talking about it. And then we have the Kotakus and the GameSpots and those people and the ones in Australia and Germany also sort of matching the message at the same time. So that's important that we work in conjunction.
Well, we had a big awareness at PAX, and I thought that was successful. The next big thing is when we do ultimately roll out V1, which I think is coming just in a few weeks.
Exactly. And it was important that the press understood that this was a reveal. This is not really a chance for you to play it and review it. Well, that sort of review part of my job, media relations, is about to come up when V1 goes out the door. So that's the next big thing for me.
TL;DRSwofford believes the press likes the transparency, accepts the difference from big publishers hiding unfinished work, and is giving some slack, though they still expect quality delivery.
I think you're on the right track there. That's the feel I get. The community has helped on this messaging also, but I think the press like the transparency that we're delivering. And with transparency comes all those sort of warts and things that you have to roll out there. The press are used to, over the last 10, 20 years, dealing with big publishers who are very careful about how their product looks when it goes up for the first time. We're careful about that, but you're going to see everything. And so, from what I can tell, I think the press is looking at that, accepting it, and realizing that it's a different paradigm in the way we're doing things all the way around: the community, developing the product, and how we handle the press. And so, yeah, I think they're giving us some slack and letting us go. Now, we need to deliver quality, and we will. That's what their expectation is.
TL;DRGiving a partner site a short head start on a video reaches new audiences who haven't heard of Star Citizen, aiming to bring in more backers; it is standard practice and will continue.
That's a great question, and here's why. We're always looking for another audience, another group of readers or another group of fans that maybe haven't heard about Star Citizen. So what we do is I'll line something up with a Polygon or an IGN or one of those familiar sites. And if they're interested, they get it a little bit ahead of when we post it on RSI. And that just gives their fans a chance to see something before anybody else and hopefully brings in more Star Citizen fans, more backers for us. And then we flip it, usually 15 minutes to an hour later, on our own site so everybody else can see what it's all about. It's just a short amount of time, but it's a way for us to maybe get the message out to another group of people.
And that's a standard practice. We're going to continue to do that because, even though we're having an amazing amount of people, 280,000 folks out there have joined us, there's still millions out there that don't even know anything about it. And so the more we can get off our site and drive more people to us, the better the game becomes. We have more players to play against and play with. The universe is better and it's just a better game overall.
And I think the next step, for what I'd like to see, is to branch out even beyond that core gaming group of media and start getting more consumer-level people to take notice of what we're doing here. So there are my orders probably for the next few months.