#i will specifically market it as a demo without mentioning that it is actually completed

[isekyaaa]

I really want to one day make a typical otome game and spend a good amount of time advertising it. All the romance interests are clearly laid out. I'll release demos and character sheets. I'll make sure everyone knows the characters very well and which one they want to go for, so when the game comes out, everyone will know what to expect. And for the most part, everything does follow their expectations. Once you know what to do, getting the love interests to fall is easy. That is, all until they get to a certain route.

It first starts off weird when they don't appear where the guide says they're supposed to. After a few reloads, you finally find them on the complete opposite side of the map. But... there seems to be something off about them. They're not smiling like how they did in all the advertisements. And when you try to appeal to them, they react in disgust.

You try to follow up with them, but they're never in their favorite places. You find out in a rude awakening that they hate the gifts the game guide promotes. The more you try to capture their heart in the way you should, the more they come to hate you.

Eventually you get the bad ending, so you try your hand at him again. You begin utilizing the quick save/quick load option more and more. You make sure he responds well to every interaction you have with him. And at first, it works great. But slowly, things begin to change. He begins to avoid you. He regards you with suspicious eyes. In the end, you get a bad ending once more.

You try again and again with different combinations, but no matter how much you try, you can't get the good ending. Eventually you get fed up and decide to throw caution to the wind. You decide not to follow any otome logic anymore and decide to respond to his interactions how you would in normal life. And without even realizing it,

You get the good end.

[gb-patch]

Ask Answers: December 11th, 2020

How old are terri, miranda, lee, shiloh and jeremy? Are they all the same age as the mc?

Step 1: MC is 8 and Shiloh is 7

Step 2: MC and Lee are 13 and Jeremy is 12

Step 3: MC, Lee, and Terri are 18, Miranda is 19 (though she just barely turned that age)

How many different personalities are there for Jamie? Does picking one color of dialogue option mark down the personality or is it the choices and actions themselves?

There’s not really any set amount of personalities. You can mix and match traits in different ways and different levels, it’s really up to you. The colored options just give an idea of the tone of what you’re doing (whether it’s serious or more lighthearted or more emotional, that sort of thing).

Hey! Sorry to bother, but I was just curious. Why does MC and Cove react the way they do in the errands moment? It just sorta seems like they overreacted to being left alone in the farmers market. 

I’m a little confused on what you mean. You can choose not to care or to have a good time, your MC doesn’t have to be upset. There are more choices that lead to upset feelings, but that’s because there’s really only one way to say you’re really okay and multiple ways to feel upset (sad, angry, scared, etc). And if someone is upset, there’s nothing wrong with that. Feeling fine is okay too.

As for Cove, he’s just like that. Cove is a sensitive guy and he is especially bothered by parents pulling stunts without talking to their kid ahead of time. If you wanna annoy Cove, that exact thing they did is one of the fastest ways to do it, ahah. And he’s not gonna let it slide just because it was the MC’s parents doing it to them rather than one of his own parents doing it to him.

so if I were to become a one time patreon pledger, would I still have access to the things from that tier after the month is over (such as 18+ pics or access to a demo/beta)?

If you join Patreon for one month you’ll get everything released that month and have access to all our past posts, and you can save the stuff to your own computer to keep it forever. But you won’t get access to things that come out after your subscription has ended. So if you want to join for a specific piece of content, just make sure you wait until that content has already come out and then subscribe.

Why did Noelani and Pamela decide to adopt within the USA when they had previously adopted abroad?

Because we wanted to highlight more than one type of adoption. Both are valid.

At what age was MC adopted in our life?

Only around a year old, but it’s flexible based on what the player wants for their story.

If Pamela is estranged from her family and Noelani doesn't really talk to her's, where did Lee come from? 

Lee is a backer created character, she wasn’t originally part of the cast. Because our main supporter wanted her to be related to the MC’s family, we gave Pam one sibling she still talks to and that sibling has a daughter, Lee. The game was still in pretty early development way back then when we first mentioned the family situation. It’s just kind of inevitable that during the game making process some things ended up changing, aha.

In the relationship DLC’s for Derek and Baxter will there be options for polyamory to include Cove?

I’m afraid not. The way Our Life: Beginnings & Always works doesn’t support developing a poly relationship well, it’d very quickly build up too many alterations to manage. But we do hope to feature polyamory options in future games.

Will it be possible to confess to Cove (or vice versa) in Step 4, if it hasn't been done already? 

Yeah!

are you going to put the credits song on youtube or spotify? i really like it and want to play it for my friends 🙏🥺 ty 

I’m so glad you like it! We have rights to use the song in our game and for our game to be the only game it’s ever used in, but the rights to sell/upload the song belong to the actual creators of the music. We’re happy to let them decide where they’re comfortable posting the track.

Quick question, do you plan on continuing to use MC we can custom? I liked all your games but being able to customize Our Life's MC was awesome 

I can’t say if every game we ever make from now on will have a super customizable MC, but we are planning other projects with that feature. Our Life: Beginnings & Always won’t be the only one.  It’s nice to hear you appreciated the effort to add that.

Can I just express my disappointment that you only get a 'makeout session' in Step 3 if your MC is outgoing? My shy MCs miss out on grabbing the Cove booty... xP

Whether or not you can make out with Cove and how intense it can get depends on how long you’ve been a couple. If your shy MC takes longer to get with Cove, he’ll need more time before he’s ready to do that sort of stuff. And if your confident MC has been with him for years already, then he’s at a point where he can go that far with them. I’m afraid patience is required when it comes to romancing that boy, haha. 

If we played in 1.0 and we updates to 1.1 do we have to start over? Or do save files transfer? I hit the "ignore" not sure if I should have for the game to work properly 

1.0 save files should work with version 1.1. If you’re getting error reports can you send us more details about what the error is saying?

Bug report: At the end of the 'Mall' DLC moment in Step 2, there's a point where Cove says the MC's name, but it's said in his Step 1 voice instead of his Step 2 voice. I don't know if it happens with ALL names, but it happened with my most recent game using the name Devin.

As a follow-up to my earlier bug report about the voiced names (or at least Devin) in the Mall moment, I had the same issue in the Soiree moment as well (with the same name - again, it might just be that one).

Thank you for the report! Can you let me know when you downloaded the DLC files? I think that should be fixed in the most recent version of them.

Dear gb-patch, I'm one of the OL Kickstarter backers (and I had and still have a great time with your updates, it's great to see the project grow and you are great in communicating with your fans 💕).

I want to wait until all steps are complete until I play, I know I'll enjoy it even more if I can experience it all together. Because of that I didn't open the game myself but I just saw your post with the screenshot of the voiced names and noticed that the name that I submitted to you isn't on the list. The name is Mai (or May), will it be available later?

Thank you for supporting us! Mai is one of the names that we’re still working on. It accidentally had a tone missed.

And thank you for all of these asks <3

—————————————————————— We released a new FAQ! It answers common questions and we’ll keep adding more to it. Please check there before sending an ask. FAQ   Also, if you prefer to just see the main posts without all the asks/reblogs, feel free to follow our side account instead: GB Patch Updates Blog

[jackdawyt]

Dragon Age: Inquisition is one of my favourite games of all time. I love everything about this game, from the compelling hero’s journey, to the roster of lovable characters, to making the Inquisitor my very own unique protagonist. Few games compare to the experiences and tremendous moments that Inquisition provides, not to mention the Trespasser DLC which revealed the true intention of the game’s villain, and paved the story forward for future titles.  

I think it’s rather telling how good this game is, considering we’re still talking about it nearly 6 years later after launch, discovering new theories and mysterious hidden deep within the lore. Heck, if Dragon Age: Inquisition was a mediocre experience, I don’t think I’d have a YouTube channel today with thousands of recurring views weekly talking about the game, and where the story is going to go since the events of Inquisition.  

However, there is something critical that I feel is necessary to discuss regarding Dragon Age Inquisition’s original marketing demos and the expectations they set for the finished game.  

Following up to the launch of Dragon Age: Inquisition, I used to obsessively re-watch the first original gameplay demo shown at Pax Prime 2013. At the time the game was in its pre-alpha build, however, there were many impressive features and dynamics showing just a glimpse of what we’d come to expect once we got our hands on the game.  

In retrospect, these promises were scrapped before the finished project released.

This post is not meant to be a negative outlook, poking holes at BioWare’s effort, but an investigation and critique into BioWare’s game design, more specifically, the cuts the developers made tackling Inquisition’s complicated release, and how they’ve learned since.  

For the uninitiated, Dragon Age: Inquisition released in November, 2014, a month after the next generation of consoles launched. As the game was jammed in-between two gaming generations, it was designed to ship on both the previous generation of consoles (Xbox 360/PS3) and the current generation (XB1/PS4).

In order for the game to predominantly run on the lower spec consoles, many gameplay cuts, downgrades and setbacks were made to the final project.  

I’m not talking about conceptual ideas in pre-production that were drafted for the game, like The Architect making a cameo appearance in a “Here Lies The Abyss” alternative twist, or the Hero of Ferelden, Hawke and The Inquisitor meeting up in a potential drafted prologue. Of course, there were plenty of ideas, concepts and story threads that were canned and reworked because the developers had better, and frankly more relevant plans for the game.

I’m talking about actual features and mechanics that were incorporated and designed into the vertical slice demo that was shown off to the fans at Pax Prime 2013, and then were removed later on just before launch.

I would like to point out that the gameplay I’m going to show was alpha footage, and the developers made sure we all understood that it could easily change, nobody lied to us. If anything, BioWare were so eager to show off the next Dragon Age game, that perhaps this was the biggest detriment to the project.

I’ll have the full Pax gameplay demo linked for those who want to watch it fully. But without further ado, I’m going to be revealing the Dragon Age: Inquisition we almost got.  

Cut Content:  

The demo starts with a significant cut, originally Dragon Age: Inquisition would’ve featured stunning party member cutscenes when entering new areas for the first time.  We see Varric, Cassandra and Vivienne discussing how prepared they are since the Inquisition formed. Varric banters that he’s outnumbered by the ladies once again.  

We can assume that these dynamic banter cutscenes based on your party members were replaced with Scout Harding’s area report.  

The models and textures for the characters and armours look very different too. Cassandra has a more angled facial structure, like her original concept art. And, the Inquisitor’s armour and textures don’t even exist in the final game, I remember attempting to recreate this look, a thousand times over, however, no fabrics in the game have this orange texture.

Helmets also appear in conversations, which is a huge pet peeve of mine, I’m still upset to this day that we can’t see helmets in conversations and there’s no mod to fix it. However, they added this feature in Mass Effect: Andromeda, so maybe we’ll see it in the future.  

In general, this demo showed that there was going to be a lot more cutscenes when entering new areas, in party banter, and for minor conversations with smaller characters.  

Upon inspecting the gameplay, we can see the camera’s placement was significantly adjusted. The demo had a third-person feel, whereas the game ended up with a pulled back camera, probably to suite the tactical camera for combat. Fortunately, there are mods that actually fix this issue.  

The UI has evolved since the demo, there used to be a Skyrim-esqe navigation compass that was replaced with a radar. And the party member icons are different, but that’s just nit-picking.  

The combat is more or less the same, however, it does seem more reactive and heftier in the demo. Most likely because the camera is more zoomed into the action. There are some tweaks though, the enemies react more to the Inquisitor’s attacks, the stumble, flail and even run away, as opposed to just taking the damage and then attacking you back.  

However, minor these cuts may seem to you; they did change the game a fair amount adding more immersion to the overall experience.  

Even so, the most obvious and upsetting cut when watching this demo regards the entirety of Crestwood, the area has been dramatically reduced in the final game.  

In this demo, the Inquisitor is given a conflict. One of the Inquisition’s soldiers asks the player how does the Inquisitor want to handle their armies' movements throughout the area.  

The Inquisitor could send the Inquisition army to save the town of Crestwood.  

They could lead the soldiers to tend to the nearby wounded.

Or they could bolster every solider to the Keep, leaving both the wounded and the town of Crestwood.  

Each choice had a consequence, and both Mike Laidlaw and Mark Darrah spoke on having multiple ways to approach the situation. For instance, in the demo’s scenario the Inquisitor decides to leave the town while it’s under siege, instead, they find a secret entrance towards the Keep. Using Antivan Fire, they burn the invaders’ boats which would prevent them from escaping after their attack. The Inquisition take the Keep, and head back to the ransacked town filled with newly fresh corpses. A dynamic cutscene of Varric mourning the dead plays out, adding emotional impact and weight to the decision the Inquisitor just made.  

And this was just a side questline...

The demo ends with the developers reiterated the tactical and dynamic approaches when showing the Inquisition taking over the Keep at The Western Approach.  

According to Mark Darrah, you could weaken enemy defences by doing things like drawing out the troops or poisoning their wells.  

Then, once you claimed the keep for yourself, you’d get a quest called ‘This Water Tastes Funny’, in which your Keep's well was poisoned and you’d have to go find fresh water.

The Keep’s themselves were originally designed to have a lot more influence and reactivity throughout the world. Once captured, the Inquisitor could choose a dynamic choice for the Keep’s overall goal, if you had enough Inquisition agents. 

The Keep could be specialised based on the Inquisition’s advisors. You could choose to run your Keep as a Military outpost, boosting fortifications. It could be a Keep of espionage and secrets, for information gathering, or you could make it a Keep of connections and merchants for diplomatic purposes. Each different speciality had a different advantage and aesthetic to suit its purpose.  

Adding more choices and roleplaying values for making the Inquisition your own army, having a say in what aspects it should grow in.  

That sums up the majority of the cuts made since this demo. I will say it’s unfortunate seeing these unfinished features that shaped the game in a completely different direction, that inevitably couldn’t make it into the finished project.  

But I think it’s wrong to pin the blame of this cut content on anyone because the developers were tackling a console generation shift, and they wanted everyone to have the opportunity to play the game without having to get a new console. Can you really blame them for that?  

Perhaps many of these features may be designed into a future title since the developers wanted them so much in Inquisition? And speaking of the future title, at least the next Dragon Age game won’t be coming out in between a console generation, it is being designed strictly for next-gen, so there shouldn't be any console setbacks and limitations.  

Even still, when Dragon Age 4 does eventually get a gameplay reveal, don’t set your expectations in stone based on that reveal. The finished project will look very different. These days gameplay previews aren’t always accurate, and that’s just a dilemma of the entire games industry, not just EA and BioWare.  

Wrapping up on a positive note, BioWare have learned from this experience, and they’re approaching Dragon Age 4 with a “show, don’t tell” strategy. They will be proceeding with caution when marketing and revealing the next Dragon Age game, and that may play a part in why we haven't and won't see anything official for a while.  

I don’t think I could end on a better note then the Narrative Director, John Epler’s message about Inquisition’s development. John said: “A good 90% of 'bad' decisions are, in fact, the best decision at the time. Game dev is all about making the best decision you can at the time, with the resources you have. A lot of stuff you thought was weird or awkward came down to a gut call of 'this is the best I can make this and I trust it's good enough'. Sometimes we're right, sometimes not.”

BioWare decided to make these cuts to Inquisition because they realised it was the right thing to do for the entire project, perhaps they felt they couldn’t deliver these features to their full capacity, or they wanted a change of direction. They believe these decisions were made for the greater good of the game, and I commend them for that.  

Dragon Age Inquisition is an incredible RPG with tons of personality, that not many games can even mimic. Although the game had some minor setbacks with the fair amount of content that was cut, the game is just as amazing without those initial features.  

Like I said, perhaps we’ll see these mechanics in the next game, if not, then at least it has been a learning experience for BioWare, that they can utilise for the development of Dragon Age 4.  

In any regard, let me know your thoughts down below on this gameplay demo relating to the finished game, and don’t forget to check out my latest news update!

[uiux-design]

6+ Best Websites for Free Fonts in 2020

You need your website or application to look amazing, and typography is a key factor in design that can’t be overlooked. So where can you find free fonts online in 2020 that uphold a high standard of quality?

I firmly believe that, in order to strike the optimal balance between minimalism and visual appeal, a user interface should display no more than what’s absolutely necessary while making those necessary elements look visually appealing.

Keep it simple, but make the simple look amazing.

But, what does simple look like exactly?

Well, strip away all of the over-the-top marketing gimmicks, redundant features, and cluttering visuals, and most of what’s left is the UI copy and text content. As boring as this sounds, let’s be honest: this is the most important aspect of any app or website. Information and the ability to navigate it is the entire reason users are using our app or website.

So with the right typeface coupled with the right font styles (see “Font vs typeface: the ultimate guide”), we can create designs that are quite simple and yet visually appealing at the same time. This emphasizes the most important aspects of the design while using fewer resources and also inducing the least amount of unwanted cognitive load.

Typography can be very powerful.

But what are the best free font websites?

Where not to look for free fonts

Dribbble, Behance, Gumroad, and so on are home to a ton of hidden gems, but this involves sieving through a lot of digital resources, some of which are incomplete side ventures and “lite” versions. That being said, make sure that you bookmark awesome resources if you do happen to come across any. Even Instagram might surprise you, and Twitter shouldn’t be overlooked either.

That aside, let’s take a look as the best free font websites.

1. Google Fonts

Number one on this “best free fonts” list is obviously Google Fonts, which goes above and beyond what most free font websites offer. First of all, Google Fonts offers a fast and convenient CDN (content delivery network), making it super easy to embed webfonts into websites without having to actually host them.

Google fonts can be subsetted by script and weight, and we can also control how they’re loaded on the Web by setting the font-display CSS property from the embed code’s query string, which improves website loading times. (The CSS-Tricks article on “Google Fonts and font-display” explains how.)

Mind you, self-hosting fonts is better for privacy (because it’s cookieless) and speed (because it offers developers more control). Either way, Google Fonts has a humungous repertoire.

2. Creative Market

I know what you’re thinking: “Creative Market isn’t free, Daniel!”

Ahhh, but what about the Free Goods section? What’s interesting about Free Goods is that these are actually premium fonts that are temporarily free. While the section isn’t that huge, and isn’t guaranteed to include fonts specifically, each and every week it’s refreshed with six new design assets (plus three more if you sign up and another three if you spend X amount on assets).

I’ve been checking the Free Goods section on Creative Market every week for years, and I’ve built up a large repository of high-quality fonts that cost literally nothing. Font Bundles runs a similar deal.

3. Font Squirrel

Font Squirrel is like Unsplash but for fonts, although considering how long it’s been around (a really long time!) maybe saying that Unsplash is like Font Squirrel but for stock images is more accurate! It’s one of the veteran free font websites alongside Dafont, 1001 Free Fonts, and Urban Fonts, although “squirrel” is better.

Although many of the veteran free font websites look a little outdated, Font Squirrel has kept its website somewhat modern compared to the rest. It also has a couple of very useful tools:

Webfont Generator (converts TrueType/OpenType fonts into webfonts)

Font Identifier (for finding out the name a font from an uploaded image/screenshot)

4. FontSpace

FontSpace is one of the nicer-looking websites for free fonts, although it only offers fonts that are free for personal use, whereas Font Squirrel confirms that all of their fonts are free for commercial use too. FontSpace might not always be suitable.

5. Befonts

What sets Befonts apart is its focus on display fonts.

Although some of the fonts only offer lite/demo versions and often enough only come in TTF/OTF format (meaning they’re less suitable for the Web), Befonts is one of the very few websites that doesn’t take the “we have everything” approach (which can be overwhelming sometimes). Besides, you can always convert TTF and OTF fonts into webfonts.

6. Font Shop

Font Shop doesn’t focus completely on free fonts like Font Squirrel and FontSpace, but it’s still a rather decent alternative if options one to four didn’t have what you were looking for. I find it to be the least user-friendly of the options, but the fonts are relatively high-quality.

Honorable Mentions

The following free font websites look a little outdated, and truthfully some of the fonts do as well, but they’re arguably some of the largest databases of free fonts out there today:

Dafont

Urban Fonts

1001 Free Fonts

Fontsly

Which font format do I need?

OpenType (OTF) and TrueType (TTF) font formats have been the standard for a really long time, and they’re still used heavily in graphic design today. But that being said, WOFF formats have better compression on the Web (especially WOFF2, which is now supported in 94.49% of web browsers according to caniuse.com). In fact, the new Google Fonts embed code only offers the WOFF2 format now.

So, in short:

WOFF2 for web embeds

TTF/OTF for everything else

Which font style do I need?

Nowadays, it doesn’t really matter all that much because the norms have been thrown out the window a little bit. As an example, Serif fonts can have a modern feel now (think Medium).

Instead, we should focus more on clarity:

Legibility (how easy it is to tell characters apart)

Readability (how easy it is to read sentences as a whole)

Some of this comes down to the font itself, so one should be observant when deciding which fonts to use, but other times it comes down to how the font is styling (in terms of size, weight, and so on).

When in doubt, the WCAG 2.0/2.1 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) have everything you need to know about typography and its many attributes, such as line spacing, line width, line height, font sizing, and so on.

Conclusion

Fonts are super useful, and they’re often all that’s needed to achieve the right amount of visual and emotional appeal without laying on more and more visual clutter. Your design needs text anyway, so why not make it the most outstanding aspect of it?

[connan-l]

Ciconia Phase 1 Ramblings

Well, it sure was a wild ride, but I enjoyed it quite a bit!

The whole thing was very Heavy and Intense and Long and a lot of stuff happened. I’m not sure I really digested everything yet, but I have Thoughts.

GOD I spent so much time writing all of this... At first I just wanted to make a short Twitter thread about it, but it ended up a lot longer than initially... 😔

Those are just some messy ramblings and I don't think I said any more new or interesting stuff than what other people have already said, but I still felt the need to write it down, so...

Ciconia spoilers for Phase 1 and the tips:

So I thought overall it was pretty good and interesting! As someone who didn’t play the demos, I went in completely blind, and it was a nice read. (As such the flood of Okonogi memes some time ago were kinda confusing to me at first lol.)

It was radically different from Higurashi and Umineko, but that was something I expected (Umineko was radically different from Higurashi, after all.)

I’m not sure if it’s going to hit me as personally as Higurashi and Umineko did yet, or even if I’m going to like it as much — I enjoyed Phase 1, and the story is really intriguing, but it’s not quite on the level of its predecessors for now. Then again, it is only the first part of the story so it’s a bit unfair to compare them now, and I remember I was far from being into Higu and Umi by just their first installments too. So I guess I’ll just have to wait for the other phases and see!

On a technical level, this is definitely ones of Ryukishi’s most sophisticated visual novels — with the big animations and sound effects during the battle scenes, of course, but also with the numbers of different backgrounds and the visuals for the Kizuna thing. The sprites are also my favorites from all of Ryu’s games, they have the uniqueness of his artstyle all while being more polished and with really pretty coloring. And the character designs are SUPER GOOD — the best of 07th Expansion works to me (well, I was still a bit disappointed in Vier’s design, though. I mean. She’s just Takano with a lab coat. You could’ve at least changed her clothes or something, Ryu.) The music was the only thing that was... pretty average. It wasn’t bad, there was a lot of neat OST in it... but there wasn’t really anything memorable either (Alright, except for Apocalypsis Ciconia II. This one was dope as hell and it gave me chills.)

I was pleasantly surprised by how good and compelling the worldbuilding was too, as personally I find this peculiar part of Ryukishi’s writing has always been one of his weakest points. I don’t know much about sci-fi stuff admittedly, so I’m not sure how that would be perceived by fans of the genre, but Ciconia’s world is still quite fascinating — the different factions, the technology and selcom stuff, the way childbirth is managed or the history of World War III, all of that was good. Although to be honest, some stuff felt kinda contrived too (like, sure, let’s say the entire history of WWIII is entirely erased, like that we don’t have to deal with the political issues of our current real world lmao), and I don’t know all of the histories of the countries mentioned, so I can’t really tell if some things were insensitive (for example, how Africa was “unified” by a single king felt a bit off to me, but, er... I don’t know...)

The more absurd elements like the conspiracy theories, the chivalric orders or the freaking ILLUMINATI KINGS were pretty hilarious, honestly. I’m... not sure what to make of them. Obviously none of Ryu’s stories were ever going to be realistic (and well, the entire premise of Ciconia is about children soldiers who have the strength of an entire army in one gauntlet, which is ridiculous enough), but knowing him I wonder how much of this is going to be played straight and how much of this is meta stuff. Especially with all the religious/spiritual references (the blue bodies of Evil Miyao and of the gauntlet girls alluding to the Hindu god Shiva, Seshat being a Egyptian goddess, etc.)

I have more mixed feelings about the plot, and especially the pacing. Most of it was okay, but some scenes were really dragging and redundant. Which, isn’t really something new with Ryukishi’s writing, but here especially with the political stuff and the long blocks of exposition it was... kinda boring and hard to focus on it, and after a while it even felt quite egregious. Some of those parts weren’t needed, or at least didn’t need to be that long. Especially given that after the first hours, there were not a lot of more peaceful moments that would give the player time to breath. 

Which is another one of my complaints: a lot of intense things happened, but the narrative rarely give you the time to actually digest those things, especially in the second part of the story. It often pretty much felt like “X event happen > Discussion of X event between the characters > Y event happen > Discussion of Y event between the characters,” and this without any breaks (with the exception of some exposition here and there in between, of course). The events, discussions and characters were interesting enough to more or less keep my attention, but it still felt like too much at times. Part of this may be volunteer, as it put a stressful and opressive feeling on the reader (God, the clock and quotes between each chapters stressed me out a lot lol), and after a while I really felt like I was kinda suffocating with all of this like the characters — but even so I think it would’ve been better to give us some pauses here and there. Which is something we could have had with, say, the tips. I thought it was a shame all of the sixteen tips could only be read once the main story was over, because the narrative could have really benefited from having them fit into the plot or in-between chapters, like in Higurashi.

Also, I know Ciconia wasn’t exactly marketed as an horror story unlike the other WTCs, but hoo boy, I think some of the sequences in it are honestly among the most gory and disturbing things Ryukishi wrote? I haven’t read Iwaihime or TRianThology, so I can’t really say for sure, but damn, those human factories really are big nightmare fuels...

Now, I think the most tricky parts and the ones who are gonna get the most criticisms are, likely, the whole political and military stuff. Ciconia is probably Ryukishi’s most political and provocative work so far, maybe on par with Rose Guns Days — not to say Higurashi and Umineko are not political, they definitely are, but here it truly is in-your-face. Which is not a bad thing, per se, but... let’s say it all depends on how Ryukishi handle and criticize all those stuff down the line in the other installments, when so far it’s been... meh?

Like, the whole military stuff, specifically, was... shaky, at best. The thing with fiction that portray militaries with soldiers as their main characters is that they walk a thin line between just portraying this thing and actively glamorizing it. The narrative was definitely critical of some of it (lol the whole massacre at the end was very obviously there for a reason), and I appreciate Ryukishi often makes a point in his stories to frame a problem with different persepectives... but the whole “healthy military balance” and “Walls of Peace” thing was still iffy, and I’m... unsure about how much of it is going to be criticized within the narrative in the end. Now, again, it is just the beginning of the story, and Ryukishi has always been good at presenting a thing at the start for later on tearing it down to pieces, so... I don’t know.

It’s way too early to decide what kind of themes and messages Ciconia is going to have, so here too I guess we’ll have to wait and see, but I’m just a bit wary given some things that were in RGD were... definitely questionable. Now I actually think Ciconia got to a better start than RGD, but... well. I’m also not really someone who know much about these stuff, so I’m not the best placed to talk about it, but it’s definitely something worth to be under scrutiny.

On the more positive side, there were times where some things felt really, really real, as well as pretty in tone with some of today’s social issues. Like all those news about the terrible things going on in the world and that a war can happen anytime, the military propaganda to recruit young people who “want to fly” in the army but who just end up killing each other, or the feeling that these kids have about how in the end they’re just powerless pawns  who can’t do anything used by selfish old men... I saw someone said Ciconia was basically Fuck Boomers: The Game, and... yeah. Yeah, that’s basicaly it lmao. All of the adults being assholes is not new in WTC or even in Ryukishi’s works in general, but here it was definitely a big theme. God even the whole thing at the end about how the planet is dying and that everyone knows it but people just don’t care about it... lmao, if that wasn’t directly referring what we’re living right now with climate change, I don’t know what is.

I just really loved too the way the game was sort of sold as this “cool sci-fi battle royal,” but in the actual story all of those kids are desperately trying to not kill each other, until the very end where everything just goes to hell.

I said it before, but there really was a huge feeling of suffocating and being powerless the more and more you reach towards the end, and the way everything culminated in this huge massacre truly sent shivers in my back. I know at some points I could really feel for the kids who were like “Well, fuck it, let’s just let all those awful people kill each other and the world get destroyed.” The final scene with the Christmas party was really powerful and also so uncomfortable to read, it was really well done.

Otherwise, if there was one work I wasn’t expecting to scream “LGBT+ rights,” it was Ciconia, but here we are I guess lmao. Honestly, that entire conversation was super neat, not just in a “Oh it’s great they acknowledge gay and trans people exist in a positive way,” but also because it really adds a lot to the worldbuilding. I remember some people talking about it when a similar thing happened in the comics of The Legend of Korra, and honestly more stories should do that, not just in term of representation but because, well, it’s just good writing to put this much thought in your fictional world. The conversation in itself was a bit clumsy (GAYS DON’T FUCK), but it also felt very sincere and a pretty believable discussion a bunch of teenagers with very different backgrounds could have on the subject (and I really loved the narrative acknowledge how different cultures and religions feel about those topics, without it being judgemental.) I’m also thankful it was here at all because of the, uh, gay jokes made about Miyao and Jayden early on that were a bit tasteless to me.

(Now it would be even more great if we could have actual canon gay and trans characters too. Ryukishi... please...... I beg you........)

And of course, the characters were also really good! 

It was so nice to have such a big diverse cast all constituted of likeable characters, and I was honestly impressed Ryukishi managed to handle it. That was something I was wary of when the game was first released, but in the end I think he did a good job so far. Of course, that’s only from my point of view, so I can’t say if other people found there were some things he did badly or that was offensive...

But personally, I honestly love all of the Gauntlets kids so much. They’re all so good and charming! And I kinda want to adopt them all lol.

I think my favorites for now are Miyao, Gunhild, Naima, Rethabile, Chloe, Koshka, Rukhshana, and Lingji... But like I said, they are all really good it’s hard to choose!

However... when it comes to their writing I felt Ciconia went in the continuity of Rose Guns Days and concentrated more on the plot than the characters, and that’s something that... honestly bother me a bit. I liked RGD, but Ryukishi’s writing is still at its strongest when it comes to very human, character-driven narratives, like Umineko and Higurashi. Like I said, I love all of these kids a lot, and some of them have pretty solid characterization and screentime... but in the end a part of me still feel like we didn’t really... get to know them much, if that makes sense? Even with the main ones, like Miyao, Jayden or Gunhild — most of their scenes were principally focused on the Plot Stuff, and not much about them as people.

I know there are a lot of folks who criticize the slice-of-life parts of Higurashi and Umineko, where there are lots of scenes of just the characters spending time with each other or goofing around and that don’t do much to advance the plot — and in a way I understand that, because yeah, some of these scenes can be pretty long to get through and drag the pacing. But personally, I always thought those sequences are very important. Even if some of them are admittedly unnecessary or are a bit too long, they’re really needed to humanize the characters and make you invest in them  — which was something that was a bit lacking in Ciconia. Basically I guess I’m saying the VN needed more slice-of-life stuff, and that rejoin with what I said earlier — that including some of the tips in the plot here and there instead of putting all of them at the end would have really helped with that.

Now, that said, again I’m aware this is just the first part of the story. I understand Ryukishi needed to have all of those exposition blocks and truly pose the basics of his story first and foremost. So I’m really hoping that after that he’ll be able to focus more on its characters  — especially on those who got almost no screentime, like the Yeladot Shavit and Cairo Squad girls. Having characters and human grounded moments is especially important in a story where war is a big focus like Ciconia.

Now, on the characters themselves... 

Miyao was a really charming protagonist, and I love him a lot! He was so endearing to me during the whole story. He was instantly more likeable as a male protagonist than Keiichi and Battler, where it took me some time for them to grow on me — principally because, well, Miyao don’t have the shtick of sexually harrassing the female characters around him, which was profoundly annoying in the other WTCs. I loved his serious but caring and friendly personality, his friendship with Jayden and Gunhild and with all the other kids, and his anger against the adults trying to use him and the others. His relationship with his father too was interesting. His interactions with Evil Miyao were also pretty intriguing, even if I’m not sure yet what to think of him being a “murder program” or about what even is Evil Miyao. 

Now, the only thing I am on the fence about him is... his whole DID thing and Meow. Like, on one hand, I think it is neat to have a likeable protagonist with a named mental illness, and the narrative felt sincere on not wanting to present this as a bad thing and just a part of who Miyao is... but on the other hand, there were all the jokes made as a result of this, which made the whole thing pretty awkward to me. Furthermore, there’s the problem that this “CPP” thing is not really DID, as if I recall it doesn’t actually seem to come from any trauma-related reason, and is almost a made-up condition? It kinda gave me Kara no Kyoukai flashbacks, in which Shiki, the protagonist, also has an alter, but it is not as a result of trauma or anything — it has a fantasy explanation. And, I mean... An author taking an actual, real condition that a lot of people have to bend it at their will to fit a story isn’t super cool, especially if you’re going to make some jokes at its expense... The other kids calling out Jayden on how he didn’t act properly with Miyao about this was nice though. (Also, now that I think about it, did Miyao just... randomly told all of the other gauntlet knights about it? Wasn’t it said that “CPPs” were something most people didn’t like to talk about? It’s a bit odd.) Plus there’s also the fact Miyao is possibly a “program” and it adds another layer of not-so-great stuff... So I’m just really wary of how Ryukishi is gonna handle this going forward...

Those problems aside, Meow herself was... fine. She’s cute, but she doesn’t really have much going on for her. She and Jayden are dorks together and their scenes definitely made me smile, but their relationship still felt kinda shallow so I don’t have much feelings about them as a couple (like, it’s just that to me Miyao and Jayden have a lot more chemistry and have been friends for quite some time, so it’s just odd that he instantly decides to date Miyao’s sister whom he just met. And, also, he was definitely flirting with Miyao before meeting Meow, too.). It was also pretty jarring the way she just... almost disappears once the war stuff began, so in the end I had this disagreeable impression that she really was just here to be Jayden’s girlfriend, and not as a character on her own or to develop Miyao more...

Jayden was pretty neat too! He’s a character that could be “yikes” pretty easily, but in the end he really did come across as a awkward but kind teenage boy who may be clumsy at times but is still trying his best. In fact, I really wish Ryukishi had wrote Keiichi and Battler more like Jayden. It was nice in general that none of the guys in Ciconia acted inappropriately towards the girls (with the exception of Toujirou, I guess. The way he acted towards Valentina especially made me go “ehh dude please no.” Like I know the LATO girls are said to be older than the other kids so they’re probably 18 or something, but still, it was a bit ugh... But even then it wasn’t something that was too overt, so it didn’t bother me too much), because some of Keiichi and Battler’s antics towards the female characters was something that annoyed me greatly. Don’t get me wrong, I did end up liking Keiichi and Battler despite this, they’re both good kids at heart — but it’s possible to write horny teenage boys without them ~comically~ sexually harassing the girls around them, if you feel me? Aside from that, I like that the story made a point to show that Jayden is actually a pretty lonely and kinda socially awkward kid just like Miyao, and that’s why their friendship work so well. On the other hand, though, his character mostly only turned around Miyao and Meow, and so we didn’t get much of him as a person? Which is a bit disappointing as he is meant to be one of the main kids, so I’ll hope he’ll get more interesting later on.

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE GUNHILD, she really intrigue me! I wasn’t expecting to love her so much — for the most part I thought she was okay but nothing more... though now that I finished the story, she’s probably my favorite character for now? Her scene in the restaurant with her sibling, and especially the tips focused on her, really got to me. I loved her cool personality and her backstory was really interesting, as well as her relationship with Miyao and Jayden. She seems to honestly like and care for both of them, but at the same time resent them, and the way she obviously have a lot of pent-up anger towards the world and some self-hatred make her a truly compelling character. I’m pretty intrigued by Maya and her relationship with her too. She’s honestly one of the characters towards who I look forward the most, and I really hope Ryukishi will deliver on her. 

Chloe has definitely a lot of Rena Vibes, so of course I was going to love her lol. Although honestly for now I find her mostly... confusing. She’s obviously really fucked up (CHLOEVIL), and she made me pretty nervous during the entire story because there was this “Okay so when is she going to snap?” kind of tension with her. And her last scene with Lilja gave me chills... At the same time, her kindness and caring nature as well as her friendship with Koshka, Lilja and the  others felt genuine, so it was an interesting contrast. Other than that I wasn’t a fan of the running gag of Okonogi hitting her whenever she mess up (or do not mess up, for that matter)... Like obviously Okonogi is meant to be a Bastard, but the thing being presented as comical made me go :/ I really wish it’s going to stop.

Koshka was cute and also Extremely Relatable in a lot of ways (I, too, would rather spend my time playing silly games on my phone rather than socialize lmao). I love her a lot, and like Gunhild she really fascinate me. I like the fact that she’s meant to be an asocial, cold person but that at the same time it’s pretty easy to see glimpses of the affection she has for Lilja, Chloe or Miyao, and how she’s actually a deeply traumatized and angry teen. I’m pretty intrigued by what kind of “crime” she must have committed and how she ended up being an “equipment”... Not sure what to think about her super brain or the thing about her being some sort of “chosen one” lol. It sounds really shady.

For Lilja, I have to say I wasn’t exactly fond of her at first, but then the small moments we got with her where she obviously care a lot about Koshka and Chloe still got to me. That scene in the tips where she fiercely defends Chloe made me go “awww.” She really give me the impression of being the sort of person to hide her vulnerability behind a tough façade and her odd tics, and in that way she’s pretty similar to Koshka, which is how their friendship feel really special. The revealation at the end that she’s probably faking a lot of her personality and of her friendship with Koshka because it’s an assigment made her and her relationship with Koshka a lot more interesting to me, and I hope it’s going to result in a lot of compelling character stuffs.

Lingji was great! She’s pretty cool. I liked her optimism  and her will to do the right thing, and how that actually cover the fact she’s a pretty fragile and sheltered person. Her scene where she break down after her grandfather’s death is really illustrative of this especially, and where I really felt for her too. I think she’s the most interesting character in term of possible development. I quite enjoyed her friendship with Miyao too, but here again I wish these two had gotten more moments together. Like, how much more impactful the scene where Miyao kill her would have been if we had actually seen these two have some intimate moments before? But, oh well...

Aysha was really cool too, and I especially loved the way her sharp and down-to-earth personality contrast to Lingji’s idealism. The moment where she calls out both of her teammates was super good. Momotake was okay, and I love his intense admiration for Lingji (I’m a sucker for male characters really looking up to cool female characters lol)... but otherwise I felt he was honestly the most stereotypical character of the bunch — especially compared to Lingji and Aysha.

NAIMA IS THE BEST, SHE’S MY BABY I LOVE HER SO MUCH. She was my favorite before I even start the game because of her design alone (SHE’S THE CUTEST CHARACTER RYU EVER DESIGNED OKAY), and I wasn’t disappointed from seeing her actual personality. She’s not especially complex or anything for now, but she has a lot of potential. I loved her relationship with Naomi and Stan too — it kinda felt like two older siblings looking after their annoying youngest one reluctantly, but who still have a lot of affection for them. Also she’s such a little badass, I literally cheered out loud during that rescue scene or during the last battle scene where she screams she wants to protect all of her people. I want more of her in Phase 2 pleaaaase!

Naomi was really overshadowed by Naima and Stan, so as a result I don’t have much to say about her. I think she’s cool, and her backstory about how she apparently lost a lot of her memories and emotions is interesting, but again I can’t say much given we barely see her at all. Stanisław was a good boy, but despite the fact we see him a lot during the story, I... don’t really have a lot of thoughts on him? I liked his implied friendship with Gunhild as them being death metal buddies, but we didn’t actually saw them interacting at all, which was a shame.

Rethabile was the coolest character of the cast, I love her dearly! I like how she can be so adorable and such a dork but at the same time she’s probably the one who has her shit together the most out of all the kids. I feel she really has a good grip on politics and how the adults just want to use them compared to the others — which, well, isn’t all that surprising given she’s literally a princess. The scene with her brother’s death was pretty harsh, and I’m sad they didn’t really... put much attention to her reaction to such a traumatic event. I know the plot hadn’t time for that, really, but I feel even Lingji got more focus when her grandfather died, so I wish we had more of that with Rethabile too.

Ishak and Abdou... well, they didn’t really get much time for them either. They seem like nice dudes, and I really love their relationship with Rethabile, how they tease her quite a bit but there’s still obviously a lot of complicity and respect among them. So I hope we’ll get to know them more, especially on an individual level — as for now they were only present as a duo.

The LATO girls were... interesting too. I especially love Valentina, because she really give me Bad Bitch vibes and I love bitchy female characters lol. It’s pretty clear she has some Secrets and I’m really curious about her goals. As for Maricarmen, I thought she was mostly going to be comic relief like the Yeladot Shavit, but towards the end she actually showed some interesting depth so she did grew on me quite a bit.

And then there was just the teams no-screentime lol. Alright, I guess Suparṇa did get some time, and Rukhi is ones of my faves, but they still were really sidelined. I liked Sujatha, she’s such an uptight idiot, and her scene towards the end where she says she was aware that Miyao’s plan was doomed but still played along for Lingji made me kinda emotional. Rukhshana is the cutest and the greatest — I really liked her personality, how she can be extremely shy but then also completely goof around when she actually trust the people around her. And that moment at the end where she just say to her superiors to fuck off was glorious and one of my favorite scenes. Her relationship with Sujatha and Andry is adorable too. Andry himself was also... not present at all, but I really love the small glimpses of him we have seen, he’s pretty cool. I like how he sincerely seems to care a lot about his teammates despite his aloof character (him protecting Rukhi when their superiors try to hit her at the end was sweet.)

Still, Suparṇa wasn’t sidelined as much as Yeladot Shavit and Cairo Squad, though. I mean, I do like those girls — I adore Gannet because she’s cute as hell, Noor seems cool and Mariana intrigue me, but I can’t actually say much about them. Leah, Fatma and Stephania were also mostly comic relief except for one or two scenes towards the end. So I really hope Phase 2 will remedy to this, ‘cause I want more of these six, definitely!

I’m not sure I have a lot of thoughts about the adults characters quite yet — GERMAN TAKANO cracked me up, but she’s just as great as her Higurashi counterpart for now, and I always trust Ryukishi to write good Terrible Women. Especially Terrible Mothers, which is one of my personal weaknesses. Though I guess it’s not actually been confirmed she’s Miyao’s mom? It’s heavily implied, but we all know Ryukishi love to troll his audience so I wouldn’t put it past him that it is in fact just a red herring, but well, we’ll see I guess. 

Toujirou is obviously a bastard, but he’s an interesting one, and I have no fucking idea what is going on in his head. Like it’s interesting that on the one hand he seems to genuinely care about his son, but on the other hand he has no problem manipulating and screwing him over (and the implication of Miyao being maybe just a program is... ooof.) Okonogi was... a bit less worse than in the other WTCs, I guess? He obviously care about the kids in his own way, and him defending them at the end was nice... but I still can’t really feel anything but contempt towards him. He’s still a pretty bad instructor, and like I say, I’m really not a big fan of the way he treats Chloe at all, even if it’s meant to be “comical.”

The Three Kings mostly made me laugh to be honest, and they’re more plot devices than actual characters for now so I really don’t care about them (a part of me even wonder if they “exist” at all, because, you know, meta stuff). I absolutely LOVED Jestress on the other hand! I have no idea what’s the deal with her, whether she’s Lambda or whatever, but she’s really intriguing and her design is top notch and I want more of her. Seshat was so fucking cool and I don’t have much thoughts about her yet other than I wanna marry her.

And that’s pretty much it!

I’m not really good at predictions or at throwing theories around (sorry, Ryukishi), so I’m not sure what to expect for the rest of the story. I guess my only thoughts are that the moles are probably Gunhild and/or Chloe, but then they seem like obvious candidates, so I don’t know. I kinda suspect Valentina too, because, er, I do not trust her at all and she just have that traitor vibe. 

I really hope too that we’ll have time loops here again instead of a linear story because... well... I don’t wanna these kids to die okay... I also know that Ryukishi said Ciconia is only going to have four parts, and that’d make sense given how long Phase 1 was... but a part of me still kinda hope we’ll have a bit more... I guess it’s just that only four phases seems really little compared to the density of the story, and I’m really hoping he’ll have the time to develop well all of his narrative points and characters...

In any case, I think my thoughts on Ciconia for now pretty much get down to: it’s interesting and it has the potential to be a really great story, even if it’s far from being flawless and that I’m still very wary about how Ryukishi is going to handle some elements in the future.

But I’d definitely recommand it to people who love 07th Expansion stuff and sci-fi stories, and am very much looking forward to Phase 2!

[moralanxietystudio]

“An RPG / Visual Novel / text adventure hybrid” is a mouthful - Roadwarden Devlog

In her Rock, Paper, Shotgun article, Jay Castello has mentioned:

The game’s genre is purposefully fluid. On (...) Studio’s website, the top frequently asked question says “I can’t figure out what is this game’s genre,” to which they’ve cheerfully replied “Me neither.”

When I mention Roadwarden in my Facebook posts or on Twitter, I usually struggle describing it. I keep saying things like “RPG / Visual Novel / text adventure hybrid”, but it’s not very... marketable. I like to use “interactive fiction”, which is arguably correct and sounds fine, but it doesn’t explain well what the player does in the game.

The main goal of this post is to sink deeper into this topic: how could we label Roadwarden? And what it actually is?

By the way, during the next couple of days I want to update the game’s demo. It’s going to be awesome.

Why am I looking for a label?

Why is the label important? Is it just because it’s convenient for social media ads?

When we categorize a game, we also set up the player’s expectations. If we call a game an endless runner, we make a promise. We claim that it’ll be easy to learn and hard to master, with a very stable pacing, without pointless plot and accessible from your phone. Sure, some endless runners can diverse from this premise or even completely fail at executing it, but making this label is an act of communication. Here is what I have to offer. Are yo interested?

And while Roadwarden fits into various definitions of specific genres, it makes promises that are not as commonly associated with its labels. It has an experimental approach to role-playing. Violence, that’s always plot-related and significant, not grindy. Exploration of a grim, detailed and consistent setting, but not a very heroic one. Dialogues used as the core of the experience, not just a tool. Humble adventures of a regular person in a world that overwhelms it. And I try to avoid common tropes in my story.

And I never ask myself “is it OK to add this new feature? after all, it’s not popular in this genre!”. I add everything that helps me make a better game. I put the experience above the marketing convenience.

A term “video game RPG” is famous for being a very vague label, pretty much impossible to define. It’s one of the most diverse branches of gaming. Every person plays RPGs for different reasons, thou we could probably make a list like 1) a complex story with possible side quests, 2) some character progression (both story-wise and through XP-like mechanics), 3) combat and exploration. If you prefer western games, you’ll probably enjoy 4) having important decisions. And you probably like 5) fantasy, eventually science-fiction with fantasy elements.

Sure, there’s a lot of variety - we have action RPGs, text-based RPGs, tactical RPGs, dungeon crawlers, rouge-likes... It’s really weird that the same label somehow covers The Witcher 3, Undertale, Final Fantasy VI and Wizardry from 1981, yet not Far Cry Primal, but that’s because these games are classified by an objective definition of a genre. We just try to say: “if you like X, you may also like Y. they’re kind of similar”.

Roadwarden as an RPG

When I develop Roadwarden I’m interested in things that most RPGs consider unimportant. And I don’t mean something like “I care about story, and These Other Games are all about combat”! That would be a silly statement. But I put an emphasis on aspects of the story which are often marginalized.

For example, in most RPGs you simply kill things (in self-defense!) and grind XP to get stronger. You can kill 10 packs of wolves and 25 boars and it means absolutely nothing. You’re just overcoming a barrier while trying to get a new level or reach the other side of the forest. Killing these enemies won’t be considered animal cruelty. Won’t destroy the balance of the nearby forests. Won’t starve the villagers. These animals are not Really a part of the story.

In Roadwarden, bandits don’t randomly spawn and die without influencing the plot. They are not some random loot waiting to drop on the floor for the player’s convenience. They have families, friends, goals, story behind them. They don’t want to kill you - they want your stuff. And they’ll try to rob you only if they know you can’t beat them. Without an unfair advantage they wouldn’t put themselves at risk.

In my game, violence means something. Nobody here dreams about it, aside of the most terrible, wicked people. Every death leaves a void, and void should be haunting.

In most RPGs you find a tavern, buy a potion and leave. In Roadwarden you spend 15 minutes talking to the innkeeper, and he’s not there just to give you a quest. He wants to know more about you. He wants to know what news you’re bringing. And if you can be trusted.

Also, potions in this game are rare and have taste. And aroma.

Your character isn’t going to have one hundred thousand coins at the end of the game, nor murder two thousand creatures to save a village inhabited by 30 NPCs. They characters are not waiting for The Chosen One or a master of martial marts that can save them. You’re just someone who tries to change your own life by doing something risky, in a realm that’s filled with people who don’t even know if they want you here.

Your character is a part of the world they live in. And I think most RPGs don’t do a good work reflecting this idea. Immersion should be something more than the constant pursue of better graphics, cinematics and more “freedom”.

So while Roadwarden is still a game that includes combat, trade, exploration, unlocking new abilities and building your character, it’s all put in a new context. And there’s a good chance that a portion of RPG fans wouldn’t be satisfied with something this different. I try to encourage them to take a look... But I don’t want anyone to feel cheated.

Roadwarden as a Visual Novel

Roadwarden may also not be a perfect fit for many Visual Novel fans, even though it involves a lot of narration, descriptions and dialogues supported by limited visuals. Roadwarden has fewer gameplay elements than most RPGs, but way more than most VNs - it even introduces simple survival mechanics.

Also, the story is non-linear - it’s very complex (what doesn’t mean “long”) and modified by how the player moves around the map. Many VNs introduce story branching, but I’m pushing it unusually far. And, of course, Roadwarden has way more choices than most VNs, even though some of these choices are focused on role-playing alone and don’t impact the game’s mechanics.

Not only that, but the visual style and the lack of common tropes that are appealing for the core VN-fanbase can be a big problem. I was even asked a couple of times if my game will involve any romantic relationships. Sure, there are successful VNs that don’t involve porn (VA-11 Hall-A), romance (Ace Attorney), manga-style drawings (Cinders), nor Best Girls, so I’m not saying it’s impossible to make one and prosper. But it’s playing against the odds.

All these things push me into being very careful here, and I usually feel that I should say something like “it’s a Visual Novel, BUT...”

Roadwarden as an adventure game

So let’s make a step back. There’s an argument to be made that Visual Novels are a sub-genre of (or rather, an evolution of) a more interactive label. Here’s how Wikipedia defines the adventure games:

(...) a video game in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving.

That works, doesn’t it? It’s also fair to say that such a definition is very vague and doesn’t even exclude RPGs or games like Half-Life. Quest for Glory series, for example, is usually considered to have “RPG elements” or gets classified as a hybrid of both an adventure game and an RPG.

This vagueness opens adventure games for many subgenres, and Roadwarden graciously falls into a couple of them at once. It has scenes with text parsers, typical for interactive fiction, but its advanced dialogue choices could even categorize it as digital gamebook (CYOA-like). Probably a better option for us is a “graphic adventure game”, since there are Some graphics and few ways to interact with the game - parsers, in-game “buttons”, dialogue choices.

I have a pleasure to be a part of few adventure game communities and there’s usually a small range of titles that are constantly mentioned as the “classic” adventure games. Point & clicks (Monkey Island, Grim Fandango), graphic games with parsers commands (King’s Quest), sometimes games like Myst...

Text adventure games, while accepted, are not really discussed often. And it’s difficult to make silly memes about them, so they are a bit obsolete. However, a group focused specifically on text adventure games really doesn’t care about graphics.

It feels to me like there Should be a spectrum of graphics vs. text, and of visible interface vs. text parsers. But it’s not the case. Text adventures and graphic adventures are almost in different worlds - not because of what they are, but rather because of what communities surround them. And, once again, Roadwarden is in between. It’s not just a hybrid of an RPG and an adventure game, it’s also a hybrid of a text adventure game and a graphic adventure game.

Roadwarden is a hybrid, and that’s not sexy

In conclusion, here are some of the genres that I think are strongly present in Roadwarden:

· RPG;

· Visual Novel;

· text adventure game;

· graphic adventure game;

· digital gamebook.

Also, I heard opinions that “it feels a lot like a tabletop RPG”. What makes me happy, since it’s intentional.

Some of my game’s features are not exclusive to any specific genre. All of the labels I’ve listed tend to be story-heavy and support their plot with dialogues (or even narration), often include inventory management, allow you to role-play a protagonist and tend to use fantasy settings. Others, however, are genre specific: parsers, open world exploration, mechanically progressing protagonist, simplified visuals, resource management...

Roadwarden is a hybrid, what means it’s going to have a problem appealing to fans of a specific genre. Yet, at the same time, it’s a game that’s not restricted by its labels - and I don’t think genres should limit our designs. My game can include all the things it needs. It can be unusual, experiment and creatively look for new ways to explore.

I just hope I can earn your trust.

[snowingforest-blog]

Thumbnail Blaster Review and Bonus

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The Fannibal Age/Gender Gap

Since I started my blog for Hannibal on Tumblr back in 2013 (then quickly got rid of it because people on there are assholes) I’ve wondered why the fandom demographic for the show is so weird. It seems that it’s 99% female, for one, and for two, it seems a crap ton of the fandom are either super old women or very young girls. There seems to be an in-between group of 20 something-year-olds but mostly it’s just old women or people under the age of 18. The key demo for the show, if you bother to look it up, was something like 18-25-year-old men. Not, well, what it actually got in way of fans.

Part of this, I theorize, has to do with the fact that the show was marketed almost exclusively on Tumblr when it first started. After the first season it did branch out, kind of, to regular ads and TV promos but before that most of the advertising was done on Tumblr. This is only super weird because the demographic NBC was marketing to with that show (or should have been marketing to) was what I mentioned. 18-25-year-old men. It was a crime drama about an iconic horror villain. NBC would have known this before airing the show because networks know what their key demo is supposed to be, in order to be able to market to them and make money. Why they let Fuller primarily advertise the show on Tumblr (where the demographic of users is like 13-20-year-old females) I have no idea.

As for the “appeal” of the show to the young girls, spanning the ages of 14-20 or so I can see the appeal, sort of. Mostly because Tumblr is very well known for a few things such as:

Daddy issues

Fetishizing age gap in relationships where the female is vastly younger than the male

Weird looking but still insanely handsome European actors

Gay relationships (especially between two attractive men)

I can only fathom that Fuller knew this somehow, already, and since it was clear that he wanted to ship Hannibal and Will himself (and still does ship them himself) he decided the best market to advertise to were people who were going to agree with him. Still, the actual content of the show should have been very off putting at least to minors, given how gory and dark it is. It’s also dialogue-heavy, which (at least in my opinion) typically doesn’t attract teenage girls.

With how some of these girls behave, I question if a lot of them ever even watched the show. It’s possible they just saw the aesthetic on Tumblr (as well as all the gay fan art and whatever) and then pretended they watched it. Started to reblog pictures and art without ever having seen the show and then stuck with it because Mads Mikkelsen is “such a daddy” and so is Hugh Dancy. I do remember in season two there was a promo with Will Graham in the electric chair being executed and a bunch of these young girls were screaming “YOU NEED TO TAG TRIGGER ALERTS!”. This is when I found out that there were legitimately people in the fandom claiming to be triggered by GORE and BLOOD and they couldn’t SEE it on their blogs or else they’d have some kind of super panic attack. Which leads me back to wondering how they were even watching the show if they couldn’t see a screenshot of it or a gif of it without being triggered. It was just stuff in the show. The show you are allegedly a fan of. Why are you triggered by the content of this show that badly and if you are, how do you watch it and why are you still watching it?

If you go through some of the videos I posted (specifically the cringe compilations) you can see that there are clearly girls in the fandom that are not adults, and at least one of them looks like she’s 12. I started watching X-Files when I was 14 and though I’m sure I was not the target demographic for that, I also wasn’t being insane on the internet like a little shit head all the time and demanding everything have a trigger warning. I knew the content of the show and I enjoyed it.

Even more concerning is the fact that there are a crap ton of older women in the fandom. I mean ranging from ages 40-60 years old, consistently interacting with very young girls and minors. There is one blog, she claims to be a mother and an English professor who writes essays exclusively to her very young teenage girl following. Not just normal essays but ones about how it’s okay for Hannibal (an older male) to be in love with Abigail (a teenage girl and a minor in season one). Some of these women, in their 40s and 50s see absolutely no problem getting together with teenagers and reading them adult fan fiction. Explicit adult erotica. Because it’s Hannigram. These women see no issue with sharing their erotica with teenagers and I would assume in some cases minors because of what they post on their blogs. Since they all meet up in real life, a lot, and everyone knows what blog everyone runs, this would denote that 45 year old women are completely fine with people they know are minors, following their porn blogs and doing nothing about it.

There’s also, almost, no men in the fandom. At all. I mean directly in the fandom as in the hardcore members who attend the conventions. I won’t say there aren’t males who are fans of the show, but what I’m specifically talking about are the fannibals. The ones that shell out thousands of dollars each year to fly to Europe and hang out with their “Family” even though what they really mean is a cult. The point is if you look at these conventions 99% of what you will see in attendance there are females or female-identifying people or biological females. As in, there are a lot of female to male transgender people. It’s actually rare that I see a man at one of these events that is definitely a biological man and identifying as such. It’s like these conventions are overrun by women for some reason.

Then we have the fact that Bryan Fuller has to know this to some extent because he inappropriately interacts with the fandom and overly engages them not just on social media but in real life. He goes to lunch with them and hangs out with them as if they are real friends. This dude has to know he has 12-14-year-old fans watching Hannibal which means he’s entirely okay with promoting explicit gay erotic art to them on his timeline on Twitter which he does A LOT. I know it’s not his fault that minors follow him or like Hannigram but he does have the ability to control himself on his own social media especially since he has to be aware this is the case. He’s too involved with his fandom, it’s creepy, he knows who’s in it.

What we have here is a show that’s actual key demo was supposed to be adult men. It somehow gained a huge cult following of females, minors and middle-aged, and almost all of them are lesbians too. Or some kind of queer or trans or something. It’s a very weird demographic for that specific content. Once again, I’m specifically referencing the MOST DEVOTED AND MOST INSANE Fannibals. The really loud ones who cry that you are harassing them if you say Hannigram isn’t canon or something. Those people. The ones who made flower crowns the trademark symbol of the show, which a predominantly male fan base would not do.

It also begs the question of “where are the parents?”. Now, I get that parents can’t or really don’t control what kids watch on TV or on the internet anymore. They didn’t do it when I was a kid either. However, they have to be allowing their kids to go to these conventions? Taking them in some cases? How is that cool? Not to mention the fact that they apparently just never monitor what their children are doing on social media or what they are looking at. Never even checking in on their kid to see what kind of content they may be consuming. As much as my parents didn’t control what I watched on TV they at least looked at the shows I was watching and decided if it was okay for a 14 year old to watch or not. At the time it was annoying but I can see, as an adult, how it’s fair to do that. Maybe you don’t want your 14 year old exposed to murder and cannibalism. Maybe there’s a reason for the TV-MA rating on a show. Maybe you should check out what your kids are watching and who they are hanging out with at conventions.

At the end of the day, what we have here is a cult fandom of 40-60-year-old women regularly engaging with very young (sometimes minor) girls and sharing explicit gay fan fiction and erotic art with them, for some reason. No one thinks this is weird or creepy, and parents apparently just DON’T check on what their kids watch anymore? What the hell is going on?

[promonote355-blog]

Wheel Of Fortune Online Slots

Video slot released by IGT in 2005. For me, when I think of Vegas, I think of the fabulous Wheel of Fortune slot machine. Ranging from three reel versions, to huge jackpot games, right through to video slots and multiplayer versions, this game remains the biggest and most popular slot. Play wheel of fortune slots and win big with up to 720 ways to win! 3 or more trigger the triple extreme spin bonus. The Wheel of Fortune range from IGT is a huge hit for this developer and has become one of the most popular slots based around game shows in the world. Play the Wheel of Fortune Ruby Riches slot online, and you’ll see boldly styled playing card symbols, plus a ruby ring, jeweled bird, and bright red ruby.

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If you’ve ever enjoyed sitting back and watching an episode of Wheel of Fortune, you may be excited to learn that there are slot games based on this timeless classic. For as long as casinos have dotted the United States landscape, some form of a Wheel of Fortune slot game has been around. It’s one of the most unmistakable slot games on the market and has plenty of longtime fans.

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Legal casinos range from real money gambling casinos in states like New Jersey and Pennsylvania to free casinos that offer games to residents in every state. Since Wheel of Fortune is such a huge part of world culture, it’s also one of the most popular slot games to see at casinos.

Do Legal Online Casinos Offer Wheel Of Fortune Slots?

Many of the legal online casinos out there do offer Wheel of Fortune in one iteration or another. Some of them include offerings like Wheel of Fortune Triple Extreme Spin, which happens to be the most popular Wheel of Fortune slot game currently available. Others have older Wheel of Fortune games that might be simpler and less complex for someone new to slot gaming.

As one of the most successful game shows in history, it’s more surprising when a legal online casino doesn’t offer a Wheel of Fortune slots game. All of the games have a common theme and provide similarities to the game show, so fans can enjoy feeling like they are part of the action.

Do I Have To Sign Up To Play Free Slot Games Online?

Depending on where you choose to play free slot games like Wheel of Fortune, there may be a signup process or there may not be. Some websites will want you to register before you begin to play, while others will offer a demo so you can try the game before signing up, and some may have the game available without any registration.

If you are playing at a legal online casino from one of the states that has legalized paid casinos, you are going to be required to register before playing. There is a process that varies at each casino, but the actual registration typically takes no more than five minutes or so.

What Makes Wheel Of Fortune Slots Fun?

One of the best things about playing a Wheel of Fortune slot game is that it features symbols and bonuses that tie into the game show that so many people are fans of. Since this is a game show with millions of fans, it’s exciting to feel like you are a part of the magic that has made the show so popular for decades. It’s also nice that the game is ideal for those who are beginners to slot machines but also has features for more experienced gamers who want a challenge and extra excitement.

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The graphics that are used for the Wheel of Fortune slot game are reminiscent of the game show. One of the first things you will notice is that the wheel from the show is prominent and featured on the screen so you never forget what game you are playing. It also incorporates fun symbols shaped like different fruits that make this slot game feel like the traditional versions in a physical casino.

Adding into the excitement of the Wheel of Fortune slots comes from the music and sound effects, many of which are pulled from the game show. You can enjoy the sound of the wheel spinning, as well as special effects when you get winning reels to win coins or cash. It also has all the typical features of a traditional slot machine, so learning to play it isn’t difficult even for seasoned gamers.

It’s also nice that there are different Wheel of Fortune games so you can choose the number of reels you want to play, what sort of symbols appeal to you, and which bonuses will offer you the highest amount of winnings when you hit the jackpot. If you’ve always wanted to spin the wheel you see on television, this slot game makes that happen for you.

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We mentioned that there are a few different Wheel of Fortune slots above, so there are also several options when you want to play. All of these are attractive games that have fun bonuses and features to offer an exciting gaming experience, whether you’re playing for free or you’re hoping to win real money.

How Many Reels Does Wheel Of Fortune Slots Have?

In most cases, Wheel of Fortune slot games have a traditional number of reels at three. However, some machines offer five reels or have off-centered reels that look and play differently than other slots that might be available. Someone interested in a novelty experience reliving Wheel of Fortune from the television set can likely find an option that meets their needs.

For the slots with three reels, you’ll see that a spin symbol can appear on the third reel, which offers the authentic Wheel of Fortune experience. Even if nothing great shows up on the other reels, you still have a chance of spinning the wheel and adding to your coin or cash count when the last reel finishes spinning.

How Many Paylines Are Available On Wheel Of Fortune Slots?

While it depends on the exact slot machine, some of these slot games at online legal casinos have hundreds of paylines for tons of different ways to win. For example, Wheel of Fortune Triple Extreme Spin has 720 paylines, which means that you have a good chance of winning back part of what you bet on the slot game every time.

If you aren’t sure how many paylines are available, each of these games will have an information page that offers the answer. It will also provide information about what symbols are available and how much you can win when you get three or more of a specific symbol.

Progressive Slot Machines

Within the category of slot machines, some of them are designated as progressive slots. These games are configured slightly differently from traditional slot games and offer the chance to win a large amount of money or digital currency. The basic idea behind a progressive jackpot is that as more people play the game, the prize will increase. At some point, a player will get the entirety of the jackpot, which can be thousands or millions of dollars.

Does Wheel Of Fortune Offer A Progressive Jackpot?

Some of the Wheel of Fortune games have a progressive jackpot that offers the opportunity to win big if you happen to get lucky. However, most of these machines offer only a regular series of jackpots that can earn you increasingly large sums of coins or money, depending on whether you are playing for real money or fake currency.

How Do You Hit The Progressive Jackpot?

The way you can qualify to win a progressive jackpot on a Wheel of Fortune slot game is by playing max credits on a spin. Some games will require three credits to add you into the fold, while others might need only two. The smallest of these jackpots can start at $200,000 but will rise as you and other players continue to enjoy the game.

Is There A Minimum Amount To Bet?

Since there are several different Wheel of Fortune slot games, it’s hard to state what the minimum bet is. However, of those that offer a progressive jackpot, it typically starts at a $0.25 wager. Some of the games will have a minimum of one dollar or even five dollars and also begin with more enormous jackpots that you can win. Make sure to look over the game that you want to play to see how many coins (or how much cash) you need to start a game.

Are There Any Big Jackpot Wins?

There have been several massive jackpot wins on Wheel of Fortune slot games. Numerous people have won tens of thousands of dollars, while a few others have managed to receive a payout of more than a million dollars. There’s a potential to win a bundle when you stick it out with the Wheel of Fortune slot game at legal online casinos.

Wheel Of Fortune Slots Symbols

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While there are various Wheel of Fortune slot games, many of them offer the same symbols which makes them a complete set. We’ll be focusing on Wheel of Fortune Triple Extreme Spin while looking at symbols so you can get an idea of what to expect from it and other games that are based on the award-winning game show.

What Are The Symbols And What Do You Win?

Most of the traditional symbols on Wheel of Fortune are types of fruit, such as oranges, grapes, plums, and cherries. This is a common choice for slot games and can be more colorful and exciting than simple symbols like J for Jacks and A for Aces. However, there are also symbols like cars, expensive jewelry, and other items that harken back to the game show.

Bonus Round Symbols

The bonus symbol for this game comes in three varieties, each with a different sized Wheel of Fortune wheel on it. These symbols can only be found on the second through the fourth reel, so you won’t see them on the first or fifth. However, you need to get three on your screen at once to start the Triple Extreme Spin bonus.

Jackpot Bonus Game Symbols

The jackpot game is a little different than most jackpot bonuses, as should be expected for anything related to Wheel of Fortune. Rather than taking you to a separate screen where you spin more reels, the bonus game takes you to the Wheel of Fortune wheel. You get the chance to spin it and then wait to find out if you win the substantial jackpot.

Additional Bonus Symbols

There are also special wild symbols that simply show up in red with the word “Wild” across them. They may not be flashy or innovative, but they do offer a chance to match more symbols together. Scatter symbols are just as simple as the wilds, but if three of them show up on the reels, you get a Mini Wheel bonus.

Wheel Of Fortunes Free Slots Play FAQ

Is Wheel of Fortune the same as the real money game?

Yes. For the most part, this game is the same in a free version as it is in a real-money game. The same symbols are present, as well as the identical graphics and music. The gameplay is also the same for Wheel of Fortune, whether you are playing it for free or for actual money.

Is it legal to play free slots?

Yes. Free slot games are legal for those throughout the United States. There are also specific states that allow real-money slots like Wheel of Fortune as long as they are associated with a physical casino. It’s essential to make sure that the website or app that you use for slots is a legitimate one for the best possible experience.

Are the odds the same as the real money game?

It depends. In many cases, the odds are going to be the same whether you are playing for real money or not. However, sometimes the odds may be amplified, and in other cases, the odds might be lower. It’s always a good idea to check with the online casino you use to determine what the odds are for Wheel of Fortune or other slot games.

Can I play Wheel of Fortune without creating an account?

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Yes. Demo games and free games can sometimes be played without creating an account. However, this is going to vary based on where you play the Wheel of Fortune slots game. You’ll want to see what the requirements are on the website that offers the slot games to be sure about whether registration is necessary.

Can I play slots for free but win real money?

Yes. In some cases, free slots award real money when you accumulate a certain number of coins. However, there are also free slots that are just for fun and give you a way to pass the time without paying out actual money. To play Wheel of Fortune, Divine Fortune, and other slot games, make sure you check out the information on the website to determine whether real-money is offered.

Are free slots safe to play?

Yes. Free slots can be just as secure and safe to play as real-money slot games. The main thing to be aware of is whether the website is reputable or not. If you trust the brand or company behind the site, there’s no reason to worry about your safety when using free slots like Wheel of Fortune.

[severestrangerpersona]

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Last week, with the delivery of NX for Mac, Siemens PLM Software became the first to cross the finishing line (that is, the first among the four big names—Autodesk, Dassault, PTC, and Siemens—that dominate the CAD space). The new version is, according to the announcement, NX “with native support for Mac OS X on 64-bit Intel-based Macs.”. ‎Download apps by Siemens PLM Software, including Solid Edge Mobile Viewer, Teamcenter Mobility, Intosite, and many more. Your web browser must have JavaScript enabled in order for this application to display correctly. Link download Siemens PLM NX 12.0.0 for MacOS 64bit full crack forever. Siemens PLM NX 12.0.0 x64 full crack Working with Siemens PLM NX 12.0.0 full license forever. Description: Siemens NX is a leading CAD / CAM / CAE system built on the best technologies designed to create products of any complexity. The main task of the system ultimately. Before selecting, deploying and using NX we were facing numerous problems specifically related to design flexibility. We decided to invest in high-end software and chose NX for a variety of reasons, especially its sophisticated design capabilities and proven strengths in significantly reducing design time.

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Description: Siemens NX is a leading CAD / CAM / CAE system built on the best technologies designed to create products of any complexity. The main task of the system ultimately consists in reducing the cost of creating the product, improving its quality and reducing the time to market. This enables companies in a short time to return the investment spent on the purchase and implementation of Unigraphics. In Russia, Unigraphics has a strong position, thanks to the wide possibilities of using the system in various industries (aerospace, engine building, automotive, engineering, etc.) and the use of modern technologies that provide the user with advanced solutions in MCAD at all stages of product development. The success of the Unigraphics system in the Russian market is confirmed by the vast base of users, the successes they have achieved as a result of using the system. If you want to download Siemens PLM NX 12.0.0 full license, please click to DOWNLOAD symbol and complete check out a little help my website is maintained. The download link is appeared automatically when you complete check out. Please see youtube video for download instruction by open *.txt file and copy youtube video link paste to your browser If you don’t know how to download. Inside folder Siemens PLM NX 12.0.0 full, already have crack’s file and instruction how to install Siemens PLM NX 12.0.0 step by step. I guarantee you can install Siemens PLM NX 12.0.0 successfully if you follow that instruction. If you also can not install it or any problems, please contact to me by email: clickdown.org@gmail.com, then I will help you to install software by teamviewer. Thanks a lot

A reader of my post “NX 3D Graphics Performance” commented:

Nx Siemens For Macbook

“You should try NX on your Mac and see what you get. I bet it will be better than your AutoCAD for the Mac test.”

That seemed like a good idea. So I asked Siemens PLM for a second license of NX for my MacBook. Now if any of you have tried getting demo licenses of software from Siemens PLM you already know what a pain that can turn out to me. You need to sign agreements and amendments and then post them across, wait for a counter sign and stuff like that. Siemens PLM goes strictly by the book and for good reason. And after that is all done you will be lucky if you can actually get their wretched Flexnet licensing system to work the first time. It took me four days of back and forth with Siemens GTAC support to get my NX license up and running on my Windows workstation.

Anyways, as I am waiting for all the paperwork to go through, Siemens PLM sent me an internal document which is more like an FAQ to help its support personnel answer questions regarding NX on Mac. I found the contents of that document quite interesting. With their permission I am reproducing the document here.

Why did Siemens PLM Software decide to make NX available on Mac OS X?

We have had several requests for this from our customer base. We have made available to all customers the computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM) functionality of NX, for the popular Apple Mac OS X operating system running on any current 64-bit Intel-based Mac computer. Also available immediately is support for Teamcenter through rich client capabilities embedded in NX and the thin client based on Apple’s Safari Internet browser.

Can you describe the target market for this product?

There is a lot of buzz in the marketplace about MCAD for Mac, and we believe this market is underserved. Given the popularity of the Mac platform in Mechanical Design, Industrial Design and Styling area, as well as education, we see opportunities in those areas. We also have existing customers using the Mac platform who have expressed an interest in adding additional NX licenses on Mac OS X.

How does the performance of NX on Mac OS X compare to other environments like Windows, Unix and Linux?

Siemens Nx 11 For Mac

Performance should be very similar to other hardware platforms, given comparable hardware specs. In fact, several EAP participants have commented on the fast performance of NX for Mac.

What do you mean by “native support”?

Native support for Mac OS X means that NX functionality has been fully ported to this platform and has been developed to run natively, i.e. without any emulation software.

What about the user interface? Is it the “native” Mac UI?

The user interface is the same NX user interface that all of our Linux-based clients are using. NX for Mac uses X11/Motif to support the UI. X11 is bundled with Mac OS X and OpenMotif is a free download from IST Limited. We will continue to evaluate the business case for adopting the Mac UI based on sales volume and success of the platform. We employed a similar strategy with our Windows version of NX. That is, we started with a Motif based UI and gradually moved to a Windows UI as the business case dictated.

You mentioned full support for CAD/CAM. What about CAE?

We believe that the full NX CAD/CAM support will appeal to the vast majority of the potential users of NX on Mac OS X. However, we will continue to evaluate the business case for porting the CAE code based on user demand. A significant portion of our CAE support is based on third party products, most of which do not currently support Mac OS X.

What about Printing on MacOS? Is the SDI software supported?

NX produces PDF output which is the native format for Mac OS X.

Siemens Nx For Mac

What are the Hardware and Operating System Requirements?

The release of NX on Mac OS X supports Apple Mac 64 bit Intel based systems. This includes the MacBook, iMac and Mac Pro systems. All available graphics subsystems are supported.

The version of Mac OS X required to run NX is 10.5.5 or later. Version 10.6, also known as Snow Leopard, is certified and supported.

Does NX on Mac OS X take advantage of dual processors or dual core systems?

Nx By Siemens

NX7.5, which utilizes a newer version of our solid modeling kernel, called Parasolid, that supports multi-threading will take advantage of dual CPU systems or dual core processors. Due to threading performance limitations in Mac OS X, the threading is limited to two.

Ug Nx Mac

Is there support for 3D Input Devices?

Siemens Nx 10 For Mac Download

Support for 3Dconnexion input devices is available for NX on MacOS X through the use of drivers and software available directly from 3Dconnexion. Please use this link to download the software and get installation information. http://www.3dconnexion.com/labs/profile.php?id=29

Siemens Nx Help

If you have any other questions please leave a comment. I will try and get them answered for you.

[epackingvietnam]

How to Combine SEO and CRO for the Ultimate Lead Generation Strategy

Posted by IzabelleHundrev

If there’s one thing that most marketers have in common, it’s that we want more leads.

Sure, not all leads are good. Some are even downright unqualified. But leads are what drive business, and as a result, many of us are held accountable for generating more of them.

Out of all of the lead generation strategies out there, there’s one that I find particularly effective: search engine optimization (SEO) and conversion rate optimization (CRO) working together.

While this may seem obvious, you’d be surprised how many marketing teams are really good at one or the other, but fail to find the balance between both.

Below, I’ll share why it’s critical to find alignment between SEO and CRO, and how to do it so that both of these functions work together to drive qualified leads for your business.

SEO and CRO: Why you can’t have one without the other

Being discoverable is more important than it’s ever been. If a prospective buyer can’t find your business online, there’s a good chance that you’re leading them right into the arms of your competitors.

By now, most businesses understand the importance of having a presence in organic search results. SEO is more than just a buzzword, it’s a given. And it’s critical to growing brand awareness and driving traffic to your website.

But there’s a catch.

Traffic doesn’t magically turn into paying customers and revenue. Ask yourself, when someone clicks on an organic result and lands on your website, what kind of browsing experience are they having? Is your site easy to navigate? Are your web pages optimized to guide the user towards an action?

Traffic without conversions is essentially just a vanity metric. CRO is the piece that ties it all together.

Put simply, conversion rate optimization is the process of optimizing a web page to lead a user toward a desired action. Typically, this action comes in the form of a conversion. This can be a demo request, email newsletter sign up, webinar registration — you get the gist.

The idea here is to entice the user to move further down the marketing funnel in some way.

SEO is what brings people to your website and CRO is what gets them to convert.

It sounds like a match made in marketing heaven, but achieving alignment is often easier said than done.

Start with a strong SEO foundation

I could write thousands of words on what it takes to build a strong SEO foundation for your website, but that’s not what this article is about. With that being said, a discussion about the relationship between SEO and CRO wouldn’t be complete without a mention of it.

Earlier, I said you can’t have SEO without CRO. But this goes both ways.

While it’s true that conversions are a meaningful standalone metric, you can’t have conversions without web visitors. Plus, experimentation and testing is a big part of what makes CRO so effective. It can be difficult to run tests if your website doesn’t get a healthy amount of traffic. More on this later.

A successful SEO strategy fuels the inbound marketing engine to bring new prospective buyers to your site on a regular basis. With SEO, your entire marketing team could be on PTO for a week and your website will still be generating traffic on its own.

If you’re still working to build a powerful SEO strategy, there are countless SEO resources that are available to you.

Be intentional about your content

Content and SEO go hand-in-hand.

When a buyer goes to a search engine, they want to find content that brings them an answer to their question.

As marketers, we want to create that content and match it to a buyer’s specific search query. We do this through extensive keyword research and on-page optimization to ensure that every piece of content that’s published has a likelihood to rank on page one.

Although this approach to content creation is effective at generating organic traffic, sometimes we forget to think about how a piece can drive impact beyond just ranking number one for a keyword.

CRO doesn’t just apply to landing pages or core solutions pages. There are elements of CRO that apply to your long-from content as well.

When strategizing topic ideas and doing keyword research, assign a goal to every piece of content that you publish. Ask yourself, “what action do I want the reader to take when they land on this page?”

Build this goal into your content calendar and incorporate it as a call-to-action (CTA) on each page that you publish.

As always, be mindful of the reader and their position in the funnel. Someone that lands on “The Beginner’s Guide to Marketing Automation” probably isn’t ready for a live demo just yet.

Instead, guide that reader toward a less intimidating action, such as signing up for your email newsletter. A good CTA shouldn’t feel spammy or overly promotional, it should provide additional value to the reader overall.

Following this process forces you to think beyond just traffic — you’re focusing on conversions before you even hit the “publish” button.

Test, optimize, and repeat

User experience (UX) is at the heart of both SEO and CRO.

If your website is slow, glitchy, and hard to navigate, it’s going to negatively affect both traffic and conversions. The goal is to continuously refine your website to ensure that anyone who lands on it has a frictionless browsing experience — thereby increasing their likelihood to convert.

This is why split testing is so important.

Split testing, sometimes referred to as A/B testing, is the process of testing multiple variants of a web page to determine which one converts at a higher rate. This is a core practice among marketers who specialize in CRO. You can test different types of lead forms, CTA buttons, copy variants, and even page layouts.

Here’s an example of a split test between a single and multi-step lead form:

Some SEOs may be hesitant to run split tests because they worry it will negatively affect organic rankings. The truth is that Google not only encourages testing, but it even has its own tool that helps marketers to run split tests.

As long as you’re abiding by Google’s webmaster guidelines, you should see no major negative impact on organic traffic due to testing.

It’s also worth noting that you can’t reach statistical significance in your split tests without a big enough sample size. In other words, you need traffic to have accurate test results.

There’s no hard and fast rule for what counts as “enough traffic” but the general consensus is that your web visitors should be in the thousands, at least. I recommend using this sample size calculator tool to get a better idea of a number that’s unique to your website.

This is yet another example of how closely intertwined SEO and CRO truly are. Earlier we discussed how important it is to start with a solid foundation in SEO, now you know how it fits into the bigger picture.

The common thread here?

CRO and SEO have a symbiotic relationship. What’s good for one is good for the other. And both are working toward the same common goal of generating revenue.

Identify marketing funnel gaps

When looking at the big picture of your inbound marketing efforts, SEO and CRO can help you identify and fix any gaps in your funnel.

Let’s say you have a product page that ranks #1 for its primary keyword and generates lots of traffic. But, when you dig into the conversion data, you notice that only a small percentage of users that land on that page actually convert.

This is a red flag that something is off with the page.

It could be the messaging, the offer, or the lead form. Just because it works for Google doesn’t mean it’s working for your audience. And their opinion is the only one that matters.

This goes the other way around too.

Say you have a product page that’s converting at a high rate, but you notice that it’s one of the lowest-trafficked pages on your site. This should alert you to revisit the content on that page and identify opportunities to re-optimize it. If you don’t, there are likely hundreds of potential conversions that you’re missing out on.

Final thoughts

SEO and CRO is kind of like the digital marketing version of the chicken and the egg. You can’t be really good at one without the other.

Realistically, it doesn’t matter what came first. What does matter is achieving alignment between these two key marketing tactics. By doing so, your website has the potential to become a major driver of leads and revenue for your business.

If there’s one thing you take away from this article, it’s to integrate your SEO and CRO efforts and view them as one cohesive part of your lead generation strategy.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

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How to Combine SEO and CRO for the Ultimate Lead Generation Strategy

Posted by IzabelleHundrev

If there’s one thing that most marketers have in common, it’s that we want more leads.

Sure, not all leads are good. Some are even downright unqualified. But leads are what drive business, and as a result, many of us are held accountable for generating more of them.

Out of all of the lead generation strategies out there, there’s one that I find particularly effective: search engine optimization (SEO) and conversion rate optimization (CRO) working together.

While this may seem obvious, you’d be surprised how many marketing teams are really good at one or the other, but fail to find the balance between both.

Below, I’ll share why it’s critical to find alignment between SEO and CRO, and how to do it so that both of these functions work together to drive qualified leads for your business.

SEO and CRO: Why you can’t have one without the other

Being discoverable is more important than it’s ever been. If a prospective buyer can’t find your business online, there’s a good chance that you’re leading them right into the arms of your competitors.

By now, most businesses understand the importance of having a presence in organic search results. SEO is more than just a buzzword, it’s a given. And it’s critical to growing brand awareness and driving traffic to your website.

But there’s a catch.

Traffic doesn’t magically turn into paying customers and revenue. Ask yourself, when someone clicks on an organic result and lands on your website, what kind of browsing experience are they having? Is your site easy to navigate? Are your web pages optimized to guide the user towards an action?

Traffic without conversions is essentially just a vanity metric. CRO is the piece that ties it all together.

Put simply, conversion rate optimization is the process of optimizing a web page to lead a user toward a desired action. Typically, this action comes in the form of a conversion. This can be a demo request, email newsletter sign up, webinar registration — you get the gist.

The idea here is to entice the user to move further down the marketing funnel in some way.

SEO is what brings people to your website and CRO is what gets them to convert.

It sounds like a match made in marketing heaven, but achieving alignment is often easier said than done.

Start with a strong SEO foundation

I could write thousands of words on what it takes to build a strong SEO foundation for your website, but that’s not what this article is about. With that being said, a discussion about the relationship between SEO and CRO wouldn’t be complete without a mention of it.

Earlier, I said you can’t have SEO without CRO. But this goes both ways.

While it’s true that conversions are a meaningful standalone metric, you can’t have conversions without web visitors. Plus, experimentation and testing is a big part of what makes CRO so effective. It can be difficult to run tests if your website doesn’t get a healthy amount of traffic. More on this later.

A successful SEO strategy fuels the inbound marketing engine to bring new prospective buyers to your site on a regular basis. With SEO, your entire marketing team could be on PTO for a week and your website will still be generating traffic on its own.

If you’re still working to build a powerful SEO strategy, there are countless SEO resources that are available to you.

Be intentional about your content

Content and SEO go hand-in-hand.

When a buyer goes to a search engine, they want to find content that brings them an answer to their question.

As marketers, we want to create that content and match it to a buyer’s specific search query. We do this through extensive keyword research and on-page optimization to ensure that every piece of content that’s published has a likelihood to rank on page one.

Although this approach to content creation is effective at generating organic traffic, sometimes we forget to think about how a piece can drive impact beyond just ranking number one for a keyword.

CRO doesn’t just apply to landing pages or core solutions pages. There are elements of CRO that apply to your long-from content as well.

When strategizing topic ideas and doing keyword research, assign a goal to every piece of content that you publish. Ask yourself, “what action do I want the reader to take when they land on this page?”

Build this goal into your content calendar and incorporate it as a call-to-action (CTA) on each page that you publish.

As always, be mindful of the reader and their position in the funnel. Someone that lands on “The Beginner’s Guide to Marketing Automation” probably isn’t ready for a live demo just yet.

Instead, guide that reader toward a less intimidating action, such as signing up for your email newsletter. A good CTA shouldn’t feel spammy or overly promotional, it should provide additional value to the reader overall.

Following this process forces you to think beyond just traffic — you’re focusing on conversions before you even hit the “publish” button.

Test, optimize, and repeat

User experience (UX) is at the heart of both SEO and CRO.

If your website is slow, glitchy, and hard to navigate, it’s going to negatively affect both traffic and conversions. The goal is to continuously refine your website to ensure that anyone who lands on it has a frictionless browsing experience — thereby increasing their likelihood to convert.

This is why split testing is so important.

Split testing, sometimes referred to as A/B testing, is the process of testing multiple variants of a web page to determine which one converts at a higher rate. This is a core practice among marketers who specialize in CRO. You can test different types of lead forms, CTA buttons, copy variants, and even page layouts.

Here’s an example of a split test between a single and multi-step lead form:

Some SEOs may be hesitant to run split tests because they worry it will negatively affect organic rankings. The truth is that Google not only encourages testing, but it even has its own tool that helps marketers to run split tests.

As long as you’re abiding by Google’s webmaster guidelines, you should see no major negative impact on organic traffic due to testing.

It’s also worth noting that you can’t reach statistical significance in your split tests without a big enough sample size. In other words, you need traffic to have accurate test results.

There’s no hard and fast rule for what counts as “enough traffic” but the general consensus is that your web visitors should be in the thousands, at least. I recommend using this sample size calculator tool to get a better idea of a number that’s unique to your website.

This is yet another example of how closely intertwined SEO and CRO truly are. Earlier we discussed how important it is to start with a solid foundation in SEO, now you know how it fits into the bigger picture.

The common thread here?

CRO and SEO have a symbiotic relationship. What’s good for one is good for the other. And both are working toward the same common goal of generating revenue.

Identify marketing funnel gaps

When looking at the big picture of your inbound marketing efforts, SEO and CRO can help you identify and fix any gaps in your funnel.

Let’s say you have a product page that ranks #1 for its primary keyword and generates lots of traffic. But, when you dig into the conversion data, you notice that only a small percentage of users that land on that page actually convert.

This is a red flag that something is off with the page.

It could be the messaging, the offer, or the lead form. Just because it works for Google doesn’t mean it’s working for your audience. And their opinion is the only one that matters.

This goes the other way around too.

Say you have a product page that’s converting at a high rate, but you notice that it’s one of the lowest-trafficked pages on your site. This should alert you to revisit the content on that page and identify opportunities to re-optimize it. If you don’t, there are likely hundreds of potential conversions that you’re missing out on.

Final thoughts

SEO and CRO is kind of like the digital marketing version of the chicken and the egg. You can’t be really good at one without the other.

Realistically, it doesn’t matter what came first. What does matter is achieving alignment between these two key marketing tactics. By doing so, your website has the potential to become a major driver of leads and revenue for your business.

If there’s one thing you take away from this article, it’s to integrate your SEO and CRO efforts and view them as one cohesive part of your lead generation strategy.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[nutrifami]

How to Combine SEO and CRO for the Ultimate Lead Generation Strategy

Posted by IzabelleHundrev

If there’s one thing that most marketers have in common, it’s that we want more leads.

Sure, not all leads are good. Some are even downright unqualified. But leads are what drive business, and as a result, many of us are held accountable for generating more of them.

Out of all of the lead generation strategies out there, there’s one that I find particularly effective: search engine optimization (SEO) and conversion rate optimization (CRO) working together.

While this may seem obvious, you’d be surprised how many marketing teams are really good at one or the other, but fail to find the balance between both.

Below, I’ll share why it’s critical to find alignment between SEO and CRO, and how to do it so that both of these functions work together to drive qualified leads for your business.

SEO and CRO: Why you can’t have one without the other

Being discoverable is more important than it’s ever been. If a prospective buyer can’t find your business online, there’s a good chance that you’re leading them right into the arms of your competitors.

By now, most businesses understand the importance of having a presence in organic search results. SEO is more than just a buzzword, it’s a given. And it’s critical to growing brand awareness and driving traffic to your website.

But there’s a catch.

Traffic doesn’t magically turn into paying customers and revenue. Ask yourself, when someone clicks on an organic result and lands on your website, what kind of browsing experience are they having? Is your site easy to navigate? Are your web pages optimized to guide the user towards an action?

Traffic without conversions is essentially just a vanity metric. CRO is the piece that ties it all together.

Put simply, conversion rate optimization is the process of optimizing a web page to lead a user toward a desired action. Typically, this action comes in the form of a conversion. This can be a demo request, email newsletter sign up, webinar registration — you get the gist.

The idea here is to entice the user to move further down the marketing funnel in some way.

SEO is what brings people to your website and CRO is what gets them to convert.

It sounds like a match made in marketing heaven, but achieving alignment is often easier said than done.

Start with a strong SEO foundation

I could write thousands of words on what it takes to build a strong SEO foundation for your website, but that’s not what this article is about. With that being said, a discussion about the relationship between SEO and CRO wouldn’t be complete without a mention of it.

Earlier, I said you can’t have SEO without CRO. But this goes both ways.

While it’s true that conversions are a meaningful standalone metric, you can’t have conversions without web visitors. Plus, experimentation and testing is a big part of what makes CRO so effective. It can be difficult to run tests if your website doesn’t get a healthy amount of traffic. More on this later.

A successful SEO strategy fuels the inbound marketing engine to bring new prospective buyers to your site on a regular basis. With SEO, your entire marketing team could be on PTO for a week and your website will still be generating traffic on its own.

If you’re still working to build a powerful SEO strategy, there are countless SEO resources that are available to you.

Be intentional about your content

Content and SEO go hand-in-hand.

When a buyer goes to a search engine, they want to find content that brings them an answer to their question.

As marketers, we want to create that content and match it to a buyer’s specific search query. We do this through extensive keyword research and on-page optimization to ensure that every piece of content that’s published has a likelihood to rank on page one.

Although this approach to content creation is effective at generating organic traffic, sometimes we forget to think about how a piece can drive impact beyond just ranking number one for a keyword.

CRO doesn’t just apply to landing pages or core solutions pages. There are elements of CRO that apply to your long-from content as well.

When strategizing topic ideas and doing keyword research, assign a goal to every piece of content that you publish. Ask yourself, “what action do I want the reader to take when they land on this page?”

Build this goal into your content calendar and incorporate it as a call-to-action (CTA) on each page that you publish.

As always, be mindful of the reader and their position in the funnel. Someone that lands on “The Beginner’s Guide to Marketing Automation” probably isn’t ready for a live demo just yet.

Instead, guide that reader toward a less intimidating action, such as signing up for your email newsletter. A good CTA shouldn’t feel spammy or overly promotional, it should provide additional value to the reader overall.

Following this process forces you to think beyond just traffic — you’re focusing on conversions before you even hit the “publish” button.

Test, optimize, and repeat

User experience (UX) is at the heart of both SEO and CRO.

If your website is slow, glitchy, and hard to navigate, it’s going to negatively affect both traffic and conversions. The goal is to continuously refine your website to ensure that anyone who lands on it has a frictionless browsing experience — thereby increasing their likelihood to convert.

This is why split testing is so important.

Split testing, sometimes referred to as A/B testing, is the process of testing multiple variants of a web page to determine which one converts at a higher rate. This is a core practice among marketers who specialize in CRO. You can test different types of lead forms, CTA buttons, copy variants, and even page layouts.

Here’s an example of a split test between a single and multi-step lead form:

Some SEOs may be hesitant to run split tests because they worry it will negatively affect organic rankings. The truth is that Google not only encourages testing, but it even has its own tool that helps marketers to run split tests.

As long as you’re abiding by Google’s webmaster guidelines, you should see no major negative impact on organic traffic due to testing.

It’s also worth noting that you can’t reach statistical significance in your split tests without a big enough sample size. In other words, you need traffic to have accurate test results.

There’s no hard and fast rule for what counts as “enough traffic” but the general consensus is that your web visitors should be in the thousands, at least. I recommend using this sample size calculator tool to get a better idea of a number that’s unique to your website.

This is yet another example of how closely intertwined SEO and CRO truly are. Earlier we discussed how important it is to start with a solid foundation in SEO, now you know how it fits into the bigger picture.

The common thread here?

CRO and SEO have a symbiotic relationship. What’s good for one is good for the other. And both are working toward the same common goal of generating revenue.

Identify marketing funnel gaps

When looking at the big picture of your inbound marketing efforts, SEO and CRO can help you identify and fix any gaps in your funnel.

Let’s say you have a product page that ranks #1 for its primary keyword and generates lots of traffic. But, when you dig into the conversion data, you notice that only a small percentage of users that land on that page actually convert.

This is a red flag that something is off with the page.

It could be the messaging, the offer, or the lead form. Just because it works for Google doesn’t mean it’s working for your audience. And their opinion is the only one that matters.

This goes the other way around too.

Say you have a product page that’s converting at a high rate, but you notice that it’s one of the lowest-trafficked pages on your site. This should alert you to revisit the content on that page and identify opportunities to re-optimize it. If you don’t, there are likely hundreds of potential conversions that you’re missing out on.

Final thoughts

SEO and CRO is kind of like the digital marketing version of the chicken and the egg. You can’t be really good at one without the other.

Realistically, it doesn’t matter what came first. What does matter is achieving alignment between these two key marketing tactics. By doing so, your website has the potential to become a major driver of leads and revenue for your business.

If there’s one thing you take away from this article, it’s to integrate your SEO and CRO efforts and view them as one cohesive part of your lead generation strategy.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[xaydungtruonggia]

How to Combine SEO and CRO for the Ultimate Lead Generation Strategy

Posted by IzabelleHundrev

If there’s one thing that most marketers have in common, it’s that we want more leads.

Sure, not all leads are good. Some are even downright unqualified. But leads are what drive business, and as a result, many of us are held accountable for generating more of them.

Out of all of the lead generation strategies out there, there’s one that I find particularly effective: search engine optimization (SEO) and conversion rate optimization (CRO) working together.

While this may seem obvious, you’d be surprised how many marketing teams are really good at one or the other, but fail to find the balance between both.

Below, I’ll share why it’s critical to find alignment between SEO and CRO, and how to do it so that both of these functions work together to drive qualified leads for your business.

SEO and CRO: Why you can’t have one without the other

Being discoverable is more important than it’s ever been. If a prospective buyer can’t find your business online, there’s a good chance that you’re leading them right into the arms of your competitors.

By now, most businesses understand the importance of having a presence in organic search results. SEO is more than just a buzzword, it’s a given. And it’s critical to growing brand awareness and driving traffic to your website.

But there’s a catch.

Traffic doesn’t magically turn into paying customers and revenue. Ask yourself, when someone clicks on an organic result and lands on your website, what kind of browsing experience are they having? Is your site easy to navigate? Are your web pages optimized to guide the user towards an action?

Traffic without conversions is essentially just a vanity metric. CRO is the piece that ties it all together.

Put simply, conversion rate optimization is the process of optimizing a web page to lead a user toward a desired action. Typically, this action comes in the form of a conversion. This can be a demo request, email newsletter sign up, webinar registration — you get the gist.

The idea here is to entice the user to move further down the marketing funnel in some way.

SEO is what brings people to your website and CRO is what gets them to convert.

It sounds like a match made in marketing heaven, but achieving alignment is often easier said than done.

Start with a strong SEO foundation

I could write thousands of words on what it takes to build a strong SEO foundation for your website, but that’s not what this article is about. With that being said, a discussion about the relationship between SEO and CRO wouldn’t be complete without a mention of it.

Earlier, I said you can’t have SEO without CRO. But this goes both ways.

While it’s true that conversions are a meaningful standalone metric, you can’t have conversions without web visitors. Plus, experimentation and testing is a big part of what makes CRO so effective. It can be difficult to run tests if your website doesn’t get a healthy amount of traffic. More on this later.

A successful SEO strategy fuels the inbound marketing engine to bring new prospective buyers to your site on a regular basis. With SEO, your entire marketing team could be on PTO for a week and your website will still be generating traffic on its own.

If you’re still working to build a powerful SEO strategy, there are countless SEO resources that are available to you.

Be intentional about your content

Content and SEO go hand-in-hand.

When a buyer goes to a search engine, they want to find content that brings them an answer to their question.

As marketers, we want to create that content and match it to a buyer’s specific search query. We do this through extensive keyword research and on-page optimization to ensure that every piece of content that’s published has a likelihood to rank on page one.

Although this approach to content creation is effective at generating organic traffic, sometimes we forget to think about how a piece can drive impact beyond just ranking number one for a keyword.

CRO doesn’t just apply to landing pages or core solutions pages. There are elements of CRO that apply to your long-from content as well.

When strategizing topic ideas and doing keyword research, assign a goal to every piece of content that you publish. Ask yourself, “what action do I want the reader to take when they land on this page?”

Build this goal into your content calendar and incorporate it as a call-to-action (CTA) on each page that you publish.

As always, be mindful of the reader and their position in the funnel. Someone that lands on “The Beginner’s Guide to Marketing Automation” probably isn’t ready for a live demo just yet.

Instead, guide that reader toward a less intimidating action, such as signing up for your email newsletter. A good CTA shouldn’t feel spammy or overly promotional, it should provide additional value to the reader overall.

Following this process forces you to think beyond just traffic — you’re focusing on conversions before you even hit the “publish” button.

Test, optimize, and repeat

User experience (UX) is at the heart of both SEO and CRO.

If your website is slow, glitchy, and hard to navigate, it’s going to negatively affect both traffic and conversions. The goal is to continuously refine your website to ensure that anyone who lands on it has a frictionless browsing experience — thereby increasing their likelihood to convert.

This is why split testing is so important.

Split testing, sometimes referred to as A/B testing, is the process of testing multiple variants of a web page to determine which one converts at a higher rate. This is a core practice among marketers who specialize in CRO. You can test different types of lead forms, CTA buttons, copy variants, and even page layouts.

Here’s an example of a split test between a single and multi-step lead form:

Some SEOs may be hesitant to run split tests because they worry it will negatively affect organic rankings. The truth is that Google not only encourages testing, but it even has its own tool that helps marketers to run split tests.

As long as you’re abiding by Google’s webmaster guidelines, you should see no major negative impact on organic traffic due to testing.

It’s also worth noting that you can’t reach statistical significance in your split tests without a big enough sample size. In other words, you need traffic to have accurate test results.

There’s no hard and fast rule for what counts as “enough traffic” but the general consensus is that your web visitors should be in the thousands, at least. I recommend using this sample size calculator tool to get a better idea of a number that’s unique to your website.

This is yet another example of how closely intertwined SEO and CRO truly are. Earlier we discussed how important it is to start with a solid foundation in SEO, now you know how it fits into the bigger picture.

The common thread here?

CRO and SEO have a symbiotic relationship. What’s good for one is good for the other. And both are working toward the same common goal of generating revenue.

Identify marketing funnel gaps

When looking at the big picture of your inbound marketing efforts, SEO and CRO can help you identify and fix any gaps in your funnel.

Let’s say you have a product page that ranks #1 for its primary keyword and generates lots of traffic. But, when you dig into the conversion data, you notice that only a small percentage of users that land on that page actually convert.

This is a red flag that something is off with the page.

It could be the messaging, the offer, or the lead form. Just because it works for Google doesn’t mean it’s working for your audience. And their opinion is the only one that matters.

This goes the other way around too.

Say you have a product page that’s converting at a high rate, but you notice that it’s one of the lowest-trafficked pages on your site. This should alert you to revisit the content on that page and identify opportunities to re-optimize it. If you don’t, there are likely hundreds of potential conversions that you’re missing out on.

Final thoughts

SEO and CRO is kind of like the digital marketing version of the chicken and the egg. You can’t be really good at one without the other.

Realistically, it doesn’t matter what came first. What does matter is achieving alignment between these two key marketing tactics. By doing so, your website has the potential to become a major driver of leads and revenue for your business.

If there’s one thing you take away from this article, it’s to integrate your SEO and CRO efforts and view them as one cohesive part of your lead generation strategy.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[ductrungnguyen87]

How to Combine SEO and CRO for the Ultimate Lead Generation Strategy

Posted by IzabelleHundrev

If there’s one thing that most marketers have in common, it’s that we want more leads.

Sure, not all leads are good. Some are even downright unqualified. But leads are what drive business, and as a result, many of us are held accountable for generating more of them.

Out of all of the lead generation strategies out there, there’s one that I find particularly effective: search engine optimization (SEO) and conversion rate optimization (CRO) working together.

While this may seem obvious, you’d be surprised how many marketing teams are really good at one or the other, but fail to find the balance between both.

Below, I’ll share why it’s critical to find alignment between SEO and CRO, and how to do it so that both of these functions work together to drive qualified leads for your business.

SEO and CRO: Why you can’t have one without the other

Being discoverable is more important than it’s ever been. If a prospective buyer can’t find your business online, there’s a good chance that you’re leading them right into the arms of your competitors.

By now, most businesses understand the importance of having a presence in organic search results. SEO is more than just a buzzword, it’s a given. And it’s critical to growing brand awareness and driving traffic to your website.

But there’s a catch.

Traffic doesn’t magically turn into paying customers and revenue. Ask yourself, when someone clicks on an organic result and lands on your website, what kind of browsing experience are they having? Is your site easy to navigate? Are your web pages optimized to guide the user towards an action?

Traffic without conversions is essentially just a vanity metric. CRO is the piece that ties it all together.

Put simply, conversion rate optimization is the process of optimizing a web page to lead a user toward a desired action. Typically, this action comes in the form of a conversion. This can be a demo request, email newsletter sign up, webinar registration — you get the gist.

The idea here is to entice the user to move further down the marketing funnel in some way.

SEO is what brings people to your website and CRO is what gets them to convert.

It sounds like a match made in marketing heaven, but achieving alignment is often easier said than done.

Start with a strong SEO foundation

I could write thousands of words on what it takes to build a strong SEO foundation for your website, but that’s not what this article is about. With that being said, a discussion about the relationship between SEO and CRO wouldn’t be complete without a mention of it.

Earlier, I said you can’t have SEO without CRO. But this goes both ways.

While it’s true that conversions are a meaningful standalone metric, you can’t have conversions without web visitors. Plus, experimentation and testing is a big part of what makes CRO so effective. It can be difficult to run tests if your website doesn’t get a healthy amount of traffic. More on this later.

A successful SEO strategy fuels the inbound marketing engine to bring new prospective buyers to your site on a regular basis. With SEO, your entire marketing team could be on PTO for a week and your website will still be generating traffic on its own.

If you’re still working to build a powerful SEO strategy, there are countless SEO resources that are available to you.

Be intentional about your content

Content and SEO go hand-in-hand.

When a buyer goes to a search engine, they want to find content that brings them an answer to their question.

As marketers, we want to create that content and match it to a buyer’s specific search query. We do this through extensive keyword research and on-page optimization to ensure that every piece of content that’s published has a likelihood to rank on page one.

Although this approach to content creation is effective at generating organic traffic, sometimes we forget to think about how a piece can drive impact beyond just ranking number one for a keyword.

CRO doesn’t just apply to landing pages or core solutions pages. There are elements of CRO that apply to your long-from content as well.

When strategizing topic ideas and doing keyword research, assign a goal to every piece of content that you publish. Ask yourself, “what action do I want the reader to take when they land on this page?”

Build this goal into your content calendar and incorporate it as a call-to-action (CTA) on each page that you publish.

As always, be mindful of the reader and their position in the funnel. Someone that lands on “The Beginner’s Guide to Marketing Automation” probably isn’t ready for a live demo just yet.

Instead, guide that reader toward a less intimidating action, such as signing up for your email newsletter. A good CTA shouldn’t feel spammy or overly promotional, it should provide additional value to the reader overall.

Following this process forces you to think beyond just traffic — you’re focusing on conversions before you even hit the “publish” button.

Test, optimize, and repeat

User experience (UX) is at the heart of both SEO and CRO.

If your website is slow, glitchy, and hard to navigate, it’s going to negatively affect both traffic and conversions. The goal is to continuously refine your website to ensure that anyone who lands on it has a frictionless browsing experience — thereby increasing their likelihood to convert.

This is why split testing is so important.

Split testing, sometimes referred to as A/B testing, is the process of testing multiple variants of a web page to determine which one converts at a higher rate. This is a core practice among marketers who specialize in CRO. You can test different types of lead forms, CTA buttons, copy variants, and even page layouts.

Here’s an example of a split test between a single and multi-step lead form:

Some SEOs may be hesitant to run split tests because they worry it will negatively affect organic rankings. The truth is that Google not only encourages testing, but it even has its own tool that helps marketers to run split tests.

As long as you’re abiding by Google’s webmaster guidelines, you should see no major negative impact on organic traffic due to testing.

It’s also worth noting that you can’t reach statistical significance in your split tests without a big enough sample size. In other words, you need traffic to have accurate test results.

There’s no hard and fast rule for what counts as “enough traffic” but the general consensus is that your web visitors should be in the thousands, at least. I recommend using this sample size calculator tool to get a better idea of a number that’s unique to your website.

This is yet another example of how closely intertwined SEO and CRO truly are. Earlier we discussed how important it is to start with a solid foundation in SEO, now you know how it fits into the bigger picture.

The common thread here?

CRO and SEO have a symbiotic relationship. What’s good for one is good for the other. And both are working toward the same common goal of generating revenue.

Identify marketing funnel gaps

When looking at the big picture of your inbound marketing efforts, SEO and CRO can help you identify and fix any gaps in your funnel.

Let’s say you have a product page that ranks #1 for its primary keyword and generates lots of traffic. But, when you dig into the conversion data, you notice that only a small percentage of users that land on that page actually convert.

This is a red flag that something is off with the page.

It could be the messaging, the offer, or the lead form. Just because it works for Google doesn’t mean it’s working for your audience. And their opinion is the only one that matters.

This goes the other way around too.

Say you have a product page that’s converting at a high rate, but you notice that it’s one of the lowest-trafficked pages on your site. This should alert you to revisit the content on that page and identify opportunities to re-optimize it. If you don’t, there are likely hundreds of potential conversions that you’re missing out on.

Final thoughts

SEO and CRO is kind of like the digital marketing version of the chicken and the egg. You can’t be really good at one without the other.

Realistically, it doesn’t matter what came first. What does matter is achieving alignment between these two key marketing tactics. By doing so, your website has the potential to become a major driver of leads and revenue for your business.

If there’s one thing you take away from this article, it’s to integrate your SEO and CRO efforts and view them as one cohesive part of your lead generation strategy.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[camerasieunhovn]

How to Combine SEO and CRO for the Ultimate Lead Generation Strategy

Posted by IzabelleHundrev

If there’s one thing that most marketers have in common, it’s that we want more leads.

Sure, not all leads are good. Some are even downright unqualified. But leads are what drive business, and as a result, many of us are held accountable for generating more of them.

Out of all of the lead generation strategies out there, there’s one that I find particularly effective: search engine optimization (SEO) and conversion rate optimization (CRO) working together.

While this may seem obvious, you’d be surprised how many marketing teams are really good at one or the other, but fail to find the balance between both.

Below, I’ll share why it’s critical to find alignment between SEO and CRO, and how to do it so that both of these functions work together to drive qualified leads for your business.

SEO and CRO: Why you can’t have one without the other

Being discoverable is more important than it’s ever been. If a prospective buyer can’t find your business online, there’s a good chance that you’re leading them right into the arms of your competitors.

By now, most businesses understand the importance of having a presence in organic search results. SEO is more than just a buzzword, it’s a given. And it’s critical to growing brand awareness and driving traffic to your website.

But there’s a catch.

Traffic doesn’t magically turn into paying customers and revenue. Ask yourself, when someone clicks on an organic result and lands on your website, what kind of browsing experience are they having? Is your site easy to navigate? Are your web pages optimized to guide the user towards an action?

Traffic without conversions is essentially just a vanity metric. CRO is the piece that ties it all together.

Put simply, conversion rate optimization is the process of optimizing a web page to lead a user toward a desired action. Typically, this action comes in the form of a conversion. This can be a demo request, email newsletter sign up, webinar registration — you get the gist.

The idea here is to entice the user to move further down the marketing funnel in some way.

SEO is what brings people to your website and CRO is what gets them to convert.

It sounds like a match made in marketing heaven, but achieving alignment is often easier said than done.

Start with a strong SEO foundation

I could write thousands of words on what it takes to build a strong SEO foundation for your website, but that’s not what this article is about. With that being said, a discussion about the relationship between SEO and CRO wouldn’t be complete without a mention of it.

Earlier, I said you can’t have SEO without CRO. But this goes both ways.

While it’s true that conversions are a meaningful standalone metric, you can’t have conversions without web visitors. Plus, experimentation and testing is a big part of what makes CRO so effective. It can be difficult to run tests if your website doesn’t get a healthy amount of traffic. More on this later.

A successful SEO strategy fuels the inbound marketing engine to bring new prospective buyers to your site on a regular basis. With SEO, your entire marketing team could be on PTO for a week and your website will still be generating traffic on its own.

If you’re still working to build a powerful SEO strategy, there are countless SEO resources that are available to you.

Be intentional about your content

Content and SEO go hand-in-hand.

When a buyer goes to a search engine, they want to find content that brings them an answer to their question.

As marketers, we want to create that content and match it to a buyer’s specific search query. We do this through extensive keyword research and on-page optimization to ensure that every piece of content that’s published has a likelihood to rank on page one.

Although this approach to content creation is effective at generating organic traffic, sometimes we forget to think about how a piece can drive impact beyond just ranking number one for a keyword.

CRO doesn’t just apply to landing pages or core solutions pages. There are elements of CRO that apply to your long-from content as well.

When strategizing topic ideas and doing keyword research, assign a goal to every piece of content that you publish. Ask yourself, “what action do I want the reader to take when they land on this page?”

Build this goal into your content calendar and incorporate it as a call-to-action (CTA) on each page that you publish.

As always, be mindful of the reader and their position in the funnel. Someone that lands on “The Beginner’s Guide to Marketing Automation” probably isn’t ready for a live demo just yet.

Instead, guide that reader toward a less intimidating action, such as signing up for your email newsletter. A good CTA shouldn’t feel spammy or overly promotional, it should provide additional value to the reader overall.

Following this process forces you to think beyond just traffic — you’re focusing on conversions before you even hit the “publish” button.

Test, optimize, and repeat

User experience (UX) is at the heart of both SEO and CRO.

If your website is slow, glitchy, and hard to navigate, it’s going to negatively affect both traffic and conversions. The goal is to continuously refine your website to ensure that anyone who lands on it has a frictionless browsing experience — thereby increasing their likelihood to convert.

This is why split testing is so important.

Split testing, sometimes referred to as A/B testing, is the process of testing multiple variants of a web page to determine which one converts at a higher rate. This is a core practice among marketers who specialize in CRO. You can test different types of lead forms, CTA buttons, copy variants, and even page layouts.

Here’s an example of a split test between a single and multi-step lead form:

Some SEOs may be hesitant to run split tests because they worry it will negatively affect organic rankings. The truth is that Google not only encourages testing, but it even has its own tool that helps marketers to run split tests.

As long as you’re abiding by Google’s webmaster guidelines, you should see no major negative impact on organic traffic due to testing.

It’s also worth noting that you can’t reach statistical significance in your split tests without a big enough sample size. In other words, you need traffic to have accurate test results.

There’s no hard and fast rule for what counts as “enough traffic” but the general consensus is that your web visitors should be in the thousands, at least. I recommend using this sample size calculator tool to get a better idea of a number that’s unique to your website.

This is yet another example of how closely intertwined SEO and CRO truly are. Earlier we discussed how important it is to start with a solid foundation in SEO, now you know how it fits into the bigger picture.

The common thread here?

CRO and SEO have a symbiotic relationship. What’s good for one is good for the other. And both are working toward the same common goal of generating revenue.

Identify marketing funnel gaps

When looking at the big picture of your inbound marketing efforts, SEO and CRO can help you identify and fix any gaps in your funnel.

Let’s say you have a product page that ranks #1 for its primary keyword and generates lots of traffic. But, when you dig into the conversion data, you notice that only a small percentage of users that land on that page actually convert.

This is a red flag that something is off with the page.

It could be the messaging, the offer, or the lead form. Just because it works for Google doesn’t mean it’s working for your audience. And their opinion is the only one that matters.

This goes the other way around too.

Say you have a product page that’s converting at a high rate, but you notice that it’s one of the lowest-trafficked pages on your site. This should alert you to revisit the content on that page and identify opportunities to re-optimize it. If you don’t, there are likely hundreds of potential conversions that you’re missing out on.

Final thoughts

SEO and CRO is kind of like the digital marketing version of the chicken and the egg. You can’t be really good at one without the other.

Realistically, it doesn’t matter what came first. What does matter is achieving alignment between these two key marketing tactics. By doing so, your website has the potential to become a major driver of leads and revenue for your business.

If there’s one thing you take away from this article, it’s to integrate your SEO and CRO efforts and view them as one cohesive part of your lead generation strategy.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!