(cross-posted from CTFPL side)

Hello everyone,

I have been working on contacting old CTF / infantry players and let them know about the incredible developments with Free Inf now being on Steam and the growing population.

Many of those I have been able to get ahold of, either come back immediately or are excited to come back soon.

In addition to the large social media footprint I have with the inf community, I found some other methods of getting contact info for people. I have gone through internet archives and the way back machine and searched old CTFPL sites (goblin1, davoid, infantry-sector, ctfpl.us, ctfpl.net, etc.) and found many email addresses for former players.

Now granted, many of these emails were 10-20 years old and when contacted, many emails were returned as undelivered due to the email no longer being active. HOWEVER, close to 15-20% of the emails I sent, actually resulted in a response and a download of infantry and joining the discord. All of those I spoke to via email, have missed infantry and ZERO clue infantry was on Steam and had ZERO contact information from other active infantry to players to hear about it from.

I say all this to say, the USLZONE site has been up for a long time now and there are MANY players that haven't visited the site in 2-10 years. But, with my recent success of getting ahold of people with 10-20 year old emails, there is no doubt that USLZONE accounts could be a treasure trove for locating old CTF and CTFPL players.

Quickly reviewing player accounts, I found the following accounts of interest, people that I knew or played with that I think would absolutely come back to play pub or organized play:

Adept
Amp
Angie
Armageddon-Fang
Armor (maybe?)
Axidus (maybe? if hes not upset)
Balloon
Big Fat Noob
Blaze (possibly Pinna?)
Cheezewiz
Chuckie
Condor
coo880
Cybeast
Cyril
Daventry
Demonthrall
DK
doc
Dodge
Emp / Emperor
Ender
Gee
Goblin1
Green Jelly
Incorp
JDAM
Jericho
Jin
Jinx
John_Diamond
ky~
Malinger
Mights
Nac09
Naruq
Ooi
Optimus Primal
ONKYO_tx-8511
Plaps
pope
Priorities
Pusher
Rattle
RedXIII.
Reggie
saari
SDu
shaw
Sinn Fein
SlickFox
sonique
Stealthy
Streaming
SuperYAK
syth
Tango-51
tonet
Tyson_old (not mercy)
Uzo
Wimp
Yak
Z Trigger

I'm sure I am missing plenty of others, especially those that were mostly pub players, but these are the names that stuck out.

I talked to Champion and asked about how to access emails associated with these accounts to use for Free Infantry marketing purposes and understandably (I guess), he isn't willing to share that information. I also asked about the possibility of scripting something that could allow for a mass email to account holders to notify them of FI on Steam and to re-invite them to join us, but understandably, he is too busy to look into that.

So I am reaching out to the general public. Does anyone have any ideas of how we can best utilize existing assets and resources (ie: user account-associated emails for uslzone, etc.) to market FI and get players to return?

I think we are missing out on an obvious opportunity. Any help or ideas are much appreciated.

Zmn

Thought that's why you went into law enforcement

I believe you need to use an email to register for a free infantry account right? There's a chance Jovan would be willing to blast those out (although mass emails like that can be iffy legally these days)

Email blasting gets you flagged pretty quickly

Besides emails, I would suggest someone (perhaps with a YouTube channel *cough* MP *cough*) to reply to the comments on old infantry vids; out of the hundreds of cumulative comments, a fraction of them are bound to still be using the same old account and might get a notification. Should be able to pickup a handful of them maybe especially if they see MPs fire vids.

Green Jelly has been missing since Jan 6th 2021, coincidence...I think not.

Nah just laying low I've found some concerning things about the 747 max

I do agree that mass email blasts can get you flagged. What I do, and it takes a long time but I do it, I literally email each person individually and address them individually. I typically incorporate something personal to each of them from when we played together previously. I understand the hesitation to share actual emails but .... does it help if I am a trustworthy source? JS.

I thought the hum got your ass man

A python script can do this in seconds instead of doing it manually zmn.

Another option is to create a .xls in google docs with 3 columns: alias , email, league. In docs click merge mail and select whatever email you want to use.

Create a temp email such as:

To: {{email}}

Subject: {{league}} is back!!

Body: Hi {{alias}},
As one of our top players in {{league}}, I wanted to inform you that infantry is back and can be found on steam (insert hyper link).

Hope to see you in game,
Zmn4000

I've been chatting with Dekar on discord and he would start playing the game again if Soccer Brawl was fixed.

Just a FYI he's MasonDota2 a well known DotA streamer. I tuned into one of his recent streams and he had like 800+ people watching him play dota.

and then he was promptly banned by twitch for the 15th time

Yea he's still just as toxic as back in the day. Infantry runs deep in his blood.

He's got 2K plus watching him right now.

That kid was an asshole.