I agree that TBP needs more official single player campaings but that's not the real issue why it wasn't picked in top 100. The single player is fun to play, but it only lasts till you have it completed. And presto, game has been played, ready to uinstall.
The real issue is multiplayer. Take a look at other indie winners.
Most of them are multiplayer-only games. I personally play 2 from those indie winners: C&C Reborn, C&C APB which both made it top just like last year. Guess what. They don't have a single player at all. Not even a tutorial or an official campaign, not even one single mission. It's all multiplayer fps games based on the old W3D engine enhanced with a lot of scripts. It's popular but not because it's fps (it's also based from RTS in some sort), but because it's multiplayer, teamwork and online community based games.
They also made it in top because their multiplayer is far more supported using some old and new assets making it very easy for new players to join (just download a game with the built launcher which has the official server IPs already in). More even the multiplayer is supported with websites, custom maps, online ranks, lots of scripts and bots to help both playing and ranking. The community is large, devided in many clans and the overall support is just huge.
Just take a look into comparrision. C&C APB has really dozents of online moderators and at least two server operators at all times. 8-30 players all the time on their server.
TBP has one multiplayer mod (pokes FUBAR
) and the session is only available one day (which is reasonable considering the amount of online games).
Now with this there's no doubt that TBP and none of the FS2 mods will make it in top indie games.
So what TBP really needs, is to get a large multiplayer overhaul with at least monthly updates. Yes new campaigns are needed but it would attract more people if they were all co-op or team vs team based. Server and MP should be available all the time not just one session of the week. There should be official missions for multiplayer as well and they should support the plot cannon from the show to reflect the B5 universe as much as possible.
Such a multiplayer mission should also look interesting like e.g. Severed Dreams mission where one team defends bab5 where other are Clarks forces. The action should take place right after starting the mission - e.g one team jumps in and the fighting will start soon.
Also the FRED editors are very open to set various objectives to all multiplayer missions so making interesting missions shouldn't be a problem.
Why else wasn't TBP picked for top Indie games.
As mentioned earlier it's mainly because the project is new on moddb. It also lacks information, feedback and updates so people are not hearing from it much. The new media added and everything else is fine, but still new people are not going to watch the game for long if there are no updates (even if there are but not posted).
I've started to record missions to attract new players into the scene, but that's just a little effort. TBP needs more and serious advertising overall.
And last reason, already mentioned and very clever though, is, that this conversion has gone final. Which isn't exactly true seeming there are updates being done for the builts. I bet there will be updated stuff for the multiplayer. So let's hear from them. All updates should go to public ASAP so people won't run away after a while. And not just this forum but also places where people are searching for new games.
Well just some thoughts.