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Interesting opinion article on SWG
http://mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/gameId/6/setView/features/loadFeature/714
I'm not sure if I agree with all of the author's arguments (I for one like it when things change... barring GS did away with twitch combat o.0) But I found this passage particularly interesting:
In making these changes, SOE and LucasArts also sorely misunderstands what generates true subscriptions for an MMO. While marketing campaigns no doubt contribute some assistance, true marketing comes from word of mouth. The veterans of a game are the ones who bring their friends and family to these games, and in turn they recruit more... A marketing campaign cannot achieve this, no matter how slick.
That's us, people... Be ready.
I'm not sure if I agree with all of the author's arguments (I for one like it when things change... barring GS did away with twitch combat o.0) But I found this passage particularly interesting:
In making these changes, SOE and LucasArts also sorely misunderstands what generates true subscriptions for an MMO. While marketing campaigns no doubt contribute some assistance, true marketing comes from word of mouth. The veterans of a game are the ones who bring their friends and family to these games, and in turn they recruit more... A marketing campaign cannot achieve this, no matter how slick.
That's us, people... Be ready.
I hope OUR devs have internalized the messages in that op-ed a long time ago.
Hey, word of mouth is a powerfulL tool, don't abuse it!
Indeed. The hard thing to do with marketing to today's youth (The under-18 and the coveted 18-25 market) is that they are already SO jaded to advertising that almost NOTHING works from the old-school marketer's bag of tricks.
Word of mouth is already known to be the best way to reach these age groups.
One of the ways to generate leads/hits/prospects is to create "buzz" around a concept or idea related to the product or service you want to sell. It's called viral marketing and essentially it's like, well, crafting a computer virus. It's more than a "whisper" campaign, it's directed and targeted towards a specific demographic. This kind of effort would work extremely well in advertising a MMORPG, as long as you target your markets from small to big, pausing along the way to consolidate your grasp and take care of customer service issues before moving on to the next market.
Word of mouth is already known to be the best way to reach these age groups.
One of the ways to generate leads/hits/prospects is to create "buzz" around a concept or idea related to the product or service you want to sell. It's called viral marketing and essentially it's like, well, crafting a computer virus. It's more than a "whisper" campaign, it's directed and targeted towards a specific demographic. This kind of effort would work extremely well in advertising a MMORPG, as long as you target your markets from small to big, pausing along the way to consolidate your grasp and take care of customer service issues before moving on to the next market.
A la eon8.com, Leber?
Somewhat. Except, perhaps provide a BIT more info, heh. But a countdown timer that means nothing might be cool.
Huh. Quite the coincidence that this came up. About two months ago, I re-subscribed to SOE's "Planetside" MMO title after taking a two year break from the game. I wanted to see how the game had progressed, etc.
SOE (and its vocal playerbase) had gone through a couple of community relations people and a few feature additions, but there was really nothing of major significance that made me want to pay SOE's subscription fee. Furthermore, there were major, three-year-old bugs still in-game with no fix on the horizon and their current community relations folks really hadn't a clue how to communicate with the playerbase. I was shocked.
For a company with the potential resources of SOE, their efforts with Planetside paled in comparison to what Guild has been [visibly] pushing out to the community over the past seven months.
So Guild: Thanks for your depth and frequency of communication; your dedication to this project and your paying playerbase; and what is turning out to be visually stimulating and diversely-played title.
I look forward to telling more friends about this when the major publicity push comes.
SOE (and its vocal playerbase) had gone through a couple of community relations people and a few feature additions, but there was really nothing of major significance that made me want to pay SOE's subscription fee. Furthermore, there were major, three-year-old bugs still in-game with no fix on the horizon and their current community relations folks really hadn't a clue how to communicate with the playerbase. I was shocked.
For a company with the potential resources of SOE, their efforts with Planetside paled in comparison to what Guild has been [visibly] pushing out to the community over the past seven months.
So Guild: Thanks for your depth and frequency of communication; your dedication to this project and your paying playerbase; and what is turning out to be visually stimulating and diversely-played title.
I look forward to telling more friends about this when the major publicity push comes.