Seems like a probable path will be what they did with Vangaurd and engage gaming sites, do a lot of interviews, participate heavily in social media, and rely on the community to help spread the word. Its essentially free, and if your game is worthwhile its quite effective.
Megaera said: If the community is small, which this one seems to be at the moment, you can't get enough of a word out. For example there was this nifty console mmo called eqoa.....i chose it over eq pc...Sony pretty much left it to rot...and milked money from us until it slowly witherd away.... If they say " we are sticking to the Internet and word of mouth" I will cut my losses now.
Well for starters, Visionary Realms hasnt said anything about the ad campaigns. I just provided an avenue. And it's not an all or nothing strategy. Just because you rely heavily on word of mouth doesnt suggest that you do no advertising.
Second, Sony had a pretty heavy advertising campaign for a while, and they let EQ and EQOA (and Planetside, and other titles) largely just rot. Gamebreak seems to be continuing with this trend. There's no inherent correlation between the advertising mechanism, the quality of software, and the underlying business management philosophies of a parent company. They can be great at all, suck at all, or some mix of good and bad. I've played some incredible Indie titles that I never saw an add for but heard of through the grapevine. And I've played some absolute s***-show games that I was ground into submission by a bombardment of advertising for. Everyone that has played many titles would agree. Look at Star Wars: Galaxies. Sony hammered advertising everywhere, and the game was (IMO) crap.
Third, I'm not really sure how you can say that this community is small. Considering the game is likely at least a year from release and there are approaching 10,000 subscribers here, I'd say the community has a pretty solid flegdling following. Not to mention that known and respected gaming pundants have taken note of it and are reporting on it with reserved optomism. Do a youtube search for top MMO's in development, and you'll find many videos of critics and enthusiasts who rank Pantheon among a small few they are anticipating and recommend you keep an eye on. And then there are the gaming sites like MMORPG, Ten Ton Hammer, MassivelyOP, GamersNexus and many others that are tracking and reporting every time there's an update to Pantheon's status. MMORPG.com (which has a somewhat skeptical and sometimes downright hostile relationship with Brad) currently ranks Pantheon 19th overall in hype of the roughly 1000 games they track. It's arguably the most trafficed site for this kind of data, and Pantheon sits in elite company on the scale of talked about and anticipated titles. That doesnt go unnoticed by the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of MMO gamers out there looking for the next big thing. I'd easily argue the value of that ranking on that site alone far outweighs hugely expensive ad compaigns and the money is better spent making a quality product that people will talk about. And this doesnt begin to address the notable buzz in social media platforms like Reddit that are already taking notice of Pantheon and the hype continues to climb. Gamers talk, and they plan for their next adventures. They research, and they investigate what they think will give them a new home to settle in.
Fourth, I dont give advertising from game companies any credibility at all. Look at the deluge of crap we got about No Man's Sky. They are now being investigated on two continents for fraud. I go look for myself. And where do I start? See the third point above.
Fifth, there's something to be said for a slow march toward success. How many titles with heavy ad campaigns have we see crash on opening day because the deluge of advertising over sold a product they didnt have infrastructure sufficient to support? That kind of word of mouth can be a death sentance to an otherwise quality game. Customers assume (sometimes rightly) that if you cant even size your services to the aniticipated load you'll get all at once, then maybe you're not cut out for managing a successful multi-millon dollar service.
I want a good game, and I'll do my best to find it based on what the developers talk about, the philosphies they hold, and the feedback provided by those in the know. I can't really comprehend valuing the promise of a game on what some crafted ad feeds me, and that is by design created to lead me to a very specific conclusion. I'm not a sheep.
I'd say the vast majority of EQs marketing was word of mouth. I've looked back over the years at the commercials for EQ, and I can't remember seeing any of them on TV.
The best marketing avenue for a game like Pantheon in terms of ROI would be very targeted exposure on mmo affiliate sites. Paying for video ads and banners. Pantheon will not appeal to much of the flavor of the month variety of gamers (if it does, it won't appeal to us). If they were to splurge and go for TV placement, it would probably be best and wait until post-launch when they are closer to feature-complete than minimum viable product.
I've told about 6 friends of mine about Pantheon, and at least 2 of them have expressed an interest in the game. So, if all of us here can get 33% of the people they know to take a look at it, coupled with the advertising that the team is sure to put out there, I'm willing to bet that "word of mouth" will have a significant impact. Especially after the game launches and most people who play it are expressing positive reviews. Based upon the gameplay, dev diaries and such, I'm certain that word of mouth type advertising will be a very important source of selling the game.
I think the best thing we can do right now is express our interest in Pantheon on mmorpg.com. Both in Pantheon threads and in general and news discussions. Though it seems most of the old mmorpg players are becoming scarcer and scarcer there, but they do stop in now and again and it gives them a chance to hear about it. That and there are still new players who frequent the forum who haven't ever played a real mmorpg. I threw up a sig banner and a link to these forums and have directed thousands of people to the official site here.
I would expect the game to be most popular among men, like most games are, I don't think they are specifically targeting men or a specific age range. There are a few women here that are interested in playing too. I imagine advertising would just be put out on gaming sites through interviews and possibly banner ads. Whoever visits the sites will see the Pantheon content.
The best advertising of all is word-of-mouth and it comes free.
Drull said:The best possible advertising would be a free open beta that lasted atleast several months before release.
From my experience with Landmark this is a bad bad idea. Now first let me assure you I'm aware Landmark has LOT of problems. I hope Pantheon doesn't but none the less BETA is there to find bug's and tune in play. People like us that bought into this game in develop are aware of that. And even with that lots Wong get it and will expect a polished game (they seem to ignore, or they just don't know what BETA means) they go off pissed and spewing trash all over Reddit about how bad it is.
And that's those that are supposed to know what there getting themselves into. Open this up to a OPEN beta where every person that knows how to click a Download button.... I wouldent recommend it.
A good long CLOSED beta.
Do you know how a movie is going to suck? They wont allow reviews untill after it is released.
Landmark is an excellent example, aside from the fact they charged for that abomination. Landmark was terrible and showed a true indication of what to expect out of Next. A good example would be WoW which had a no-NDA closed beta near the end and then followed with an open beta before release. They had a quality product which even if you didnt prefer the gameplay decisions, generated alot of positive word of mouth.
The biggest example and the one that Pantheon will have to contend with is Vanguard. Vanguard had a closed beta with NDA right up to release and then came out of the gates as a technical clunker. This first impression haunted the game for its entire life and I guarantee you that players will remember when Pantheon gets close to release. The way you alleviate this fear (and I hate that I am going to say this word) is through transparancy. I agree that releasing an open beta to early can cause alot of bad press, as can be seen in alot of early acces games on steam, but releasing an open beta for a couple of months to nail down the finishing touches before release would be nothing but positive.
Side note: a good experiment is to watch Project Gorgon. They have been in a free open beta for over a year and will soon be releasing on Steam Early Access. Lets see what kind of response they generate.
Potentially off topic, but maybe not really.
Saw a Pantheon ad on Skype. Black background, with the golden words: "Pantheon is coming".
Simple. Amazing. I almost peed.
So they're already advertising, and in a very mainstream setting. Not sure what that says to their advertisement philosophy, but there's at least one thing to go off of.
P.S. - Think I saw the same add on my yahoo homepage the other day, too.
We have a very experienced marketing team that will handle this, we already have some targeted ads out there that some of you may have seen, we have done Twitter and FB promotions to our targeted audiences and people with similar interests, the age is open ended but a good indication of the age is on these forums, this type of game usually only attracts the more mature audiences and we won't be trying to change that although we do hope that any younger people are treated with the same maturity and kindness that you show each other here for the most part.
You really shouldn't base your judgment of any game on the marketing, otherwise, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. ;)
Kilsin said:We have a very experienced marketing team that will handle this, we already have some targeted ads out there that some of you may have seen, we have done Twitter and FB promotions to our targeted audiences and people with similar interests, the age is open ended but a good indication of the age is on these forums, this type of game usually only attracts the more mature audiences and we won't be trying to change that although we do hope that any younger people are treated with the same maturity and kindness that you show each other here for the most part.
You really shouldn't base your judgment of any game on the marketing, otherwise, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. ;)
PC gamer mag, is given away freely in some canadian retail chains btw. Ontario, and i am sure all across canada.
I know this for a fact because i am a partner with them. They have always given me a free magizine each month for the last 3-4 years now.
So i recommend if nobody has said anyting about it, i would suggest it.
Crazzie said:Kilsin said:We have a very experienced marketing team that will handle this, we already have some targeted ads out there that some of you may have seen, we have done Twitter and FB promotions to our targeted audiences and people with similar interests, the age is open ended but a good indication of the age is on these forums, this type of game usually only attracts the more mature audiences and we won't be trying to change that although we do hope that any younger people are treated with the same maturity and kindness that you show each other here for the most part.
You really shouldn't base your judgment of any game on the marketing, otherwise, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. ;)
PC gamer mag, is given away freely in some canadian retail chains btw. Ontario, and i am sure all across canada.
I know this for a fact because i am a partner with them. They have always given me a free magizine each month for the last 3-4 years now.
So i recommend if nobody has said anyting about it, i would suggest it.
When it is time to ramp up the media and marketing campaign we will definitely look at options like that, we already have a few in mind that are similar and PC Gamer is already on that list ;)