Comments on: I Don't Hate Marketing

By: Philip Ripper

Philip Ripper — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 10:37:01 +0000

Moorgard, we aren’t talking about what is, but what aught. And, out of curiosity, five years ago, would you have said director level? At least, without expecting someone to take away your car keys? Even if it was true in talent then, it wasn’t in respect.

This is still an infancy, and there are no rules, only mile stones.

By: UnSub

UnSub — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 05:50:40 +0000

I’m amazed (but not surprised) that anyone considers print magazines a key marketing channel for online games. For the person to play, they need online access. If they don’t have that, then it doesn’t matter what the magazine says about it, they won’t be able to play.

Community management is a critical part of any marketing for a MMO, since these are your customers, right there in front of you, who you can talk directly to (and they will want to talk back). Most other types of marketing aren’t nearly as efficient – you can’t see who you are talking to if you use above-the-line channels like TV or newspapers and a lot of those audiences could be the wrong ones for you – while print magazines can go out with errors / outdated content. But your community (who possess the most powerful marketing channel of all in word-of-mouth) is the key, so getting the info out to them should be the priority.

And yes, good marketing relies on good strategy across multiple channels delivered at the right time. Get one of those aspects wrong and you’ve wasted the opportunity.

@Sanya – isn’t it great? You write a piece on community management and marketing in MMOs and all anyone will remember is “A girl without a gag reflex? Where?”

By: Georgia

Georgia — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 21:59:25 +0000

“girl without a gag reflex” HAHA… the tears won’t stop streaming from my eyes!

I love you. Deeply.

Keep it coming!

By: Bob the Barman

Bob the Barman — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:30:12 +0000

It’s easy to have a spectacular sense of humour, when marketing an outstanding product.

No matter how good you are at marketing, when the dust settles, if you have just sold someone a pile of steaming horse shit, they are always going to remember that you sold them a pile of steaming horse shit.

In those circumstances, humour usually has a little difficulty entering the equation.

By: Moorgard

Moorgard — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 15:28:35 +0000

The thing is, even the most well-intentioned marketing person is likely to see community as a subset of their domain; a specialized form of target marketing. And even though there are some community people in the industry on a director level, every game company will have one or more marketing people on an executive level. Hierarchically speaking, the marketing person is going to win out.

By: Mox

Mox — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:42:48 +0000

Technically, Lum only said he’d seen the “blog.”

The marketing departments all over the electronic entertainment industry have always struck me as, well, the best word I can think of to describe them is immature. I mean both lacking in experience, and crudely juvenile.

By: Bonedead

Bonedead — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:59:55 +0000

Oh, I’ve seen her before on the internets, that’s funny that she sucks.

By: Bonedead

Bonedead — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:48:17 +0000

So seriously, what about this blog link? kekeke

By: Rawrasaur

Rawrasaur — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 23:41:09 +0000

The only response I’d have is that marketing and community must be tailored to the product. MMOGs live and die by the internet, so it makes sense that the (internet) community and the marketing must go hand-in-hand. Jen Gamer might pick up a MMOG based on a magazine’s reccommendation, but the retention is all about the game and community. Magazines don’t matter too much in the long run for MMOGs, since whatever gets printed is usually out of date anyway, and all the players know all about what’s coming up. This is the main reason why I skip the MMO news from various gaming websites; most of the time it’s just stuff I know already, or stuff that’s so far in the distance it’s still below the horizon.

On the other hand, many other games don’t benefit from community either. I don’t see community being a big deal for Super Mario Galaxy or Splinter Cell: The Next One. I think that the chance of marketing and community working together is probably closer than you implied though. People are noticing the wow effect (bigger budget, more time spent polishing, etc.) leads to better retention and more customers, and a great deal of that is through the community, especially now.

By: Kaa

Kaa — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 19:38:55 +0000

Well, Lum and Tweety worked together so I’m guessing she who is now known forever as “the girl with a total lack of gag reflex” was a Mythic employee as well…

Kaa