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An Interview with the Sigil Team

Part Three of Three

Viral Marketing

Before a launch, many companies increase their marketing to a break-neck pace, throwing advertisements helter-skelter so they can generate as much interest as possible about the title. However, after launch things a get more interesting. We were interested in the next stage of marketing for Sigil and what they were planning to do to get people interested in Vanguard.

“It’s all about our ability to get behind a megaphone and get the word out to people,” Butler said. “From this point on, we’re more indebted to viral marketing and word-of-mouth than anything else.”

There’s also the 800-pound gorilla that is World of Warcraft. Jones was eager to note just how many players from WoW had gone into Vanguard and had enjoyed the game. “We don’t expect every one of the eight million WoW subscribers to enjoy Vanguard,” she said. “But it surprised me just how many WoW players DID enjoy Vanguard and were willing to give the game a chance. And I think these were the players who’d reached end-game WoW content where grouping was more important, and so they liked going to a game where the whole premise was joining up with other people.”

Butler agreed with this sentiment, explaining that WoW had actually helped them gain those players. “WoW literally forged these players into enjoying Vanguard with their end-game content.”

“If we could give away a free copy of the client to each of those high-level WoW players, I think we would resonate fairly strongly with them,” he said. I’d want to settle us into the market a little bit more, so that those players aren’t smacked in the face with the lack of teleportation, for instance, but I think after a month or two we could do it.”

According to Elam, he thinks many of the World of Warcraft players are just trying to reach that level 70 plateau before they jump to Vanguard. “They just want to cross that finish line,” he said. “That’s what they’re striving for. And after that, the gaming world is open to them.”

Communicating with the Community

Since the Ten Ton Hammer Vanguard Community Site is part of the Affiliate Program launched by the Sigil team, our next comments were directed at community feedback. April Jones had several interesting launch observations to share with us.

“A lot of times, you’ll see on message boards that people will have “hot button” issues. It looks like, from a cursory glance, that this topic is the issue.”

“But when you’re looking at the numbers,” she continued, “you see what is actually the issue in the game world for the majority of the people, we might have a completely different priority. We have to let the vocal minority know that we’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

And, according to Jones, only about 10% of the whole gaming population is actually vocal at any one time. What then do you do with the vocal minority? That’s the question we presented to the Sigil staff.

“It’s a difficult situation,” Jones said. “As a PR person, most of my frustration actually comes from trying to explain to the small groups that – for the greater good – we can’t address your problem right away. And it’s even worse for those players who don’t go to our affiliated sites…how do we communicate with those people?”

Butler also weighed in on this issue. “One of the most important things we can do – and I think this most MMOs follow this same path – is…there’s one simple way to communicate with your players who are entering or leaving your game,” he said. “There’s a process whereby the game files are verified every single time a player logs in…it doesn’t matter where they are. You’ve got some method of file check before you roll into the game – the patching process. Say what you want to say to your players there. When they log into the game, explain to them what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and why you’re doing it. Give them a projected date of arrival for the fix.”

“Just tell people everything you possibly can to let them know you’re not stupid and you’re there in the game with them,” he added. “We had our entire development team in beta and most of us are playing the game live with the players. We know the issues.”

The Vision™ of Vanguard

With all this talk about reinvention and the adaptation of games and, specifically Vanguard, just what does the team at Sigil think about the current outlook of Vanguard. Is it staying close to the design that they’d initially dreamed up?

“It’s not really deviating,” Butler said. “I think you could talk to some different people at Sigil who had a certain view of the market – where they wanted Vanguard to land – and maybe weren’t looking at all the other games that were out there. Some people who didn’t want to include one element of the game or another.”

“But on a whole, I think if you took a cross-section of Sigil that the entire company is behind bringing Vanguard to its appropriate place in the market,” he continued. “We want it to be a fun game to play across the board and is a more challenging and in-depth experience than other massively multiplayer games.”    

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