Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Ten Ton Hammer confronted several industry insiders on MMO marketing practices that have long chafed players, sometimes using quotes from the players themselves. Has word-of-mouth made traditional PR and marketing obsolete, or worse: prone to deceit just to get games noticed? Is pre-launch hype important for a game with a potential ten-year (or even longer) lifespan, and if so, is there such a thing as too much hype? Why is marketing used to gather feedback for features that aren't necessarily "final," and what's with the "box promises" that aren't made good at launch? Through their responses, you'll find that perhaps the industry has turned a corner.

Post-Twitter Marketing

In today’s games market, opinions spring up overnight and word-of-mouth spreads rapidly. If we’re willing to accept that the purpose of PR and marketing isn’t to deceive and bilk us into buying games on impulse (and that’s a monster-sized benefit of the doubt for some developers), what’s the role of marketing in a post-Twitter world?

Put simply, exposure. “Marketing exposes your product to the core audience - then IF your product delivers the goods, players use word-of-mouth. But someone has got to tell the core audience that the game exists and why they should play it.” explained April Burba, former NCSoft all-around community manager, developer, and producer (currently a producer for an unannounced project).

Michal Adam, PR Director for Hi-Rez Studios (indy developer of the massively-multiplayer shooter Global Agenda), has a tough road to hoe, since she can’t call upon the resources of a publisher. For her, exposure is all the more critical. “We just want everyone to know about Global Agenda. The main message of our marketing is that we’re doing something different.”

NetDevil PR Director Grace Wong faces similar challenges with the team’s current project: Jumpgate Evolution. “News does spread quickly, but it spreads about only a few things at a time. To get your voice heard in a competitive space that moves quickly is very difficult,” she explained. “Good marketing is all about getting the core strengths of your game into the hands of the people who are most likely going to respond to it.”

Over the last several years, we at Ten Ton Hammer have noticed a trend to put more emphasis on direct representation of games by the studios that make them over third-party PR firms and publishers. Since the answers we get straight from developers are often more detailed, honest, and hassle-free (they’re gamers, we’re gamers) it’s an encouraging trend for us, and we believe, our audience. Case in point, we contacted five third-party PR firms that we work with routinely to comment on this piece. None responded.

Marketing an Incomplete Game

For our first topic up for debate, should PR and Marketing initiatives be used to promote and even gather feedback about aspects of a game that aren’t yet “final” - i.e. are reasonably tested and (in all honesty and likelihood) will make it in for launch? Michal thinks not. “I would never do that. We’re so careful about what design ideas we put out there, that unless we’ve tested something and we’re satisfied with it, we’re not communicating about it. That goes back to expectations-setting.”

She noted that the most massively multiplayer side of Global Agenda, the “campaign game” (i.e. a grand strategy map where large player organizations vie for control) is one of Hi-Rez’s most closely guarded secrets. Players know that it exists, that it will be in for launch, and some of its most basic principles, but details won’t begin to emerge until later in testing. That’s by design, according to Michal, even though it’s potentially one of the most marketable and innovative sides of the game.

But April notes that sometimes timing and marketing objectives can interfere with your best laid plans. “PR and marketing campaigns can be planned and start a year or more before a game is released and, obviously, they want to put your best features forward to generate interest in the game. They usually have to market things that aren't fully tested yet or they wouldn't get to market much. It's an art form as a producer to line up development and marketing - it's part of why there are producers.”

We’re reminded of one of the more classic marketing mishaps in recent memory every time we run a live Q&A session with the Warhammer Online team. The top question is at least as inevitable as the Chaos city: when are the other cities going in? Players have a long memory for features removed prior to launch, and removing four of the six racial cities is still a sore spot for some players.

However, Ten Ton Hammer member Chilidawg cited EA Mythic as one of the two companies that have done a great job with PR in his opinion. Much is apparently forgiven since EA Mythic made a big effort to communicate the changes prior to launch: “Mythic was good at communicating with its community on the announcements of removed classes / locations and other features as they were nearing launch, as well as weekly announcements about what areas they were fixing and bringing into the game.” Honesty seems to be the best policy: EA Mythic was rewarded with 1.2 million in retail box sales in the first two months.

Bottom line: while it may be best not to discuss game features until you’re absolutely sure they’ll be in the game, should you have to start ripping out features, it’s best to be open and honest about the changes you’re making before launch, lest you creep towards the dim, dark, dirty realm of...

False Advertising

Marketing students learn that false advertising falls into two broad categories: price manipulation and deceptive advertising. Price manipulation is often practiced by unscrupulous retailers which use hidden fees and surcharges, cost-plus pricing, hidden fees and surcharges, and other methods to inflate prices beyond their advertised norms. In a recent class-action lawsuit involving the makers of Final Fantasy XI, the plaintiffs allege that Square-Enix failed to disclose that playing the game required payment of monthly fees, penalties for late payment, and other fees and adjustments that, if proven, fall into the realm of price manipulation tactics.

On the other hand, deceptive advertising is an intent to purposely defraud consumers by knowingly misrepresenting a product. It’s much harder to prove, yet fairly widespread in games marketing. “In-game” preview screenshots and trailers that can’t be replicated by the most powerful machines post launch are a common example. But while no game has been found guilty of deceptive advertising in a court of law (at least, in Internet-researchable legal memory), false advertising often takes a subtler form in games marketing.