Silky Venom - Sigil Developer Tracker

Sigil Developer Tracker

The dev tracker is no longer actively scanning, however you may continue to browse the archives collected over the past several years here. Please remember that these developer posts are taken out of context, so beware of any silky venom being spewed forth.

Color Key:

Green - Sigil Games Online Employee
Pink - Sony Online Entertainment
Gray - Microsoft Game Studios Employee
Orange - Community Member

Thread List

Dev List

Site List

Search

Page 1 of 1

Question: Why aren't online games advertised outside of the internet?

F I R E S O F H E A V E N
Nov 02, 2004 - 04:41 PM - by Teclisen

It's a lot harder to sell the depth and staying power of an mmorpg in a 30 second TV spot, than it is to sell cool looking fight scenes and lots of explosions in Ratchet and Clank. If you think about it, way more marketing is done for mmorpgs, it's just done on so much more a specific scale.

Beta testing, is a huge example of this. Promotions with fileplanet, ign, things that mmo players are more often going to frequent and pay attention to become to target mediums for advertising. SOE had a 7 minute long ad that was featured on that bullshit they show instead of still frames before movies now in theaters, but it was only a test run a long while back..

But the success of an mmorpg is obviously not determined in the same fashion that a console or single player game's success in determined. I've seen GTA, doom 3, ratchet and clank, Halo 2 ads, those games need to do well in box sales and that's it.

As far as walking into your EB and not seeing any advertisement for EQ2 or WOW, well, that store's manager is probably behind on his marketing. Companies actually pay to have their shit advertised in stores. Meaning as a part of Sony's promotional campaign, they will pay to have the standee's in there, and send them with a bunch of hats and give-aways for the employees to wear/give to costumers. WOW recently sent out those novel deals to give away with preorders, EQ2 has a bonus CD and whatnot, but both companies paid for floor space at the beginning of october - game stores are most likely a desirable medium for that kinda advertising. More important in both of these game's cases simply because of their attempt to bring a wider audience into the mmorpg genre. But again they're still looking for a specific type of gamer, not one going to be effectively reached by ads on G4TV.

reply to this post Find all posts by Teclisen.
Find all posts in "Question: Why aren't online games advertised outside of the internet?".

Page 1 of 1

All times are GMT -4. The time now is 03:57 AM.