MMO Marketing, Advertising, etc. (SWTOR, GW2 ...)

I like surfing around the web for articles and news about up and coming MMOs. You don't have to look very far to find information and details about Star Trek Online, Champions Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic online, and a host of other games in development.

I was just wondering -- and maybe someone with business expertise can help me out here -- how games in development raise capital? It's got to be enormously expensive. I would think that sending out a lot of information generates buzz and (maybe?) encourages investors.

Or are games in development funded by existing games by said developer?

I am just struck by the contrast between, say, Guild Wars 2 for which there is very little information) and other MMOs.

Then again, maybe advertising/positive buzz can blow up in your face -- as it seems to have done for AoC and TR, games that sounded better "on paper" than in actuality.

I would think, however, from a business perspective, that ANet would be flooding the marketplace with information about Guild Wars 2 (or at least dropping a few well-placed hints). That they haven't done so frankly puzzles me.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Maybe ANet doesn't need to *prime the pump*, so to speak, because their trump card is the "no subscription fee" angle. Maybe they figure that they don't have to give away anything information-wise because this no-subscription business model (+ a reasonably good game, of course) is all the "hype" that they need.

I am still not sure how the costs for developing GW2 would be met, though.

Yet another thread on this. IMO despite whatever reason they're not telling us anything, isn't as bad as people, maybe they really haven't got anything to show us but keeping the hype by keeping silence apparently it's working. Threads like this and all the others regarding GW2 and no information about it are the perfect examples of it, people are screaming for some info and the longer anet holds it's breath the more anxious people get.

But also it's one hell of a gamble, when they finally release the game it better be something outstanding to justify all of this. If GW2 turns out to be simply a good or an 'okay' game people will get pissed, all this waiting and silence... For an above average game? It might be good for anet, just like it might come back and bite them in the ass. It depends on them. But this is just my personaly opinion.

Release bits of info: people get bored of it. Nitpick it. Will nitpick and call doom&gloom if you do something differently than you claimed. (OMG, they are not gonna add X after all - company must be near bancrupt and similar shit) Soon, noone is listening because they get bored of it all. Hype will die.

Or keep omniously silent. Starve people of infromation so that when you finally release something they will be all ears, actually send email about to to their buddies, vote it up on (whatever social bookmarking site is hot atm) - Hype will build up.

I don't believe in GW2.

It's just a gossip from the Aliens, they are trying to mesmerize us with information and dominate the planet silently. Everybody knows that.

There are to many games being developped atm, like you say yourself.

So the more you let others know about your game, the more they can go "hey, good idea, lets use it" ruining your competitive position on the market. Star trek/star wars/wow all benefit from a huge fanbase and storyline due to movies and/or loads of previous games. They will get players just from the name since people want to know the new lore; even if the game isnt to great (especially wow) loads will continue just to keep into the lore. They dont require something special for marketting, just their name is enough (kinda like dumb kids only wanting brand clothes/shoes and the like; the name sells not the item).

Guildwars just has Guildwars. All they have are new/special/unique features to attract gamers. They havent got a real name that sells itself, they have to make the game special enough for gamer to buy it and keep playing. Especially after TR's disaster for not listening to the playerbase (testers ignoring NDA and warning people all over not to ever play it) and taking action, they cant deal with another moneysink and will want to do it correctly this time.

You mean NCSoft and ANet

You make good sense. Plus, I noticed that ANet apparently has sustained, long-term financial backing, so maybe attracting investor revenue via hype and advertising isn't important or necessary to them.

The possibility of competitors "stealing ideas" as a disincentive to advertising or revealing any game details seems a bit weak, however, as WoW routinely reveals game details and seems to suffer no ill effects. (Then again, maybe would-be "idea-thieves" are too afraid to take anything from Blizzard ). Already, SWTOR is describing a "one-companion feature" that sounds a lot like what is being planned in GW2.

I would think that the revenues from sales of GW1 would now be too small to finance the development of a new MMO (which GW2 basically appears to be). I always thought it a bold move on ANet's part to pretty much drop development on GW1 altogether to focus entirely on GW2, partly because the cautious part of me would think, "I need to keep producing expansions for GW1 to help subsidize the development of GW2."

But it sounds, from their job postings page anyway, that they have plenty of capital socked away somewhere or at least have all the financial backing they need to keep going on GW2.

Partial answer to your question: I recently read here that an some MMO companies raise the initial capital from venture capitalists. It's basically a bit bet that'll be worth big bucks for the capitalists. I guess it's pretty much the same story for all companies that start from "nowhere", i.e., they haven't spawned from another company or haven't accumulated such a capital (i.e. Activision Blizzard) that they can pay for the initial development of their next game.

After the initial work is done, i.e. the initial capital has been consumed by buying technologies/HW platforms and paying staff, they market it and try to stick to their business plan as best as they can (i.e. please the venture capitalists and pay back their "loan").

its called trade secret i think, even people entering the wintersday art contest wouldn't show you their entries fear of people copying their ideas.

tl;dr gw2 is vaporware k

Yea after the "erm we are waiting to release beta til we are nearly done" bull I figured it was obvious they really aren't doing anything to show for. The clueless interviews on youtube give that off as well. No one knows anything because only about a handful of people are actually doing anything while everyone else just works off that.

Here's to hoping for GW2 in '10

Another thought for you: NCsoft is fully paying for GW2 development, given that GW1 generated a nice profit for them over the last 3 years and that 2 of Anet's leader have now moved into NC West, to contribute to NCsoft's expansion. BUT, NCsoft is counting on Aion being the big success of 2009 (it apparently was very successful in Korea where there are many MMOs) and so they asked Anet to not release anything that would decrease Aion's sales. It's a bet that in the long term they can win on both sides, i.e. gaining customers for Aion while not loosing any for GW2 given that it's going to be f2p. I think that the f2p aspect is such a huge edge compared to other MMOs that NCsoft and Anet can afford this approach, however unerving it is for existing GW1 customers. In the end, absence of monthly fee will ensure that people are willing to pay, since they're not tied to pay later.

I guess my point is, don't necessarily look at one piece of the NCsoft puzzle but look at the big picture. I'm actually pretty sure that internally NCsoft moves expertise, technology and experience around its game development companies, such that the success of one game may impact on the other ones.

Someone also mentioned a "big band" approach to PR with GW2. It's well possible that they'll try to mimic the surprise they created with GW1, where very little people were expecting such a quality game for no monthly fee. More and more people think "vaporware" for GW2, but Regina clearly said that she actually saw the game but couldn't say a word about it due to their PR strategy. (also the newly appointed president of NCWest saying that they were very encouraged by what they saw, or Bobby Stein mentioning GW2 too)

Has the community considered that the cancellation of a beta this year might be connected to the TR testers breaking of the NDA?

ArenaNet's announcement of holding the beta closer to release date may have more to do with cutting down on the pre-release window for bad mouthing. They have had almost four years of interaction with the GW community. ArenaNet knows how stupid that community can become when trying to act "cool" and "in the know".

As for GW2 game info, when has ArenaNet ever given us info before the fact? They have a history of keeping things quiet until they are ready to release.

That would be pretty dumb reason, because it equates to:

We think that our game might flop and that our beta experience will be so terrible that people will cancel preorders and that they will warn their friends.

---

In TR, there were very good reasons to warn fellow players to stay clear of it before release, but it were those warn-reasons why game sinked, not those warnings themselves.

GW2 team is not God Personified Who Can Never Be Wrong (aka, they are not Lord British) and if they actually listen to feedback and act on it, instead of dismissing all of it being sure that they are brilliant they should have no trouble.

Comunity can understand that fixes are not instant and that stuff changes and can outtroll any problem causing kids that think that beta is about getting several months of free, quality and polished gameplay. It will not understand threads about real issues disappearing and people getting kicked from beta for "finding too many minor bugs that waste developers time".

Re: how a game's development gets started:

Like any business. You need an idea, then you get the money to make it real. That means either getting a loan from a bank or getting several investors. They believe your enterprise will yield them more money than they put in and they invest. If your game sells well, you pay it back/split up the profits. If not, you go bankrupt.

Older game developers will sometimes already have enough capital to develop a game on their own. Of course, if the game doesn't sell, they are left with nothing.



Re: General game info

First, the investors are not people who buy the game. You don't attract them with commercials but in a rather more "business" like manner. Suits, technologies, how much, projected sales etc. Those will rarely be made public as many business secrets are involved.



Re: Why no GW2 info:

First, GW2 is still far away. Things are not yet decided. Classes will be toyed with and scrapped, skills named, renamed, rebalanced, reimagined, concept art drawn, liked, disliked, modelled, seen that it doesn't look as good in 3D as it does in 2D, redesigned,.... In other words, it's in progress. Now, giving out a few teasers is nice, but with every teaser you release, you get people making mountains out of molehills. Assuming tons of things about the game, getting their expectations high,... - and suddenly, it's hard to change things without making a lot of long faces.

Second, the competition may be taking notes, so keeping revolutionary concepts near would make sense.

And last: news about a product is all about promotion. And with promotion, it's like this: you put out the news, it takes time for people to actually hear about it, and then they start getting interested. However, after a while, the attention drops - and by then, you've lost the whole campaign. So, don't expect news until just before release.

Some news about a possible rough release date would be nice, but I guess why they don't give us even that. I'm still hoping for a release in mid 09 *crosses fingers*

You and Darcy intrigue me. I have always thought that ArenaNet does a pretty good job in the community relations department (at least i thought Gaile did, Regina no so much). It seems they listen to the players. They actually play the game too. They watch the what is actually happening in the game and gather stats on it. And they can act fast on any problems that can arise.(maybe not as fast as some players would like).

So how in this day and age, when word of mouth by way of the internet and message boards, can a company not listen to players and their feedback? Especially during the beta period?

I don't really know all the details about Tabula Rasa or why it failed, but from what I gather it was a shitty game in beta and players asked for changes and were told "you players don't know anything" and no changes were made. The players then told everyone how bad the game sucked and no one bought it. Is that the jist of things? And the same was true about Age of Conan?

I mean my god, you would have to be a ragin' retard of a developer to not test your game with real players and make changes based on what they say. Especially if you want to charge a monthly fee. it just doesn't make any damned sense to not test a game in beta, make changes to make the game better, then release the game to all, set back and count your money. If ANY company does not do those things in this day and age they are stupid and deserve their game to fail

That said I do hope Anet does beta GW2, even if I don't get into said beta, just because I think it is an invaluable thing for a game company to do in order to insure that the game is a success.

As much as it sounds like a good idea to withhold all information about GW2, it isn't actually one. Considering how long ago they announced GW2, and the total lack of information, it is actually harming the game as opposed to 'hyping' it. After this long without even a tiny speck of information, players are simply getting bored of waiting, and are moving on the other games. If they keep it up there will be very small numbers of players who still care enough to provide hype for the game - which at this point is a very bad thing seeing as it has been a very long time since they announced it.

Another thing that I think is plaguing players is that there is no actual proof that they're making a game at all. No concept art, no early engine renderings, nothing. All that we have to go by is that Regina has said they can't share anything because they want it to be a big secret, which still doesn't actually show anything.

I think basically the players are just asking (in a nice way) for ANet to 'put up or shut up', and actually show that they're working on GW2. Because at this point, we might as well assume that it'll never happen.

GW2 was a nice concept, but I honestly believe that it will never see the light of day.

I didn't mean to sound like I thought that GW2 will be so bad in beta that ArenaNet is afraid to start the beta. I meant that NCSoft (the banker) got their fingers burnt with Tabula Rasa and might not want GW2 beta to begin until the game is more polished. They have also seen several other highly publicized games crash and burn over the last few years.

Remember that while ArenaNet is building the game, they still have to keep their "investor" calm. While the success of GW as an FTP has amazed NCSoft and the gaming world, I imagine most think it will be a one off deal and the sequel will not succeed as well.

Personally, I think that ArenaNet has a very clear idea of what the fanbase reaction will be to GW2. There will be the usual 5% screaming "xxx sucks" and the rest of us will be happily playing the game.

GW2 is an elaborate conspiracy that allows ANET to be lazy while still having people playing GW in anticipation for the second.

This is true.


Well it seems that NCSoft has been burnt by 2 games that I know of. Auto Assualt and Talba Rasa. I actually did play Auto Assualt in the open beta and thought it was just a horrible game. There was no way in hell I was going to pay any kind of monthly fee for that game. For being an MMO I felt utterly alone when I played it. Grouping for quests was a total nightmare. The towns made for socializing were boring. The car upgrading and crafting was totally confusing. I could go on. The thing is that players were telling the developers of ALL the problems I just listed and they did absolutely nothing to change any of it. They released the game as-was and it tanked. This is a perfect example of a company not listening to players and their game doing horrible sales.

This has got to make investors pissed off. If I were a heavy investor I would demand that the players of the beta be taken seriously. Cause really a beta is a test run of your game. If people don't like it when its free to play how the hell could you expect anyone to play it when they have to pay for it?

And it seems from what I gather from conversations that Tabula Rasa suffered from the same.

But strangely I trust Anet even in their silence. I just know that they will start a beta for GW2 and they will actually listen to what the players are saying is good and what just doesn't work. And they will fix it. Anet seems to actually care what players think about their games. Now I know we see a lot of crying and whining here on the forums for changes, but they have to be able to seperate the wheat from the chaff and only make changes that affect everyone, not just a few whiners.

So I will take Anet's silence and I will be patient because I know when its all said and done Guild Wars 2 will knock my socks off and probably be more than I had even thought it could be. Anet will give us a polished product. Just have to be patient and wait for it.

Duke. Nukem. Forever.

I agree that GW2 will be great, regardless of their marketing strategy (or lack thereof ). I was just curious how one would fund MMO development on that scale for years and years with dwindling revenue (from GW1) *without* doing any advertising or press releases; if I were a game/company investor, that kind of silence would make me ... nervous.

It sounds, though, like ANet has plenty o' cash.

I have been trying to think of other games that have adopted a very low-profile pre-release strategy. Not many. I have also been trying to think about pretty good games that failed due to a lack of adequate advertising and promotion.

How, for example, was "Hellgate: London" hurt or helped by prerelease advertising -- or did it not make a difference at all? The same with AoC and TR; if prerelease advertising is too intense, the level of player disappointment can be catastrophic, whereas if players enter a game with lower expectations, maybe your chance for success is increased.

Heck, SWTOR is planning to show in-game footage already, which is pretty amazing to me.

I have no doubts that GW2 will be a resounding success; I just marvel somewhat at their approach vis a vis PR--for funding reasons if nothing else.

Most memorable title ever. 100% Sure they will get frontpages without having to pay a dime.

But still, point taken.

One thing is overhyping the game and another is rushing an unfinished product, then fail to fix it for ZOMGHOWLONG over a year?

A venture capitalist, or a funding company like NCsoft for Anet, thinks in terms of risks and costs/benefits. It is not something we usually do in a rational way, as we value things with emotional connotations and often make the wrong calculations. For "us" GW player, Anet's silence sounds worrying. For a company, it's a strategy which is backed by data and based on the experience of many people that are working on this industry.

Anet showed to NCsoft during the last 3 years that they made a brilliant cost/benefit on GW1, 4 millions game unit sold and infrastructure costs under control. And even despite the comments on fansite before EotN (and just after release), they kept on selling, while making sure not to loose too much money (thin customer support, very low maintenance, server loads only peaking during week-ends and festival events).

But now they've probably shown NCsoft that they can limit and mitigate the risks of their new PR strategy, for the transition from GW1 to GW2. I have absolutely no idea how they did that, and it's a trade secret anyway. But one can imagine reasons like "we don't want to give the wrong impression" (thus giving the impression that they are cautious, or some would say that they are disrespectufl to the existing customers) or "create expectations that will come bite us back" (the 3 years of GW1 experience), or "let's play it like for GW1, low profile then people will be amazed when the game's out". Or maybe Anet has exact numbers to back up their estimations, based on existing use of GW1. Maybe then we're the ones blind and not seeing how good the situation is for GW1 from a business perspective, thus allowing them to keep a low profile.

In the end, both Anet and NCsoft are making a big bet, because given the shape of the MMO and online game market (coming: D3, SC2, stargate, star trek, DC online, etc. etc.) and NCsoft's portoflio (Aion will be big in 2009, but then you need something after that, and they have others in the pipe), the risk of loosing market shares with this PR strategy is huge. I read that WAR's PQs are extremely successful, probably as Aion's PvEvP will soon be, and in essence they're the culmination of MMO activity (a WoW raid on a bigger scale), so I can only wait for GW2's linked events to move to the next level.

I bet they're counting on the natural attraction of f2p to the existing GW community (people complain on fansites, but it's a minority, as other people don't complain because they play) and maybe even counting on WoW decline (which may be caused by the other MMOs/online games), plus a brilliant technical platform that will blow us away .

One thing I hadn't thought of is that hyping GW2 before Aion has released might be self-defeating, somehow or other, for NCSoft. Maybe there's no use competing with yourself, so to speak. I imagine Blizzard thinks the same way about Starcraft and Diablo, though those games target a different kind of MMO audience, whereas Aion and GW2 seem much more mutually competitive.

Aion does not appeal to me at all, however.

I think it is interesting that TR is still prominently featured on NCSoft's website. I really wish they'd salvage TR. If only that game had been set up like Guild Wars (i.e., no subscription fee), I think it might have had a fighting chance. As it is... The main problem with TR, imo, was that they charged a subscription fee and the game, while OK, was not worth a subscription fee.