http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/20/3776210/electric-funeral-death-of-mmo
That was a very nice piece.
/e hat_tip
A good read indeed.
Very good.
Good read. Thanks for sharing.
My only problem is the mantra, repeated about five times, of "All MMOs must end." I dispute this. The article makes MMO closings something akin to natural law: that the destruction of these things is inevitable and beyond anyone's control. Yet we must be very clear. Nature did not destroy these virtual worlds. Human beings did, and they closed these worlds willingly.
The only reason "All MMOs must end" is because the industry wants all MMOs to end...at whatever time and for whatever silly reason strikes a publisher's fancy.
Quote from: Sajaana on December 22, 2012, 06:40:01 PM
My only problem is the mantra, repeated about five times, of "All MMOs must end." I dispute this.
Everything that has a beginning has an end, Sajaana. The problem is when they end prematurely, when there are still a critical mass of participants capable of sustaining it operationally and financially.
You hand me a million dollars a month, which is approximately what City of Heroes was bringing in, and I'll operate all of the server shards in hardened facilities with triply redundant internet connectivity and put about 60 developers and 5 operations people on the payroll to support the game, and have enough pocket change left to pay myself a six figure salary to sit at home and take credit for everything. By any measure except for people who can't add, CoH was not just financially stable, it was wildly profitable. It was just never going to be a hundred million dollar game.
The City of Heroes shutdown was like Archie Manning euthanizing Eli Manning because he thought he would not grow up to be Payton Manning. That's what really stings.
What REALLY stings is the pancaking ads for Guild Wars previewing in front of The Hobbit 2D.
HOW many players would we have had if we'd had CoH ads in front of The Avengers?
Quote from: Victoria Victrix on December 23, 2012, 12:00:30 PM
What REALLY stings is the pancaking ads for Guild Wars previewing in front of The Hobbit 2D.
HOW many players would we have had if we'd had CoH ads in front of The Avengers?
Or any Marvel or DC movie. Heck even movies like
Kick-Ass,
Hancock or
Chronicle considering our independent canon.
Fortunately ArenaNet was able to call it's own shots when it came to hiring an PR firm for their game.
I wonder if COH was doomed from the start.
No ad campaign even when it would have been too easy to put it with any of the numerous countless super hero movies that have been coming out as of late. Even GW2 got ad spot with Hobbit, meaning there is ad money somewhere.
COH never got really any exposure beyond the word of mouth solely based on the players shoulders.
Not even every major store carried the game or time cards yet other games like GW and GW 2 was everywhere.
I wonder if it was the plan from the start.
Just merely a random thought. Nothing more. Nothing here to jump on.
Also don't forget GW2 is still "new" and this is it's first Christmas, so if you are going to spend money on advertising, now IS the time.
Can any of us think back to 2004 and 2005 holidays when CoH and CoV were new? Ads in PC gaming magazines. Were there PC game ads even on TV at all back then never mind movies? Console games I'm sure but PC games? XBox 360 just came out, but the original XBox and PS2 were still going strong. The N still had the Gamecube for what that was worth but Sega's Dreamcast hardware was dead and buried. And of course as the joke goes "PC gaming was dead".
We live in different times now. Gaming mags are gone. Most computer big box stores are gone. There might be 20ft of shelve space a BestBuy devoted to PC games, their game cards hint books when back in 2004 there were multiple aisles three shelves high of PC games (of course back then Circuit City and CompUSA were still alive). The only MMO that routinely have ads in primetime is WoW. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see another GW2 ad campaign until it's first big expansion or even next Christmas season, it depends on how well it does.
The problem with advertising is that often it's a case of "chicken or the egg". You need money to advertise to get more people to give you money so you can spend some of it toward more advertising. The other major and cheap way is word of mouth but that can only get you so far. In those early days of CoH/CoV we had an honest to God comic book, in comic book stores, about our game. How much more targeted advertising do you want? These were our people, our primary audience. There was a lot of promo material sent to comic book shops. Swag given away at E3. But it's only rarely that years after a game is launched that there's a significant ad campaign. They get pushed out of dry dock and then it's up to them and word of mouth to keep the game going, to get new blood.
Quote from: FatherXmas on December 24, 2012, 06:43:42 AM
Also don't forget GW2 is still "new" and this is it's first Christmas, so if you are going to spend money on advertising, now IS the time.
Can any of us think back to 2004 and 2005 holidays when CoH and CoV were new? Ads in PC gaming magazines. Were there PC game ads even on TV at all back then never mind movies? Console games I'm sure but PC games? XBox 360 just came out, but the original XBox and PS2 were still going strong. The N still had the Gamecube for what that was worth but Sega's Dreamcast hardware was dead and buried. And of course as the joke goes "PC gaming was dead".
We live in different times now. Gaming mags are gone. Most computer big box stores are gone. There might be 20ft of shelve space a BestBuy devoted to PC games, their game cards hint books when back in 2004 there were multiple aisles three shelves high of PC games (of course back then Circuit City and CompUSA were still alive). The only MMO that routinely have ads in primetime is WoW. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see another GW2 ad campaign until it's first big expansion or even next Christmas season, it depends on how well it does.
The problem with advertising is that often it's a case of "chicken or the egg". You need money to advertise to get more people to give you money so you can spend some of it toward more advertising. The other major and cheap way is word of mouth but that can only get you so far. In those early days of CoH/CoV we had an honest to God comic book, in comic book stores, about our game. How much more targeted advertising do you want? These were our people, our primary audience. There was a lot of promo material sent to comic book shops. Swag given away at E3. But it's only rarely that years after a game is launched that there's a significant ad campaign. They get pushed out of dry dock and then it's up to them and word of mouth to keep the game going, to get new blood.
yep. I remember those days. Some places dont even havea PC game section.
There is still a COmpUSA out here but even their computer section have been taken over by console games even though they have rows and rows of computers. "?". I remember some advertising for computer games on tv, of course mostly the usual WoW when it hit, which was a around the same time, a few months after COX, Everquest commericals here and there, and various other computer games, sometimes more so than console games. But no COH on tv.
I guess the target audience were comic book readers as I heard they put some ads in there, but me personally I never read comic books and if I just so happened didnt see the box in walmart and was in a curious mood, I wouldnt have never heard of this game. But I heard of WoW and I dont even like the lore much or even played it for too long, nor did I even seek it out. Heard of Everquest, never played it, really didnt even know what it was about besides some fantasy game. Even heard of NeverWinter nights (1991) in passing never played it, Meridian 59, some game called Nexus, Terra, Ultima Online back in 2003 (released in 1997 I think), Dark Ages, Runescape (seen an ad for it), EVE Online (ads and the big deal of it's release that was made), even Lineage 2 then by default figured there wasa Lineage 1 hanging around, then seen ads for EverQuest 2 and that's how I found out about the sequel to the first one, of course heard about Matrix online because I liked the movie, and got wind about the games console and MMO they released, never played either one, and seen Pirates of the Caribbean in an ad on a Disney film, and then on tv, non-disney channel, Warhammer commercial, and lastly Dragon Ball online, commercial and internet ad.
But came across COX by pure luck and if on that particular day I didnt get bored and go to the local walmart in the early am, I would have never played nor heard of COH. It wouldnt even have existed in my world since I didnt read comics nor was subscribers to PC magazines and the few that I have read had WoW and Everquest ads in it with ads to other games, but not COH.
But tv ads existed back then, just not for COH it seemed. It seemed that COH aimed for niche market and got niche market numbers but then decided that niche wasnt enough. I think COH could have aimed for more than just comic book reader niche market and went further and appealed to wide range of people. Yes it wasa super hero mmo by definition but it hada bit of fantasy, sci-fi, shooting, super heros of course, super villians a few years later, and everything in between a few years after that. It could of been the game where there was a little for everyone if they got their name out there and aimed for more than a few comic and PC game magazine readers. Hell, it seems that most players were casual gamers and thus probably wouldnt be reading up about every game that hit the market anyways. And not all players were serious comic book fans. Given COX unique group of players, I dont think they had any of the slightest clue of how to market this game and or what was the target audience was. I think it probably was a bunch of fantasy game marketing experts looking at a super hero mmo and had no idea what to do with it and thus did nothing much at all. They dont seem to realize there is more than a few gamers that would play an MMO that is not a pure fantasy based game of orcs, elves, barbarians and magic throwing mages and endless quests. The devs knew what they had, but the marketing people seemed as clueless as a group of chimpanzees trying to build a NASA spaceship.
I live in a rather affluent and tech industry state in the Northeast. We don't have a CompUSA anymore (lots in Florida I see). Or a Fry's or a Microcenter. We do have an Apple Store and a Microsoft Store though.
Walmart's PC section, at least at the Walmart closest to me, is a jumbled pile of misc. games in anti-theft boxes and shovelware (10,001 Mahjong Games, "Almost like Bedazzled" and "Mancy Brew and the Case of the Almost Copyright Infringement"). At least at Target it they almost have a whole aisle, well mostly one side of an aisle, but it's more than just shovelware, The Sims and WoW.
I guess if your area is too techy we just mail order parts and use digital distribution for software.
Quote from: FatherXmas on December 24, 2012, 02:50:03 PM
I live in a rather affluent and tech industry state in the Northeast. We don't have a CompUSA anymore (lots in Florida I see). Or a Fry's or a Microcenter. We do have an Apple Store and a Microsoft Store though.
Walmart's PC section, at least at the Walmart closest to me, is a jumbled pile of misc. games in anti-theft boxes and shovelware (10,001 Mahjong Games, "Almost like Bedazzled" and "Mancy Brew and the Case of the Almost Copyright Infringement"). At least at Target it they almost have a whole aisle, well mostly one side of an aisle, but it's more than just shovelware, The Sims and WoW.
I guess if your area is too techy we just mail order parts and use digital distribution for software.
lol yeah this area is not tech fluent at all. There is an apple store in one of the malls but the employees do not seem to know anymore about the product than I do, and that is not much. No microsoft store and targets here have computer game shelf. Sim games, WoW in one place while the rest of the display is those little games like that Mahjong and other various crap. Only Compusa here sell anything computer related on a decent scale, which isnt much at all. It's even hard to get good computer parts down here. You wont be able to go somewhere and build a decent normal average computer because they dont have all the parts or even most. You can get a hard drive and memory sticks and outdated video cards that's it. Well many people do call this city the forgotten crap hole of America. Many people dont even know this city existed, even people in the same state.
Quote from: FatherXmas on December 23, 2012, 01:06:05 PM
Or any Marvel or DC movie. Heck even movies like Kick-Ass, Hancock or Chronicle considering our independent canon.
Fortunately ArenaNet was able to call it's own shots when it came to hiring an PR firm for their game.
Heck, when was the last time CoH had ads in any printed comic? That was THE core demographic and it was, as far as I know, not targeted since the release of CoV (and that's a guess, I just asume there were print comic ads for CoV.)
Quote from: FatherXmas on December 24, 2012, 06:43:42 AM
Also don't forget GW2 is still "new" and this is it's first Christmas, so if you are going to spend money on advertising, now IS the time.
I also saw a World of Warcraft ad play a few minutes after the GW2 ad.
Sure, WoW IS WoW but...
Got to portrait this on a story form. A long time ago I worked a rather lame door to door sales jig. However, the guys in charge were amazingly great marketing people. They told us this tiny tale, a tale that may be real, may not be, but either way the message is 100% true:
QuoteAn marketing executive is in a business trip. He boards the plane and once he sits down he realizes that the guy sitting next to him is the CEO of one of the largest chewing gum manufacturers in the world. He starts a conversation and during the talk this executive asks Mr CEO:
"I got to ask something, you got this huge brand, and the entire planet knows your product by name. The logo is a household icon. You have to live under a rock not to tie up your product to its identity... yet... you spend millions and millions on advertisement every year... why? You are already a household name... why waste so much money on advertisement?"
The CEO smiles and replies: "Well, it's very simple. You see, killing all advertisement for my product just because it's already known, is as wise as shutting off the engines of this plane simply because we are already in the air. Sure, we will glide for a few extra hundred miles, but we will eventually crash and burn. And chances are, turning the engines back on mid crash won't prevent our demise."
No product in the world remains in the spotlight forever. All products require constant advertisement to remain relevant. Why you think The Coca Cola Company makes sure you see a coke logo at least once a day? It's not just about selling it for the first time, its' about making sure you can't forget it either.
CoH was a profitable game to the end, but it was a shadow of what it could have been had they stuck to a hard marketing campaign. A reason WoW has managed to maintain its spot at the top of the hill is precisely because they have maintained various high profile ad campaigns throughout its lifetime.
QuoteThe only MMO that routinely have ads in primetime is WoW. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see another GW2 ad campaign until it's first big expansion or even next Christmas season, it depends on how well it does.
I am sure I saw an ad for SWTOR on TV last time I sat down to watch one of those things (within the last 60 days for certain, but don't watch TV regularly.) Mind you, a campaign does not have to be on national TV. A campaign at all would have been enough to keep things running much smoother.
Eventually you do need to cut back in advertisement, but entirely eliminating it is a bad idea. You are better off reducing workforce than reducing entirely eliminating marketing.
QuoteIn those early days of CoH/CoV we had an honest to God comic book, in comic book stores, about our game. How much more targeted advertising do you want?
I hate to say this, and it may not be popular opinion, but the original comic run was... poorly executed. It needed to feel mainstream, it felt too indie. Would have been way more effective to spend that same money in printed ads inside the most popular comics of the time. Although there tends to be an overlap between gamers and comic book readers, the overlap tends to be stronger across the mainstream comic reader than over the indie comic audience.
If you wanted to do real comic prints as promotions, would have been more effective also to capitalize on existing franchises with super-star crossovers like Batman/Manticore or Superman/Statesman crossover specials and the like.
I worked in a comic book shop at the time. I found out about City of Heroes via GamePro. Darn we should have received posters and promotional material to hang up in the store! That on itself is wrong! I saw the comic in our shelves and walked by unimpressed. It we stopped ordering it because no one picked it up.
Mind you, there were a significant amount of ads for the game inside other comics. The printed CoH comic should have vanished before these did, though.
NCSoft is doing a good job promoting GW2 so far, but they really did a poor job with CoH, and a horrible mistake by entirely killing all marketing later on.
Quote from: Starsman on December 26, 2012, 08:28:01 PM
I also saw a World of Warcraft ad play a few minutes after the GW2 ad.
Sure, WoW IS WoW but...
Got to portrait this on a story form. A long time ago I worked a rather lame door to door sales jig. However, the guys in charge were amazingly great marketing people. They told us this tiny tale, a tale that may be real, may not be, but either way the message is 100% true:
No product in the world remains in the spotlight forever. All products require constant advertisement to remain relevant. Why you think The Coca Cola Company makes sure you see a coke logo at least once a day? It's not just about selling it for the first time, its' about making sure you can't forget it either.
CoH was a profitable game to the end, but it was a shadow of what it could have been had they stuck to a hard marketing campaign. A reason WoW has managed to maintain its spot at the top of the hill is precisely because they have maintained various high profile ad campaigns throughout its lifetime.
I am sure I saw an ad for SWTOR on TV last time I sat down to watch one of those things (within the last 60 days for certain, but don't watch TV regularly.) Mind you, a campaign does not have to be on national TV. A campaign at all would have been enough to keep things running much smoother.
Eventually you do need to cut back in advertisement, but entirely eliminating it is a bad idea. You are better off reducing workforce than reducing entirely eliminating marketing.
I hate to say this, and it may not be popular opinion, but the original comic run was... poorly executed. It needed to feel mainstream, it felt too indie. Would have been way more effective to spend that same money in printed ads inside the most popular comics of the time. Although there tends to be an overlap between gamers and comic book readers, the overlap tends to be stronger across the mainstream comic reader than over the indie comic audience.
If you wanted to do real comic prints as promotions, would have been more effective also to capitalize on existing franchises with super-star crossovers like Batman/Manticore or Superman/Statesman crossover specials and the like.
I worked in a comic book shop at the time. I found out about City of Heroes via GamePro. Darn we should have received posters and promotional material to hang up in the store! That on itself is wrong! I saw the comic in our shelves and walked by unimpressed. It we stopped ordering it because no one picked it up.
Mind you, there were a significant amount of ads for the game inside other comics. The printed CoH comic should have vanished before these did, though.
NCSoft is doing a good job promoting GW2 so far, but they really did a poor job with CoH, and a horrible mistake by entirely killing all marketing later on.
All valid points but video games and household commodities like gum or soda operate under two very different business models. Video games production is a lot closer to movie production than soda manufacturing. There is a lot of money spent up front, the amount of time you have to sell your product is fairly short due to the limited shelf space and constant stream of products. And like advertising movies, you spend the bulk of your ad dollars in the days or weeks before it's release to around four weeks after. There are exceptions, like when movies are nominated for awards, they may get a bump in advertising then just as popular games get a boost around the holidays.
Now MMOs are not quite movies but more like expensive TV SciFi where there is a large upfront cost in set construction and location costs (off to another closed quarry or ultra modern building/campus or even an entire town). And like TV it's longevity is based on it's ratings or in an MMO, active population. And while it makes sense to fight turnover with advertising, advertising needs to cost less than what the new clientele is willing to spend otherwise you are losing money on the deal.
Also MMOs are a rather "new" type of product and finding the right model to market it is still a work in progress. Many companies still look at them as simply another video game so ad money is only spent around it's release and the Christmas holidays and they depend on MMO news sites and word of mouth, both somewhat free, as a way to attract new paying customers. Especially as F2P becomes THE expected way, from a new customer's POV, of how an MMO is sold and marketed. Recent subscription based games like TSW, DCUO and SWtOR, aren't even lasting long enough in their original income model to pay off their production costs. MMO players have now been conditioned to expect subscription based with registration fee games to go fully F2P within a year and there isn't a need to rush into it.
I believe you have hit on the right analogy. MMOs are indeed like TV series. And TV series advertise constantly in the form of "This week on..." plugs among other shows. Because someone who likes detective shows might be intrigued by a detective episode or character on a Science Fiction show. And someone who likes horror might be intrigued by an intimation of horror on a police procedural.
Which is precisely why NCSoft should never have killed its promotional budget. Poor Hosun Lee was having to operate on "what can we get for free."
Quote from: Victoria Victrix on December 27, 2012, 03:25:06 AM
I believe you have hit on the right analogy. MMOs are indeed like TV series. And TV series advertise constantly in the form of "This week on..." plugs among other shows. Because someone who likes detective shows might be intrigued by a detective episode or character on a Science Fiction show. And someone who likes horror might be intrigued by an intimation of horror on a police procedural.
Which is precisely why NCSoft should never have killed its promotional budget. Poor Hosun Lee was having to operate on "what can we get for free."
As I understand it, Black Pebble's budget was negative. I think he used to operate a car wash at Paragon just to balance his budget to zero.
MMOs are far from being a new thing. We have been with them for nearly 20 years now. There are plenty of people out there that don't recall a world where MMOs did not exist.
Now the TV analogy... it is indeed close but not bullseye, not for every MMO. By definition an MMO does have a lot of work up front, years worth of production, 3 years is ideal but 6 years is not unheard off. By contrast, the amount of money you sink in subsequent content tends to be rather small.
TV shows do spend some up-front money for set-building but the up-front cost is not as disproportionate. Script writers and actors charge a LOT of money per episode. Even then, they market the show to the end, and not only in the station it's broadcasted. You see the show marketed in other stations that belong to the same network, in Hulu and Youtube via full video spots, over the web, on the radio, etc. They wont stop promoting a TV show until they cancel it, and even that last episode is heavily promoted.
As far as the MMO model goes, boxed expansions have worked for a long time. It may no longer work well, though. Ideally, even if we complained about it, CoH would have seen a yearly expansion, even if this meant thinner independent issues. Think of the expansions as the "episodes", or perhaps the seasons, of a TV show. They are great points for new players to jump in and well marketed content for those that did "everything" to return to. Yea we likely got that in the form of issues, but few outside the game knew about those issues.
I quit the game for a while after GR came out, and I didn't realize how many issues came out until I decided to return to the game. Social media may work, but it tends to work best at engaging current audience than spreading the voice (unless you give the followers something they feel motivated to share, something that has strong marketing punch behind it.)
Mind you: there were other things wrong with CoH. We got used to it over years and feel it as second nature, but the UI for CoH was horrible. Too many things all over the place, too many things hidden under layers and layers. Important features like the power inventory represented as a tiny un-searchable and un-categorized list of names. Movement was not exactly natural either out of the box. I got a few casual gamers to try the game and they had a very rough time getting around the interface and the controls. It is not very helpful to bring players in if there is such a high hurdle between the player and the game. I attempted to bring this up a few times but most players seemed extremely content about it.
Quote from: Arcana on December 27, 2012, 04:05:37 AMI think he used to operate a car wash at Paragon just to balance his budget to zero.
I would love if my brain didn't default to "you are likely serious... " in this situation...
Quote from: Arcana on December 27, 2012, 04:05:37 AM
As I understand it, Black Pebble's budget was negative. I think he used to operate a car wash at Paragon just to balance his budget to zero.
Everybody remember the very first Humble e-Book Bundle? The one that netted about a million and a half dollars?
The one we were privileged to participate in?
I had a campaign ready to go to attach to that, which would have cost nothing.
EXTENSIVE preface about CoH, how we all met, what our characters were like as CoH versions, and how we decided to turn them loose in a new setting.
Extensive description of the game, and links.
Front page promotion on my website.
I was going to ask Hosun for some sort of special game-code for a "gimme" for people that bought the book. Free German Shepherd as a callback to "Leader of the Pack" probably.
I was going to talk to him about it after labor day weekend.
....right.
Quote from: Victoria Victrix on December 27, 2012, 03:25:06 AM
I believe you have hit on the right analogy. MMOs are indeed like TV series. And TV series advertise constantly in the form of "This week on..." plugs among other shows. Because someone who likes detective shows might be intrigued by a detective episode or character on a Science Fiction show. And someone who likes horror might be intrigued by an intimation of horror on a police procedural.
Which is precisely why NCSoft should never have killed its promotional budget. Poor Hosun Lee was having to operate on "what can we get for free."
Yes but "new" TV shows often have existing popular shows to lead in and out of as well as having "free" advertising around other shows on that network or network family (like seeing USA Network shows advertise on SyFy or vice versa).
Now Popcap has a tendency to put up a "also by Popcap" screen when you quit one of their games and you could say the NC Launcher program did provide a similar function, displaying news about the all of the MMOs in their stable unless you always bypassed that with the direct game shortcuts. However you couldn't avoid it during a patch (which makes me believe that's partially the reason CO and STO is patched weekly so they can flash you about the new items in the store.
Now you can't spend say a million dollars on ads unless you are absolutely sure you will make more than a million dollars back in the long run. I don't think the industry knows what is the most cost effective way to attract new customers to an existing MMO. For CoH, would it have been better to keep publishing a tie-in comic and get it into comic book shops everywhere or just have a reasonable size booth at all the major comic and game cons in NA with a couple of rigs up and running with developed characters ready to play? Would Marvel or DC have allowed a nationwide ad for a superhero MMO in front of their movie when they have their own MMOs? And before you say anything it's not like Turbine could have any influence over stopping the GW2 ad in front of
The Hobbit. And how much did that little ad cost ArenaNet and would they have done it if
The Hobbit came out in February and not during the Christmas buying season?
I still believe that some of this "they should have advertise more" sentiment is based on us wanting others to see what we play. Face it we hated it when someone would say "I never heard of that game" or "why aren't you playing WoW". We wanted ads so others would at least be aware of the game we play and that MMO doesn't just mean WoW. It's like being a fan of some overseas football or rugby team and are annoyed that there isn't more people who have heard of them. We wanted an ad that was seen widely enough that someone would turn to their roommate/SO/friend and say "hey that's the game Joe at work/my lab partner/Jane's friend plays". We craved for others to know about the game from sources other than us. We want someone to walk up and say "hey I saw an ad for the game you are always talking about".
Quote from: Starsman on December 27, 2012, 04:07:34 AM
MMOs are far from being a new thing. We have been with them for nearly 20 years now. There are plenty of people out there that don't recall a world where MMOs did not exist.
Now the TV analogy... it is indeed close but not bullseye, not for every MMO. By definition an MMO does have a lot of work up front, years worth of production, 3 years is ideal but 6 years is not unheard off. By contrast, the amount of money you sink in subsequent content tends to be rather small.
TV shows do spend some up-front money for set-building but the up-front cost is not as disproportionate. Script writers and actors charge a LOT of money per episode. Even then, they market the show to the end, and not only in the station it's broadcasted. You see the show marketed in other stations that belong to the same network, in Hulu and Youtube via full video spots, over the web, on the radio, etc. They wont stop promoting a TV show until they cancel it, and even that last episode is heavily promoted.
As far as the MMO model goes, boxed expansions have worked for a long time. It may no longer work well, though. Ideally, even if we complained about it, CoH would have seen a yearly expansion, even if this meant thinner independent issues. Think of the expansions as the "episodes", or perhaps the seasons, of a TV show. They are great points for new players to jump in and well marketed content for those that did "everything" to return to. Yea we likely got that in the form of issues, but few outside the game knew about those issues.
I quit the game for a while after GR came out, and I didn't realize how many issues came out until I decided to return to the game. Social media may work, but it tends to work best at engaging current audience than spreading the voice (unless you give the followers something they feel motivated to share, something that has strong marketing punch behind it.)
Mind you: there were other things wrong with CoH. We got used to it over years and feel it as second nature, but the UI for CoH was horrible. Too many things all over the place, too many things hidden under layers and layers. Important features like the power inventory represented as a tiny un-searchable and un-categorized list of names. Movement was not exactly natural either out of the box. I got a few casual gamers to try the game and they had a very rough time getting around the interface and the controls. It is not very helpful to bring players in if there is such a high hurdle between the player and the game. I attempted to bring this up a few times but most players seemed extremely content about it.
But a brand new show usually has a cast of mostly unknowns or haven't been seen on TV or movies anytime recently so their initial per episode cost is relatively low. It's only after the show becomes popular and the actors feel irreplaceable that they insist on major raises. Funny that I never heard of Joss Whedon having that problem. :roll:
And while try that MMOs aren't new, the MMO market is very different today then say 10 years ago. Sticking with the TV metaphor, studios were OK back then with unique, quirky shows that had a passable size following but today they want
Friends or
Dallas.
And while you can have a new box edition out for the holidays every year with it's own ad campaign, places that stock box PC games have dwindled and those that still do have less space for stock than even 5 years ago. A box or time card on the shelf is "free" advertising. It reinforces the fact that your MMO is still alive and kicking.
Still there's been a lot of forces over the last five to ten years that have significantly changed the PC gaming landscape. The death of gaming magazines. The adoption of broadband download services (remember that broadband isn't universal or inexpensive in the US) and online stores have discourage retailers from stocking physical product (I notice in BestBuy that they are selling some games as just a card, requiring you to download it yourself, for the same price as the previous box edition). Targeted social media advertising might help, custom ads displayed for people who may be more likely to buy your game, but that only works if the likely target is willing to over share enough information that such a profile could be identified.