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.
