m1nion wrote:To make it viable you would have to keep it the same as other MMOs. The vets who know and love the game would maybe pay a bit more but we need new players. With the right advertising and support the game can thrive and still cost the same as the other MMOs.
I beg to differ. Both SWG and Ryzom fate prove with no doubt that this kind of game shouldn't sell for same price as WoW ones or they cannot be... viable. Both games proposed players complicated environments and an evolution that didn't imply only be taken by the hand, led to quest A and then continue through B, C,...N while N means master. By the way, they call it content. From this point of view Ryzom lacks content, there are compeltely different things that Ryzom defines as content.
Never dared any accountant working for the marketing of these games asume that maybe, just maybe, they should not compete with the huge player base of WoWlike games. And both games aimed - at the pressure of the administration - to attempt competing with those guys. Why? For greed. Because those games bring on huge and fast amounts of money.
Why the MBA guys accepted? For one reason because they never knew what games they are playing for. But for a more phylosophical answer because we tend nowadays treat humanity as a crowd of indistinguishable individuals where majority dictatorship is law. That's why the political discourse addresses majority, that's why slowly but surely cars design is the same, that's why TV programs address majority and so on.
But in games you don't have to win the majority, it's just the novelty of such products that makes it even possible to think you can have the majority. Lack of competition it is called. It's like making a L'Oreal deodorant, the market guys would suddenly plan everything as if every single person of the civilized world is supposed to wear that deodorant within 9 months from releasing the product.
The second confusion might be the quantity of work involved. It is only true that making a complex game where you use your brain or you lose, or making a simple game full of easy, fast, easy quests involves a similar amount of work, a similar amount of people, and finally a similar amount of post release fixing and developping. That's only true, but you don't expect a Chanel dress involve much more work than a Walmart dress if you come down to details, right?
The truth is Ryzom and good part of old SWG are made for a limited market, people over their teens generally, enjoying freedom, enjoying long time thinking over problems in game, challenged by complex environment. But for the majority of WoWlike games, the same Ryzom and old SWG parts are boring, slow, confusing, a place where you surely have nothing to do. Face it, there's nothing to be ashamed at. Thus Ryzom looks for a thinner slice of the market. Can continue with socio considerations about Ryzom potential player base but you'll look around and see for yourselves.
So taking facts as they are, Ryzom needs a focused marketing campaign aiming only at its potential target. If you remember GameForge tried a strong ad campaing aimed just general to all audience. It did fail because it had to fail. All here who were recruiting for guilds should remember the average life of the newbie in Ryzom. Why? Because the fat slice of audience can be ovelapped with the general profile of the WoWpattern games seeker. Ryzom cannot keep such people happy, it lacks mechanisms to do it, and if it had then it wouldn't be Ryzom anylonger. Statistically Ryzom cannot survive luring this kind of players, they cease payment in a month maximum two and hurt the community in doing so as well.
The Marketing should be addressed to a specialised slice of the market then, and attempt to add to it people who do not play MMOs at this time. Identify the newspapers and blogs these people read and publish not so much ads but articles. Identify what part of the market can be stolen from even more statical envirnments like MUDs od AfterLife -kind games. Address them the same way your game addresses players, in a challenging and complex way. A large cathegory that Sony tried to catch and partially succeeded before changing policy. I would only count here on house wives, elderly people, and young mothers.
But as Sony failure proved, even so, the game may not provide the expected revenues in a bank defined time to make it profitable. The slice is still too thin. So what then? Get backrupt and admit it's a mistake creating such games? Ehh, giving up too easy.
Dare what was never dared before. Create a prestige advertising campaign, create a brand, not only attract players but make them aware they are _the_ minority, _the_ out of stream. And, of course, kindly ask them to pay more. Not so much as to make them run away, but a decent more percentage. By the way, if you hire some MBAs to make you prices and they come with same price as WoW, I honestly don't see why they get payed for, the developpers could have done this for nothing.
And if you dare take the decision, if you make a correct targetted ad campaign, if you succeed in creating a brand (which is not a label, but a mental value, mind you) then maybe just maybe at least one of these games will pay to survive.
