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Tek

MMORPG.com Marketing Campaign

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For those who don't know Wurm Online started a marketing campaign today on https://www.mmorpg.com/ ( Press Release: https://gamechestgroup.com/investor-relations/press-release/20678 )

 

I thought it would be interesting to get some discussion going about it and see what everyone thinks about it. I have been curious with the road map and a few mentions of marketing since the steam launch to see what came of it - and it looks like this is one of the things that was being worked on. I've questioned whether big marketing is really something that should be done or a focus for the game since steam or whether a longer period of time from the steam launch to really iron out some ongoing issues, the team expansions, bug fixing, new content etc should all be focused on before another marketing push that could lead to just more reviews with the same issues as we have been seeing since steam.

 

So Wurm community... What are your thoughts on this?

 

Should Wurm Online be marketing like this? Would you like to see more marketing to grow the game and push the population back up some more? Do you feel like marketing should be put on the back burner and resources allocated elsewhere? 

 

There was some chatter recently debating the idea of getting more players/numbers VS content/fixes. Seems some stand on either side, do you think the two can happen at the same time? Or do you feel like one has to be a primary focus?

 

Let's try to keep this constructive :)

 

Thoughts?

Edited by Tek

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 You have to realize Wurm Online has been around for 10+ years. Wurm is already known in the MMORPG world. Advertising is designed to tap into lesser known demographics, it would useless aiming into the MMORPG community. 

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Despite game´s age, we have low numbers specially at SFI, and since devs dont seem to care about linking both clusters to bring together the community we need fresh blood to fill our ranks, game feels so empty and dead because of this absurd idea.

+1 to any kind of advertisement, i dont care about other games, I care about Wurm.

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2 hours ago, Tek said:

Thoughts?

too early for saying anything

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13 hours ago, Postes said:

 You have to realize Wurm Online has been around for 10+ years. Wurm is already known in the MMORPG world. Advertising is designed to tap into lesser known demographics, it would useless aiming into the MMORPG community. 

errr go open google.com and google for the categories where wurm have signed itself on steam: 

We have 'free to play', rpg, 'massively multiplayer', indie, go.. google... see on which page you'll find wurm online for these keywords if you do not add game's name in the search, that's how famous the game is(NICHE, remember.. that's 1 reason for the low population), even if you google for sandbox.. chance to find wurm online listed on some website with chart of such games is also low.. game's being famous for being unknown out there.

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Than again.. look for some free to play rpg games, or new rpg games for this/last/next year.. there are only a few doing this.. you'll eventually land on mmorpg or one of their lists.. if 'sandbox' is your teapot.. well you'll at least see wurm

Rest is some effort to fix the vast 'bugged' features that make no sense and fight "wogic" in all kinds of game features, plenty of UI missing elements, plenty of mechanics with wogic parts, mis-matching features and contradictions in mechanics, but that you learn with months/years of playing the game.. or less.. depends how much you play the game and how fast you learn about the invisible walls. 

8e0cff2c52266ea2c4258e1bc1133d6a.jpg

 

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Oh sweet, one of my favorite topics.

 

19 hours ago, Tek said:

Do you feel like marketing should be put on the back burner and resources allocated elsewhere?

 

There are seasons for both products and services and in that regard a budget might be altered to account for that trend but I've not seen advertising getting placed on the back burner, ever, it needs to be a constant focus. Likewise, for any business, there is no such thing as allocating advertising $ for other things. A business that does not advertise, does not succeed as well as a business that does advertise and in most cases, flat out fails unless they get incredibly lucky with crowd sourced exposure. But one can't run a successful business rolling the dice and hoping to get picked up en-masse, they must be proactive in their efforts to get eyes on the thing they are trying to sell.

 

 

19 hours ago, Tek said:

I've questioned whether big marketing is really something that should be done

 

Are you referencing budget and if so do you know the budget set by Game Chest? If not then I'm not sure that you could make the claim that Game Chest is engaged in "big marketing" (unless you mean something else by that phrase). In most situations, any budget can be set regardless of the venue. Though some venues have expensive minimums, for example Hulu ad reps don't want to talk to anyone that is unwilling to run a test campaign for less than $100,000. But situations like that are rare and for many venues something as low as $1/day is an option.

 

What matters more than the budget is venue-appropriate marketing and I'd venture a guess that mmorpg.com, while not the only choice, is still certainly a valid choice for WO. What if it fails? If a proven venue fails to convert at the standard conversion rate, then the problem isn't the venue, it's the message. But this is dependent upon it being the right venue for the market and most advertisers don't launch with their full budget until they've had some time to analyze the results using a smaller budget first.

 

One more thing. mmorpg.com runs Google ads so anyone can literally plop ads on their site simply by targeting them within their Google Ads PPC campaign settings and clicks of that sort are less expensive than paid ads in the SERPS. And while it's true that sites running AdSense can block specific advertisers, this is usually only done to prevent bad targeting (otherwise they are losing out on earnings). I mention this because the article you linked does not clearly state the nature of how their space will be used for promoting WO, be it articles etc... or using Google Ads which will see ads all over the internet, not just mmorpg.com

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11 minutes ago, Whane said:

Oh sweet, one of my favorite topics.

 

 

There are seasons for both products and services and in that regard a budget might be altered to account for that trend but I've not seen advertising getting placed on the back burner, ever, it needs to be a constant focus. Likewise, for any business, there is no such thing as allocating advertising $ for other things. A business that does not advertise, does not succeed as well as a business that does advertise and in most cases, flat out fails unless they get incredibly lucky with crowd sourced exposure. But one can't run a successful business rolling the dice and hoping to get picked up en-masse, they must be proactive in their efforts to get eyes on the thing they are trying to sell.

 

 

 

Are you referencing budget and if so do you know the budget set by Game Chest? If not then I'm not sure that you could make the claim that Game Chest is engaged in "big marketing" (unless you mean something else by that phrase). In most situations, any budget can be set regardless of the venue. Though some venues have expensive minimums, for example Hulu ad reps don't want to talk to anyone that is unwilling to run a test campaign for less than $100,000. But situations like that are rare and for many venues something as low as $1/day is an option.

 

What matters more than the budget is venue-appropriate marketing and I'd venture a guess that mmorpg.com, while not the only choice, is still certainly a valid choice for WO. What if it fails? If a proven venue fails to convert at the standard conversion rate, then the problem isn't the venue, it's the message. But this is dependent upon it being the right venue for the market and most advertisers don't launch with their full budget until they've had some time to analyze the results using a smaller budget first.

 

One more thing. mmorpg.com runs Google ads so anyone can literally plop ads on their site simply by targeting them within their Google Ads PPC campaign settings and clicks of that sort are less expensive than paid ads in the SERPS. And while it's true that sites running AdSense can block specific advertisers, this is usually only done to prevent bad targeting (otherwise they are losing out on earnings). I mention this because the article you linked does not clearly state the nature of how their space will be used for promoting WO, be it articles etc... or using Google Ads which will see ads all over the internet, not just mmorpg.com

 

Some great points in there, which is why I thought a discussion would be a good idea. Around the time I noticed the press release from gamechest there was some talk in GL about marketing and getting more players and there were people discussing issues and needed fixes/content as reasons for why a push shouldn't be done. Though the chat wasn't related to this release so I thought some discussion on here could be interesting to get some thoughts. Obviously nobody outside of the company knows these kinds of figures. My mention of budgets and focuses is just to get some conversation going on the topic. My only reason for thinking it was "big marketing" was that they put out a press release for it, unlike other advertising they have done, they felt it was important enough to do so.

 

Obviously marketing is important, and being on steam now makes those efforts that much better as the client is much more accessible. From what I can see on it looks more like a take over style promotion on the website, though my knowledge on all of this is limited, so perhaps those who know more will chime in.

 

I think overall pushing more marketing will help the game and hopefully bring in new players, and should for sure be happening. I do wish that having campaigns lined up with some sort of update, or that more of the issues that steam reviews show, or long time bugs/exploits getting fixed. Not meaning marketing should stop but more so wishful thinking that things were getting fixed quicker so that maybe the retention numbers would increase, and that maybe then those ad dollars would have a more lasting effect. 

 

One final thing I was thinking about since I saw the ad being used for the campaign, on top of some recent discussions I have seen, is whether the "free to play" push helps or hurts, and whether "free to try" might be more accurate. Though that is another topic for another time.

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2 hours ago, Tek said:

My only reason for thinking it was "big marketing" was that they put out a press release for it, unlike other advertising they have done, they felt it was important enough to do so.

 

Oh I see what you mean. So Game Chest doesn't typically release info like that then. Interesting. I confess that I don't typically watch for anything on their site but I will from here on out for sure.

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On 1/15/2021 at 7:44 PM, Postes said:

 You have to realize Wurm Online has been around for 10+ years. Wurm is already known in the MMORPG world. Advertising is designed to tap into lesser known demographics, it would useless aiming into the MMORPG community. 

I wouldn't totally discount it as useless to aim at the MMORPG community. One could argue that each year the community gets new "members"; and especially in this last year of lockdowns, there are a lot more people playing games. 

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Advertising is always going to be necessary despite the state of the game and what active players feel. It's the easiest way (if you have the budget) to increase revenue without having to devote a budget to bugfixing or developing new features, which would potentially lead to more revenue. The theory would be that increasing revenue by advertising would then allow for bugfixing/developing. Yes, it's just a theory. :) 

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On 1/15/2021 at 4:44 PM, Postes said:

 Advertising is designed to tap into lesser known demographics, it would useless aiming into the MMORPG community. 

 

And yet we still see growth campaigns for MMO's like WoW and Eve. It all depends on the campaign goal. There are roll-out campaigns to introduce a new product or service, there are growth campaigns to increase sales, there are retention campaigns to bring back previous customers, etc... A site like mmorpg.com is good for all 3 because the venue is well matched to the game but hopefully they have a diverse campaign that does not utilize that website solely.

 

A common mistake new business owners make is to think they only need to advertise at launch and then sit back and wait for money to come in. Look at iconic companies like McDonalds and the Coca-Cola Company (I know it's cliché to use them as examples, but I'm feeling lazy atm), both are bad for your health, and yet both are successful and despite being successful, they both continue to advertise. The same is true for any business, assuming they want a chance to remain in business. But I've seen plenty of businesses fold prematurely, because they thought merely existing was good enough.

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I think advertising will not help much if the issues reported by the community will not be resolved. There are reasons why the player retention is so low, and these reasons should be addressed before the campaign is launched. 

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7 minutes ago, Platyna said:

I think advertising will not help much if the issues reported by the community will not be resolved. There are reasons why the player retention is so low, and these reasons should be addressed before the campaign is launched. 

 

Yes yes WO needs some fixing (broken AH being my biggest complaint) but I agree that we should address those reasons for low retention. Can we start with a small list?

 

1. The general juvenile attitude of gamers using the Steam platform.

2. The need for instant gratification.

3. Lack of patience (okay I cheated a little here, this is the same as #2 but I like a good list).

4. Unwillingness to discover a game as apposed to having someone else do the discovery first and then getting mad because they had to read a wiki.

5. The tendency to move with the crowd to the next popular title never to return to an "old" game.

6. The lack of spectacular animated combat sequences to impress the world (and a nice global announcement to refresh the ego as well "Whane defeated old diseased spider with his running spin-kick staff to the spinneret".

 

Of course those that have stuck with WO over time didn't suffer from any of those issues. I think most players understood that Steam would be the top of the conversion funnel and over time a much smaller niche group from steam would filter into it with most passing out within a few months and for the same reason Wurm has always been that way... But the reality is, we can't determine the value of advertising without know the cost per conversion, how that conversion is defined, and the average income relating to that conversion.

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Steam over 21 million concurrent users as of 2020 but very few people using the steam launcher as if it's something bad. I Like steam and use the steam launcher. Using the steam launcher shows others that people are online and playing. This has potential to bring in new players. Writing off steam is imo very short sighted.

 

Hope the Marketing Campaign goes well.

 

Avg age of a gamer is around 35

 

 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/189582/age-of-us-video-game-players-since-2010/

 

Edited by BoarHead
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any population growth gained by advertising will be lost in months if this dev cycle continues

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3 hours ago, RainRain said:

any population growth gained by advertising will be lost in months if this dev cycle continues

 

The lack of updates in reasonable timeframes is one of the key issues and I agree, sadly.


The lack of an actual roadmap. The lack of transparency for "what is in the works". Updates being forced with not much testing (the priest channeling/favor revamp) , many still don't like it. Communication is vital to any company to its customers.

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In my opinion this game needs even more advertisting. This is such a hidden gem. Try to make a promotion deal with a big better known youtubers/streamers that like these sorts of games. If i had known about his game way back when i would have played it since day one. Adds one homepages are so outdated and give games a weird look in my opinion. 

 

Be upfront about this game being a huge grind and taking a long time. There are people like me that look for these kinds of games even.

 

A buddy of mine showed me WU and it didnt press the right buttons for me. Seeing the negative reviews on Steam and how this game is to hard and to complicated is what sold me on this. 

 

There are a million casual games out there but none that actually pose a challenge. People that just look for a quick fix in dopamine wont play this for a long time anyway. 

 

I would know the perfect kind of youtuber for that he is called Gronkh. Issue with him is he hates being "bought" and never does promotions. But i know if he actually would try this game he would love it to death..even if he might be only playing it private.

He has the nicest community ever too.

 

Imho dont change much about the game and dont make it easier. But find a way to make it known for people that like rough games where you have huge goals that take a while to achieve.

 

The only thing i would think make sense to add ontop of this is a real endgame to work towards. Like give a use for dragon armor... 100 Q weapons and items. I can run around with 50q cloth armor and a decent weapon ( 80q silver staff +nimb+life ) and i can clear all content. 

 

There is no need to achieve something bigger in this game. 

 

Add content that is absolutly impossible with small groups.

 

Most of that you could simply achieve by tweeking current game mechanics.. increase the dps of unique bosses and their health. Make it so people cant simply fence them in and farm them excluscivly. Make it so new people are not forced to find their first animals by some huge breeder that happend to be on the server eariler. 

 

Make the animal deed limits a lot smaller so quality matters and not quantity. Introduce a MAX Deed size. Like on cadence there are way to many breeders that quit because the market got oversaturated like crazy and a lot of new people quit because they had the feel to be someones marionette that has a gigantic deed and a gazillion horses.

 

Sure people give them away.. but new people are robbed out of the expirience to try it on their own and being forced to do something because of someone else.

 

If you limit it in a way so breeders are the places where you can get good animals for money this will help. Make it so you can get your starter horse anywhere but having good horses is a loooong and hard grind not many can do.

 

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2 hours ago, goemo said:

I would know the perfect kind of youtuber for that he is called Gronkh. Issue with him is he hates being "bought" and never does promotions. But i know if he actually would try this game he would love it to death..even if he might be only playing it private.

He has the nicest community ever too.

Not 100% sure but isn't all his videos in german laguage?

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50 minutes ago, Wilczan said:

Not 100% sure but isn't all his videos in german laguage?

Yep he is mostly german but speaks english good aswell 😃

 

The thing is germans love these kinds of games. He is mostly playing minecraft esque games aswell. His whole channel became famous in germany because he played minecreaft way back when

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12 hours ago, BoarHead said:

Steam over 21 million concurrent users as of 2020 but very few people using the steam launcher as if it's something bad.

 

Steam user here and I dislike it. I typically use Steam if that is the only way that I can play a game or if I've been given a free key. Steam is 1st: an advertising platform and 2nd: a gaming platform. I'm also not a fan of the need to have multiple accounts to play a game. For example, a Steam account, a game account, and a 3rd party account (like rockstar gaming for example). 

 

12 hours ago, BoarHead said:

Avg age of a gamer is around 35

 

Sadly, that does not say anything about the attitude of the gamer though because what I see a lot of is this "I have to have it right now and if you make me wait too long then I quit" attitude and in my opinion that is juvenile at any age. I'm sure that Game Chest is aware of the fact that an attitude like that can result in a quick influx of cash though and probably even moreso from an impatient player. But having a customer that sticks around for a long time and paying for a sub is probably better in the long run. I didn't see anyone writing off steam though, just pointing out both disadvantages and advantages. This entire thread is mostly speculation.

 

I would be interested to see the demographics for MMO gamers, survival sandbox gamers, and gamers exclusive to steam though.

 

8 hours ago, goemo said:

In my opinion this game needs even more advertisting. This is such a hidden gem. Try to make a promotion deal with a big better known youtubers/streamers that like these sorts of games.

 

I agree that more of the right type of advertising might work and by that I mean highly targeted. Promotion via Steam is casting a wide net but pin point advertising can be better depending on the cost per conversion. Of course there is a range of options between those two as well.

 

I've often thought that targeting people that were interested in CoE might work because many of the "never-before-seen" features listed for that game were identical to features already present in WO (and done better in Wurm). I was convinced that WO was the primary motivation behind the feature list of CoE and when I commented about this casually on their forums, my post was deleted. And now that there is a lawsuit against the team behind CoE with a huge loss of faith by early backers, there is a group of players that probably contain a higher % of individuals that would be interested in WO when compared to a broad cast campaign. They can be targeted via PPC ads for both the SERPS and web pages using a phrase like "chronicles of elyria"... though I would start with a small budget and low bid to get some feedback first.

 

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On 1/19/2021 at 10:25 AM, elentari said:

 

The lack of updates in reasonable timeframes is one of the key issues and I agree, sadly.


The lack of an actual roadmap. The lack of transparency for "what is in the works". Updates being forced with not much testing (the priest channeling/favor revamp) , many still don't like it. Communication is vital to any company to its customers.

 

This. Around this time last year there was a lot of communication, a lot was being shown and interesting releases happened monthly. It gave the community things to talk about and things to look forward to in the short term. Right now there's just this vague long term roadmap, but I have no idea what to expect for the first quarter of this year at all, or for any part of this year really, except that fighting will get revamped (but who knows when that will be, probably not soon considering how little they are communicating about it at the moment). The roadmap by itself isn't enough, just look at how many years it took to implement bridges, who knows what kind of timescale the stuf on the current roadmap is even on.

Edited by Ecrir

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On 1/16/2021 at 1:44 AM, Postes said:

 You have to realize Wurm Online has been around for 10+ years. Wurm is already known in the MMORPG world. Advertising is designed to tap into lesser known demographics, it would useless aiming into the MMORPG community. 

No, absolutly not, it is actually not really known in the MMORPG and PC Gaming World i would say.

Edited by Caduryn

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Out of all my gamer aquaintances I've made over the years playing D&D, tabletop games, Rpgs, MMorpgs, WoW fans, nerds and fun geeks, I have never met 1 single person that has ever heard of Wurm Online. Even when I say the name to them, the first thing they ask "Wait , you mean Worms? Worms game? The one with bazookas and grenades?" 


Even oldie fans of Ultima never heard of Wurm. 

 

Objectively speaking when it comes to brand visibility or people knowing about Wurm, it's probably the most underground game I've met. 

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