Sleazy MMO Marketing – A Growing, Disturbing Trend
Perhaps because I make games and because I believe so strongly in the importance of community in MMOs, I like to think that my industry treats its customers better than other industries. Apparently I am not just wrong, but getting more wrong by the day.
Some examples:
World of Warcraft: They have bragged for years about their gazillions of customers (11.5 million according to the most recent boast I have seen). Turns out not all customers are created equal, and the 6-8 million customers from Asia include “hyper casual” customers with minutes or hours of total gameplay. Asia accounts for just 6 percent of WoW revenues. This it not outright lying, but is definitely deceptive. That would be like Blizzard counting people in the west who are using trial accounts. Actually, who knows… maybe they are.
Aggressive Advertising from Evony – Racy, Raunchy, Sexy, Spammy
Evony Spam: Forget shills… Evony dispatched staff to spam blogs telling people to play Evony. I’m talking “Buy Viagra” type spam.
Evony – Sex Sells…. RTSes?: The web site Coding Horror was one of the most notable to document this. Over time, Evony web ads evolved from this:
To this:
That’s no lie. That is not parody. They actually used the above ad to try and get people to play the online RTS Evony.
City of Heroes, #1: For years they have been using the “Free Content Expansion” label for their “issues.” When people pay $15 a month, new content is not free. MMO companies are cagey with their info, but I have read estimates that the per player cost for bandwidth, hardware, etc. is less than 25 cents a month. So when you come out with a pittance of new content once every 8-12 months, calling it free is just dishonest and sleazy.
City of Heroes, #2: As incredibly content light as this game is, at least every 6 months or so they would release a few more costume options. No longer! Now you pay extra for those via microtransactions/booster packs. The devs lie and say the creation of these booster packs does not pull any staff off creation of “other content” for the game, but come on… who are they kidding? CoH still has less content than most MMOs have at RELEASE. But as we will see from Champions Online, the former Cryptic employees running CoH are mere padawans when it comes to sleaze and ripping off their customers.
Champions Online, #1 – Cryptic sent staffers to the City of Heroes forums to try and steal top players and guilds via PMs. They sought to lure them away with closed beta invites and other perks for them and their guilds. As sleazy as this is, what makes it worse is the fact that everyone still working on CoH used to work for Cryptic. Cryptic sold CoH to NCSoft, and 10 or so people stayed on staff. So the slimeballs at Cryptic were doing this to their former co-workers – people they weated and salved together with for 5+ years to make CoH. Classy.
Champions Online, #2: Subscriptions + Microtransactions for content? Uh, no. This is not technically a marketing issue, but its still pretty skeezy. Pick a business model and stick to it. Don’t engage in this kind of double dipping. But we’ll see in the next 2 examples that these guys take money grubbing to new levels.
Champions Online, #3: Selling lifetime subscriptions, with an expiration date on the offer BEFORE the game even comes out. Are you kidding me? You want people to buy a lifetime subscription before they can even play the game? What are you afraid of? And giving away Star Trek Online beta keys as part of the incentive? Are you this desperate?
Champions Online, #4: Charging money for open beta. Yes, that’s right. Cryptic announced open beta, but when you try to sign up for it the only way to participate is if you have a PAID subscription to Fileplanet. There can be little doubt that Cryptic is getting a kickback for this little deal. Despicable.
Those are a few off the top of my head. What do you think of them? Do you all know of some other gems?
How are microtransactions “appealing to the weak willed.” Microtransactions give people the ability to buy exactly what they want. The subscription model as it currently exists is basically 90% of the customer based subsidizing the 30+ hour a week “lifers” who then lord their superior gear over the ones paying their way for them.
Maybe if I’m more specific it might help – microtransactions based on buying things in a game – “virtual goods” – i.e. things that, 10-20 years ago, people would never have thought to actually spend money on. I see that as incredibly weak willed.
What if you’d put your quarter into a Donkey Kong Machine – and for every level, you were charged another quarter? And another nickel or dime or quarter for another fruit in pacman? At some point society grew pretty weak minded, IMHO – and accepted spending real money for virtual crap. Sheer stupidity. So imo, it’s sleazy on the part of the companies, but stupid on the part of the gamers. Obviously they don’t realize there was a time when once you paid for a game, the content was YOURS – no requirements to join a portal, give your personal info, hand over control to some company to force you to buy “mochi points” or whatever the hell…
I’m not really up for big arguments on the topic as the internet is full of people with opinions. I’ve seen people who say “they are a company, so what’s wrong with greed?” And they actually meant it. Haven’t got time to argue with people who have no conscience or concept of right vs wrong either… lol.. just voicing an opinion anyway. And I’ll keep my money, not play mmorpgs anymore, and spend my time on more quality things.
Just saw something that reminded me of this post. Apparently now Evony is using women from the cover of a porn DVD on their sign up page:
http://www.bruceongames.com/2009/11/10/evony-porn-girls/
Rogue: “At some point society grew pretty weak minded, IMHO – and accepted spending real money for virtual crap.”
Really? And that is stupider than spending money to watch television or movies that are also “virtual”?
What about people who stupidly waste money on Magic: The Gathering cards, $300 tickets to the opera, or any other form of entertainment someone else likes but you don’t enjoy?
Does it really make someone weak minded when they spend THEIR MONEY on things that make THEM HAPPY? Sounds like anyone doing that is pretty strong minded and is smart enough to spend their money on things that bring them happiness rather than listening to someone else tell them what is acceptable.
It is all too easy to call someone else stupid when they spend money on something that brings them joy and amusement simply because you do not share the same opinion.
Outsider: LOL!
Lord of the Rings Online recently offered an item as part of a promotion to purchase an “adventure pack” and is now set to nerf the item after sales have been made.
The Adventure pack gave the player 2 extra character slots and some shared storage for their characters. Two items, a goat and a cloak, with an in combat run speed buff useable every 8 hours, were given free to those that pre-ordered the pack.
Now on the test server the cloak has been nerfed to only allow the run speed buff out of combat making it essentially worthless.
It’s a type of bait and switch, “buy this and you get a free toaster,” Then they come to your house while you’re sleeping and swap the toaster for a cardboard box.
Wow Beorn. That is really, really bad. I’ve never heard of pre-order, or directly purchased perk items getting nerfed like that. That’s a TERRIBLE move on their part.
What was the justification? Is an 8 hour cooldown in combat run buff really that strong?
Yeah a 30 minute in combat buff is pretty powerful. There are only a few 20s IC speed buff items in the game now.
Here is the thread about it.http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=303066
The devs say that it was never meant to give an in combat buff and that it never did. But the tooltip when you click on the item says it’s supposed to. So they’re “fixing” the item by changing the tooltip to show that it’s an out of combat only buff. Instead of fixing the item to work the way the tooltip says it’s supposed to work.
I can’t prove it but I think they snuck in a hot fix for the item during one of their maintenances because it’s not working in combat now.
They ended up locking both threads about the cloak.
Wow. You know, I understand how items in games can do things you don’t expect. But tooltip info is hand written generally. It says what it is supposed to say.
For as unique an item as a purchase incentive, don’t you make SURE it is right?
If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.