Hey BP! Glad to have your presence felt here on the forums.
Now, instead of bombarding you with a ton of questions that you can't answer or don't have the time to, I'm going to try my best to summon up where I think this game would benefit the most for the least amount of money in advertising. Hopefully this is constructive enough to get your brain juices flowing on how to make our beloved game more widely accepted.
WARNING: EPICALLY LONG POST FORTHCOMING!
Still with me? Good...
I want to start by saying that I think the biggest issue with our game's advertising (or lack there-of) is that there is a serious lack of awareness. People who remember seeing those small ads when the game first came out, don't know that we're still here. People who might have played 3 years ago, don't know that a LOT has changed in the time they were away. People who might have researched the game during the release of CoV, but didn't like what they saw then, might not be aware of the ground breaking additions that have been incorporated into the game since.
The biggest asset that City of Heroes has going for it is the amazing list of accomplishments that this MMO has over all the others.
It's really that simple. Get the awareness out there. Let people see the long list of features that this game has, that no other MMO has, and allow them to compare that to their current/favorite. Then they will start to see that maybe they ARE missing something special.
How many other MMOs can say that they came BEFORE WoW and lived to tell the tale? How many other MMOs can say that they have the most comprehensive, expansive character creator in the business? How many other MMOs can say that they have the most passionate and active forum community in the business? How many other MMOs can say that their Devs post daily and have an openness about their designs as ours?
Just posting a long, bullet-point list of every feature this game has, and laying it beside another MMO would potentially be enough to open the eyes of the most negative of viewers. My friends and I have a game we play where we list off things we like about our respective MMOs and then counter offer with something we think is better. A list would only increase such debates.
The examples I have presented below are meant to be cheap, effective ways to gain the awareness this game needs through advertising. These are in no way the full extent of what could be done, but they highlight the biggest and simplest ideas in my opinion. With all that in mind, I present to you my long list of advertisement awesomeness!
1. Request an Update to Game Summaries and Reviews: This has been said by a few people and I think that it would greatly help our cause. Websites like IGN, MMORPG, Metacritic, etc all have information on CoH that has been stored since it's inception that anyone can just go and recall. It would be great if those blurbs were updated to incorporate all of the HUGE, AMAZING updates this game has received over the last 6 years. That Way, when someone goes to look up info on the game, they don't see screen shots from Beta, or read about how there are 5 Classes/ATs in the game.
When Going Rogue is released, all the cookie cutter stuff you guys hand out for websites to post to promote the game's release should include instructions on placing all CoH, CoV, and Going Rogue information all under the same header. It isn't that terribly hard to go back through and edit a few tags and reorganize their information. This would have a huge effect on the people who won't give this game a chance because it's "old". They think like that because of what they see readily available to them on these sort of websites.
2. Give Us a Real Online Store: If for some reason NCsoft doesn't want you posting a ton of merchandise on their website, set up a subdomain for CoH.com that has eCommerce and put all those wonderful trinkets you guys have had laying around for years inside for us to finally purchase. Others have said it, but we don't really care about Con freebies. That's what Costume Codes are for!
Give the players who already play this game a way to support you beyond the occasional Booster Pack and Boxed Expansion. With bumper stickers, t-shirts, hoodies, posters and the like, it becomes much easier for us to show off our love for the game and make others realize what they might be missing. There are so many items that you could make for fairly cheap and sell in the store that would bring in extra revenue. The community has been asking for statues, figures, and plushies for SIX YEARS...we're not kidding. We'll buy them. A lot of them.
And when I say merchandise, I don't mean a blue shirt with the CoH logo on it. Grab the Marketing Artists that are getting paid to make box art and posters for the game to come up with some really amazing and funny shirt designs. It's not hard. Ask the community here for some ideas, I'm sure you'll get a ton that all make perfect sense and would have an awesome factor that would make us want to purchase them.
3. Free Advertisement from Internet Media: This game is amazingly fun, incredibly different, and has a lot of things to offer that no other MMO has. Give free trials to some choice websites on the internet that has a lot of traffic. Let them test the game for themselves and you might find that they are so elated at how awesome this game is, that they'll run and tell their audience.
Send Sexy J or BaBs to a few Headquarters with a rig that has some unreleased stuff on it, and let them toss out some great humor while the person tests out the super secret stuff. You'd be amazed at how far a little kindness and some top secret stuff will go to make a person excited about a project. We have amazing Developers with great personalities. Let them "hang out" with some of these people for an afternoon and see what comes of it.
Which brings me to...
4. Do Guest Appearances on TV and in Magazines: It shouldn't be too terribly hard to get a small 5 minute guest spot on G4 or GameTrailer's. Give our amazing Devs some air time, let them show just how cool they are and how passionate they are about the game they have been making for six years. Like someone else said, how many other games on the market are being designed by a female Lead? Get War Witch on a guest panel and have her talk about how women fit into the industry. Have her show up on MSNBC where they are talking about the negative effects of video games on kids, and have her stand up for the industry she's helping lead.
Likewise in print. Have the Devs get interviewed in Magazines. PC World, GameDesigner, Game Informer...they are all popular magazines that get read by an entirely different audience. If you can get a little blurb in a magazine about the game, or about the MMO business, then you'll get word of the game circulating again. It'll bring out interest from readers and rejuvenate the awareness of our little dark corner of the MMO business.
5. Advertise on Youtube: Not with pop up ads and side panel stuff! What I mean is, take idea #3 above, and do it for some of the larger members of Youtube. Toss some cool videos and info towards Machinama and LikeTotallyAwesome. Let them play with the game and get acquainted with it and ask them to post their opinion on their respective channel. Heck, even offer to pay them a little to advertise the game in a video. Just a small mention in a 4 minute video can garner HUGE press.
Everyone is on Youtube these days for one reason or another. Reach out to these large audiences and see what sticks. If anything, it will get more people looking at the game. That's a start to getting new members who will stay. The more people talk about the game, good or bad, the more press it will receive, and the more people will keep it fresh on their mind that the game is still out there.
Even better, would be to have a person start a Youtube account that does updates and new vlogs about the game. Talk about the updates and advances the game is making, and when times are slow, talk about things that happened to them in their SG or on a really bad PuG TF. This would be more for the community that already exists, but if popular enough, could gain a great awareness of the game and it's kind of community. A figure-head that could represent the community and give us a presence on Youtube could be huge. If nothing else, a lot of fun. (Hire me, or at least buy me a nice Webcam and I'll do it for free!)
6. Advertise on Hulu: The more expensive idea. Unlike the Youtube suggestion, here I actually DO want you to run traditional ads. For less than half of what it would cost on Television, you can run short 15-30 second clips on Hulu in-between and before a show. Tons of people use Hulu to catch up on their favorite shows, and no one has a way to avoid those commercials. Unlike banner ads or little pop-ups, these clips are in their face and talking to them.
HOWEVER!
Don't go and blow your money on stupid, washed up, no-name actors (Shatner aside). Do something quick, cute, and catchy...preferably with something from the actual game. Those "I'm a Hero, I'm a Villain" ads were the right idea, but try something a little more original. If it's funny enough, catchy enough, then it will stick with the user. They might become interested in the game, or at the very least research it a little.
Again, awareness is the key. Let the user decide if they like the game. All you care about is getting the name to circulate among friends and family. Don't tell them how much they love the game already. Those ads NEVER work for me. Another big NO NO is trying to do a 15 second montage of epic scenes with some John Williams type music behind it. As cool as some of those may seem, they never really get the point of the game across. More often than not, these sort of commercials sell music more than they do the actual game (See Dante's Inferno)
If the advertisement gained enough approval and Marketing saw that it was actually working, then it might be reasonable to consider a release to Television. This is only in the event that the ad works and proves effective. I would not advise doing television ads prior to said success.
7. Make a Mobile App: Something simple that could be put on the Apple Store and Droid Phones could be a huge venue for gaining awareness. Pretty much everyone has a smart phone these days and having a small app that relates to this game would bring in a whole slew of new customers that may have never even considered playing an MMO before. Don't make it too costly, or maybe even offer it for free. It could be a character builder like Mids or even a small, low poly version of our in-game character design interface. I for one would spend countless hours playing on a Mids for my iPhone. There would never be a time where I was bored waiting in line!
*DEEP BREATH*
And that's my list! Hopefully I didn't put you to sleep or make you so bored that you just skipped over my post. I want to help the game become even brighter and somehow obtain the awareness that it deserves.
Thanks BP!
I'm thankful for the awesome community! So thankful actually, that I buy 30 day game-time cards and PM codes to folks that I really appreciate posting on here. They really make the community as a whole better and deserve a little reward!
