Wednesday, May 5, 2010

A little smugness never hurt...

So if you haven't seen the Tyrannis trailer by now you need to watch it. I recommend viewing it in HD if possible with the sound way up and the lights way down. You might need a cigarette afterwards, or a cold shower. Go ahead, I'll wait.


(YouTube Link Here)

I'd like to think that trailer accomplishes exactly what a trailer should accomplish. It made me salivate a bit and very excited to play the next expansion. Obviously, the game play isn't going to be exactly like the trailer on the screen, but that is what it is going to be like in my mind. I can already picture Alehandra mapping out worlds and setting up remote stations on planets, controlling the harvest from afar. It oozed polish and awesomeness.

While it would be extremely arrogant to take any credit for the new trailer I will take a bit of smug validation. In the recent blog banter about women in Eve I stated in my submission, "What Women Want (in Eve)", I had stated that one of the biggest problems with pulling in new players in general, and especially women, was the poor job Eve did of advertising elements of the game other than combat. I had said that CCP needed broaden and retool their tutorial system to highlight the diversity of gameplay options, they also have to broaden their ad campaign to include other elements such as roleplay, industrialization, player run corps, mining, etc.

Less than a month after I penned those words (or typed I guess) CCP releases a trailer where the primary focus is creation and industrialization. Obviously they have been working on that trailer for months and they didn't have someone in their marketing department running down the halls screaming "Stop everything! We are doing it all wrong! Quick read what this amazing intelligent blogger has to say!" However, it does make me feel as if my observations are being somewhat validated by CCP's trailer choice. They could have easily gone for a trailer that focused just on the space combat element, they obviously had that bookending their trailer already, but to devote the majority to mining, industrialization, and planetary interaction shows their willingness to highlight the other parts of the game.

I hope that the banner ads that seem to flood the internet have the same angle in the near future. I think CCP should also consider an ad campaign that uses real player events in game, and perhaps real players, to help sell their product. Imagine if select [AAA] members were allowed to tell the story of the massacre in Providence, or imagine the victors being allowed to talk about their righteous victory, driving back the invaders from their domain.

Heck, even do both and have a whole "There are two sides to every war, but only one victor" as a slogan. Have another campaign where a market mogul talks about her rise to power, a pirate who speaks out on the honor of piracy, a miner who shares the tranquility of an asteroid belt. There is a veritable gold mine of PR representatives in the game itself that CCP could tap, most of whom would be willing to work for free - or at most a PLEX.

So if you marketing gurus ARE reading my blog, feel free to hit me up for that miner spot. I look forward to working with you.

3 comments:

  1. Good Post, I like the Idea of using in game players.
    Keep the great posts coming.

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  2. hey please tell me that planet design isnt yours

    if it is dear god erase every single link you have... all links should be short... to minimize pg and cpu usage

    link extractors in same area together to each othern then 1 single path back to yor processor or whatever its going to that way many small and only 1 large link... the routes take care of where things go via the links that way you can have short limited low cpu/pg roads and still get the stuff where it needs to go

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  3. No, that was just a screenshot I grabbed. I haven't fooled around with PI yet, I plan on doing that Tyrannis is released. Never been much of a test server person.

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