Inside Asian Gaming

Marketing drive Once a publisher has made such a big investment in purchasing the territorial rights to an MMO game, it’s vital that he recoups the outlay with a high impact and successful launch to the players. “It’s very similar to the marketing of a Hollywood movie, where creation of strong expectation and strong anticipation for the game is the key,” says SamWoelm of C Y Foundation. “WithMMOs it’s very important to have a lot of players come onto the game platform. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of players right at the launch phase. This builds the buzz, the word of mouth. To build this expectation we use posters on the sides of buildings; we have themed buses at player conferences; we have fan forums; we have player symposiums where they take a building and theme it as a castle for one of the games. We also have something that’s called ‘cosplay’[short for‘costume roleplay’]. That’s where girls and guys get dressed up as characters from the game and go on tours around the country where the game is being launched. “Because China is the largest online game market in the world, the publisher will also pay royalty of anywhere from 15% to 30% on the revenue of the virtual items sold in the game. The publisher also does very well with these games.” The sale of virtual items to players is a vital element in the MMO business model, explains Mr Woelm. “A key turning point in the business model of MMO games in China came in 2006,” he says. “That year the online game operators switched their MMO business model from what’s called a time-based model to a virtual items sales-based model. The time-based model is where the player pays for howmuch time they spend online in the game. In the virtual item sales-based model, players pay for what they buy. They buy virtual clothes and virtual weapons etc. If we look at the model after 2007 and into 2008, there’s a significant growth in revenue.” Cosplay is used to build buzz for MMOs F or the uninitiated, MMO games may appear to be a fantasy world having more in common with a teenager’s bedroom wall poster than the realities of 21st century business. But as SamWoelm points out, huge amounts of revenue can be generated by the ability of MMO games not only to draw players into their virtual world, but in getting them to commit real life money to acting out their online roles and building up the presence of their online avatars. Inside an MMO game How do they attract players and how do they keep those players playing? Mr Woelm illustrates the point with a fictional account of an ‘Everyman’ of MMO game playing, whom he refers to as Li Chen. “Li Chen’s an avid online game player. She’s 28 years old and she’s married. She and her husband work for large corporations. By day she’s a marketing director for an equipment manufacturer. By night she’s monarch of the Kingdom of Song, and she has many ‘subjects’ who follow her. “Li Chen has money, but she doesn’t have a lot of time. She used to play time-based games where she had to go through mazes and kill monsters in order to get to a higher level of the game. She found she’d often get a quarter or half way through and she’d get ‘killed’ and she’d have to start at the beginning again. This is frustrating to her because she has to work and time is valuable to her. So she finds out about a new game—it’s called Sword Master. She’s in an Internet café and a salesman comes up to her and says ‘Hey, we have a great game for you. It’ll be perfect for your lifestyle. It’s more money-based rather than time-based. So Li Chen’s excited and signs up for the game. Five MMO ‘truths’ “As I go through this story, I want to point out five common elements of an MMO game. The first is the fantasy world. There’s a structure around an MMO game. It has a story that drives the action. A lush scene from Aion MMO INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | December 2009 26