Hype always works ...

... as long as the consumer buys the product!

Onlinegames are no longer being developed by small teams of nerds who want to create a superb gaming experience. The gaming industry is leaving the start-up phase and is entering the stage of a consolidated market. This means that in order to deliver the needed quality for success a huge amount of capital is needed. In order to receive funding, the product must become a succesful product in terms of after-tax earnings.

This is where the marketing machinery comes in handy. It shows of a products best sides and generates hype. Consumers buy the product and thats it. The problem is: Marketing signals the game was developed just for you. But it wasn't and that is why many customers become unsatisfied with a product soon after release.

Bottomline: The gaming industry has become mature. Best option for the consumer is to decide, if a game is worth your money or not. This includes a lot of reading and research - same as you do if you decide to buy a car or anything else.

Regards

Asariasha

Originally posted by laokoko

Ya I remember during GW2 beta, everyone is bashing me when I say anything remotely negative.  ( I called GW2 a wow clone, I said that game have no raiding).  And everyone is like nono, GW2 is very different from wow, and nono those dynamic event is called raiding.

And now I see many people bash GW2, which I dont' understand.  That game is probably doing better than almost all mmorpg on the market now, and people bash it?  Are your expectation a bit too high?

 Why were you bashing?

Why did you choose to speak up?

Originally posted by laokoko

Ya I remember during GW2 beta, everyone is bashing me when I say anything remotely negative.  ( I called GW2 a wow clone, I said that game have no raiding).  And everyone is like nono, GW2 is very different from wow, and nono those dynamic event is called raiding.

And now I see many people bash GW2, which I dont' understand.  That game is probably doing better than almost all mmorpg on the market now, and people bash it?  Are your expectation a bit too high?

Because bashing and hating is far worse then hyping a game.

Onto the OP though, I pity those who can not look forward to something and I especially can't stand people who make fun of or demean those who are excited for something announced.

Hype is perfectly fine and healthy, its what draws some of us to a game.

Things like TOR show me that developers are still trying to develop games for long term subscriptions. If not for them spending way more than they could ever recoup on initial sales i would have assumed all mmo development was just to hype things up, get box sales, and then cash out. Because that seems to be all they are able to do these days. People want a new game and they keep getting a reskinned old one with empty promises.

This is why im against box sales, blame UO for that. The first mmo i played (pre uo) had no initial cost, you downloaded it and if you wanted to play past the trial period you started paying ($10 a month). Very clearly a game designed for people to play and stick with, no money grab.

Hype is a product of stupidity.

Two situations.

A) Random gentleman is super excited about a product, stupid person sees his excitement  and gets pumped up himself without any prior research of the product. It releases and hes let down, random gentleman might still be happy however.

B) Person fails to properly research product and gets excited, tells the world.

Hype is easily defeated and to the intelligent person should not be an issue. Research your product, investigate it thoroughly, then decide how badly you need that thing in your life. If you were stupid, you'll get burnt.

A Guild mate once said however, Hype is only a bad thing to an intelligent person when those who are collectively hyping up a product, feeding off the frenzy, begin to invade other similar products, heralding them as the future.

I still have yet to purchase Guild Wars 2, I did not buy into the hype.

I purchased SWToR, because I was in the beta and really enjoyed the early game.

Originally posted by VengeSunsoar
The movie industry and apple would like to take this time to laugh at the hype analysis... all the way to the bank.

Movies make 85% of the box office in the first 3 weeks.  More than 60% during the opening weekend.

Which is why MMOs with hype sell well and boast "millions of copies sold" see SWTOR and GW2.  But if you actually play the game you will see they are complete wastelands with no one playing.

Originally posted by SoMuchMass

Originally posted by VengeSunsoar
The movie industry and apple would like to take this time to laugh at the hype analysis... all the way to the bank.

Movies make 85% of the box office in the first 3 weeks.  More than 60% during the opening weekend.

Which is why MMOs with hype sell well and boast "millions of copies sold" see SWTOR and GW2.  But if you actually play the game you will see they are complete wastelands with no one playing.

Your point is?  The OP said hype never really works.  IF they are selling millions of copies it obviously worked.  Edit I'm pretty sure Swtor and GW2 sell have several hundread thousand subscribers, possibly over 500,000.

edit - I re-subscribed to swtor just a couple weeks ago, there are people everywhere.  I have not seen one even remotely empty zone yet, mind you I am only 26 so far.

Hype almost always fails because it is based on an imaginary product.

If you were to take out the peak and the trough, it would appear to be similar to any normal product life cycle. 

Now unless the "hype" is generated through false advertising, I would say the peak and trough are the fault of end user ignorance and not the efforts of advertising.  This, to me, is what makes it relevant to MMO releases.

EDIT:  Use SWTOR as an example, once enough people beta tested it, there was ample info on what the game actually looked like.  I bet if you were to graph user satisfaction over time, you would see a similar results.

Originally posted by SoMuchMass

Originally posted by VengeSunsoar
The movie industry and apple would like to take this time to laugh at the hype analysis... all the way to the bank.

Movies make 85% of the box office in the first 3 weeks.  More than 60% during the opening weekend.

Which is why MMOs with hype sell well and boast "millions of copies sold" see SWTOR and GW2.  But if you actually play the game you will see they are complete wastelands with no one playing.

Oh look, Zorndorf is back, not even 3 posts and already pushing the slander against the competition again. Stay classy.

Could have at least used a different alias than the previously banned sockpuppet on massively.com.