Scott Hartsman, the former CEO of Trion Worlds, has shared a new blog reflecting on the Rift launch campaign over a decade ago and lessons learned after a successful launch.
Back when Rift was on its way to launch, Hartsman recalls a meeting with the marketing department head, David Reid, about some angles for the campaign. They were targeting people who had come from games like World of Warcraft, EverQuest, and others and were looking for something new.
If you were around at the time and paying attention to MMORPGs you'll probably remember this campaign.
“The last page in the deck screamed at us in all caps, “WE’RE NOT IN AZEROTH ANYMORE!” The first words out of my mouth came instantly: “Oh, hell no. We can’t do that.” Then a beat.
Then we both looked at each other, and at the same time realized, “We HAVE to do that.” “
So in short, they did it, and it did connect with the audience they were looking to connect with. This was the marketing campaign that worked, but it needed to be followed up by actually continuing to build upon the game, retain players, and grow. He goes on to explain what happened after all this.
They had to do more of what had worked, run a stable live service, and release new updates at a pace that would give people reasons to keep playing. The launch was smooth and successful,, but afterwards, the team was not able to grow to take advantage of launch success, because at that time, Trion had three big MMORPGs in the works. Both of those were late and over budget.
Growing the team was out of the question, and there was much left on the table that never got the chance to happen. Some of their mid-game content never got added, and more stuff was added at a much lower scale than intended or desired.
Yet, in all of this, Rift is still running and the game has been influential in a number of ways. Hartsman notes that one of the lessons that persists through now was that launch success means needing to have a way to grow to meet demand.
The full story is worth your time, both for its details on the story of Rift’s early days, but also for the lessons learned and sources of pride that continue.
