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The Perfect Ten: Memorable marketing campaigns
I took only a single marketing class in college, so by no means am I an instant expert in anything but being on the receiving end of marketers' nefarious experiments to manipulate me so that I buy their stuff. I did take away the lesson that all marketers are professional liars who have no shame or dignity. Pretty much the same as a blogger, so I guess I have a backup career. Believe it or not, MMOs get off easy when it comes to notorious marketing campaigns. Anything on the following list, good or bad, is a pale shadow of what we've seen in the larger video game industry. Still, there have been plenty of attempts to promote MMOs in ways that make us either applaud or laugh at the studio (and sometimes both at once, which takes coordination). After doing some staff polling and internal polling, here are 10 memorable marketing campaigns from the era of MMORPGs. Maybe they're all winners in that they got noticed by at least one person, even if they're the most foolish notions in history. Here we go!
Blogger sued by Evony for defamation, libel
Serve me now, my lord!Blogger Bruce Everiss, author of the website BruceOnGames.com, has been sued by Evony LLC, the company behind the notorious online webgame Evony, formerly Civony. The suit stems from Bruce's Evony coverage and critical stance towards the game, including his assertions that Evony LLC is a company under the WoWmine.org network (a site that is allegedly part of a World of Warcraft gold farming network), his statements concerning the company being based in China, and that their game has infringed on other game IPs, including Civilization and Age of Empires.Evony usually comes under fire for their very transparent marketing strategy, which is usually slapping a hot woman (who has nothing to do with their civilization/empire building MMORTS) onto an ad to entice gamers to click. However, as we posted prior, some bloggers have found some content that was directly ripped off from Civilization and Age of Empires, however the Age of Empires assets have been removed from the current iteration of the game.
Comment spam, lewd advertising, and stolen assets abound for Evony
If you've been on the internet for longer than five minutes then you've probably run into ads for Evony, an online free-to-play browser real-time strategy game. The game is a medieval MMORTS, but you probably wouldn't be able to figure that out from some of their recent advertisements, most of which center around lingerie and women.The game's unorthodox marketing strategy has been a target of the blogosphere for some time, starting back when they were still called Civony instead of their current title. During that time the company was caught by bloggers for stealing images without permission from other sites and using them for their game's marketing. Since then, the name has changed and new advertising has appeared, including an overuse of blog comment spam.Interestingly enough, the company has denounced the use of spam amongst their users of the iEvony codes, calling it a "unethical" and "abusive."The company may have more to worry about than just poor taste in marketing, as many sites are also noting that the game's art assets and writing assets have been ripped from other real-time strategy games. Things such as text from Civilization 4 to the castle sprites from Age of Empires have been found in the game, creating the feeling for some users that this developer, whoever it is, is not entirely on the legitimate side.
