I have been following Champions for 4 months now. Cryptic is slowely releasing details of the game through the Developer's interviews on various websites.
I believe this is how the process of building hype starts. The Dev.s create awareness that there is an actual game out there that will eventually be released. The Dev.s feed into this awareness by giving details of the new game.
The next step will be the debacle of giving away Beta keys. This in its self is the Dev.s way of promoting the game. Oh, and this step is already underway.
I further believe that coming out with a big ad campaign before the game is actually finished, and thus has no release date, is foolish.
Champions Online will have a few big obstacles to overcome in its attempt to be a successful game.
1) The genre of the game attracts a small segment of the gaming community.
2) DC Universe Online, which will be coming out in 2010, will be a serious challenger to CO's market share.
I've never heard of game failing because it did not receive enough hype. Have any of us?
You might not have heard of it because it didn't get enough hype to begin with. :-)
Well then I reiterate. Does any one know of a game that should've been hyped more? Or by the having less than stellar hypeage
Did poorer than was expected?
System Schock 2, Suikoden II, and Tactics Ogre come to mind immediately. Hype can be deceptive, but in the end, it's any form of publicity. Preview videos, interviews, official websites, and yes, even the feature-list and box art is hype. Anything that entices one to buy a game can fall into the hype arena - some hype is just more subtle. Exactly how do you decide what games to buy if you have never heard of them and know nothing about them?
While I agree that too much hype often allows the marketing department to steer game development of a game rather than the developers, a veritable lack of publicity can be just as detrimental. No hype = no interest = no new investors and nervous initial investors that just want to see an immediate return on their money = a game released far too early.
Lack of hype spelled doom for System Shock 2 and its developers. Despite eventually winning numerous awards (7 game of the year awards), dismal initial sales forced its developers to close their doors. I have never met anyone that played this game that doesn't count it among their all-time favorites, but for each one of those, I meet dozens of gamers that have still never heard of it.
After seeing MMORPG that have really gotten a great deal of hype, it's almost refreshing to see one that's not going overboard with it during development.
But I would think it's about time they start pushing their PR department, there are some very interesting looking features about the game that are starting to emerge and it's not like it's that far from release.
Maybe they're counting on making a big splash at E3?
There is a lot of interviews happening right now, and each one of them has the potential to hit up new people. That counts as info and hype. Plus why waste a ton of cash promoting a game that isn't coming out soon? Seriously, unless you are a huge fan of Super Hero games, or, like me, a long time fan of Champions PnP why would you get all spastic over a game that isn't coming out for another couple of months? If there is an Open Beta then I will spam out the link to all my peeps and try to stir up my WoW guild to come give it shot, but till then not gonna risk burning them out on waiting too long....
I was surprised to learn the game is coming out in 2 months now. The game has yet to reach its full marketing or hype potential I gather. Hopefully, as the final phases of Beta progress, I hope they will release more and more info and a storm of user-generated impressions when the game NDA will be lifted!
Hopefully, this will work and attract people to the game!
I say when the open beta starts, things will get lively with the marketing campaigns. They will also save money aswell - because us, the players will be doing alot of hype/advertising ourselves in a way. Spreading the word of how good or bad the game is. People will start posting alot more content on fan sites, superhero(team/clan/guild) sites will start to pop up and the community as a whole will do alot of the work regarding the hype.
All what they got to do is a few advertisment banners here, trailers, trial editions and a few other things and off they go.
I'm surprised to see so little about the game released so far considering launch is pretty much around the corner in July...
A friend of mine recently got me interested [up til now I was much more interested in DCU] but I find myself craving more facts and media. I hope they really start showing the game off much more soon - I want to be really excited to possibly buy this title...
Why do I write, create, fantasize, dream and daydream about other worlds? Because I hate what humanity does with this one.
I'm surprised to see so little about the game released so far considering launch is pretty much around the corner in July... A friend of mine recently got me interested [up til now I was much more interested in DCU] but I find myself craving more facts and media. I hope they really start showing the game off much more soon - I want to be really excited to possibly buy this title...
They are following the Aventurine marketing model for DF, where less information is better for generating hype.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
They are following the Aventurine marketing model for DF, where less information is better for generating hype.
That's not funny. Even with /sarcasm. The idea that any developer would follow Aventurine's example in community relations is a really horrifying prospect for the entire MMORPG genre. AV spent little to no effort/money on PR or community relations, other companies might think they can get away with that as well /shudder.
As far as Champions goes, Bill Roper was on G4 recently, so they are starting to hype it a bit.
I'm surprised to see so little about the game released so far considering launch is pretty much around the corner in July... A friend of mine recently got me interested [up til now I was much more interested in DCU] but I find myself craving more facts and media. I hope they really start showing the game off much more soon - I want to be really excited to possibly buy this title...
They are following the Aventurine marketing model for DF, where less information is better for generating hype.
And don't bet the ranch on the July launch date.
No but Atari are when they announced the official launch date, it wasn't pulled out of someones arse you know.
I read about the release date and I'm keeping an eye on this game, but the lack of information is disturbing to me. Right now I'm just looking at CoH 2... even with all I've read about the enhancements, it still sounds like a modded version of CoHs with no PVP or PVP set as an afterthought. (Which is okay if its just a PvE game but lets not half ass it like in CoV)
I mean right now with such low hype its killing my drive to want to play this game.
I like Cryptic, and I like hero games and all, but I just don't get the feeling this is going to be any more attractive then CoH at this point.
If it was just CoH2, it would still be worth buying anyway.
That being said, the only thing the two games really have in common right now is the genre. The most obvious difference is that Champions is a twitch game and CoH is not. That alone is huge. CoH is more or less like everquest as far as interaction. Champions has more in common with Quake.
If it was just CoH2, it would still be worth buying anyway. That being said, the only thing the two games really have in common right now is the genre. The most obvious difference is that Champions is a twitch game and CoH is not. That alone is huge. CoH is more or less like everquest as far as interaction. Champions has more in common with Quake.
Well there you have it, twitch based is something I can wrap my overactive adrenal glands around. Maybe I just haven't looked in the right place for info.... if I knew about the combat I would've probably been looking forward to this game more.
On the other hand, you're right in stating CoH2 would be worth the buy.. even if it were just a month sub.... I enjoyed it.
I read about the release date and I'm keeping an eye on this game, but the lack of information is disturbing to me. Right now I'm just looking at CoH 2... even with all I've read about the enhancements, it still sounds like a modded version of CoHs with no PVP or PVP set as an afterthought. (Which is okay if its just a PvE game but lets not half ass it like in CoV) I mean right now with such low hype its killing my drive to want to play this game. I like Cryptic, and I like hero games and all, but I just don't get the feeling this is going to be any more attractive then CoH at this point.
The reason why I am interested in this game is that it appears to be nothing like CoX. From my perspective it has all the goodies from CoX, but with a different twist. As for PVP it appears it is far more well thought out in this game this time around.
To me what I find most intriguing about CO is that it continues to stray away from traditional models that many MMORPG's follow which is a refreshing change.
Any game that Jack Emmert is involved with is doomed to be a frustrating experience for players. Doubt me? Go talk to the old hands from CoX, and how the game started making *dramatic* improvements when he left. Not a long time after he left, but right off the bat. The man has a warped style of development and an attitude of "This is my definition of fun, yours doesn't matter". Really, go ask long term CoX players. I left the game after playing for over a year, though I did return to it on a win-back and WOW it was so much better. Tremendous, positive changes that the playerbase had been asking about for a long time...suddenly the players were all so much happier.
I was really looking forward to this game, having heard of the title prior to MMO production...then I heard he was involved. He's the plague, I strongly suggest that people don't buy in to the hype and avoid this future catastrophy.
Any game that Jack Emmert is involved with is doomed to be a frustrating experience for players. Doubt me? Go talk to the old hands from CoX, and how the game started making *dramatic* improvements when he left. Not a long time after he left, but right off the bat. The man has a warped style of development and an attitude of "This is my definition of fun, yours doesn't matter". Really, go ask long term CoX players. I left the game after playing for over a year, though I did return to it on a win-back and WOW it was so much better. Tremendous, positive changes that the playerbase had been asking about for a long time...suddenly the players were all so much happier. I was really looking forward to this game, having heard of the title prior to MMO production...then I heard he was involved. He's the plague, I strongly suggest that people don't buy in to the hype and avoid this future catastrophy.
Or people play the game and make judgements for themselves. Having played the game, Jack has been helpful, listened and come up with some pretty decent ideas.
Any game that Jack Emmert is involved with is doomed to be a frustrating experience for players. Doubt me? Go talk to the old hands from CoX, and how the game started making *dramatic* improvements when he left. Not a long time after he left, but right off the bat. The man has a warped style of development and an attitude of "This is my definition of fun, yours doesn't matter". Really, go ask long term CoX players. I left the game after playing for over a year, though I did return to it on a win-back and WOW it was so much better. Tremendous, positive changes that the playerbase had been asking about for a long time...suddenly the players were all so much happier. I was really looking forward to this game, having heard of the title prior to MMO production...then I heard he was involved. He's the plague, I strongly suggest that people don't buy in to the hype and avoid this future catastrophy.
Actually thats kind of a ridiculous statement. You're saying a game thats launched and had more updates and development time is better then a game thats just launched. You could say the same about almost any game out there today, Vanguard, WoW, CoX, LOTRO, the only game you can't say that about is SWG for obvious reasons.
Truth be told I played CoH on launch and loved it, but got bored of it after a few months, but I came back a few times to see how it progressed. There wasn't anything fundamentally wrong with the game, and they eventually added bells and whistles to it.. but it was completely playable on launch, which is more then I can say for alot of games that launched recently.
So whatever you've heard aside, I think people will be surprised on what they see when this game goes live...
it actually depends what circles you frequent... most potential Champions players won't come on MMORPG.com for various reasons, and generally aren't Forum posters. That's a relatively small segment of the desired market for this particular title. Keeping in mind this might be the first MMO on the 360, effectively. All the instructions and whatnot are written 360 first, with PC in an afterthought-ish sort of position. If that's true, there's no reason for a 360 player to be here yet, most of them don't know it's possible to play it on the 360. Most 360 players aren't Forum users in general.
Actually, funny story... all these games coming out pitching to the "casual gamer" and writing lengthy articles about it? yeah, casual gamers don't read articles about games on the web... they just play. It's the best market you're not really talking to ;-)
Where are you getting this from...
Quotations Those Who make peaceful resolutions impossible, make violent resolutions inevitable. John F. Kennedy
Life... is the shit that happens while you wait for moments that never come - Lester Freeman
Lie to no one. If there 's somebody close to you, you'll ruin it with a lie. If they're a stranger, who the fuck are they you gotta lie to them? - Willy Nelson
I don't know. Overhype can lose you a lot of subs from the start while pumping initial sales. They are a stable company and don't need that surge of initial sales. I wouldn't mind low hype with a stable and solid product that speaks for itself and grows over time.
My personal reason for not really being to hyped is I tried CoH and CoV and did not have all that much fun on them. So I am not really keeping much of an eye on this one, as of right now Aion is my main info priority.
I think this game will appeal well to casual gamers on the 360, lots of children who want to play a super hero and stuff.
Comments
I have been following Champions for 4 months now. Cryptic is slowely releasing details of the game through the Developer's interviews on various websites.
I believe this is how the process of building hype starts. The Dev.s create awareness that there is an actual game out there that will eventually be released. The Dev.s feed into this awareness by giving details of the new game.
The next step will be the debacle of giving away Beta keys. This in its self is the Dev.s way of promoting the game. Oh, and this step is already underway.
I further believe that coming out with a big ad campaign before the game is actually finished, and thus has no release date, is foolish.
Champions Online will have a few big obstacles to overcome in its attempt to be a successful game.
1) The genre of the game attracts a small segment of the gaming community.
2) DC Universe Online, which will be coming out in 2010, will be a serious challenger to CO's market share.
Is Jack Emmert still involved with this game?
Couple of things to clear up.
Hype does not sell a product.
The product sells the product.
If CO was to receive little to no hype in the upcoming months, I believe that the populations for the servers, upon launching, will
not be significantly impacted.
Case in point.
I've never heard of game failing because it did not receive enough hype. Have any of us?
Co will either be able to stand on it's own two feet or it wont.
Also, in reply to those who said that the PC version is being built as an after thought. I estimate that's not true.
If it was then why are they releasing the PC version before the XBOX?
I'm guessing they want to see how it fares on the PC first. Makes sense eh?
Also here's a bit of a mindf**k.
If the hype's so bad for this game, why have we heard of it?...OOOoooooOOoooo.
In all seriousness even if it's just us merry few on the CO severs, I'm excited enough to let that slide.
You might not have heard of it because it didn't get enough hype to begin with. :-)
Whenever the NDA lifts, ill post my impressions. But I think i can say that its something to be excited about without getting in trouble.
You might not have heard of it because it didn't get enough hype to begin with. :-)
Well then I reiterate. Does any one know of a game that should've been hyped more? Or by the having less than stellar hypeage
Did poorer than was expected?
You might not have heard of it because it didn't get enough hype to begin with. :-)
Well then I reiterate. Does any one know of a game that should've been hyped more? Or by the having less than stellar hypeage
Did poorer than was expected?
System Schock 2, Suikoden II, and Tactics Ogre come to mind immediately. Hype can be deceptive, but in the end, it's any form of publicity. Preview videos, interviews, official websites, and yes, even the feature-list and box art is hype. Anything that entices one to buy a game can fall into the hype arena - some hype is just more subtle. Exactly how do you decide what games to buy if you have never heard of them and know nothing about them?
While I agree that too much hype often allows the marketing department to steer game development of a game rather than the developers, a veritable lack of publicity can be just as detrimental. No hype = no interest = no new investors and nervous initial investors that just want to see an immediate return on their money = a game released far too early.
Lack of hype spelled doom for System Shock 2 and its developers. Despite eventually winning numerous awards (7 game of the year awards), dismal initial sales forced its developers to close their doors. I have never met anyone that played this game that doesn't count it among their all-time favorites, but for each one of those, I meet dozens of gamers that have still never heard of it.
After seeing MMORPG that have really gotten a great deal of hype, it's almost refreshing to see one that's not going overboard with it during development.
But I would think it's about time they start pushing their PR department, there are some very interesting looking features about the game that are starting to emerge and it's not like it's that far from release.
Maybe they're counting on making a big splash at E3?
There is a lot of interviews happening right now, and each one of them has the potential to hit up new people. That counts as info and hype. Plus why waste a ton of cash promoting a game that isn't coming out soon? Seriously, unless you are a huge fan of Super Hero games, or, like me, a long time fan of Champions PnP why would you get all spastic over a game that isn't coming out for another couple of months? If there is an Open Beta then I will spam out the link to all my peeps and try to stir up my WoW guild to come give it shot, but till then not gonna risk burning them out on waiting too long....
I was surprised to learn the game is coming out in 2 months now. The game has yet to reach its full marketing or hype potential I gather. Hopefully, as the final phases of Beta progress, I hope they will release more and more info and a storm of user-generated impressions when the game NDA will be lifted!
Hopefully, this will work and attract people to the game!
I say when the open beta starts, things will get lively with the marketing campaigns. They will also save money aswell - because us, the players will be doing alot of hype/advertising ourselves in a way. Spreading the word of how good or bad the game is. People will start posting alot more content on fan sites, superhero(team/clan/guild) sites will start to pop up and the community as a whole will do alot of the work regarding the hype.
All what they got to do is a few advertisment banners here, trailers, trial editions and a few other things and off they go.
I'm surprised to see so little about the game released so far considering launch is pretty much around the corner in July...
A friend of mine recently got me interested [up til now I was much more interested in DCU] but I find myself craving more facts and media. I hope they really start showing the game off much more soon - I want to be really excited to possibly buy this title...
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
They are following the Aventurine marketing model for DF, where less information is better for generating hype.
And don't bet the ranch on the July launch date.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
That's not funny. Even with /sarcasm. The idea that any developer would follow Aventurine's example in community relations is a really horrifying prospect for the entire MMORPG genre. AV spent little to no effort/money on PR or community relations, other companies might think they can get away with that as well /shudder.
As far as Champions goes, Bill Roper was on G4 recently, so they are starting to hype it a bit.
g4tv.com/xplay/previews/36381/Preview-Champions-Online.html
And Massively's recent interviews gave a good amount of info as well.
They are following the Aventurine marketing model for DF, where less information is better for generating hype.
And don't bet the ranch on the July launch date.
No but Atari are when they announced the official launch date, it wasn't pulled out of someones arse you know.
I read about the release date and I'm keeping an eye on this game, but the lack of information is disturbing to me. Right now I'm just looking at CoH 2... even with all I've read about the enhancements, it still sounds like a modded version of CoHs with no PVP or PVP set as an afterthought. (Which is okay if its just a PvE game but lets not half ass it like in CoV)
I mean right now with such low hype its killing my drive to want to play this game.
I like Cryptic, and I like hero games and all, but I just don't get the feeling this is going to be any more attractive then CoH at this point.
If it was just CoH2, it would still be worth buying anyway.
That being said, the only thing the two games really have in common right now is the genre. The most obvious difference is that Champions is a twitch game and CoH is not. That alone is huge. CoH is more or less like everquest as far as interaction. Champions has more in common with Quake.
Well there you have it, twitch based is something I can wrap my overactive adrenal glands around. Maybe I just haven't looked in the right place for info.... if I knew about the combat I would've probably been looking forward to this game more.
On the other hand, you're right in stating CoH2 would be worth the buy.. even if it were just a month sub.... I enjoyed it.
The reason why I am interested in this game is that it appears to be nothing like CoX. From my perspective it has all the goodies from CoX, but with a different twist. As for PVP it appears it is far more well thought out in this game this time around.
To me what I find most intriguing about CO is that it continues to stray away from traditional models that many MMORPG's follow which is a refreshing change.
Any game that Jack Emmert is involved with is doomed to be a frustrating experience for players. Doubt me? Go talk to the old hands from CoX, and how the game started making *dramatic* improvements when he left. Not a long time after he left, but right off the bat. The man has a warped style of development and an attitude of "This is my definition of fun, yours doesn't matter". Really, go ask long term CoX players. I left the game after playing for over a year, though I did return to it on a win-back and WOW it was so much better. Tremendous, positive changes that the playerbase had been asking about for a long time...suddenly the players were all so much happier.
I was really looking forward to this game, having heard of the title prior to MMO production...then I heard he was involved. He's the plague, I strongly suggest that people don't buy in to the hype and avoid this future catastrophy.
Or people play the game and make judgements for themselves. Having played the game, Jack has been helpful, listened and come up with some pretty decent ideas.
I urge people to play the game before assuming.
Actually thats kind of a ridiculous statement. You're saying a game thats launched and had more updates and development time is better then a game thats just launched. You could say the same about almost any game out there today, Vanguard, WoW, CoX, LOTRO, the only game you can't say that about is SWG for obvious reasons.
Truth be told I played CoH on launch and loved it, but got bored of it after a few months, but I came back a few times to see how it progressed. There wasn't anything fundamentally wrong with the game, and they eventually added bells and whistles to it.. but it was completely playable on launch, which is more then I can say for alot of games that launched recently.
So whatever you've heard aside, I think people will be surprised on what they see when this game goes live...
Where are you getting this from...
Quotations Those Who make peaceful resolutions impossible, make violent resolutions inevitable. John F. Kennedy
Life... is the shit that happens while you wait for moments that never come - Lester Freeman
Lie to no one. If there 's somebody close to you, you'll ruin it with a lie. If they're a stranger, who the fuck are they you gotta lie to them? - Willy Nelson
I don't know. Overhype can lose you a lot of subs from the start while pumping initial sales. They are a stable company and don't need that surge of initial sales. I wouldn't mind low hype with a stable and solid product that speaks for itself and grows over time.
My personal reason for not really being to hyped is I tried CoH and CoV and did not have all that much fun on them. So I am not really keeping much of an eye on this one, as of right now Aion is my main info priority.
I think this game will appeal well to casual gamers on the 360, lots of children who want to play a super hero and stuff.