CCP’s Magnus Bergsson on marketing EVE Online
With all the issues that have been cropping up regarding CCP Games and the way they have been running EVE Online, there is no arguing that this Icelandic company’s forays into the MMORPG market has been very fruitful. So after celebrating the 10th year anniversary this month, it might be good to look at what made the company a success.
One major factor of that achievement is how the company effectively marketed their game. Luckily GamesIndustry.biz was able to sit down with CCP’s Marketing Director Magnus Bergsson who shared his views, approach, and implementation of the company’s marketing plan.
CCP is really taking their marketing seriously and is looking to take the market by storm with a slew of marketing campaigns. They have even decided to further explore the U.S. market considering they already have an advertisement agency already set up. The company has allocated a good US$ million for this and Bergsson discussed the allocation of these funds.
Well, we’re going to spend about USD 4 million on media buying. We have an ad agency in the US: they have about 10 people there working full-time almost for us. That’s costing quite a bit, and it’s been a learning process for us. We’re used to doing everything here, and doing it really, really quickly.
Working with an ad agency… Took much longer than we anticipated to get them actually started. It took, like, three months, and three months for us is like an eternity. We were getting extremely restless.
It looks as though CCP will really be pushing to take down the competition this year with Bergsson at the helm of a very aggressive marketing plan. It should be remembered though that many have failed at breaking through the mass-market and it remains to be seen if EVE Online will gain the amount of popularity the company is hoping for.
Want to read more? Click on the full article for more on EVE Online’s marketing push
With all the issues that have been cropping up regarding CCP Games and the way they have been running EVE Online, there is no arguing that this Icelandic company’s forays into the MMORPG market has been very fruitful. So after celebrating the 10th year anniversary this month, it might be good to look at what made the company a success.
One major factor of that achievement is how the company effectively marketed their game. Luckily GamesIndustry.biz was able to sit down with CCP’s Marketing Director Magnus Bergsson who shared his views, approach, and implementation of the company’s marketing plan.
CCP is really taking their marketing seriously and is looking to take the market by storm with a slew of marketing campaigns. They have even decided to further explore the U.S. market considering they already have an advertisement agency already set up. The company has allocated a good US$ million for this and Bergsson discussed the allocation of these funds.
Well, we’re going to spend about USD 4 million on media buying. We have an ad agency in the US: they have about 10 people there working full-time almost for us. That’s costing quite a bit, and it’s been a learning process for us. We’re used to doing everything here, and doing it really, really quickly.
Working with an ad agency… Took much longer than we anticipated to get them actually started. It took, like, three months, and three months for us is like an eternity. We were getting extremely restless.
Of course the company is not going to invest their money blindly. The company is feeling confident right now about their prospects and are looking towards expansion. Bergsson gave word that this is the right time for this kind of spending citing two major reasons.
First of all, we have it. Secondly, we want to go beyond 300,000 users. It is a goal we set for ourselves. If we do it this year that would be fantastic. It’s not likely it will happen, but we’re going to try.
There’s just so much stuff now. The game is so much easier for new players to enter than ever before, and we are lucky that the gameplay is controlled so much by the players and not by us: it never really gets old. It’s timeless. And as more people are in the game, [the corporations – the EVE equivalent of guilds] need more people.
That’s how corporations work. It’s the right time for us, we think. It’s a very different growth curve from any other MMO. We know that. It’s also because you don’t have this leveling. You don’t have a character at level 60 and a character at level one, and the character level 60’s just going to pwn the guy who’s level one.
EVE doesn’t work like that. It’s a cooperation and everyone can participate.
It looks as though CCP will really be pushing to take down the competition this year with Bergsson at the helm of a very aggressive marketing plan. It should be remembered though that many have failed at breaking through the mass-market and it remains to be seen if EVE Online will gain the amount of popularity the company is hoping for. If you want to read more on this, feel free to click on our via link for the full interview.
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