Feature: 'Postcard: 'How to Manage a Large-Scale Online Gaming Community'

In today's main Gamasutra feature, we look at a talk by Rich Vogel (Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies) spoke at the Montreal Games Summit on handling your userbase in MMO games, pointing out that traditional marketing tactics and PR-speak simply don't work for most game players, and offering some alternatives. In this extract, Gamasutra examines Vogel's opening arguments: "Marketing in MMOGs, he claims, has to be both entertaining and informative, and those who drive the marketing need to balance those two aspects. In a massively multiplayer online game, marketing can take a variety of forms, including text written by the gamemakers and displayed in or before the game, newsletters (written by the gamemakers also), forums connected to the game, forums not connected to the game, and the content of fan web sites. All these outlets provide ample opportunities for viral marketing at its best. However, the reality is that marketing written by someone other than the content creators could (intentionally or otherwise) subvert their objective. What MMOG owners need to learn, in order to maintain control over their marketing, Vogel suggests, is to better manage the relationships they establish with their community, especially the outspoken members." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, including more information on Vogel's Montreal talk (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).