I’ve been thinking a lot about the upcoming Unreal launch and what a remarkable opportunity it represents for Entropia Universe. I’ve worked in advertising and marketing communications for almost as long as Entropia has been around, and from that perspective, this feels like much more than an engine upgrade. It is a rare opportunity to relaunch and reintroduce a mature, fully developed game to a much larger audience.
I’m also a little anxious about that opportunity being missed. Entropia is an unusual product and not an easy one to explain or market, and a successful technical launch does not necessarily translate into a successful product relaunch. I wasn’t around for the previous engine transitions or most major content launches, so I don’t have much history by which to judge MindArk’s approach.
Rather than speculate about what MindArk will or won’t do, I thought it would be more useful to lay out what I would do if I were developing the marketing strategy for the Unreal relaunch. Obviously I don’t know MindArk’s budgets, internal plans, data or development schedule. This is simply one advertising guy’s strategic wishlist for what I think could be an extraordinary opportunity.
The basic plan has 16 parts:
-
Campaign strategy — Relaunch Entropia as a mature science-fiction MMORPG, not simply “Entropia with better graphics.”
-
Kickstarter — Use crowdfunding as a prelaunch marketing and community-investment event—not because development needs funding, but as another avenue to generate excitement, participation, and emotional investment in the relaunch.
-
New starter packs — Retire the old Frontier proposition and create products specifically for the new generation of Entropia.
-
New webshop products — A small, carefully chosen range of additional direct-sale items without undermining the player economy.
-
Development film series — Professionally produced films that explain the universe, systems, economy and history.
-
Planet designer profiles — Put the actual creative leads for Arkadia, Cyrene, Next Island, etc. on camera and let them sell their worlds.
-
Creator/influencer program — Give creators interesting Entropia experiences instead of having everyone stream the tutorial.
-
Paid media — Put an actual acquisition budget behind the relaunch and test different reasons to play against different audiences.
-
Steam promotion — Treat Steam as a major acquisition and discovery channel and build toward a concentrated launch.
-
PR and earned media — Sell the gaming, technology, economic, virtual-world and 20+ year history stories.
-
Community mobilization — Give existing players, societies, mentors and crews ways to participate in the relaunch.
-
New-player experience — Make sure the product is actually ready to retain the audience the marketing brings in.
-
Return to Entropia — Run a separate campaign specifically designed to reactivate years of lapsed players.
-
Landowner activation — Give landowners entirely voluntary incentives to improve and promote their lands around launch.
-
Integrated launch architecture — Coordinate all of this around a single prelaunch, launch and postlaunch calendar.
-
Measurement — Judge success by retained, participating players, not Kickstarter dollars, views or launch-day installs.
I’ll post the larger ideas as separate topics, so each can have its own discussion rather than turning this thread into sixteen conversations at once. I’d love player feedback here, but I also hope someone at MindArk sees something here worth considering.