Not long ago, the Left 4 Dead 2 “boycott” amicably wound up (I hate to admit it, it seems like an instance where online petitions do work.) Now outrage is brewing and gamers are cracking out the signatures with the news that the PC version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will not support dedicated servers – the tried and true model of multiplayer FPS gaming. A brief but amusingly weary summary can be found here. Naturally, this sort of news would not be easy to accept for casual gaming communities, competitive clans, modders and their fans. The developer, Infinity Ward, already indirectly responded to this controversy, rebuking ‘the modders and the tuners’ who want to ‘bifurcate the community’ in favour of a solution that will satisfy the majority of their audience. But is it necessarily good to alienate your most ardent fans in this way? Sound familiar?

Now, neither of these are actually games I play. I rented Call of Duty 2 AGES ago if that counts for anything. It’s just interesting to see that video games will always arouse strong and passionate opinions, and there are circumstances where a game company simply has to make concessions for its own sake. Interesting sort of interaction.

Also interesting how apart from the SecuROM fiasco (for which The Sims was only one game affected) EA seems to be largely immune to its community opinion. Outside of their official forums, is there any meaningful interaction or contact to speak of? I believe this dynamic is no doubt driven by the ‘silent majority’ who help keep Sims games on the bestseller lists constantly. I wish they’d speak up more.

TS3′s REAL core audience

“The Sims 3 is looking at 16-24 year-old PC players .. [it] has been developed from the ground up specifically against those consumer audiences.”

“it’s not just about appealing to the current Sims fans – they’re critically important, but we know we have to bring new consumers in too.”

So the people complaining about unnecessary changes, and who aren’t in this nicely-segmented age bracket or are ‘old consumers’, have a point. It’s not “developed against” them.

More below about the delay, social networking and kids, and the surprising use of the Internet to market games.

Intentional delays

When it comes to the reason for the June date, Arons replies, “Half strategy, half shifting.“. She gives the standard “more marketing” reason, adding that they intend to bring in new consumers (as quoted above).

She also talks about why EA went out with all these “trial experiences”: to bring in the “lapsed” flock who played TS2 when they were 12, but have probably moved on to KillBlow 3 and such games.

“A lot of what we’ve put significant effort into since we moved from February into June was creating trial experiences for new and lapsed players … “

Making kids buy stuff – I mean, network socially

“…what we’re leveraging on The Sims 3 in terms of social networking being a primary marketing vehicle – actually that’s not as appropriate for, say, young kids, but as we go into building up Littlest Pet Shop online, or any kind of kids online sites, we now know a lot more about social networking and how you dial it down for younger consumers.”

I think “dial it down” means “make it less obvious/offensive so we don’t end up on the news”. Parents should be concerned when they hear marketers talk about things being “primary marketing vehicles” for their children.

‘The online’

On marketing strategies:

“…with The Sims 3 (16-24 year old primary target) – those folks aren’t watching TV. Good luck there, they’re all Tivo-ing or watching online, so we had to go online. It’s probably one of the first marketing plans in EA where the online is more heavily weighted than television – and that’s an evolution. We have to spend a lot more time getting to this consumer group, that’s a lot harder to find than ever before.”

This is why they delayed it four months; because the core demographic is so hard to find! I’m a bit surprised that marketing mainly on the Internet is considered ‘novel’ for EA. In 2009.

Brilliant quote

“EA Play is less about “Let’s make a great game, because we know there’s a market out there.”"

OK, in the interest of fairness…

“It’s more about seeing that girls are really getting into gaming, younger and younger…So I’d say it was (sic) a consumer-centric approach that asks where the market opportunities are, and then goes about building the right titles and game experiences towards them.”