Erik Rutins
Posts: 37503
Joined: 3/28/2000
From: Vermont, USA
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ORIGINAL: ravinhood
You know I been tellin the Matrixgames guys this for awhile now. I believe wargaming is such a niche market because none of the industry gets out there and really demonstrates their product. Did you ever see Avalon Hill have a boardgame set in your local Mall? Did you ever see a Matrixgames representative do the same?
There's a point there, but when we have the money to pay someone to stand around and do demos at a mall, I won't be worrying about what that point was. 
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How many TV ads do you see of board game wargames or even computer wargames on TV? Now, I've seen MADDEN FOOTBALL and Console games advertised on TV quite often, but, I have NEVER seen a computer wargame of any type advertised on TV. I'd think trying to get an advertising spot on the History Channel would be a good idea.
You have to realize that TV is a medium that's ideal for advertising some things, not for others. There are a lot of products you don't see on TV because they're difficult to "sell" visually. Besides that point, buying a TV spot to advertise one of our games once would probably blow our entire ad budget for the year. I'd like to believe you that it would somehow bring tons of people to out doorstep, eager to buy Battles In Italy, but I can't say I'm convinced.
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Not, because they really want it, just because it was advertised during that show and so many people buy on impulse, they don't care what they are buying, they just buy it cause they saw it and it was NEW! lol
How do I join your fantasy?
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You can't just goto wargamers conventions and expect and increase in sales and customers. Those people there are "already" wargamers, not that many a newcomer to the wargaming genre at wargame conventions that I've ever been to.
Origins and Gencon are not "wargamer" conventions - they're "big" conventions. I'd say Origins is probably 30% wargamers, which is very high for a big convention. However, the rest are gamers who might be interested in a good computer game - war or sci fi. GenCon is probably no more than 15% wargamers. We find a fair amount of cross over interest, particularly for our sci fi titles among the non-wargamers. It's still a great way to spread the word.
You have to think for a sec and ask yourself why, in forty years, wargaming has not made it fully out of the niche. It's come close, but there seems to be a limit beyond which it won't go. I doubt everyone trying to market wargames in that time period has been a nincompoop and I'm know some of your suggestions at least have been tried with much the same logic - the more "mainstream focus". Do you know what that taught the wargame makers? Wargames are - by design - a niche. You can design yourself out of that niche and make a "pseudo-wargame" that appeals to a larger market. Trying to sell real wargames to a larger market has unfortunately shown fairly poor results. It appears that a person either "gets" wargaming or they don't and the "gets" are a fairly small group of the population. Very hard to convert a "don't get" to a "get", it's not like showing someone a new sport, a new car or anything else that's relatively intuitive.
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It takes money to make money and it takes reinvesting that money into visual advertisement as well as magazine advertisement to open the market up to more new and prospective customers. Just think of the projected sales if some sort of demo setup were done in the likes of WALMARTS video gaming department. $$$$ Ching Ching But, alas without retail packages to back up the demonstrations, that sorta nips it in the bud for Matrixgames titles.
The key thing is return on advertising investment. There's no question sales would go up due to a TV ad or Walmart demo. However, whether they would go up enough to cover the additional channel/advertising/promotional costs (not to mention make a profit and "re-invest") is doubtful. Wargaming is very promotion-sensitive when marketed to the right segment of the population. Wargaming is remarkably non-promotion sensitive when marketed with a shotgun approach to anyone that walks by. Based on what we've seen, my belief is that you'd take a million bucks, promote like crazy to the mainstream audience, get an additional $250k in sales and go broke. Please note, we've gone to retail in the past and also very recently with GGWaW. It can work, but it has to be setup very carefully and your sales forecasts have to be realistic.
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When I walk into a Gamestop, there's two video machines running some console game on it and of course the retail packages under it or very near it for sale. When I walk into Best Buy, there are sales caps with fancy new EA products on them, first thing a customer sees when they walk towards the computer gaming department. The only software outlet I walk into which I feel gives "equal" opportunity to all new games on display is "Hastings" music/book/video store. But, their gaming department is so bland and many unfilled spaces, it's like ghost shelves full of nothing but old product and the one new game display is the only thing really worth noting.
Note that most games you see are console games. Within that segment, most are quick action type games that are very simple and which a customer walking by can pretty much play instantly by picking up the game controller. Selling someone in this way means they basically take a look, go "Wow" and walk over to try it. Wargames are the equivalent of "Excuse me, Sir? Do you have 15 - 30 minutes to pause from your shopping while I explain this great new game for you so that you can start playing? It's historical, it's accurate and it's full of great maps and counters. What do you say?"
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Another cheaper avenue of advertising though would be to pay some teenagers to plant wargame flyers on cars in shopping mall parking lots. Even if you picked up 2% increased sales, I don't think the cost of paper and ink would bite into it that much.
This type of idea has some potential, IMHO. You could call this "asymmetric marketing" I suppose - there are many online ways to do the equivalent and they tend to be inexpensive enough that even if they are somewhat scattershot, they make some sense for wargames.
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And that's what bugs me about this direct sales/internet sales business, do you really think the majority of gamers are on the internet? Do you really think the population of consumers on the internet is higher than retail consumers?
No, when did we ever say that? However, if you track the statistics, 30-60% are for our key markets and that percentage is growing at a fast clip yearly. Online download sales are growing much faster than online "shipped sales" on a yearly basis and are projected to grow at a meteoric rate for the next five years as even more people become comfortable with them.
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Somehow I myself just can't swallow that just yet. Maybe in 50 years or so, but, from my own personal pollings, many people still do not "trust" the internet enough to give out personal information on it like a credit card or bank routing number. Maybe for wargames from Matrixgames it's different. I'd sure like to be a fly on the wall in their sales department and just see how many direct sales they are getting vs their retail sales before. ;)
I've seen some bigger polls. We don't release sales numbers, but suffice to say that each year has been better than the last.
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But, here's another idea!! Create a Matrixgames buyer gamer card. That people can purchase in retail outlets. Worth the price of a game. They take up little to no space and people will wonder, what's this Matrixgames??? Is it the MATRIX?? Oh I gotta buy this lol. This way though they don't have to give out personal information and can call or use the internet to just order a game without worry about anything. Something else, at least put up a product magazine/manual in retail outlets, something colorful and eye catching on display so people can at least see what products you do offer for direct sales and download.
All that costs a fair amount of money - in the case of the buyer card probably a lot of additional planning, implementation and then program management as well, if one decided to do it. I understand what you're aiming at, all I can say is that we're constantly bouncing ideas around as well and there are several "experiments" in the works.
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Main thing is the mainstream prospective consumer just isn't going to know about Matrixgames, HPS, Shrapnel products if there's nothing in retail outlets to show they exist even. Need something still in the retail market to continue to draw the uninformed, and the curious. The diehard wargamer will always know or find out about the products, but, DIE is the key word in that word. We gonna DIE someday and if yah don't bring in new customers, well the market will never increase in size and could very well eventually die itself.
In all honestly, you need to realize that a company like EA makes _billions_ of dollars. Console games out-sell PC games by a large ratio. Retail stores are reluctant to make space and promote a PC game (which immediately sells less than console games, even if it's Civilization IV), particularly one that won't appeal to every single PC gamer out there.
Retail still has a purpose and getting the word out is part of that. The GGWaW release to retail was intended also as a way to make sure we had a presence in retail this year for customers who never look around online. But, retail is an expensive proposition and a difficult match. The retail market of today is _much_ different from five or ten years ago.
Regards,
- Erik
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RE: demise of board games? (in reply to sarge - 
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