Internet Marketing And Evony: A Tale of Epic Boobage *NSFW*
Author: Rees | Date: July 10, 2009
Jeff Atwood’s Coding Horror is a programming blog that I’m somewhat interested in. Of course, the enthralling world of Javascript, Regexes, and database design aren’t really things I think get Team Teabag readers excited, but a story today really caught my eye for reasons that should hopefully become apparent. It’s all about online advertising, and a browser-based “freemium” Civilisation clone called Evony (formerly Civony).
Here’s how their online advertising campaign has “evolved” over time:
Tasteful. Then we have this…
Medieval cleavage. Nice! But then…
Can you see where this is going? I bet you can’t…
Er, yeah. (Coding Horror has more, BTW. Ads that is, not boobs.)
That’s right – I am not making this up. A medieval city building browser-based game went from somewhat tasteful but alluring ads, to full-on unashamed in-your-face boobage. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a man who enjoys his boobage, but perhaps it wasn’t really appropriate in this case.
Props to them for trying, of course.
On that note, I came up with this banner ad for Team Teabag. I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s both understated and tasteful, and it’s bound to bring yet more readers to our ever-growing blogging empire:
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I hope thats not your arse!
Nope, just a very strange set of boobies.
It is looking increasingly likely that Evony is just the Chinese gold farmers going first party. There are a lot of unhappy people out there who have paid money for nothing. And Evony are spamming up the game interweb looking for new victims.
http://www.bruceongames.com/2009/07/10/dont-play-evony/
Wow, I’ve noticed it getting worse but I haven’t seen the last one yet.
Atleast it’s pushed out those annoying ‘IMVU’ ads.
…and when boobs became an overused marketing tool, I guess we’ll then start seeing vaginas. I can just image slogans like “come here my lord”
This game rakes in money for the owners of it, period. Its daily revenue is phenomenal.
The really isn’t free if you want to keep what you have after the 7 day no-fire policy. Everything in the game cost game cents. Your Credit card or Pay Pal account will cost you $5 per 50 cents of in-game currency. Items cost between 50 cents to 400 cents, and only last from 24 hours to 7 days. Some people may spend nothing, but eventually lose everything they have to an invasion with those spending real money to buy items.
To do the math, the game collects on average $5 a day from players. Some spend nothing and others spend a lot. At $5 a day, with 5750 players on each continent, and 30 continents per server, and 46 servers in operation, that’s a pretty good scam I think. Yes, almost 36 million dollars a month. The game owned and operated by an actual Gold miner, who realizes he can make much more money this way than having to discover, claim, mine and refine actual gold.