Tabula Rasa: WTH

Last week, we looked at the games that players of WOW enjoy when they aren’t stomping around Azeroth, and we compared it to the list of games enjoyed by Guild Wars players. I concluded that MMO players are pretty much whores, and will try anything once… but underneath they’re terribly loyal, and will almost always stay with whoever buys them a house and expensive clothes and a 500 person friend list.

Today, I want to run a comparison with a game that refuses, to its detriment, to get into a box and stay there.

First, the numbers prove that most of the people who tried Tabula Rasa were in fact MMO players. Six of the top ten “other games played” appearing on TR player lists are MMOs. The top played game that ISN’T an MMO is Team Fortress 2, in third place… representing HALF of the TR players. Yes. Fifty percent of GamerDNA members actively playing TR are also Team Fortress fans.

It looks like people who had previously enjoyed an NCSoft title were more willing to give another NCSoft product a try – City of Heroes appears higher up on the list than it did for WoW players. Dungeon Runners, an NCSoft game that didn’t appear on the other lists, and a title that is somewhat disturbingly known for inflicting THIS onto humanity,  made this list.

One real standout on the list was Portal. This fascinating game didn’t crack the top also-played titles of WoW players or GW players, but sits very highly on the TR list in fifth place.

This data doesn’t reflect the whole story, however. The GamerDNA members currently playing Tabula Rasa the most barely have any Xfire data in their feeds… because they’re predominately console players, and this title is one of the only ones they play on the PC at all.

And now, a digression into a theoretical conversation:

MMO Player: Gosh, I never get tired of pretending to be an elf.

Shooter Player: *gags*

MP: I did just try Tabula Rasa.

SP: Yeah?

MP: I hated it. But you should check it out, it seems right up your alley.

BZZT! No! That conversation never happens! But I know this conversation happens:

MP:  Blah blah elf blah raid blah blah DKP blah 1.7 DPS modified downwards by charisma, what kind of tool thought that up blah blah bored blah blah Tabula Rasa.

Other MP: What’d you think of it?

MP: Eh. Like an MMO for shooters.

SP, who wasn’t really paying attention: What? Those exist?

I know this conversation happened at least once, because it happened at GamerDNA HQ.  The shooter player in question has gone on to become a real fan of Tabula Rasa. Advertisements had been seen, in this anecdotal case, but had not had their message sink in to any degree. The MMO crowd that knew about it did not find anything beyond the control scheme to be innovative enough in terms of the experience – but shooter players did not have the same impression.

Simply advertising the game to shooters was not enough. Any game seeking to carve out its own niche needs to be aggressively marketed, in an educational sense – if you’re trying something new, you need to tell the market what the game is about, and who its player should be. You can’t rely on word of mouth, when the word would have to jump unnoticed boundaries in order to be effective. And the solution to getting that word to jump boundaries from MMO players to shooter players isn’t to invite more MMO players, or to time those invitations more strategically – it’s to seek out the shooters in the first place.

Analyzing what games your most enthusiastic players are ALSO playing will tell you exactly where to spend your advertising money, and even suggest your strategy. A demo booth under a banner known for MMOs, or an exhaustive tour of every LAN party outlet in the country? Glossy magazine spread talking about the founder’s history, or college dorm tour?

Success? Or unfair obscurity?