INTRODUCTION ABOUT THE PRODUCT
What is online games
Online gaming is a technology rather than a genre, a mechanism for connecting players together rather than a particular pattern of game play. Online games are played over some form of computer network, now typically on the Internet. One advantage of online games is the ability to connect to multiplayer games, although single-player online games are quite common as well.
Online games are games played over some form of computer network. At the present, this almost always means the Internet or equivalent technology; but games have always used whatever technology was current: modems before the internet, and hard wired terminals before modems. The expansion of online gaming has reflected the overall expansion of computer networks from small local networks to the Internet and the growth of Internet access itself. Online games can range from simple text based games to games incorporating complex graphics and virtual worlds populated by many players simultaneously. Many online games have associated online communities, making online games a form of social activity beyond single player games.
The rising popularity of Flash and Java led to an Internet revolution where websites could utilize streaming video, audio, and a whole new set of user interactivity. When Microsoft began packaging Flash as a pre-installed component of IE, the Internet began to shift from a data/information spectrum to also offer on-demand entertainment. This revolution paved the way for sites to offer games to web surfers. Most online games like World of War craft, Final Fantasy XI and Lineage II charge a monthly fee to subscribe to their services, while games such as Guild Wars offer an alternative no monthly fee scheme. Many other sites relied on advertising revenues from on-site sponsors, while others, like Run Escape, let people play for free while leaving the players the option of paying, unlocking new content for the members.
After the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, many sites solely relying on advertising revenue dollars faced extreme adversity. Despite the decreasing profitability of online gaming websites, some sites have survived the fluctuating ad market by offsetting the advertising revenue loss by using the content as a cross-promotion tool for driving web visitors to other websites that the company owns.
The main objective of this product is to reach the user as large and many numbers of player and keep the interaction to the community through external forums or chat system. Usually these games have a large community of players to plan, coordinate and work as a team (if possible) such as tribes, clans or alliances.
Ragnarok Online Version 2 (RO2)
The year 1000 L.C is approaching. One thousand years prior, a terrible destruction took place, and the world was saved by St. Lif, son of Baldr. Roughly twenty years earlier, a destructive war took place between Normans of the east and west, but there has recently been peace. Strange things have begun happening, however; the dark wanderers Dimago have awoken, and the Ellr have left their land of Alfheim to investigate the Mother Tree's silence.
Ragnarok Online 2 improves on many of the original's features as well as adding quite a few of its own. Below are notable new features or changes that will be seen in RO2. (Larger features are described in detail however not all game features have been announced yet).
Full 3D graphics, while retaining the "original manhwa style" of Ragnarok Online.
Real Emotion Expression, allowing player avatars to show and express realistic emotions. This will replace the "bubble emotes" from the original.
Anti-Theft Mob System, which gives benefits to victim of kill-stealing instead of penalizing the offender.
Safe Trade System, which enables two ways of trade. The first option requires an item from both parties (or Zeny) and the second option allows the trade of an item or amount of Zeny without having to receive something in return.
Killing one strong creature has been redesigned to be far more effective than killing multiple weaker enemies. Grouping has also been made far more beneficial to those in the group.
Loot collection has been changed to a "loot the body" system. Instead of making dropped items fall onto the ground, the player must select the fallen enemy's corpse and retrieve the items.
Jumping and swimming have been implemented.There will be a day and night cycle.
Besides day and night cycle, weather effects such as rain is available. It is possible that in the future there will be snow effects for Christmas festival.
This System allows a character to use skills from other classes. Special abilities can be gained by leveling a character's job class, giving them the ability to create useful and original class combinations, such as battle mages and wares-selling thieves.
For example, when a Swordsman learns Bash Specialty, he can equip this ability when he changes into another class, such as an Enchanter. He can now use the ability without being a Swordsman. Specialty skills learned this way have no real limitations, except for the fact that they cannot be upgraded while the character is not in the class in which the skill belongs. In this example, in order to upgrade the skill, the Enchanter must change back into a Swordsman, level up the Bash ability, before changing back to an Enchanter.
A bonus feature of this system is that a class can now equip class-specific gear that is normally limited to a different class. For example, Swordsmen have the "Long Sword Specialty." When equipped on an Enchanter, he/she can use Long Swords, where usually Enchanters could not.
There is a limit to how many special abilities one can employ at a time, represented by 16 blocks in a 4x4 box. Some skills may take up to 3 blocks, however, thus leaving less room for other abilities. Characters start with fewer than 16 blocks, but will gradually gain additional blocks as he/she levels, eventually gaining access to the full 4x4, 16-slot box.
PRODUCT ANALISYS
SWOT ANALISYS
The overall evaluation of a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats is called SWOT analysis. It involves monitoring the external and internal marketing environment.
A major purpose of environmental scanning is to discern new opportunities. In many ways, good marketing are the art of finding, developing and profiting from opportunities. A marketing opportunity is an area of buyer need and interest in which these is a high probability that a company can profitably satisfy that need.
An environmental threat is a challenge posed by an unfavorable trend or development that would lead, in the absence of defensive marketing action, to lower sales or profit. Threats should be classified according to seriousness and probability of occurrence.
Strengths
- Ragnarok which genre is MPOCG provide the players with unlimited various gameplay to make them feels like they’re in the real world.
- It has an attractive visualization where every player are able to modify the gender, styles and hair colors of the characters which is create 72 combination plus accessories that can be bought in stores in the game will make each players as a unique person.
- This game has a quite high level of interactivity because the players can communicate and interact with others and even create a chatting room and build a team against the monsters.
- Ragnarok Online supporting the features which is rich of love and friendshipness, contrary with other games. The players could show various emotion by using the emote icon which is simple and easy to used. Therefore, the married system and adopting child is aplicated for the purpose of the main objective of this game which is love and friendshipness.
- Ragnarok Online has a dynamic and attractive visualization , besides it can also creating an ideal world to fulfill the inner side of the player.
- Ragnarok community has its own social control towards its players. The one who says un-polite words when they interact with other players will be discriminated when he wants join to a group.
- Technical penalty will be possible if there was a deviation-surpass the fundamental rules in the game, for example: stealing the character owned by other players dishonestly by hacking and etc. The trespasser will get Ban (eviction then continued with isolation) by the administrator or the board of the game.
Weaknesses
- Space for the installation is quite big (it is about 600 MB), beside, the player cannot play it instantly because they have to install the application first.
- There is a limited platform which supported by each games cause not everyone can play it.
Opportunities
- The growth of games lately can be said developed rapidly. It’s caused by the growth of internet Technology in all over the world.
- The rapidly growth of IT might create a perfect dimension of social interaction to substitute the social interaction.
Threat
- There are negative perceptions from people of online games (please see attach, Negative Impact of Online Game)
- Most gamers are interested with the online games which have violence contents and mostly have negative effects for children who imitating the dangerous scene in that game.
POSITIONING, DEFFERENTIATION AND BRANDING
Positioning starts with a product, such as a piece of merchandise, a service, a company, an institution or even a person. But positioning is not what a company does to a product. Positioning is what a company does to the mind of the prospect. That is a company positions the product in the mind of prospect (customer).
If a company does a poor job of positioning, the market will be confused. But if the company does an excellent job of positioning, then it can work out the rest of its marketing planning and differentiations from its positioning strategy.
A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, design or any combination of these features, which is intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of the competitors.
Essentially a brand is the perfect means of identifying the seller or the manufacturer. Once a brand name has been legally registered under trademark law, it is in force forever and no other organization can copy the name, unlike a patent or copyright, both of which have expiry dates.
MARKETING COMMUNICATION CAMPAIGN
As a recreation tool, online games have a negative and positive effect. People is spotlighting the negative effect because the online games players tend to spend their time and money just for play and cause them to losing academic grades. Parents and teachers are even concern with the behaviors of the children and teenager who playing this games. They are assuming that playing games (online games) can affect negatively to the academic performance and social behavior of the children.
However the positive things of online games are the players gain the opportunities to do self exploration, to fulfill their needs of leisure. Online games are fun and sharpen strategic thinking and improve our responses.
Indonesia has a largest number of players, to look at its potential, we are doing campaign to establish and increasing the number of players and also the interaction between them can establish the friendshipness or gamers community although they have never seen one another face to face. And also we are going to launch the new version of Ragnarok Online which is Ragnarok online version 2.
Target Audience
The main (primary) target audience for Ragnarok online version 2 campaign are Female and Male around 15-25 years old, leave in the 5 big cities in Indonesia such as Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, Semarang and Medan. Those who familiar with the previous Ragnarok online, innovator and early majority types of audience category as a trend setter at their community, student and employee (both blue and white collar), like challenges, adventure, socialize, risk taker, imaginative, creative, friendly, tend to develop team work and relationship.
While the secondary target will be those who followers of the trend setter person on the community, usually those people categories as early majority, people who like to build up their community and networking in the virtual life.
Objective
- To build the awareness of Ragnarok online version 2 as the extended of Ragnarok online in the mind of the target audience by twelve months.
- Increasing the number of players of the Ragnarok online version 2, into 25% by twelve months.
- Create the understanding among the gamers how important to build up the networking and relationship in both virtual and the real live by twelve months.
Strategy, Tactics, Tone and Support
To launch the new version which is Ragnarok Online 2, we are going to make an event titled : “Ragnarok Berjuta Cinta Bagi Sahabatku”. The event will be held in the view malls of 5 big cities in Indonesia such as Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, Semarang and Medan. The duration for every city will be 2 days. (For the event description details, please see the attachment).
In every event, gravity corps, will be donate fund to the UNICEF as realization of the titled “Berjuta Cinta Bagi Sahabatku”. Every gamer has opportunity trying the unique feature of Ragnarok online Version2 and guessing the name of the icon or creature in the cards. Stamp will be given to the gamer who succeed to mention the name of the icon. One stamp for a single correct answer, which worth IDR 10,000.- each stamp. The gamers can redeem to a merchandise from UNICEF for every 5 stamps.
During the event, a hundred gamers will be get a CD trial of Ragnarok Online Version 2 also they can buy in the discounted price the map and guiding book of Ragnarok Online Version 2. This activity’s objective is to build the awareness among the community, by using experience of the gamers. On the other hand, we believe it will be increase the number of the players.
As we know that majority online games is more challenging game rather than rational. The tone for the campaign will be fun and challenging. We use the additional song as the opening song will be “I Got You (I feel Good)” from James Brown also the theme song of The Ragnakrog online version 2 itself. The Banner or the advertisement of this event will be written “It’s a challenging!!!” and “Dare you try???” or “Ready to take off with RO2” and so on.
Beside the event, the media from all segmented magazine for the games will be invited to try the unique feature of the Ragnarok online version 2, before the product launch. So the media will be create the story to the public about the extended Ragnarok online. It can be used to create public opinion about the game also free advertisement for the game itself.
Benefits
We understand that some of the audience tend to profiling the image of online games as the negative side which can be read as attachment. However online games can be use to build the networking among the gamers community, since Ragnarok online version 2 is game with the team working rules.
The campaign of Ragnarok online version 2 is emphasizing the understanding among the gamers how important to build up the networking and relationship in both virtual and the real live.
MEDIA COMMUNICATION
Information technology (IT) has evolved a generic term, which relates to the use of a computer as a tool for gathering, storing and using information. In their early days, commercial computers were used predominantly for communicating (written communications), data storage (databases), calculations (spreadsheets) and basic graphic presentations (simple graphics program).
The current situation of economic makes every company create the smartest way to communicate their product or services. One of the solutions is using the online media. Ragnarok Online Version 2 is online games, which operates under online system. Therefore online media of communication will be more effective such as put a banner in the other web, news web, blog, official website own by Ragnarok online itself.
Blog
A blog (a contraction of the term "Web log") is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketches (sketchblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting), which are part of a wider network of social media. Micro-blogging is another type of blogging, one which consists of blogs with very short posts. As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs. With the advent of video blogging, the word blog has taken on an even looser meaning — that of any bit of media wherein the subject expresses his opinion or simply talks about something.
Website
A website is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or more web servers, usually accessible via the Internet.
A Web page is a document, typically written in (X)HTML, that is almost always accessible via HTTP, a protocol that transfers information from the Web server to display in the user's Web browser.
Offline media
Even online media is believed as the smartest choice of media communication. However it is not the wise idea to put aside the offline media. Therefore we are using segmented magazine and word of mouth which is known as WOM to communicate RO2. It is due to the important thing of online games are networking and or community.
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles, generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three.
Most magazines are available in the whole of the country in which they are published, although some are distributed only in specific regions or cities. Others are available internationally, often in different editions for each country or area of the world, varying to some degree in editorial and advertising content but not entirely dissimilar.
The information placed in Segmented magazine (ex : Game station, Hotgame, Ultima X, etc)
Word of Mouth (WOM)
Word of mouth, is a reference to the passing of information from person to person. This includes any type of human communication, eg face to face, telephone, email.
Word-of-mouth marketing, which encompasses a variety of subcategories, including buzz, blog, viral, grassroots, cause influencers and social media marketing, as well as ambassador programs, work with consumer-generated media and more, can be highly valued by product marketers. Because of the personal nature of the communications between individuals, it is believed that product information communicated in this way has an added layer of credibility. Research points to individuals being more inclined to believe WOMM than more formal forms of promotion methods; the receiver of word-of-mouth referrals tends to believe that the communicator is speaking honestly and is unlikely to have an ulterior motive (i.e. they are not receiving an incentive for their referrals.
In order to promote and manage word-of-mouth communications, marketers use publicity techniques as well as viral marketing methods to achieve desired behavioral response. Influencer marketing is increasingly used to seed WOMM by targeting key individuals that have authority and a high number of personal connections.
