Evony Browser Game Marketing

My view on the marketing campaign for browser game Evony. Evony is a browser based massive multi player online strategy game with more than 10 million players. They have grown extremely fast after their launch less than a year ago.

Evony is a MMO browser strategy game that was launched Spring 2009. It has grown faster than any browser game I have ever seen, and right now has more than 10 million players on 130 different servers. Many of the servers has close to 200,000 players. The game is similar to older browser strategy games like Travian and TribalWars in that you start with one village that you are supposed to expand to an entire empire with building and producing your own resources as well as plundering and conquering your neighbours.

The game has received mixed reviews, but what they have become most famous for is their adverticing campaign. It has obviously worked very well for them, which the extreme quick increase of new players shows. Their ads are very misleading however, and contain many racy inmages of half naked women. Their slogan has been that you can 'play for free' 'descreetly in your browser'. Many of the ads don't give you any clue that they are actually for a civilization like browser strategy game.

The ads started out pretty inoccent with the picture of a woman dressed up as a queen saying 'save the queen'. There is no queen in the game to save, but at least you could see from that first add that it was a game it was for. Gradually the ads got worse and worse, or better and better, depending on your view, ending up with just women in underwear and photos of bra-clad pair of breasts.

Evony has also done a lot of marketing through adsense with more innocent looking ads, my websites have often been filled up with these ads. I don't mind them, but some webmasters complain they are hard to block as they go to many different urls you can sign up to Evony at. There is also an application called iEvony, where you can invite hundreds of your friends to join the game in exchange for in game currency called Evony cents. On my Evony website you can read more about the game itself and their marketing campaign.

Despite many players being drawn to the browser game by misleading ads, many players still stick around and enjoy the game itself. They had some problems with lag on their servers the first few months, but now they have many large high speed servers and the gameplay runs really smooth. The game is free to play and you don't really have to spend any money to have a good experience with the game.

If you start out with Evony now I suggest you start at one of the latest established servers. As I am writing this the latest server would be server 131. Here you will find other players at the save level as you and it will be much easier and more enjoyable for you to play.

Ivan Fogg - writer of Guides to Evony: Evony guide. Evony cheats.

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