"What have you learnt from the analysis of the specific new media form?"
This blog entry is related to my final project, which in my case will be an analysis of everything about the Dark Souls Facebook Page.
To clarify, Dark Souls is an RPG (Role-Playing Game) that I've been extremely interested in since before it was released over a year ago. This was one of the first games to captivate me in quite a while. The player plays an undead character who has the ability to change the fantasy world they've been thrown into.
From Software (The company that developed Dark Souls) currently has nearly two-hundred thousand 'likes' on Facebook. This means that at least 200,000 individuals are subscribed to seeing updates and content posted by the official Dark Souls page. The company can use this primarily as an informational tool, allowing them to inform players/fans of updates made to the game. Additionally players can converse with each other on this page and talk about the product as well.
Not only is this an example of fantastic marketing, but it also aligns with the goals the company had for the game in the first place. Dark Souls is notorious for being labeled as "one of the most difficult games to ever come out". That was the draw to it for a lot of players; Finally, a game that I would drop $60 on and be able to play for more than 10 hours. From Software made this game difficult because they wanted players to try and cooperate online. Whether this cooperation happened through their online co-op play features, or by players posting their findings on a forum/message board/facebook page, they certainly struck a chord with their fan-base.
Early 2012 I was perusing Facebook, and suddenly I see an update from Dark Souls in my news feed. The post had said "PC port for Dark Souls Petition". There was a group of individuals who loved Dark Souls on the consoles (such as myself), but had REALLY wanted to see a version of the game on PCs. Personally, preferring PC controls, I had to start following this story. Petitions were signed, information was given to remain updated; I would be naive to think that the email address supplied to sign up for these updates was not sold to other companies at some point, but the benefits outweighed the costs for me, I wanted a PC port. August 2012, my wish came true, and it was the Facebook Page that notified me of that. The next expansion of Dark Souls would be released later in the year, and the PC version of the game would get it for free.
Shortly after the PC version of the game was released, many fans were fairly disappointed (myself included). They were expecting a polished game with seamless controls and full user support on the PC. The problem was none of this happened, some of the buttons were remapped, the resolution was kept below HD-quality, and the interface wasn't touched at all so all the button commands on screen were for xbox-controllers. Luckily the official Facebook Page was able to provide fans with explanations as to why the company did not have time to completely polish a redesign of their current game (just two days ago or so we learned this was because they were already working on developing the sequel!). The company's ability to quickly address the issue allowed them to retain a large number of disgruntled fans and players, as well as continue to promote in the manner they set out to. Players now uploaded and submit links to modifications they made to make the game more playable. I instantly went and downloaded a mod that would allow me to play in higher resolutions and hide the cursor on the screen.
So far, From Software has the right idea behind marketing their product through new media forms, more specifically Facebook. The page set up is easy enough to understand, and all the company and game information is readily available. Contact information is also provided and separated by which region the user prefers assistance in. I'm excited to delve deeper into seeing how this page has been a positive (and potentially negative, in some aspects) influence in marketing one of my favorite games.
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