“In our case market promotion is simply non existent. Our games spread by word of mouth only. If players like your games they will go to great lengths to engage their friends.”
— Max Skibinsky
From a recent interview with Max Skibinsky of Hive7:
MS: I started Hive7 in 2005. Back then web gaming was in its infancy, and the web 2.0 juggernaut was just getting started. We believed that we could harness the emerging rich web technologies to deliver gaming experiences without the shackles of a traditional game company model (publishers, retail sales etc). We started experimenting with AJAX gaming technologies and it worked out terrifically in long term.
VGN: What are some of the games you’ve created? What are you working on right now?
MS: We found our biggest success on Facebook after trying about five different games. Our top game is the social MMO Knighthood, which has grown to six million players. Now we are introducing new games to cover as many diverse genres as we can. Recently we introduced another hit with the soccer (football to non-Americans) MMO “Kick-Off” and are just about to launch a zombie apocalypse game. We have a couple more secret projects in development.
VGN: How do you promote your games? I would imagine the marketing campaign – and targeted advertising – is significantly different from a standard video game campaign.
MS: In our case market promotion is simply non existent. Our games spread by word of mouth only. If players like your games they will go to great lengths to engage their friends.
– Max Skibinsky @ Video Game News