30
2009
Evony ads with a side of WTF
If you’ve visited a gaming site in the last month or two, you’ve seen at least a dozen ads for a game called Evony. The banners and letterboxes are everywhere, each begging you to play this “free forever” game, rescue the princess/save the queen, and calling you “my Lord”. Recently I discovered some fun facts about this desperate campaign, a tale that includes stealing from a well-known game series, image theft, and breasts. In other words, it’s your average internet ad campaign!
Evony, formerly known as Civony, is a browser-based online multiplayer game that’s quite similar to Sid Meier’s Civilization. In fact, The Guardian said in its review the game “felt like a ripoff… going so far as to essentially steal its name”. Guess that’s when “civ” was dropped in favor of “ev”. But the thieving didn’t stop there. The first advertisement below was an early image used to promote the game. Some people thought that girl looked familiar, and after a little digging, it was revealed the image was stolen from Costume Craze, a website specializing in, well, costumes.
The early Evony ads were rather benign, depicting a standard-looking medieval knight behind the words “Free Forever”. Ok, good, that gets the point across, right? You can infer this is some sort of RPG, perhaps, with a medieval theme, and it’s free. Fine. It seems this image didn’t pull in the clicks, however, and so the next ads pushed themselves progressively closer to smut territory. As best as I can tell, the ads below are in chronological order from earliest to most recent. As you can see, they quickly become less about the game and more about sex:
Seriously, Evony? This is what you resort to? I know marketing can be a real pain, but I’ve been working as a video game journalist for six years, and I can tell you the best way to get people to play your game is to make a damn good game. If it’s good, people will play it, bloggers will write about it, and players will seek you out without having to be tricked into clicking on breasts. You can see the company getting more and more desperate as time went by. Gamervision even noticed one of the models lost some clothing after the first ad was released!
The best part is these women really have nothing to do with the game. I might cut Evony some slack if there were a damsel in distress you were working towards rescuing, but apparently the queen mentioned in one of the ads above doesn’t even exist. From the official Evony FAQ: “How do I get my queen? There is no queen in this game, the ad you saw is for marketing purposes and seems to be highly effective by the number of times this question has come up.”
Many website owners have voiced complaints about these Evony ads, so much so that I believe they’ll either change or disappear soon. PopCap recently released a few parody ads for Plants vs. Zombies (below) that are hilarious. I haven’t played Evony, I probably won’t, and to be honest, the lame ad campaign paints a poor picture of the company behind the game. Looks like Marketing 101 has backfired!
I'm a freelance writer, editor, and lover of independent, casual, and retro video games.
I’ve been seeing these everywhere and not just gaming sites but they’ve been popping up on Myspace and the like as of late. It’s pretty sad
Wow, I didn’t realize it was that widespread! Most of the sites I visit are gaming-related, so naturally I didn’t notice it elsewhere.
Also note how the final ad doesn’t even have the game’s logo, while the one before only has a tiny one in the corner. They’re copying those equally lame dating service ads!
They’re certainly widespread…I’ve encountered them on half a dozen websites I frequent that have nothing to do with gaming. Marketing 101 in most major colleges now is just a collection of softcore porn movies being shown over and over while student’s eyes are held open with toothpicks apparently.
This is also apparently where Long John Silvers has gotten it’s idea for it’s new Fish Taco. Come on!
Idiocracy is coming true far too soon. Curse you for accurately predicting the future, Mike Judge!!!
[...] If you have visited any video game-related site in the last couple of months, you may have noticed more than a few ads for Evony. Evony appears to be a browser-based RPG or simulation title of sorts, but the marketing approach [...]
I clicked on every ad you posted, none seem to work. I think the links are broken.
Yeah, I didn’t really want to link to the game. The thought of sending them just a few visitors made me cringe. :-) Go ahead and check it out, if you like. From what I hear, it’s really not a terrible game. Be ready for microtransactions!
http://www.evony.com/
surely I jest my lord, but now you’ve gone and actually posted the link. tsk tsk
Oh, sarcasm. How you are lost when distilled to nothing but text! I really should have picked up on that, though. :-P
Side note: I found a “new” Evony ad! They re-colored her dress. I wasn’t going to click on the ad when she was wearing brown, but now that she’s wearing red, I’ll click.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v712/daear/send/evony-tower.jpg
these ridiculous ads are everywhere…. maybe if everyone keeps clicking them, evony will go broke from the pay-per-click costs, and stop running them everywhere….
I hate seeing those ads, I found one on this fashion game my seven year old daughter plays, nice evony. Do they want kids to see scantily clad women? I know I don’t want my daughter to see that kind of stuff!
Oh, I hope Evony goes broke, or perhaps some one will get the nerve to sue them for showing kids suggestive figures!