Launch Philosophy

Your launch philosophy should encompass plans for both the long and short terms. This is not like simply shipping a product to retail; this is an ongoing service that must be maintained long after the player buys or downloads the game and starts playing. Short- term thinking on your part will almost certainly leave money on the table for others to pick up, in the form of players who leave during your free trial period for other products and services.

There are a few simple guidelines you can follow to make things go more smoothly during this process. We cover those in the next several sections.

Don't Launch Before the Game Is Ready

Your concept may be explosive, capable of blowing the doors off the gaming world like a nuclear weapon. If it isn't quite perfect yet, you can survive, provided you can deliver it safely. But, if it isn't complete or if it is technically unstable, it is likely to blow up in your face. You only get to launch once. You only have one shot at a good first impression with someone you meet on the street. Here, you have but one chance to impress the highly motivated players checking out the game during the first two weeks. If you blow it here and players leave the game, it is almost impossible to recapture them later. Don't be tempted to launch with serious, known problems just to get it over with; that is short-term thinking that will cost you millions in the long run.

There Will Be Problems, So Be Prepared

This is the period in which the most problems are likely to occur, in fact. You'll experience them technically with the host/client platforms, service, and administrative tools, and emotionally with some players and player support personnel. If there is ever a good time to overinvest in player relations and overall support, this is it. It is far easier to scale back support to adequate levels once the crisis has passed than it is to try to scale up quickly to meet an emergency.

Just because there will be problems anyway does not mean you should launch prematurely; doing so will only scale up your difficulties to unmanageable levels.

The Game Is a Service, So Treat It Like One

Be service-minded, not product-minded. How you handle the customers during the first week or two of the post-launch phase will set the tone of the relationship for months to come.

Being service-minded means preparing ahead of time. Before accepting your first player's subscription payment, have these items in your toolbox, not on your to-do list:

• Policies and procedures on dealing with customers, written out, vetted by all relevant departments, published to the team, and thoroughly discussed before the launch.

• A well-trained player relations staff who exceed the expected need, who are familiar with the game and policies, who understand that 50% of the job consists of taking shots from abusive players (and not taking it personally ), and who do their jobs with compassion and speed.

• Middle-and senior-level managers experienced with online game player relations who are empowered to make decisions on the spot, who are guided by the policies and procedures, and who feel the need to be best-of-breed in online service and support.

• Rehearsals with the player relations and community management teams on possible crisis situations and methods for handling them.

Fumbling here means losing the trust of the players, and that trust takes months or years to recover, if you recover it at all.