On NPR this morning, I heard a story about how automakers are catering to niches: rather than selling 500,000 Impalas, they’ll aim to sell 80,000 to 100,000 Chrysler 500s. Map this to the MMO market, and you’ll see what publishers expect (“Over half a million copies? EQ and WoW did it, so we should too!”) versus what they can, realistically, get (“15,000 copies…we’re doomed!”). Ubiq has a reasonable explanation of why a lot of these games end up with far less market than the publishers, designers, or producers expected. Lum’s “steal my game idea, please!” proposal violates (though not in a bad way) some of Ubiq’s niche marketing points, if only because it’s yet another attempt to cross MMO and RTS games. (Although, as a niche, there are a few games in that space.)

Hint: you can’t market yourself as all things to all people with alienating someone. Pick your market segment, and aggressively market to them. Shadowbane’s “Play to crush!” campaign caught the drooling attention of the PvPers. Ultima Online promised to let you build your own world, while EverQuest said “You’re in our world now” (which I always thought was a sucky motto). Dark Age of Camelot gave you the opportunity to defend your realm. World of Warcraft seems to be mixing messages: “PvP is the endgame, and PvP is a game option, but we’re really selling a fast-levelling EQ clone with a different storyline and new phat lewt to collect.”–it succeeds because it does the EQ-thing very, very well.