Elsword Steam Greenlight Interview
Questions by Darren Henderson (DizzyPW), OnRPG Editor-in-Chief
It’s been a long wait but Elsword has nearly clawed itself to the top of the mountain of titles vying for Steamification to take its rightful place among the star MMOs on the market today. But beyond this overly dramatic representation of the process, have you ever wondered what really goes on behind the scenes to get a title voted up to this level? Or even be considered at all? I for one have been dying to know ever since jumping back into the game earlier this year and had a chance to sit down with Kill3rCombo’s Elsword Team to get a better understanding of the process.
OnRPG: So let’s go from the start. How did Elsword initially apply to gain consideration for Steam’s Greenlight process?
That’s one of the coolest things about the way Valve set up Greenlight. Anyone can post their game. It’s completely DIY and you have a huge amount of control. We started by creating a brand new trailer to highlight the best elements of Elsword and bring the Steam community up to speed with the game. For example, Elsword is an action MMO, but we support both PvE and PvP with tons of different features in each. We’ve also doubled the number of playable characters since we launched so we showed that in the trailer too. Lastly, we’ve received a number of critical accolades, so we wanted to work them into our page. All in all, we were really impressed with the way Valve set up the system and we just tried to get the most out of it.
OnRPG: Most games nowadays plan to try to get Greenlit from the start of official launch. How are things different for an already established game like Elsword to get people motivated to support you?
It’s actually helped a great deal to be an established game. First, the single biggest component of our effort to get on Steam has been the tremendous support of our Elsword community, which we wouldn’t have if we weren’t out there already. Seriously, our players are awesome and I don’t know what we would have done without their support. It also gave us many more options when we were brainstorming ways to get voted up.
OnRPG: What have you found worked best in garnering support for the Greenlight project?
During this campaign we’ve run more than 10 different events, both in-game and using social media, so we’ve learned quite a bit about what works best. As mentioned before, the key for us was the incredible support of our player community, but we also did well exploring lots of different ways to reach and mobilize our community. For example, we started out with a big in-game event where every player received very powerful in-game “titles” as we moved up the Greenlight list. This worked wonders in the early stages since it really broadcast Greenlight to our fans in-game. We also made it easy for our players to access our Greenlight page via special buttons added to the game.
This helped get us pretty far, but eventually we realized we needed to reach out to players through other channels to keep moving up. We reached out to our players on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. One thing we discovered was that Twitter was surprisingly good for us. I think the simplicity of the message fit with Twitter far better than we expected. We also frequently asked our fans to add us to their Greenlight collections and leave positive comments as another way to share Elsword with their friends.
OnRPG: In what ways do you feel getting Elsword on Steam will benefit the playerbase and the game as a whole?
It was important to us to tell our players why Steam was a good thing right from the start. For example, some players were worried this might result in too many players and strain our servers, but we made it clear that we are prepared for the addition of lots of new players. There are basically 3 main benefits. First, it’s more fun for all players to have more people to play with. For example, it’s easier to form a guild or party, matchmaking in PvP works better, and it’s easier to find someone to trade that rare mana gobbler backpack. Second, we will be creating special starter packs and most likely Steam achievements as well, which is another way Steam adds depth for everyone. And lastly we have some players who would simply rather play on Steam. It’s the way they prefer to play and we want to do whatever we can to give our players the most fun experience.
OnRPG: How close is Elsword currently to getting Greenlit? Where can players track this progress themselves (and vote while they’re at it)?
We’re currently in the top ten and doing everything we can to move up the list. Anyone who wants to learn about Elsword can check out our Greenlight page here, and yes, a vote for Elsword will make Kill3rCombo your best friend forever.
OnRPG: What has your team learned from this experience that you can use to speed up the rate that Fighters Club gets Greenlit in the future?
We’ve definitely learned about what channels and events get the best results so this helps us better focus our efforts. I think if we did it again we’d also be more active with social media events from day one. We weren’t using our Twitter or Google+ accounts as much at the beginning, but next time around we’d be there from the start.
OnRPG: Thanks for your time! I look forward to my Steam friends bugging me during my future Elsword game sessions.
Thanks for talking to us. Hopefully we’ll see your Steam friends in one of our online tournaments–they’re going to get way wilder once we’re on Steam.
