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Epic Marketing Fail
Ever wonder about what things you should avoid when trying to market your product - look no further than Monopoly City Streets. MCS is quite possibly one of the most ingenious marketing strategies I've ever seen, and it has become the most epic failure I know of as well.
The idea of playing Monopoly on real streets using Google Maps generated over 17 million hits in the first day. The interwebs were overrun with rabid Monopoly players ready to snatch up their favorite streets. I myself bought up most of TU campus with plans of building landfills (as described by the games promo pieces).
But the servers failed, and after much silence, it was announced that server corrections were being made and the game would restart.
The interwebs rejoiced and the drooling rebooted.
Unfortunately, nothing else was corrected. Cheaters ran rampant, there were innumerable security flaws that could have been easily fixed, rules to the game were randomly changed without notification (despite a well followed blog being there for just such a thing), and eventually, the same server crawling reared it's ugly head again. You can follow the changes on the blog (post change of course) and watch as the user base tears the game and company to shreds on their poor handling of things.
What easily could have been one of the most amazing internet sensations ever has quickly fallen off the wagon, and from the sound of the blog comments taken the physical game they were trying to sale down the tank as well. We won't really know until the actual release of the board game, but I certainly wouldn't want to be working at tribalddb right now.
http://blog.monopolycitystreets.com/
http://www.monopolycitystreets.com
http://blogs.tribalddb.co.uk/
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/www.monopolycitystreets.com
The idea of playing Monopoly on real streets using Google Maps generated over 17 million hits in the first day. The interwebs were overrun with rabid Monopoly players ready to snatch up their favorite streets. I myself bought up most of TU campus with plans of building landfills (as described by the games promo pieces).
But the servers failed, and after much silence, it was announced that server corrections were being made and the game would restart.
The interwebs rejoiced and the drooling rebooted.
Unfortunately, nothing else was corrected. Cheaters ran rampant, there were innumerable security flaws that could have been easily fixed, rules to the game were randomly changed without notification (despite a well followed blog being there for just such a thing), and eventually, the same server crawling reared it's ugly head again. You can follow the changes on the blog (post change of course) and watch as the user base tears the game and company to shreds on their poor handling of things.
What easily could have been one of the most amazing internet sensations ever has quickly fallen off the wagon, and from the sound of the blog comments taken the physical game they were trying to sale down the tank as well. We won't really know until the actual release of the board game, but I certainly wouldn't want to be working at tribalddb right now.
http://blog.monopolycitystreets.com/
http://www.monopolycitystreets.com
http://blogs.tribalddb.co.uk/
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/www.monopolycitystreets.com
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