When it comes to promoting Entropia Universe, there’s an interesting story behind MindArk’s Business Development & Platform Evangelist John Bates. John is a very skilled professional, with extensive leadership experience in marketing strategy and implementation, information technology, business development, and sales. His excellent client relations and team management abilities, along with advanced communication and public speaking skills, are only a part of the arsenal that make this multi-faceted, energetic, and enthusiastic individual a highly sought after public and motivational speaker. In the following interview, John gives insight into his Entropia Universe marketing strategies, as well as what MindArk has on their radar, but I think you will find that John is also very forthcoming with sharing an incredible amount of information that just might answer some of the questions we’ve had on our minds, or perhaps give explanation to some of the decision-making that has taken place with specific projects. We thank John for taking the time to share information with the community, and look forward to future updates and what’s happening with MindArk and our Entropia Universe. John K. Bates Business Development & Platform Evangelist for MindArk PE AB Your user agent does not support the HTML5 Audio element. Article banner created by Syer
Firstly, that's a really great site design for MSM. Secondly, the interview was engaging and told us a lot about how John Bates sees Entropia going forward. I think he hits the nail on the head when he indicated that before joining MindArk, they hadn't perhaps been doing enough outreach work to get EU more widely known about and to get those extra millions of players into the game. Many wonder, however, if this is to some extent still the case. Whilst certainly many more hundreds of thousands of players have signed-up since, this isn't the millions that are needed. To get them, and more importantly, to keep them, certain things need to be taken onboard. One is that surely MindArk must pro-actively advertise and promote EU through mainstream media on a consistent basis- commercial TV channels, magazines, newspapers, e-papers, etc. Second is that certain loose ends with the EU platform itself needs to be addressed. Whilst of course EU is 'not real, etc', things like sliding mobs after you've killed them (that distracts you for those vital split-seconds in trying to loot them, by which time the other mob or mobs is/are upon you), and creatures that are in 'a condition where they cannot be damaged or sweated' but then start attacking you and inflicting damage, but you can't do the same back, are simply annoying. Other areas of contention is that doing anything major in EU takes a great deal of money and a great deal of time and that there are so many levels to the skill system - and you still cannot create anything unique in EU. You can make modified or improved items, but you can't make anything new. However, having said all that, Entropia still remains attractive to many because of it's unique RCE concept and I'm sure it will continue to, but MA needs to tidy the ship a bit imho...
Nice interview indeed guys, love how excited John always is about everything and some nice info there as well about the future. Even though we are both guys, I think I love Syers voice and the way he speak so calmly :)
... just kidding ... I love Syer's voice as well, and I get to hear it every day ... so there! ... oh, and my Mom calls him "sexy voice" ... she's so cute. This was our first recorded interview, and it's been a while since I last had a voice chat with John, so I was rather excited to catch up with him again, but ... you're right about how excited that John gets (and always is btw), and he just drew me into the zone for sure. With Syer ... I think he was calm because of the nature of what we were doing, and it being the first time he met John, but ... he's actually pretty laid back until he has something to get vocal about, and then I get to hear that too ... LOL. I'll work on being more calm, because I think my highly-sensitive mic can't handle the excitement ... but we have 3 more confirmed Who's Who - Officials interviews, as well as a confirmed Who's Who - Player, and Who's Who - Society that we'll be doing soon, so I'm sure that the practice will make us better. Thanks to both of you, RAZER and Nexus, for your comments, and Nexus for really expanding on your thoughts there, that's great feedback. John already said that he is committed to doing more updates with us, so we have that to look forward to as well, and anything new he can bring to the table. Because of the varied officials that we're interviewing, we are being calculated with the questions that we are asking, and designing them to feed into a specific mindset if you will, because we don't want to be repeating ourselves based on who we have in the pipeline to interview - that's why some may think we didn't ask key questions, but we went where we wanted to go with John. Thanks again. Oh, Oh, Oh ... and don't want to forget to thank EwoK and Ace for their comments as well ... sorry guys, didn't mean to miss you there ... my purple matter is just a bit fried today, but I can't get back to sleep right now, so I'll have to take a nap later when I can't see straight any more.
