The Secret World - Marketing

Marketing

The first promotional material appeared on May 8, 2007, when a picture was leaked into the internet, containing a poem, a Knights Templar seal, and several sentences in Spanish, Norwegian, French, German and Hebrew. When solved, the poem led to a series of internet pages, one of them with a riddle, and, eventually, to the newly created official forum.

The websites led to a Flash page with a countdown timer that uses Eastern Arabic numerals instead of Arabic numbers. The timer would presumably have reached zero at 12:00 AM on December 21, 2012, adjusted for the location of Funcom headquarters. The date is the end of the Mayan calendar cycle, which is notable in Maya mythology. A massive alternate reality game was also established in the forums.

Over the years, Funcom has hosted several alternate reality games such as: Two Lines Twine, The Dark Places and most recently CoV System Malfunction. The alternate reality games were created using: Twitter, Flickr, 8-tracks, Wikidot and several websites created by Funcom such as the Kingsmouth website and the official game forums.

A first teaser trailer featuring the Dragon faction was released on April 7, 2009, during the GDC 2009. A second teaser featuring the Templar faction was released on September 4, 2009. A teaser presenting the fictitious town of Kingsmouth was released on February 2, 2010. On March 23, 2010 (i.e. 10 days after the GDC 2010 of San Francisco, California), a short teaser was released, showing some extremely brief in-game sequences and announcing the release of a bigger teaser on March 25, 2010. This last one showed some fights in Kingsmouth. Most available teasers can be viewed on the game's homepage, however, GameSpot's interviews with Ragnar Tørnquist, on the various factions within the game, included scenes from teaser trailers.

In 2011, Funcom announced that a Facebook app called The Secret War was being created. The first stage, asking players to choose their faction, aired on August 30, 2011 along with the long awaited beta sign-up for the actual game. As of April 2012, The Secret War was active. Players were able to earn the chance for a guaranteed slot in the beta, as well as a trip to Montreal, Canada to play the game. Actions in The Secret War gained special items to be used with characters at game launch. Funcom also had a panel advertising The Secret World at PAX East 2012. People could play a beta test of The Secret World. On May 25, 2012, Funcom released an announcement moving the release date to July 3, 2012.