Introduction to Game Marketing
I've been a gamer my entire life. I started my gaming journey in the late 90s and have been growing ever since. It's my passion, something I've always been good at. On top of playing games, I've also been creating games just about as long. Creating experiences, designing challenges, and seeing people's overcome obstacles and have fun is my favorite thing in the world. When I decided I wanted to pursue game creation as a profession, I started paying attention to developers and companies like most people do - through social media, email lists, forums, and YouTube. Game communities were great. People shared tips, play-styles, and created together. Companies were involved in forums and developers interacted with their fans. It was refreshing finding a community of my people. Around the mid-2000s though, I started noticing a shift - both from the community and developers. It was subtle at first but grew move obvious as time went on.
Marketing is considers one of the most important pillars of retail. How else will people know what the product is that they are buying? Good marketing will make or break a product launch - market it poorly, and nobody will even know it exists. Games are no different. If you don't market your game, nobody will even know it's released. The original Doom started development in 1992, and was released in 1993. Slightly before my time, but it was still one of the first games I played. Check out the trailer for the game, I'll link it below.
Do I see actual gameplay footage?! It looks like someone sat down and recorded themselves playing the game and added some epic music in the background. There was even a little pro-gamer troll at the end! Watching this trailer shows you exactly what the game is going to look like and exactly what to expect in terms of gameplay. For the longest time, this was the norm too. Let's look at another example from a couple years later.
We see the gameplay, get an introduction to the story and what the game looks like, topped off with couple cinematic shots and more epic music. A person watching these trailers knows exactly what they're going to get.
Back to the shift I mentioned earlier. Starting in the mid-2000s, game companies started moving away from actually gameplay footage and started releasing "In Engine" trailers. That's a buzz-phrase that just means the footage was recorded in the same engine that the game was created in. While that doesn't sound like a big deal, it can be extremely deceiving. Both the Fallout and Oblivion Series were created in the same engine, but there are very few similarities in those games especially how they look. Fornite and the Arkham series were created using the same engine as well and those games are vastly different in all aspects. The point I'm trying to make is that the engine is not necessarily reflective on how a game is going to look or play, while not outright lying to consumers about what they are seeing. The actual game won't look like the trailer, but some of the cut scenes might for example. Why this sudden shift in marketing strategy?
Around the time that the shift in marketing happened, an online revolution was happening. Facebook hit a billion users in 2013 and slowly, the online world started to change. Gone were the days of niche forums and small chat rooms, now everything - including your friends and family - could see what you were up to online. People loved it and marketers began to notice. Ads evolved from obvious banners and popups to subtle group admins "recommending" things to their followers, but leaving out the fact that they were sponsored by the company they were "recommending". This - in my opinion - was the start of influencer culture and for better or worse it changed how consumers and marketers interacted. Let's take a look at a trailer from this time and compare it to the others.
Sexy and action packed, but what is the game about? What is it going to look like? There's no gameplay at all! Instead of showing off the game and trying to entice players with good gameplay, instead the developers and marketers try and sell you on a dream - also known as hype.
Now we're here. We all remember how the Cyberpunk 2077 launch went. Optimization issues aside, the game itself wasn't bad. It was extremely immersive, had a compelling story, multiple ending, and great characters. But the game wasn't what was shown at all and players felt jipped. The online response was harsh and CD Projekt Red felt the criticism in their stock price. Was selling hype worth it?
Over the next couple months, we're going to take a deep dive into the history of game marketing and try to answer this question. We're also going to take a look at how the gaming community has played into this as well - maybe the backlash is just a loud minority. Here's a little taste of what's to come:
The History of Game Marketing
Marketing vs False Promises
The Evolution of Game Fandom
Viral Reactions + Their Effect on Stock Prices and Future Projects
Leaks
Creative Risks and Capitalism Effect on creativity
These topics should help us establish a general marketing baseline, show how marketing and the average gamer has evolved through the years, dive into fans and other variables effect on the industry, and finally look at the effect of capitalism on creativity.