Gaming's advertising problem
How an over reliance on PR has stifled video games' creative marketing
Hello,
Video games are supposed to be the future of entertainment, but you wouldn’t know it by a lot of their marketing. It usually goes with an announcement, an announcement trailer, a gameplay trailer, if we’re lucky a gameplay demo, a release, and some reviews from gaming sites over about a two-year cycle.
I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t effective. Games have been growing exponentially over the past decade, but it sure is getting stale.
Some of my favorite video game ads:
Mass Effect 3 Space Edition
To celebrate the end of their galaxy-spanning trilogy, Bioware launched Mass Effect 3 copies into space on weather balloons. Fans could track them down in order to get a free early copy of the game. It was simple, but it fits the themes of the game so well.
World of Warcraft - An axe through a taxi
This one doesn’t need much explaining. Blizzard, World of Warcraft’s, developer placed a taxi with the weapon, Garrosh Hellscream, lodged in it in the middle of Times Square. It was a great invitation into their online world world.
Halo 3 - Believe
It was an interesting choice to advertise a video game using clay models. It paid off. The spot gave me the same feeling of familiarity you get from seeing a bunch of model houses around a miniature train. Except instead of happy families it was grizzled war vets, instead of snowflakes it was debris, and instead of the holidays it was an Alien vs human war. Plus, it looked like a war that humans were losing. That is until we see Master Chief, the game’s protagonist, slowly move his head at the end of the commercial, a great way to let everyone know that it was about to go down.
Apex Legends - The Surprise Release
Just like Beyonce’s self-titled album, Apex Legends came out of nowhere. I still remember getting out of class and one of my friends calling me to download this game, because we had never heard of a game being announced like that. We didn’t even know what it was about, but we wanted to play it.
Would this work for all games? Probably not, but it was a bold way to introduce a new video game to the world, and judging by the first-month download numbers it paid off. The reease strategy helped elevate it from Fortnite clone into something bigger.
Borderlands 3 - A playable ad for a ten-year-old game
One of the most creative brand activations I’ve seen in the past year was what developer, 2k, did to announce Borderlands 3. They took an almost decade-old, forgotten game and updated it with new content that they asked fans to go play in order to introduce themselves to Borderlands 3. That’s almost unheard of in the gaming industry. That’s what made this one so special.
Tomb Raider - Survival Billboard
Tomb Raider is a game all about an explorer braving the elements and being an all around bad ass. To show that to the wider world Micrrosoft made a Tomb Raider themed reality competition on a billboard. The audience could vote on what weather the participants experienced. It was a great twist on a very old medium.
What’s missing from these?
They are all from developers and companies that are going to sell a boatload of copies anyway. The smaller games that could use a splash from advertising are no where to be seen.
It’s a shame that the mid-tier and lower-tier game developers don’t seem to value advertising the same way the big dogs do. I’m sure a lot of that comes from budget realities, but there are creative ways around that. An axe through a car in New York City is expensive, but a stunt like that would’ve gathered a lot of hype elsewhere for a fraction of the price.
Smaller developers let so much of their narrative go out of their hands by relying on big video game conferences, game media publications, and streamers to pick up their game.
If smaller developers can see the value in skipping the old guard, they can start doing whatever they want to engage fans. That doesn’t mean they have to spend more money. It just means approaching things differently and more creatively.
What to takeaway:
Big name games try to market themselves like summer movies.
Smaller titles operate like a first time author trying to get on Oprah’s book club. They should be operating like a Burger King trying to chip away at Mcdonald’s category dominance.
Gaming news that caught my eye:
Kotaku: Gamestop thought that the best way to engage employees was by hosting an employee Tik Tok challenge where the winner gets extra hours on Black Friday. I don’t know what stage of dystopia that is, but I don’t like it.
The Wrap: The pandemic has fueled the gaming industry to a 20% overall increase in profits this year.
Wired: A great exploration of how video game console design philosophy has evolved over the past couple decades.
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Email: zacharystubblefield@yahoo.com
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