'Marketing's dead, and I can back this s**t up': Baldur's Gate 3 publishing director says players 'just want to be spoken to, and they don't want to be bamboozled'
'Marketing's dead, and I can back this s**t up': Baldur's Gate 3 publishing director says players 'just want to be spoken to, and they don't want to be bamboozled'
In our State of PC Gaming roundtable, Larian's Michael Douse argues marketing isn't the right way to reach today's gaming audience.
Oh it's not, dead, it's just changed shape so we don't immediately recognize it. This, for example, is an ad for about 5 different games.
Notice how the brands were mentioned. Notice how much more palatable this is as a delivery system for that sweet brand awareness. They're making statements we agree with! They're demonstrating values that align with our own.
Now look it's video games so I really don't mind. This is certainly nicer than what we had in the 90s and 2000s (which were occasionally hilarious but I digress) , but I still want to raise awareness a bit. Larian isn't the only company that rolls this way. Thing is, they're probably not even lying, but an executive at a company does media like this for a reason.
This is them "speaking to you."
That's fine. If you want to sell me video games tell me they exist somewhere that isn't in the middle of a YouTube video I'm trying to watch, or in the middle of a TV show on Netflix/hulu. People want to play these games, we just don't want ads shoved down our throat when we aren't trying to seek put these products.
A lot of the most heavily advertised games are the ones people wouldn't play without addiction models or whaling hooks, ones that require marketing to get people on board.
I've been pretty insulated from ads for a good bit (by design) but what is that meme one again? Raid Shadow Legends?
I think he made a very good point, that traditional forms of marketing are dead, and the best place to market is the storefront itself (on the Internet).
Then again i also agree with your point, this kind of puff-piece is a type of marketing as old as human beings.
All in all 10/10 glad i came to this post
It's a PC Gamer article about a meeting between developers. Of course they mention the dev names and a recent product from them. That's how these fluff pieces have always worked. This isn't even a different shape of marketing. It's the same old shit. It's not even just a gaming industry tactic. Next time you read any news article about a thing or a company, look how often they name the brand and products or that of a competitor (depending on if the news is good or bad about first product). Much of "journalism" these days is just advertising.
I feel he's right. Youtube alone completely exhausted my patience to be advertised to in 2021, and when you're fed up with something and it keeps getting shoved down your throat at every corner then you get annoyed at first, and then you really start to actively despise it, and then it becomes completely unbearable. I absolutely cannot stand adverts anymore, including video sponsors. If I see a particularly obnoxious advert I'll go out of my way to AVOID the products in question, if I couldn't avoid paying attention to it. I'd like to go on record and say, absolutely fuck the electronic billboard outside my workplace, that piece of shit makes it dangerous to drive at night because it's so bright and I hope to god it gets vandalized beyond repair.
Most games that I try these days were recommended to me by people who I know personally. BG3 was one of very few exceptions, and honestly? You know what sold me on BG3 and made me think 'this is going to be a really high-quality game?' It was when there was a news article discussing the controversies after they confirmed that you could get railed by a druid. Not even something I'm interested in, but that design choice actively showed they were including niche options that not many people would pick into their RPG. That was what made me go 'Oh shit, if you can do that, you can probably do a lot of other things! It's an RPG with actual impactful dialog choices! They weren't just throwing that out as an advertising buzz!'
What I like is when the developer says nothing and just shows me 15-30 minutes of someone just playing their game. No scripted events, no cutscenes, no marketing hype speeches... Just show me what I'm going to be doing 90% of the time in the thing.
Every time I see an ad for a game that does not show me gameplay but has some voiceover explaining how cool it is, I just assume they didn't show it because they know it fuckin' sucks.
I don't know if I've ever felt an urge to be marketed to.