Image is everything -
June 17, 2001 - Nich Maragos
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed
within this column are those of the participants and the
moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the
GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive
material afoot.
I've got sunburn of the mind.
Don't say we didn't warn you.
This is a great job. I get to tell people their opinions are wrong.
| Come to think of it, there should be a scary ritual for this |
| DA,
I'm not a MegaTen Convert, never played any of the series. But after
reading the well-written preview, I was ready to buy it, screenshots be
damned. The story sounded awesome.
-Shake
|
How weird am I? Those screenshots of Shin Megami Tensei PSX made me want to buy it even more. Anyway, you can't say you're not a Megaten convert and then drool over one of the games in the same paragraph, silly. Welcome to the fold.
| You get what you pay for |
| Hey Nich,
Well I think marketing can only take you so far. Granted how far depends a
lot on how much money your company has (and as we know, Sony is swimming in
gold). If your marketing campaign is first rate and the money flow is
endless, you can get pretty damn far. PSX did it, touting itself as the
"cool" system even though the first crop of games weren't necessarily
first-rate. But the momentum that initial push gave allowed Sony time to get
the really good games, cementing the PSX popularity.
Hell, if you want to move outside of games and look at this from a different
angle, look at the music industry. You get hacks like your Limp Bizkits or
your NSync's, both with marketing muscle to spare, and they rocket to the
top. Remove that market machine and NSync is still in High School and Fred
Durst is still just as obnoxious and untalented, only now he's being
obnoxious and untalented in his Mom and Dad's garage. Food for thought.
-Purple Monkey Dishwasher
|
That's a pretty good assessment of the PSX, and it should be noted Sony used the same tactics on the PS2 with identical results so far. What invalidates that as far as an effective argument is that Sony's aim was for the long term, while publishers have about a three or four week window of opportunity to make or break a game upon its release. Where Sony could get away with using advertising as a foothold and building upon that with good games, publishers need to have a product to back up their claims immediately, or sales will fall off as soon as they start to pick up.
Good point about Limp Bizkit, though. Whatever your opinions of their musical merit, what many people forget is that they came to prominence due to Interscope's direct payments to radio stations and DJs in exchange for playing their hot new artist frequently. And you know what happened as a result of that. So chalk one up for advertising.
| "Legend of Dragoon is the best RPG ever!"--David Manning, The Ridgefield Press |
| Man with the Golden Maracas,
Videogames are too expensive and sell too slowly for hype
accumulation to outweigh opinion percolation. Gaming critics seem to
take joy in Daikatanizing an underperforming game, and when there's
always a newer, shinier box out you can't stay on topic without any
redeeming features. In a world where Vagrant Story (so hardcore I think
you can only enjoy it if you know the Red Wings theme by heart) can top
the sales charts, I have faith that marketing is not the only force,
even if Jet Grind Radio is not the smash hit it should be.
But then Sony dragooned people not only into buying a horrible game
but even into feigning enjoyment (they must be pretending, mustn't they?
mustn't they?), so I can't be all that right.
-Pokeytax
P.S. Screw you for printing that Super Mario Brothers spoiler. Would it
have been that hard to put "Stage 1-4: SPOILERS?"
|
Legend of Dragoon is an interesting case. Despite it being one of the worst RPGs in quite a while, it was in the top three on the PlayStation charts for a depressingly long time. However, this does not prove that marketing will sell anything. There are a few differences between a bad but marketable game and a totally unmarketable title, to wit:
There are a couple of things a bad game can do to reclaim marketability. Good graphics are a popular crutch; stick enough FMV (or plain ol' in-game engine stuff, for more recent systems) in an ad and any game can look good. If you can't manage that, it helps to have a popular license, as with Simpsons Wrestling, Chef's Luv Shack, or Superman 64. When all else fails, spin your game as having lots of "attitude," such as that featured in print ads for the mediocre first Crash Bandicoot game, and you're sure to pull in some buyers.
On the other hand, there may be nothing wrong with an unmarketable game except for the lack of an advertising hook. Steven Spielberg once famously remarked that his favorite ideas were the ones you could hold in your hand. What that means, more or less, is that if you can't summarize the entire experience in 30 seconds or less, you have no ad campaign. Cynical, yes, but try it on some of the more complex or strange works you wish would make it stateside.
| Talk to the animals |
| I honestly have to wonder - how the hell would you market a game about the
adventures of a fireball-shooting hummingbird to the gaming public? Or an
alien-fighting dolphin, for that matter? Appaloosa should be given credit;
they've created a fine selection of games that must be absolute hell
to make commercials/ads for.
-Negative Creep
|
Well, one way is to use the tactics outlined above. Just because the graphics tack works for bad games doesn't mean it's wrong for good games to use it, and I remember the original Genesis Ecco game as having some damn fine screenshots in the print ads. Furthermore, while Ecco and Kolibri are strange, they also fit nicely into the "high-concept" category. Just tell people "You control a dolphin/hummingbird" and that's enough right there to catch people's attention. Mind you, by this logic Ka would already have a U.S. distributor, so maybe I'm wrong.
| The one that got away |
| Nich,
I think marketing only matters when you have a mass market product.
One could market the hell out of Space Channel 5, Ring of Red, Samba de
Amigo or Carnage Heart, but they are not mass market products, so they
cannot put up big numbers. For mass market products, I think marketing is a
factor, but I think momentum is a much bigger factor. Playstation dominated
the past era, so there are a lot of developers and gamers who are prepared
to bet that Playstation 2 would dominate the next era. Saturn was a total
failure, so their were a lot of developers and gamers who were unwilling to
put down money on the bet that Dreamcast could win, or even survive, the
next console war. Also, I disagree with your statement about the relative
merits of the PS2 and DC ad campaigns. With the exception of the brilliant
Madden commercial (all gameplay footage, what a concept!) PS2 ads have
sucked, especially in comparison to some of the clever stuff Sega has been
doing, but bad ads could not slow the momentum of the Sony anymore than good
ads could increase the momentum of the Sega. Gazing into my magic crystal
ball, I predict that Mario, Wave Race and Star Wars sans ads will garner
more attention than Oddworld, Halo and Dead or Alive 3 will, even if the
latter is pushed by a half billion dollar ad campaign. If two original,
equivalent products are released by developers with equivalent reputations,
than marketing matters quite a lot, otherwise other factors (reputation of
the developers, reputation of the franchise) are probably more signifigant.
-Mark
|
I'd forgotten about Sega's massive failed Space Channel 5 campaign, thanks for bringing it up. Sega did everything right on that one, going so far as to co-sponsor the MTV Music Awards and have Ulala co-host, and the game bombed anyway. It was even a good game with great graphics and enough of a distinctive style to make itself stand out from other videogames. By all rights, the ad campaign should have given SC5 several hundred thousand more copies sold, but it didn't.
| Point of sale |
|
Nich,
A game can suck wildly, but still sell to people who don't know any better.
Example: I'll frequent my local Software Etc. occasionally to see what's
new. For at least PC games, do you realize what impact box images have on
people. I see people picking up like, the crappiest game this side of
tuesday, and saying, "This is cool looking, lets buy it!"
There is a segment of our population that is so media saturated that any
wizbang looking graphical wonder on a box or CD case is bound to sell
something. Look how FF7's marketing campaign turned the RPG market into a
new battleground in the US for companies to fight over. I remember that FF7
made RPGs "cool" and "mainstream", and although FF7 was an excellent game,
if it had no commercials on TV, I doubt people would have bought it as much.
Look at Vagrant Story, and even Xenogears. I've never seen a TV commercial
for those games. They are some of the best RPGs out there! Yet Conker's Bad
Fur Day has a prostitute writhing on a beer soaked bed. I'n sure that will
sell a few million more copies.
-KTallguy
|
You're right, and this is why it amazes me whenever someone thinks that people should stop complaining about ugly box art: it matters. Seeing the box in a store may be the only way that a casual gamer will even know the game exists, and in the space of less than a second that potential buyer is either going to keep looking across the shelves or stop his gaze right there and take a longer look. If the publisher can't get his attention then due to poor box art, that's an opportunity which needn't have been wasted.
As for Conker, looks like that's another case where marketing just didn't do the job, as sales for that one last I checked were in the neighborhood of 60,000 copies ...
| If this confuses you, try drawing a diagram |
| Dear Nich, my best friend,
I think one copy of a game will always be sold, no matter how crappy it
is.
There's marketing for the game, provided by the people who make it, to
try
and make you buy it. There's counter-marketing from websites and friends
if
the game is crappy, but for some people, they just have to try it, to see
if
it's really that bad. Or there's pro-marketing for when it gets good
reviews,
and people try it to see if it's really that good, and then bitch about
the
one polygon sticking out of the main character's left eyebrow during
FMV#15.
Then there's the people who have no friends, so they believe the
advertising.
There's also the clueless parent, trying to please their child with a
surprise game, and picking something that just came out recently from the
shelf. So, no game is unmarketable for the very reason that not everyone
sees
the marketing and the counter-marketing/pro-marketing. Funny how that
works,
huh?
-Opty, the optimistic opthamologist
|
This is probably the most complete picture of marketing anyone sent in, and it's a good reminder that marketing is not limited to the publisher buying spots on MTV. Many titles build their successes on word-of-mouth, so when you recommend a game to a friend, you too are taking part in that game's marketing. You're just not getting paid.
| Throwing your weight around |
| i understand that you wish your column to pertain to marketing and
advertising of video games for the momentary segment. i understand that you
and your colleagues must provide examples to validate your arguments. what
i do not understand is why it seems that there are those among the gaming
community who give reviews and statements in large publications and widely
visited websites that continually bash "non typical" games. games that have
potential for gracing the american shores with their appearance in our
language.
be it the lack of information, the fear of that which may be new or the
intense suspicion of anything that is not standard, or what may have you; i
have decided that despite marketing done by companies and sony the major
factor of games sales is word of mouth from the reviewers. online
publications, magazines, word of mouth. these things will stick, while
images tend to come in second in my opinion.
[rant-ish sections removed--ed.]
excuse me for sounding unsettled but i am. there are a large number of
games out there in japan that sell well and it's not based on marketing
alone. reviews are a high aspect of what sells so don't forget that. and
remember choose your words wisely the next time you review, you could be
costing a game its ability to be released on american shores and make a
favorable impression on the gaming community (despite it's insipid
stagnation and xenophobiac tendencies). you may also very well be pissing
off a "convert" or what i like to say "enlightened" player of a series or
game which deserves more respect than what is typically given.
-jay
|
I've often wondered just how much reviews from magazines and online sites actually do influence people's purchasing decisions. Tell Chris what makes you buy games, won't you?
Closing Comments:
So what have we learned today? Marketing can sell anything, except when it can't. Yeah, yeah, we can't pick great topics all of the time.
-Nich Maragos, sorry all over the place
|
