On Marketing Brink

(3Suns) #21

LOL You know him! (or at least about him).

:stroggtapir:

(Cankor) #22

You’re probably right about the marketing for a single player game. Bioshock is a great example of a title where you just wanted to get in and see everything and experience the story. That said I’m not a single player kind of guy, I think I’ve only ever finished one single player game.

I’m looking for game play when deciding which games to buy or not, the story really doesn’t interest me.

(Joe999) #23

i can’t say anything so far about brink marketing except that the restriction policy pisses me off. eg we waited in #splashdamage for the brink presentation at quakecon and what happens? nothing at all! total waste of time. and moreover the videos they made for those who can’t travel to the other side of the planet were forced to be taken down on youtube by zenimax. quakecon has degraded to a big PoS anyway for those who aren’t there. there’s lots of hype about it, but in the end it’s nothing except for maybe those who go there.

what i’ve learned about id marketing is that it was very bad with quake wars. but when you thought it couldn’t get worse, you got proven wrong. eg here are examples about what went wrong with the follow-up id game wolfenstein. it’s stuff that you just don’t do with a game when you really want to sell it to people:

not to mention the official wolfenstein forum. i really hope that the advertising will be a lot better now with zenimax. i mentioned that the restriction policy pisses me off. but i also have to mention that at least they care!

(Nail) #24

you seem to miss the fact that this isn’t an id Software game, it’s a Bethesda/Splash Damage game

(Joe999) #25

no, i didn’t. i tried to show a related example since there is hardly information about sd’s & bethesda’s marketing relationship so far. there are good examples and bad examples for marketing. id is a good candidate for bad examples. although atvi did the marketing, i highly doubt that id got nothing to say at all.

seriously, who in his sane mind announces that the game devs got fired on the game’s launch day?

(_milla) #26

players expectations are too high (which is normal healthy customer behavior). thanks to inventions computer parts are cheaper then ever was, and even on low end pc with dedicated graphics card its possible to run almost every game on good visual settings.
marketing in this stage, for who i want to develop game, is completed.(because they dont need to make surveys and spent thousands of $ to check for how looks average PC, and of course, players expenditures vary from country with higher income then in low income agricalture based economy. Player in Mongolia can afford same stuff like player in Lichtenstein due low cost of mainstream pc parts)

(for example, if you remember DVD’s based on regional settings. idea was great, final product failed)

from investor eyes, normal situation is that investor will support developers with good history and at leas 1 great title made. This is the place where marketing starts. Defending concept and arguments. Neverending hours spent under tons of papers and pictures. Analyzis that may make somebeody feeling sick.

signed contract is stage where starts public marketing (some screenshots, story and so on)

And from now everything depends on developer. (nvestor may spent billion of $ for advertisements, but bad game will be still bad game)

Final stage are reviews of magazines. Good review=profit.

this is only short, very short desctription how it may looks

(.Chris.) #27

Why would they? They neither developed or published the two examples you gave.

(3Suns) #28

[QUOTE=Joe999;211354]it’s stuff that you just don’t do with a game when you really want to sell it to people:

[/QUOTE]

Though I am dragging this slightly off-topic, I agree 100% about the lay-off announcements. Nothing erodes confidence in a product more than firing the team that developed it, the day the game is released. At the very least, it tells the customer that there will be no follow-through support and DLC. At worst, it tells the customer that the publisher itself thinks their game is a PoS.

Also, interesting points, _milla. You talk details like you are familiar with the system. Are you? (If you are, I would love to hear more.)

(WhiteAden) #29

not that I know, check the website in _Milla’s signature, and you’ll find a completely different “_Milla” lol

(Cankor) #30

wait wait wait! You are forgetting the part about stealing the underwear, only then will come profit.

(3Suns) #31

Ok, here is an unexpected response from one of my nay-sayin’ friends from another forum.

I will give Splash Damage big props for listening to their community as witnessed by their response to Suns’ forum post. I received the latest issue of OXM and they had an article on Brink & Splash Damage. There are a ton of very talented people working on the IP, too many to simply write here. They have assembled a solid team of artists & programmers that have worked on practically every triple-A game of the past three years. I was actually shocked when I read the list of each person’s credentials. So many talented people gives this title hope. Keep hope alive, Suns!

Yeah, baby! (and I am reminded of another scene from Jerry Maguire: “That’s how you become great, man. Hang your balls out there!” Let 'em know who you are, SD! )

Now, I just have to get my hands on that article! (Anyone else read it yet?)

(darthmob) #32

[QUOTE=3Suns;211154]I am just trying to sell this game to my friends and they are like “generic” and “meh” and I am like, wtf?! Can’t you see the potential here?![/QUOTE]Made me think of a comment I read on marketing open source operating systems: “Don’t preach, mention.”
You don’t convince anyone by telling them how awesome it is and how it is so much better than the rest. I usually forward good reviews / interviews / videos to friends.

I didn’t get anyone into ETQW and did not really try either. I think it’ll be different with Brink. One guy I know already got it on his must-buy list. :slight_smile:

(3Suns) #33

[QUOTE=darthmob;211716]Made me think of a comment I read on marketing open source operating systems: “Don’t preach, mention.”
You don’t convince anyone by telling them how awesome it is and how it is so much better than the rest. I usually forward good reviews / interviews / videos to friends.

I didn’t get anyone into ETQW and did not really try either. I think it’ll be different with Brink. One guy I know already got it on his must-buy list. :)[/QUOTE]

Very good point and I agree completely. Fanbois are scary. These people (not the EvAv blog) I am talking about though, are my good friends, people I have played with every weekend for years now.

And to support your statement, as my quote in #31 shows, he got the info from a different source.
:stroggtapir:

(RoryGreen) #34

Wow. I just went on gametrailers.com and the whole site is lit up with the light blue of Brink adverts! Nice job Bethesda for advertising so well. Keep it going!

(PSG_Mud) #35

Honestly, guys SD doesn’t market games. Publishers do all that.

However, I think the all the possible entry level advertising is already done for this game. Mirrors Edge is a similar game, and quite popular for its revolutionary style of play. People who bought Mirrors Edge, or ever thought Mirrors Edge was cool, but, never had the chance to get around to it will be interested in this game. Plus, Quakers and ET fans and fanboys like myself will be hyped about an SD release. So, SD has a pretty solid foundation to sell off of.

Some individuals whom play military themed shooters will need extra convincing pre and post release. Reason being is that they’re only comfortable with what they know, and are afraid to stray from the trendy game themes.
2 things will need to happen to convince the majority of this demographic to play Brink.

  1. Propaganda with its competitive support, and skill based performance by the competitive community that needs to be flawless and dominate. SD needs to make a statement, that they’re the best game makers, and have the best competitive gamers and that is that. Mike Tyson style with alot of trash talking and action to back the talk up. DICE did this with BFBC2, talking dirty about the FPS king MW series. Only thing is, they can’t back up their trash talk.

  2. Advertising directional themes of atmospheric cultural realism. Its more than just wearing clothing, or looking like someone you could recognize from a particular culture. Do these characters fit in their environment? What ties do the El Salvador Gangstas and the Jamaican posses have, that would allow them to work together? Birds of a feather fly together even when there is an alliance. The network of cultures is extremely complex, and extremely important when selling to a crowd who demands a realistic atmosphere. Like, the MW crowd.

So, I don’t know how its gonna work. I can’t ever see gangs working like that together ever, especially in a cramp and rugged environment where its survival of the fittest. Police aka Security are just a predictable force, but not nearly as dangerous as another gang.

(mjjdj88) #36

i believe this game has the potential to be as big as when the first Halo arrived in the gaming world. It changed shooters forever and it was all gamers talked about for months. Keep up the good work guys, this game looks amazing. A TUPAC BANDANA would be the icing on the cake.

(brbrbr) #37

sure.
statements like “we are the Best !! follow us !” is surely, enough to dominate market.
but yes, to be commercially successful its nessairy to make picture clearer 4 conusmers.

(3Suns) #38

The great news is that now SD can breathe a bit. Hopefully, now that E3 is finished, people can go off crunch mode, and get back to a healthier, more-productive, and enjoyable work week. Hopefully, there is even room down the line for a beta to ensure that the maximum number of bugs and exploits has been squashed before going gold.

There is still a whole year left. New, fresh, exciting gameplay videos, and other promotional media can get A LOT of positive press when they are released in the off-season and aren’t fighting against all the other games and hardware in the entire industry.

Good luck!

In the meantime, I am going to take a cold shower and hope that maybe “next weekend”, I get lucky.

(tokamak) #39

More media would help us get a more accurate expectation then. We’ve been running on about a slow drip of about four screenshots and repetitive interviews each month. This community doesn’t have anything to discuss other than a few minor details that usually don’t have anything to do with the actual game content.

Now that would be fine, the E3 would break that pathetic situation, or so it would, but what we get is yet four more screenshots, a shoddy video showing nothing and a delayed release date.

It’s pathetic really. I’m sure it’s Bethesda and not SD to blame here, but it remains pathetic.

It’s something I really don’t begrudge them. Just don’t let a dedicated community, albeit a small one, run dry.

(mortis) #40

I also noticed the slow trickle of new information – and I suspected that they may have been running behind schedule. Software is often assigned launch dates that revolve around retail seasons and trade show dates, not completion. I’d rather wait for a finely tuned piece of software than have a bug ridden version today, so I say, “To Hell with completion dates!”

On the other hand, it is difficult to maintain my level of excitement about the game when I haven’t really seen anything new in the game in months. Maybe in the near future we can get a bit more info about other scenarios to be seen in the game.

One of the problems with ETQW marketing, in my opinion, was an over-saturation about the Valley map. I can’t tell you how many hundreds of Valley based screenies I saw, but they didn’t tell me much about the other scenarios, other terrains, other objectives, etc. I also swear that Activision left ETQW out in the sun to die, while endlessly promoting its other FPS games launched around the same time. I doubt Bethesda will make the same mistake in terms of advertising, but I have no idea where they are in terms of hyping all the maps and scenarios, time will tell.