The consumer ”has an expectation” to hear from studios, ”every day.” They went from solitary game screenshots to full on social marketing.
”When I got here we not only had ambivalence but we had a policy against communicating directly with our consumers. What we discovered is that the consumer has an expectation to hear from us, every day,” said ex-Microsoft man Peter Moore.
”Previously we’d give out a screenshot and, if you were very good and the pre-sales showed some life we might actually reward you with some footage. But that’s all gone out the window. Now we’re not afraid of opening the kimono to the dark art of game development.”
“We still have those ‘line-them-up-at-midnight’ campaigns but that is just the climax now rather than the whole launch, meaning that we are constantly communicating with our consumer what to expect as the process goes on. We’re marketing 365 days a year and we’re measuring hourly.” Yes videogame marketing never sleeps now.
Rockstar Games still employs extremely painful drip feed marketing for their games, while others now prefer incessant countdown timer websites to reveal when an announcement is coming. What’s you preferred style of publisher product brainwashing?