Game Marketing Unplugged | EP02

Last time, I talked about games being all about emotion and marketing being everywhere around us. I even compared marketing in gaming to the ferocious, hungry great white shark and the adaptable, intelligent octopus. Sure, there are other sea creatures out there (hello, sea turtles!), but let’s stick with these two for now.

Keep in mind that this isn’t scientifically accurate (whatever that means) or comprehensive. Some of it is oversimplified to keep things friendly for regular folks who don’t necessarily breathe games and marketing. Yes, there are people outside those bubbles! And no, they aren’t sea turtles or seahorses. Why do I keep swimming in this oceanic universe of words?

I’ll spare you the sleep-inducing, generic marketing speech about knowing your product and audience – you can find that stuff everywhere. Instead, let’s dive straight into the good stuff. This is Marketing Unplugged. Sounds way more badass than it is, but bear with me.?

There are countless tactics and buzzwords out there. Acronyms like UA, MAU, DAU, LTV, CPI, CTR, ROAS, IAP, ARPU, CAC (also a verb in Romanian), and the list goes on. Yet shocker, there’s no universal recipe for a game’s success.?

What an anticlimactic conclusion, right? Well, hold your seahorses. There’s more to this.?

A good product may speak for itself, but its voice can be drowned out in a chorus of millions. How do you make its voice heard? You might be a great white shark with a megaphone. But what if you’re the quiet yet resourceful octopus?

Take No Man’s Sky, for example – a brilliant game that became even more brilliant over time, but also one of the most famous hype train crashes in gaming history. Hello Games, the developer, had a small team of about six people over the years of development. An octopus has eight arms, so my analogy isn’t entirely ruined.

The game faced huge backlash at launch for overselling nonexistent features, including its multiplayer capabilities. Remember, this was a game with 18 quintillion planets to explore. No one knew what a quintillion was, but it sounded dramatic, like “bazillion,” which is totally made up.?

Despite the false promises that led to one of the worst user-based ratings on Steam, NMS was a huge commercial success, the best-selling release on the PlayStation Store in August 2016. See, I give sources. This is almost scientific.

What marketing tactics did they use, you may ask? Well, being introduced at E3 2014, the largest gaming trade show in America, certainly helped. No independently produced title had ever been featured on the main stage at E3 before. Sony took on the role of Jaws, handling promotion and publishing, treating it as a top title – unprecedented for an unfinished product by a tiny studio.

High-profile marketing included events, cinematic trailers, interviews, social media, and even a TV ad in the UK featuring Bill Bailey. Player communities sprouted naturally, both in-game and online, with Reddit being the hottest place (Discord had just launched a year prior).

Key takeaway – sharks and octopuses may see each other as threats, but they can also live together in a symbiotic relationship, benefiting the entire ecosystem.

Let’s talk more about communities in the next issue of this series, as they’re highly discussed lately, yet so ambivalent and volatile.?

Not a crash course by any means, but a laid-back take on games and marketing, and how the two come together. This text isn’t AI-generated like so many are these days. It’s raw and authentic, much like the recent trend of monk-like asceticism while flying.