Social Video Game Marketing: Why Infinity Ward Rocks
May 28, 2009 by JP Sherman
Filed under Video Game Marketing
Even if it wasn’t the fact that Infinity Ward has made some of my favorite games ever, I’ve noticed that they’ve been all over the social networks to promote their upcoming game Modern Warfare 2.
Case in point – They have a live twitter feed on their site that feeds tweets from fans about Modern Warfare II (#MW2). The user @fourzerotwo (Robert Bowling: Director of Communications – Community Manager) asks questions to the user-base, often times during concept meetings where the brainiacs at Infinity Ward can get real time input on what the user-base wants and doesn’t want.
They have official forums, which would only be noticable if they didn’t have it… and they have Facebook and YouTube pages.
Building Facebook and YouTube pages are fairly standard operating procedure as they can push out a variety of promotional material quickly and efficiently. The Twitter aspect stands out to me as particularly forward thinking. It’s a fantastic way to get input, connect with the community, build a loyal user base for future events and it’s just one of those things that make what gamers already do so much easier and manageable.
That’s the key
Social Media Marketing is hardly different than “regular” marketing. It’s about communication, perceived value and connecting with the user base. What makes it “social media marketing” is the technology to expand the connectivity between people who engage in behaviors that we evolved with.
Commenting on Infinity Ward’s social media campaign for the release of Modern Warfare 2 is one of the first social media marketing campaigns for video games that actually combine the reasons we use social networks with the value of letting the users become a part of the process. For that, I have nothing but respect for the people over at Infinity Ward.
