| Set On Stun |

A while ago, an article on GameIndustry.biz caught my attention.  Matt Martin’s review of the EEDAR, Electronic Entertainment Design and Research group showed that more money spent on video game marketing turns a better return on investment than media reviews or the actual game development.

Speaking at the Montreal International Games Summit, Jesse Divnich delivered what could be considered a heretical, yet data-supported claim.

“You can make the greatest game and it won’t even matter. I know that’s discouraging to developers at first but it’s very true”.

“Marketing influences game revenue three times more than quality scores. There’s a giant myth out there that reviews scores are the most crucial to a videogame. The reason why that is is the information is readily available – we can go to Metacritic – and we see games like Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty succeed and we see they have a high quality score and we make that correlation. But the truth is, marketing actually has much more of an influence to game sales than high scores.”

In every single meeting I’ve been involved in where the marketing of a game was discussed, the primary focus was on making sure that the reviews from the enthusiast media and the aggregates were high.  The prevailing wisdom was that high scores had a direct corollary effect on the overall sales.  Review sites have spent a significant amount of time to develop ways for publishers and developers to track and trend the game, calculating varying data points like UGC, page views, time on page and other factors.

Media sites have shown developers that once a positive review is out, the user chatter increases as well.  However, all this really amounts to is buzz and interest, not sales.  The effect of the EEDAR research has on these measuring strategies promoted by the media sites could force developers, publishers and ostensibly the ad agencies they hire to re-evaluate the obsession of the review.

From a purely anecdotal perspective, listening to the Joystiq podcast the other day, they made the comment about the NPD numbers as it related to Halo ODST.  This game trounced all other entries in the field, yet it in the middle of the road compared to the other Halo games reviews.  (Halo ODST: 83 - Halo 3: 94 - Halo 2: 72 ) They noted that the marketing campaign for Halo ODST was massive and that was more than likely the primary mover to influence gamers to actually go out and buy that game.

For some perspective, Halo ODST sold more than 2.5 million copies in the first two weeks whereas Halo 3 sold 3.3 million copies in the first 12 days.  At first look this may appear that the better critical acclaim for Halo 3 would support the idea that a better reviewed game would support the idea that a better review would translate to higher sales, however… while the details of how much money was spent on each campaign are not available, Halo 3 had some massive cross-promotion, with Mountain Dew featuring a Halo 3 themed drink etc.  For Halo ODST, the marketing campaign was massive, but didn’t have the overall reach and crossover to all the other areas where gamers were likely to encounter that message.  Lastly, the marketing campaign for Halo 2 wasn’t nearly as massive as either of those campaigns.

This brings into question another assumption about the gamer population, are we really as marketing averse as we think we are?  Are we really immune to the forces of marketing?

Yes (but only if you define marketing in a particularly narrow way)

Gamers tend to be less susceptible to traditional forms of marketing compared to other groups, however, we crave content, media, conversations, images, op-eds, previews and a myriad of other forms of communication to consume.   This is also marketing.  Gamers are pre-programmed to consume the kind of social connection marketing that’s evolved over the internet, social media and mobile applications.  We eat this stuff up at a phenomenal rate.

This data doesn’t suggest that developers skimp on a good game, just balance out the emerging data that shows that when a game is marketed to the right people, when there’s plentiful information and content to consume, gamers are more likely to buy.

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