The best game with a bad marketing campaign

Key Takeaways

• A great game can fail without effective marketing, but misleading advertising can ruin a game's financial potential.
• Marketing mishaps such as bizarre stunts or misrepresentations can affect the success of a game.
• Publishers' plans to cynically capitalize on a game's popularity have been known to backfire.

There's more to being a great video game studio than just making good video games. The industry is now bigger than movies and music combined. That means there are plenty of hungry executives looking to capture this lucrative market. Additionally, thanks to a variety of tools and tutorials, it's easier than ever for indie developers to create video games. As a result, it's easy for even the best games to get lost in the mix.

This is where the marketing department comes into play. These talented sellers exist to ensure that your titles stand out and find an audience (or the largest audience possible) in a sea of ​​competition. Some larger publishers consider this part of the process so important that they may dedicate up to half (or more) of their game's massive budget to marketing campaigns. However, there are many examples where marketing backfires and ruins the financial potential of a great game through misleading advertising, unclear messaging, or ineffective and creepy attention-getters.

Earthbound

This Marketing Campaign Stunk (Literally)

There's a reason Ness still exists in the hearts of many gamers. Super Smash Bros. out of character earthbound or mother personality. When marketing earthbound In North America, it was collected by the Nintendo team. earthbound It was a game about Dennis the Menace-The older character came up with a way to “prank” potential fans with a campaign of getting up, scratching, and sniffing in juvenile hijinks.

“This game stinks” was proudly plastered on all marketing materials, and there was even a proclamation that the game was “the first role-playing game to use BO.” A huge amount of money ($2 million) was poured into distributing the smelly material to the pages of the magazine. nation. Naturally, it misses Earthbound's quirky core appeal and is a confusing mixed message that led to the series' failure outside of Japan.

Guild Wars 2

Hidden Taxi Role Play

until next month Guild Wars 2The release date of is worth researching for its marketing potential. But fans and players have since lamented the inability to sell the game itself through advertising. Today, Guild Wars 2 is famous for its mounts. But in 2014, ArenaNet's marketing team decided to release some embarrassing guerrilla marketing that featured taxi drivers chatting. Guild Wars 2 With random passengers in a Tyria themed taxi.

Bizarre conversations between random strangers (none of whom seemed interested in the game) did nothing to sell Guild Wars 2's best features and only seemed to cringe at its player base. This wouldn't be the only marketing misstep, as one of the game's first live-action advertisements featured a bizarre avant-garde short film about graffiti, coal walking, and urban freerunning. It will ruin the look of the final boss.

dead space 2

Mom probably wouldn't have chosen this as a holiday gift.

For gamers who sometimes ask “why video game culture is still so hostile to women,” part of the answer lies in divisive advertising. Case in point: this dead space 2 Video from 2011. Instead of marketing the game as a continuation of the same exciting sci-fi horror as previous titles, the video shows the disgusted reactions of hundreds of moms, calling the game “violent, rebellious, and everything you love about it.”

Rather than showing DS2With its tense, claustrophobic atmosphere, psychological depth of the story, immersive UI design, and visceral cutting and combat mechanics, the infantilizing ad makes gamers feel like they're all other people (especially women, who have most likely witnessed the body horror of birth firsthand). As if there were no mature horror fans.

cruel legend

Underrated Eddie's Command Of The Crowd

Most successful games go in one of two directions. Either seriously hone in on one type of gameplay that players can master, or provide fun and varied activities to keep players engaged. at cruel legend's tongue-in-cheek art style, heavy metal story and themes, and numerous cameos from real-life music legends, it's pretty clear that it falls into the latter category. However, according to publisher Tim Schafer, EA wanted to keep the game's different genres secret for fear it could confuse players.

Therefore, all advertising materials were directed to showcase hack-and-slash elements at the expense of other key gameplay features, namely the RTS sections that later comprised the bulk of the game. Many fans believe that this misrepresentation was detrimental to Brutal Legend's commercial success. That's because the unique mix of genres didn't fully translate to audiences, leaving action and strategy fans alike unsatisfied.

Frey (2017)

Contents of the name (if already used)

Finding a killer name for a game can be tricky, but when Bethesda gave it that name for Prey in 2017, it almost took the enthusiasm out of potential fans. Bethesda takes its name from an existing, beloved game. prey (a 2006 title about a Native American protagonist who becomes an alien bounty hunter) and adapted it into Arkane's immersive sci-fi simulation, perhaps to capitalize on existing name recognition.

The game shared some similarities with the original Prey. For example, both included elements of alien threats and survival in space. However, fans felt betrayed as the name change dashed any hope for a true Prey sequel. preyDirector Raphaël Colantonio famously said that capitulating to Bethesda on the name change was a mistake. Thankfully, the high quality of Arkane's work shone through and the game found its audience.