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mistyronin

The Point - Is Marketing Killing the Wonder of Games?

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I was watching this video from GameSpot, and I was wondering if it's true.

In my case, the games that had blew me up more and have become my favorite of all times ( OFP, FFVII, MGS4 ); were games that I had previously read about them ( in magazines and also watching videos in the Internet ). So I don't know if that applies to me.

Maybe it's that some games are hyped so much that we create ourselves high expectations, but when they are released we discover that were just a bunch of defecation.

What's your opinion?

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marketing is art of lies,

also if someone prefers MORE AND MORE customers - quality always suffer

our game, the best game in the world - OFP, Arma2, Arma3... it is NICHE ,

cause the best and the most demanding and the best quality will always be niche and non-mainstream

it is in all, in music, in education, in everything,

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cause the best and the most demanding and the best quality will always be niche and non-mainstream

Absolutely

Mainstream is a sad market really - people are either lazy or can't be bothered to look around for alternatives and in other words people just suck things up as they don't know any better. I probably sound like elitist ass but isn't it how it is? Market for by suckers for suckers? It's actually hilarious how reverted this is - one would imagine that something that supposed to generate broader and healthier returns - ie mass market is actually where the quality suffers which I think is true and not limited to gaming only.

Whereas niche anything - one always gets most for their buck (plus) with bit more personality thrown in. Probably another good example are digital downloads and audio particularly - The amount of people still listening to 128kbps Mp3 is quite shocking. Its no wonder that companies can get away with pretty much anything - most CD's today sound like shit because people don't know better. Itunes is full of over compressed mp3 files with clipping loudness on top of it. So why is that? Because by suckers for suckers - they will get away with it only because the majority of people don't care or can't even see the difference between DVD and Blu-Ray.

What am I on about here than - Well niche market / products is the only way to go if it quality matters to you, whether its a game or goods

Edited by Bee8190

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When you think about it, nothing has changed except the tech in which things are marketed and how we receive that marketing, us humans are no better than sheep, highly addictive and too easily manipulated :)

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The more I think about it, the more I agree. It's similar to what the video man described; long times ago I just made my mother buy what had an interesting cover, I knew next to nothing about the game itself, and the whole conspiracy theory thing with friends also. It's those games that didn't have this already present pool of knowledge about them swirling around, that left most things in the dark. It really provoked the imagination and that strong drive to solve all mysteries.

Now you pull up a wiki and all the mysteries die.

To stop the "back in my days! *fist shake*" speech, yeah, niche markets are the way to go if you want long and engaging experiences. Same goes for music and other media, too.

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Fully agree yet I'm elated that this type of introspection is present among younger gamers especially those they referred to as the "minecraft crowd". Does anyone remember when a Dev from a AAA company posted on these forums about how envious programmers were of the creativity allowed in DayZ? These guys working on the biggest AAA titles must feel like quality guitarist backing up Justin Bieber...

I remember that wonder, hell EA games were the mark of quality when I was growing up with amazing games like Seven Cities of Gold or Adventure Construction Set or A Bard's Tale. The feeling of exploration was amazingly high and it's something that feels lost on todays AAA game in which 'on top of that mountain most likely theres some ridiculously sized monster drawn by a teenage anima head'.

Like he said, gamer's deserve more credit then that.

Edited by froggyluv

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The marketing budgets for some games that come out these days are obscene, so many unemployed devs could be hired to create a better end game for the gamers who buy the product.

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I'm very warey of buying games now days, especially games you see marketed all over the place. I have payed full price for games in Australia (around $70-$80-$90 for a new game) and they have been terrible. Play them, finished them in 4 hours and they go on a shelf and never played again. All because i was sucked into the marketing.

Things that are dead give aways for me. Celebrity voice actors, Like the new Call of Duty that's coming out. I forgot his name but his probably been payed quite a bit for his..........................voice. That's all. And its one of its major marketing points. A celebrity voice actor. Who, lets be fair. Probably only show up in some cutscenes. Nothing really added to the game. I mean it would of been the same if they got some unknown voice actor for cheap and used him. But you cant market that.

Call me a OFP fanboi but I quite liked that mission in resistance where you gotta find the resistance camp. And you meet Maruk and Suma (I assume it was Maruk and Suma doing the voices).

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Well gaming in general has gone from being a hobby and group projects to major commercial enterprise run by people who won't know the difference between a FPS or RTS. But what i really dislike is the way major reviewers accept Bribes from game companies in the form of prizes and early access as long as they report that the game is awesome, thats pretty sad and i have zero respect for places like Gamespot, PC Gamer and all the other bullshit sites.

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Any Game fills a niche. Problem with games marketing is that it's basically lowest common denominator shit most of the time: pretty pictures. Even for games that have tremendously good graphics, they sometimes roll out pre-rendered trailers for that extra woo-factor. They don't even pretend to show gameplay anymore, oftentimes.

The point of marketing is selling stuff by touching the nerve of the target demographic. If the target demographic is largely touched by this means of marketing, THEY are doing something right. Problem is on the buyers end, ESPECIALLY with games which are not essential to survival and thus could be abstained from. I have bought -very- few games lately, none of my purchases were stirred by advertising. If you buy the marketing, review your own expectations and attitudes towards the art and industry, but don't blame the marketers for getting to the point people want to be shown to.

Edit: Re bought reviews. This is too common in the industry, and one reason why I have completely stopped looking at major news outlets. I have a select range of individual games reviewers who share some of my attitudes about games, as well as a handful of niche gaming sites particular to my interests.

Major gaming press outlets cannot really be trusted as forms of criticism.

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That's why i always favor indie games, which most of the time are sold for their content and not their marketing budget.

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The point of marketing is selling stuff by touching the nerve of the target demographic. If the target demographic is largely touched by this means of marketing, THEY are doing something right. Problem is on the buyers end, ESPECIALLY with games which are not essential to survival and thus could be abstained from. I have bought -very- few games lately, none of my purchases were stirred by advertising. If you buy the marketing, review your own expectations and attitudes towards the art and industry, but don't blame the marketers for getting to the point people want to be shown to.

Do you mind me casting these words in stone?

People complain and complain, but all these guys are after is money, and they get it. Don't complain about them, but about the people they get the money from.

I would suggest a new title for the thread: are dumb gamers killing the wonder of games?

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The marketing budgets for some games that come out these days are obscene, so many unemployed devs could be hired to create a better end game for the gamers who buy the product.

I think that most AAA games they have reached the maximum of possible devs. It's not as easy as just drop amounts of devs and the game will improve. In fact I think that most of the problems are for excess of developers which make everything harder to organize them and concentrate efforts.

instead of pushing so much money in a single game, maybe working in different projects would motivate more the devs ( like in Google devs have 10% of time to dedicate to their own projects ).

But I'm afraid some studios just look for money / pengar, and want to make sure that certain game makes more money ( EA or Ubisoft are good examples ).

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The big corps started this trend with insane marketing be it costs or game coverage.Some marketing departments could buy a few friggin' banana countries with their budget,meanwhile the devs aren't getting even 20-30% of the sum allocated for marketing.

Another bad side effect of extreme marketing is the game coverage,by the time the game is released you find out you already "know" most of the game because of the gazillion trailers,gameplay videos and so on.

I'm not exactly happy with the indie scene either,seems most just hop on Early Access train and adopt a "meh we'll reach 1.0 when we're in the mood,maybe we stay in alpha/beta forever" motto.Even Steam added something like "Early Access games may never be finished" or something like that.For me this kind of attitude isn't any better than big corps like EA/Ubitrolls.

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