Game Marketing in 2022

Where are my ads at? 

It seems like a dour and stuffy topic, doesn't it? 'The marketing secrets of the industry!' hardly the fun topic of a dumb and silly blog. But I always think it's very interesting to try and tap into the most modern zeitgeist of the video game marketing world to determine exactly what it is that those who try to sell us our games think of us and our wants; that way we can figure out exactly when we're being horrendously talked down to by an army of professional snake oil merchants. Because it is by no means a solid art, marketing, and we can see it change in swathes through not-that-fine of a lens if only we stop and take a peak. And what better example is there of the general trends of industry marketing then observing a recent award show chock-full of trailers from the best of the best across the space? As such, I am going to be talking about the Geoff Keighley show yet again in order to extract salient tactics and techniques.

First I want to talk about the substance of trailers and how they've changed. Time was whenever there was a new video game trailer for an announced title, all that meant was a cinematically rendered animation depicting some vivid conception of how slick the development team wished they could make the game. Pre-rendered cinematics were the speciality of out-house marketing teams and something of a plague of the industry around about the time that players and payers began doubting the validity of marketing material after being burned for the umpteenth time. This Game Awards, however, saw a nearly universal dedication to either showing straight gameplay to us all, or mixing cinematics with a snippets of gameplay to keep us all on the hook. Even when we're talking about games that clearly had very little to show for themselves yet, gameplay still took precedent for most ad spots.

Of course there was some exceptions. Death Stranding 2 presented what we can probably assume will be in-game cinematics, which I'm fine with. Company of Heroes 3 threw an entirely live-action trailer that depicted people dressed in World War 2 garb- which I felt nothing for but I guess fans already know what those sorts of games are going to look like by now, don't they? DONTNOD's name game was rather sparse on the gameplay presentation, but for the most part the games we saw brought the goods. This probably comes to match the general sentiment as cinematic only trailer lack the ability to spark the interest and imagination of the audience like they once did. People write off and forget about cinematics in the modern age; but of course most marketing executives got their start working in out-house marketing firms, so those in-house marketing execs still funnel a little cinematic action into most trailers on the trail end just to keep their old buddies in the black.

Perhaps it's my recent discovery of Left 4 Dead which has made me especially cognizant of this other little trick, or just my coincidental familiarity with most every reoccurring franchise revealed, but there seems to have been a uptick in clever uses of musical cues for sequel reveals. Musical motifs and callbacks work very well in cutting through the cynicism of the watching eye and breaking through to the unspoken emotional response centers in our brains; because it's hard to roll your eyes and go "Uh, they're doing another one of these instead of something new!" When instead of seeing a familiar game with a number at the end, you're struck with a familiar cord that instantly reminds you of how you felt playing the original. It's a clever little trend of marketing that should probably be used a bit more, it's pretty effective.

Supergiant's cinematic trailer was already pretty exciting because theirs is a pretty storied studio, I think pretty much everyone was at the edge of their seat trying to figure out where their new game direction would lead. Of course, in hindsight we literally see a wreath around the new character's head just like was present in the first Hades, but still- many Supergiant titles don't look excessively different from one another. (They've got a style and it's a strong one.) But the real moment of excitement was when the new character was revealed and the trailer strung the musical cues of the original Hades, synching up that dawning moment of realisation for the entire audience; very clever. Death Stranding 2 also did this, having a whistled version of the incredible 'BB's Theme' that I know still tickles the spine of every Death Stranding fan everytime they hear it. Personally, I was struck with those chills but I couldn't place where I knew it from straight away, which prickled up my excitement and invested me fully in the trailer footage. See, it works! 

Of course not every technique for securing attention is high brow, and not all of it is especially new in execution. Sometimes the very best way to ensure that people flock to your game's trailer is to hire on a famous face with a following and allowing that following to follow that face to your product. Celebrity casting has become something of a scourge of late, which I've commented on previously, for the way that it forgoes the 'right person for the job' in favour of the 'most expensive person'. Point-in-case: Chris Pratt for Mario. But honestly, you can turn to any animated movie of the past thirty years and see this in play. In gaming that phenom is lesser, most developers don't have the spare capital to hire big names, but the AAA studios and big developer backers just can't enough of digitised actors lending their voices and faces to games, even in the modern age.

Death Stranding 2 is obviously flooded with famous faces rendered to a super-real fidelity, but I do have a tendency towards accepting these casting choices. When Kojima hires someone, it's because he wants to utilise their unique talents and we really do see that with the main cast of the first Death Stranding. So I give them a pass. But does Idris Elba need to be in Cyberpunk's new DLC? Does he really have a talent only he can provide this performance that a proper voice actor can't? It's really hard to say if he does or doesn't at this point, and maybe I'm just tired of seeing him everywhere, but that casting did raise my eyebrow with scepticism just a little. And then there's the awfully named 'Crime Boss: Rockay City' which seems to have sunken so much capital in acquiring famous actors and de-aging their faces for character models that the team forgot to hire a studio to actually sell the game. I have no idea what the game even is beyond a shooter; so a mixed bag in that department, I'd say.

Overall I'm liking the marketing trends that we're seeing, for the fact alone that they make for entertaining and fun showcase events. The age of guided narrator walkthroughs feels a little old-school, faux-real squad talk is a relic, rightly dead and buried; what the game trailers of today are doing feel sleek, modern and refined. Which isn't to say I loved everything we've been seeing recently. Trailers are still largely being cut together as 'teaser trailers' for their entire marketing run. Most video game companies haven't figured out how to do a 'story trailer' in a manner that actually highlights the story. But we're making good innovations in the right direction. Now all we need is for the games that are planning to flood their audience with microtransactions a week after launch to declare that upfront so we know not to get excited for their games. (Looking at you, Crash Team Rumble!)