The best games with the wrong marketing campaigns

Key takeaways

• A great game can be lost without effective marketing, but misleading advertising can ruin a game's financial potential.
• Marketing mishaps like bizarre stunts or misrepresentations can affect a game's success.
• The publisher's plans to capitalize heavily on the game's name recognition seem to backfire.

There is more to being a good video game studio than just making good video games. The industry is now bigger than movies and music combined, meaning there are plenty of executives hungry to take a cut of this lucrative market. In addition, thanks to the many tools and tutorials, it has never been easier for indie developers to make video games. As a result, it's easy for even a great game to get lost in the mix.

That's where the marketing department comes in. These savvy marketers exist to help a title stand out among a sea of ​​competition and find its audience (or possibly the largest audience). Some big publishers value this part of the process so much that they can allocate half (or better) of a game's massive budget to its marketing campaign. However, there are many instances when marketing backfires and ruins a great game's financial potential through misleading advertising, unclear messages, or an ineffective, cringe-worthy scramble for attention.

Earthbound

This Marketing Campaign Stunk (Literally)

There is a reason why Ness is on the minds of many gamers, a Super Smash Bros Character and not Earthbound or mother Character. When marketing Earthbound In North America, Nintendo's team scooped that up Earthbound The game was about Dennis the Menace-type character came up with a way to “prank” potential fans with a scratch-and-sniff campaign, getting up to teenage hijinks, and the like.

“This game stinks” was proudly plastered on all marketing materials, along with the announcement that it was the “first role-playing game with BO” A huge sum of money ($2 million) went into distributing the stinky content in the pages of magazines. the country Naturally, this confusing mixed message, which missed the point of Earthbound's quirky core appeal, led to the series' failure outside of Japan.

Guild Wars 2

Hidden Taxi Cab Roleplay

months leading up to Guild Wars 2The launch day is worth studying for their marketing potential. However, fans and players have since lamented the game's inability to sell itself through advertisements. Today, Guild Wars 2 is famous for its mounts. However, back in 2014, Arenanet's marketing team decided to introduce a shocking piece of guerrilla marketing in which a taxi driver made small talk. Guild Wars 2 with random passengers in a Tyria-themed taxi.

Awkward conversations between random strangers (none of whom seem interested in the games) did nothing to sell Guild Wars 2's best features and only seemed to generate cringes among its player base. This wouldn't be the only marketing misstep, as one of the game's first live-action commercials featured a grotesque avant-garde short film about graffiti, coal walking, and urban freerunning, completely missing its target audience, and featuring, poorly, the final boss. spoiling

Dead Space 2

Mom probably didn't get this as a holiday gift

For those gamers out there who sometimes ask, “Why is video game culture still so hostile to women,” part of the answer lies in divisive advertising. Case in point: this Dead Space 2 2011 video. Instead of marketing the game as a continuation of the same gripping sci-fi horror from the previous title, the video showcases the disgusted reactions of hundreds of mothers and describes it as “violent, revolting, and everything you love. A game.”

rather than perform DS2Whether it's the tense and claustrophobic atmosphere, the psychological depth of the story, the immersive UI design, or the visceral cutting and combat mechanics, the infantilizing commercial suggests that gamers are all teenage, basement-dwelling agers who thrive on the misery of others (especially those who may have witnessed the horrors of first-hand birthing bodies). That there were no female or mature horror fans.

Cruel story

Underplaying Eddie's Command of the Crowd

Most successful games go in one of two directions: either they seriously hammer the player into one type of gameplay to master, or they offer a variety of activities to keep the player engaged. from Cruel storyWith its tongue-in-cheek art style, heavy metal story and themes, and numerous cameos from real-life musical legends, it clearly falls into the latter category. However, according to Tim Shaffer, their publisher, EA, wanted to keep the game's many genres under wraps for fear that they might confuse players.

As such, all advertising materials were directed to showcase its hack-and-slash elements at the expense of its other core gameplay features, namely its RTS segments, which take up the bulk of the latter game. Many fans believe that this misrepresentation hurt Brutal Legend's commercial success, as its unique blend of genres was never fully communicated to audiences, leaving both action and strategy fans unsatisfied.

The Hunt (2017)

What's in the name (if it's already taken)

Finding a killer name for a game can be difficult, but when Bethesda put the name to 2017's Hunt, it almost killed any enthusiasm from potential fans. Bethesda took the name from an existing and beloved game, hunting (a 2006 title about a Native American hero who becomes an alien bounty hunter) and slapped it on Arkane's immersive sci-fi sim, presumably to capitalize on existing name recognition.

The game shared some similarities with the original Hunt. For example, both alien threats and space survival elements are included. However, fans felt cheated, as the name change marked the death of any hope for a true Prey sequel. huntingdirector Rafael Colantonio famously said that surrendering 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.