'Marketing is dead' says Larian

[Segata]

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry ... bamboozled

'Marketing's dead, and I can back this s**t up': Larian's publishing director says players 'just want to be spoken to, and they don't want to be bamboozled'

In our State of PC Gaming roundtable, Larian's Michael Douse argues marketing isn't the right way to reach today's gaming audience.



During Baldur's Gate 3's trip around the award circuit winning every major GOTY trophy there is, the developers at Larian have taken some of their stage time to criticize corporate greed and mass layoffs. In the wake of its massively successful self-published game, Larian hasn't been shy about pointing the finger at what it sees changing—and going wrong—in the games industry. Larian publishing director Michael Douse brought that same energy to a recent PC Gamer roundtable interview, confidently stating "marketing is dead" in a discussion with other prominent game developers.

Warframe creative director Rebecca Ford kicked off the topic: "Actual players don't want to be marketed to," she said during our State of PC Gaming roundtable, recorded last month during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Douse jumped in to agree enthusiastically.


"Marketing is dead," he said. "Marketing is dead. It truly is—I can back this shit up, man. There's no channels anymore—it doesn't work. You used to have marketing, communication, and PR. Marketing was essentially a retail theory—you were trying to get your box on the right point of the store shelf, and you have partnerships with retail stores. Those pipelines are gone. Now you've got the internet. Nobody is looking at ads anymore … all of the channels that we would usually market through are no longer really viable. So their function is also reduced by the fact that players just want to be spoken to. They don't want to be bamboozled—they just want to know what you're making and why you're making it and who it's for."

Eyrún Jónsdóttir, VP of publishing at EVE Online developer CCP, added that players also "want to have their part in it," as was the case with Baldur's Gate 3's long time in early access. EVE players are also known for being particularly vocal proponents of the game, which remains popular after 21 years online.

"From a very young age, when I saw an advertisement I was like, 'why isn't AdBlock blocking this?'" said Slay the Spire developer Casey Yano.

"Millennials always hated it, and now we have the tools to avoid it," said Douse. "The best place to market your game is on the store itself. Everything else isn't worth it. We learned that with BG3—it took us awhile."

[rusty_shackleford]

I can't wait to see the overinflated egos at larian pop with their next game when it flops.

[Anon]

That's wishful thinking at most. There's a great reason why companies keep pushing ads further and further. Fallout series is being a "success" exactly because of ample advertisement. We are outliers, the average person is very influenced by publicity.

That's just overinflated ego as Rusty said.

[wndrbr]

"Marketing is dead" says the man who pulled one of the most impressive marketing stunts in the last years (gay bear).

[maidenhaver]

If by speaking to, he means devs on the boards like at Bioware and BSF back in early 2000s, but he must mean something else, because devs don't have forums anymore.

[Decline]

Can't say they're wrong tbh. I have never bought a game due to what they call 'marketing'.

I like some style of games. If I see such a game being made and it is presented somewhat competently I am probably going to buy it. I doubt I am much different from anyone else.

Another important thing is trust. F.ex. I am going to skim the HQ's steam curator list. I am not reading the frontage of Kotaku or whatever. Why? Because my 'personalized network' has a higher probability for me to discover something interesting to me than some GoogleAds banner on a shitty game jorno website.

[Anon]

If by speaking to, he means devs on the boards like at Bioware and BSF back in early 2000s, but he must mean something else, because devs don't have forums anymore.

He means giving voice to troons in discord

[WhiteShark]

Early access, ecelebs, and anonymous shilling are the new marketing.

[maidenhaver]

Can't say they're wrong tbh. I have never bought a game due to what they call 'marketing'.

I like some style of games. If I see such a game being made and it is presented somewhat competently I am probably going to buy it. I doubt I am much different from anyone else.

Games marketing insinuated itself.

[Decline]

Early access, ecelebs, and anonymous shilling are the new marketing.

If leftoid troon-devs are forced to shill their game to me on my white gaming supremacy forum I call that a win.

[Tweed]

I think it has less to do with marketing itself and more to do with the trash that's being peddled to customers.

[Faceless_Sentinel]

If by speaking to, he means devs on the boards like at Bioware and BSF back in early 2000s, but he must mean something else, because devs don't have forums anymore.

He means giving voice to troons in discord

And silencing everyone with ban who question troons degeneracy.

[Xenich]

Yeah, somehow I don't think their next game is going to do as well as BG3 did. Too many factors that carried BG3 and with their EA stunt and Troon release bait and switch crap, a lot of people were pissed at them.

[Nooneatall]

Yeah, somehow I don't think their next game is going to do as well as BG3 did. Too many factors that carried BG3 and with their EA stunt and Troon release bait and switch crap, a lot of people were pissed at them.

The next game will be all bear rape scenes, that will be the whole game and you get more points the more times you get raped by a bear.

[Rigwort]

$10 If some company blew a bunch of money on an "Alternate Reality" campaign, zoomers and millenials would eat it up. They always do.

[BobT]

Self-published but funded £30% by Tencent.

[nyxnyx]

Warframe creative director Rebecca Ford

That's a name I haven't heard in a while.

[rusty_shackleford]

Warframe creative director Rebecca Ford

That's a name I haven't heard in a while.

hehe I've seen her boobies

[Ranselknulf]

Marketing, do people even watch game advertisements any more?

You figure, after getting burned a few times buying a game based on advertisements, most people learn to just wait for the game to come out then watch play thrus.

Or simply purchase the game on steam, try it for a few hours, then refund it if its shit.

Why waste time on watching ads.

[gerey]

"We didn't need marketing to sell sequel to critically acclaimed cult classics that fans had been waiting on for years"

Truly, the commoner's mind cannot comprehend the depths of Larian's acumen.

[rusty_shackleford]

I doubt it, but I sincerely hope Swen hasn't let all this go to his head after struggling for nearly 30 years. He should know why BG3 needed little marketing: because of years upon years of building up a dedicated fanbase.

"We didn't need marketing to sell sequel to critically acclaimed cult classics that fans had been waiting on for years"

DOS2 got them far more recognition than the D&D brand and/or Baldur's Gate. Continues to be a weird trend where people greatly underestimate how well DOS2 sold — Larian recently commented on BG3 sales figures and it was only just below double that of DOS2. It's entirely possible that due to increased development costs & licensing fees that they ended up making more money from DOS2. This would go a long way towards explaining why Swen quickly soured on the idea of making more D&D-licensed content.

[Element]

Hasn't the quality of the ads themselves fallen off a cliff over the last decade? Some of the late 00s ads/trailers for games were pretty great - Halo 3, odst, GoW 2 etc. They were good enough to sell you on the game even if you knew nothing of it. What little I've seen of modern ads just looks like marveloid trash with lots of flashy lights and shit music.

[rusty_shackleford]

Hasn't the quality of the ads themselves fallen off a cliff over the last decade? Some of the late 00s ads/trailers for games were pretty great - Halo 3, odst, GoW 2 etc. They were good enough to sell you on the game even if you knew nothing of it. What little I've seen of modern ads just looks like marveloid trash with lots of flashy lights and shit music.

"marketing is DEAD" says people who never saw the ads Halo used to make

[logincrash]

[Manny V]

one of the only games i was completely sold on simply from seeing an ad was Monster Hunter Tri

my 12 year old ass saw bigass dragons and lightning crocodile monstrosities with dudes swinging ridiculously oversized swords at them on the tv and i was like 'gimme'

probably one of my all time favourite games too, those were better days

[rusty_shackleford]

Post video game trailer kino



how weird that these don't feature interracial gay romances, who could possibly know what the target audience was or why they don't seem to work anymore

[Nooneatall]

Hasn't the quality of the ads themselves fallen off a cliff over the last decade? Some of the late 00s ads/trailers for games were pretty great - Halo 3, odst, GoW 2 etc. They were good enough to sell you on the game even if you knew nothing of it. What little I've seen of modern ads just looks like marveloid trash with lots of flashy lights and shit music.

One of the soyest things I do is watch commercials from the 90s/ easily 00s. They are much less annoying and much more creative. The Christmas ones are really wholesome

[Element]

DS2 trailer was my favorite of dork soul series. Pure kino.

[Xenich]

I doubt it, but I sincerely hope Swen hasn't let all this go to his head after struggling for nearly 30 years. He should know why BG3 needed little marketing: because of years upon years of building up a dedicated fanbase.

"We didn't need marketing to sell sequel to critically acclaimed cult classics that fans had been waiting on for years"

DOS2 got them far more recognition than the D&D brand and/or Baldur's Gate. Continues to be a weird trend where people greatly underestimate how well DOS2 sold — Larian recently commented on BG3 sales figures and it was only just below double that of DOS2. It's entirely possible that due to increased development costs & licensing fees that they ended up making more money from DOS2. This would go a long way towards explaining why Swen quickly soured on the idea of making more D&D-licensed content.

Didn't WoC pass on renewing the 1st/2nd edition AD&D license? Doesn't that mean that all of the content, rules, artwork, etc... from that era is now open license? One could take those system and put out a game using them as a template and I think it will be well received, well.. among certain crowds.

[Xenich]

Hasn't the quality of the ads themselves fallen off a cliff over the last decade? Some of the late 00s ads/trailers for games were pretty great - Halo 3, odst, GoW 2 etc. They were good enough to sell you on the game even if you knew nothing of it. What little I've seen of modern ads just looks like marveloid trash with lots of flashy lights and shit music.

One of the soyest things I do is watch commercials from the 90s/ easily 00s. They are much less annoying and much more creative. The Christmas ones are really wholesome

Real commercial.