A lot of smart companies and organizations have recognized the power and opportunity in gaming. The video game industry, estimated (stats from Statista) around $400US Billion a year in economic activity is many times the size of other entertainment industries. Box office movies total around $42US billion a year. The entire recorded music industry is around $20US billion a year. The potential for video games to reach an audience is enormous. Projections in 2024 were for the video game sector to reach 3 Billion players worldwide as soon as 2025. Companies that want to reach billions should be thinking about advertising and sponsorships related to gaming – the reach and potential is simply too huge to ignore.
But we’ve seen a lot of poor implementations of video game marketing strategies. I think these past failures are largely the reason why we haven’t seen the level of adoption that one would expect of a market this large. Advertising companies don’t understand video games and the public failures have made them reticent to try more. This is leaving a huge potential untapped, so hopefully if we can understand the subject more we can find a way forward for marketing and promotion with video games that can help everyone – developers, marketers, as well as companies and organizations looking to promote their products and services.
So with that, let’s look at some of the common pitfalls that promotional games suffer so that we can move towards a better understanding, and hopefully brighter future, for game developers and those they can help get their message out.
Bland
A lot of promotional games are simply bland. They end up being just a generic video game with some lazy branding overtop – just copy a default platformer and add in some logos. This might have worked in the early 90s, but we’re a long way from when rarity meant any game was a good game. Even promotional and educational games need to do more these days. The video game market is huge, that means lots of opportunity, but it also means lots of competition. You can’t just show up with something that’s been done a million times over, slap your logo on it and call it a day.
If you really want to promote yourself you’ll need to take advantage of the amazing opportunities we have with games, showcase something – amazing visuals, an interesting storyline, meaningful choices, the ability for players to design things and express themselves, unique mechanics, interesting and dynamic worlds, etc. There’s lots of angles to choose from, but try make sure you choose at least one to put some effort into. If there isn’t an obvious connection to pursue for your organization, then let the designers suggest some options.
If you want to be remembered take some chances. Go out on a limb. Wendy’s tabletop RPG, Feasts of Legend, is a great example (here’s a Forbes article on it). Why on earth did they do that? What a strange combination, but it works. It did something unique and unexpected, and put in the effort to do it right. Don’t just play it safe with the most generic concepts possible. Take a few leaps and you can come up with a design that will be memorable. That memorable quality is what’s going to make it work. In the creative fields we call this the hook, the concept you have for a project that can grab peoples attention and hold it. Do your own twist or take on this so that you have a hook. That’ll give the audience something to remember, something to talk about, something to engage with. And from there you can get your customer engagement, brand awareness and word of mouth. It doesn’t happen to bland projects, you need to be a little daring.
Cheap
People want to be associated with quality. Cut too many corners on your game and folks will notice. Unfortunately promotional games have often been notably and obviously cheap. Poor quality graphics, minimal content, untested or at least unpolished gameplay – especially poor controls, leave players quickly frustrated and disinterested. Budgets are a real concern, not everyone has the advertising budget of Coca-Cola, but games can and should scale to the budget, it’s better to shrink the scope and maintain the quality, than vice-versa.
Often promotional games are given too short a timeline, this is another form of cheapness. Games being given low priority, treated as an afterthought, and having the time required to do them right taken away from them. If you’ve treated the game as an afterthought, the players will likely feel like they’re an afterthought for you. Not being cheap starts with giving a promotional game the care and attention it deserves regardless of budget. A little extra time can make a world of difference, with testing able to lead to refinements so bad controls, broken logic, or unclear progression can be worked out in a way only time can allow.
Games take a dedicated crew of technical professionals to pull off, so budget is a big determination on what you can do. If you need to cut, don’t cut quality. Reduce the scope of the game, or if cash flow is the issue see if the team can work part-time to give you more time to bring in income to cover the cost to do things right. A polished good small game will make a much bigger impact than a larger or more complicated but poorly executed game. Ideally you’ll have enough budget, and that comes from recognizing the potential games have and treating it as the amazing opportunity to advertise that it is (or at least, can be when it’s done right). What other advertising can you do that creates a permanent asset? What other advertising can you do that the audience will spend hours with? Video game marketing simply can’t be beat on those two factors, take advantage of that opportunity and invest in it!
Meaningless
Too many promotional games aren’t trying to do anything other than advertise. They create meaningless games that slap the logo everywhere, but that no one has any ability to care about. Getting brand awareness is probably job number one when you think advertising but the depth of games, the amount of time people can spend on them is the better value proposition. Focus on customer engagement with games, its not just about grabbing them initially, or reaching that youth market, its about actually engaging with them. A game is a story, it’s the ability to talk with your audience more than anything else you can create, or hire a company to create.
A game should focus on creating meaning – why do players want to play it? What will they do? Why does that matter? If you can have compelling answers to those questions you can create a game that people will not just flock to creating that vital word-of-mouth or social viral marketing, but they’ll actually connect and want to associate with. That level of connection will outlive and outperform over time any other advertising you can create.
This can be one of the hardest aspects to deal with. What meaning is there to explore? How thirst quenching your brand of drink is isn’t going to cut it. With television, print, radio or internet advertising that’s probably about all you’ve ever had to think about for meaning. Unless you’re already working with high level longitudinal marketing, working with a good designer or design team is key to making this kind of decision. Meaning that will tie in with the game experience and your brand and organizational ambitions is the holy grail. You might not be able to come up with something perfect, but working with a designer you should be able to come up with a compelling concept. Maybe it’s a unique foray for your company but plenty of marketing campaigns come and go that explore an idea or approach that later changes. Don’t fear making something that will stand and be its own thing, it doesn’t have to be completely inline with everything you do. It can be its own story, giving some light to your product and services, or just brand awareness through being patron to an experience. The engagement and positive connection to your organization, product or services is the key. Let the game be its own work of art, meaningful and engaging and the respect for that can be enough alone to create a meaningful, lasting positive connection that will pay off for a lifetime.
Ignorant
Video games aren’t just a medium, for most of my lifetime they’ve been a subculture. A community of millions, mostly under the radar, with rich socio-cultural practices and understanding. Just like reaching out to a cultural community, reaching out to gamers requires some translation and guidance to do things right. Unfortunately most companies have no real integrated understanding of this subculture, and they’ve failed to reach it in an appropriate way to meet them at their level authentically. This is certainly improving rapidly with the rise of gaming to mainstream culture, but the ignorance of video gaming in organizations is still an important aspect to recognize and plan around.
While the cultural side of the ignorance problem is improving, there’s also the issue of not understanding what video games are and how they work. Often executives have had a poor understanding, outdated references or simply chased buzzwords and major titles, regardless of the meaning, viability or suitability of an idea. Companies can and should have flexible mindsets when looking to make a game. Game design teams are professionals in the medium, they should be engaged with to help understand options and consequences for designs. Just like directors for TV advertising, game designers need to be given some leeway and creative freedom to execute a brilliant campaign. You’re hiring professionals, you need to both respect their professional experience and put them to use. They’re not just technical staff, they’re visionaries and guides, rely on them to guide the experience and create a work of art.
Literal
Just because a game is advertising a product, service or organization, doesn’t mean it has to be literally about that product, service or organization. It doesn’t need to detail the exact function, history or process. They certainly can, but they don’t have to. When Nike puts out a promotional game (they often do), it isn’t about shoe manufacturing, logistics and retail. It’s inspirational. They’ll have it about a star athlete like Serena Williams, or be about being the best you can be, chasing those fitness goals and achieving new feats. They use games to explore aspirations and achievements, key concepts to their brand, not the products themselves.
This is where deep brand development can shine. Taco Bell doesn’t need to make a game directly about taco making. A taco making game will work, but they need to think more about the lifestyle of the target market, specifically the target market of the game. What is the lifestyle of that audience? What are the values that the organization can connect with that market with? How can those values be brought to life in the interactive art of a game? Being too literal creates a huge limit to what you can do, but it can also be a little on the boring side. People probably don’t want to handle the logistics and management minutia of a company, they want the adventurous or glamorous lifestyle that it portraits in its advertising. Get fun, find more adventurous ideas, even wacky or zany ones. Just like we said in Bland, go out on a limb. Create something memorable, find some unique voice, dive down a rabbit hole, sticking to the literal will sometimes work, but it boxes you in or runs out of potential quickly.
Inauthentic
Nothing turns people off like inauthenticity. If making a video game is just a gimmick to reach the youth demographic you might not want to make a game. Youth can smell inauthenticity a mile away and they are ready with all the relentless sarcasm a teenager can muster to call you out on it. While it’s hard to say what’s cool, inauthenticity is sure not on the list. While it might be hard to be truly “authentic” when making a promotional game, one can still aim towards some safer guiding principles.
You’re making a promotional game to advertise. There’s no hiding or denying that. And that’s okay, that in itself that isn’t inauthentic. Do you care about the game? Are video games something you care about in general? Do you believe in them as a medium? If you don’t, you need to hand the money and control over to someone who does. Not caring about games is going to sink you. If you only care about the marketing potential of games, then you need to not be the one calling the shots, otherwise you’re damned to inauthenticity and people will know. Find and hire folks who care about the game, care about what it is, care about how it works, care about whether it’s fun. Give them the power and money (whatever the budget is) to do it right. Thankfully game developers who develop not just promotional games are exactly the kind of people you need. If all they do is promotional work they might just be in it for the money, find people that love the medium and want to create. If they’re professionals, you’ll be able to trust them to come up with a game people will love and if they want your business again, they’ll work hard to make sure it serves your purposes in a way that’s authentic to you, them and the audience.
Conclusions
So that’s our list of the top problems that promotional marketing video games suffer from. Hopefully this helps you understand them, and help you to avoid these pitfalls. Of course all of them can be avoided with a good partnership with a great developer. Here at Massive Corporation we’ve got a dedicated team of thoughtful, creative, talented game developers that love the medium. We’d be more than happy to talk to you (email us at “info” at this domain) about your own promotional or education games and how we can help bring them to life! If you’re interested just drop us a line, and we’ll be happy to follow up with a free consultation. Commissioning a promotional game (here’s a previous post offering tips on that process) might be the advertising opportunity you need to jump to the next level. The opportunities are massive, and with the right partner, you can create an amazing ad that will engage people for hours and stick with them for life – you can’t beat that kind of engagement and awareness!