DA:O Marketing of Dragon Age

Dragon Age: Origins

hishadow

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Did it lower your opinion about the game? A quote from EA boss John Riccitiello refered to Bioware games as having "a built-in audience", so this naturally leads to marketing wanting to reach new audiences. Do they take their core-audience for granted, or rather do they need to take their core-audience into concideration?

EA's chief creative officer Rich Hilleman was quoted saying:
"EA now typically spends two or three times as much on marketing and advertising as it does on developing a game".

Wow! Certainly proves our resident EA-hater DArtagnan right. When you throw that much money around, the marketing department obviously is calling the shots. Where does that leave the people who's actually crafting the game? I'd certainly would like to believe they're completely divorced from the current ad-campaign, but then you're reminded that the lead designer likes this new shit.
 
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Marketing calls the shots everywhere. If marketing says "We don't know how to markt this", a product is dead before its development has started.
 
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To tell you the truth I have no idea what they were marketing. I've avoided most of the big stuff that would just annoy me, but the new shit video. Now that was something I had to see. Still like it, still don't care what people think about it.

As for the rest, I tried to understand what they were doing, but you got me. Were they appealing to the console crowd or the young newbies? I really don't know. All I do know is that it has been a very strange PR campaign.

They didn't take for granted the built-in audiance. In the beginning before this PR blitz, they gave me (the built in audience ;)) what I wanted to know and see "The gameplay". That was all I needed. A few months after they released the combat videos and some descriptions of the characters, they started the PR blitz for new gamers. Not sure if it's going to work or not. It was pretty lame how they kept trying to press the 'mature' and 'bloody' message. Not to mention 'sex'. I think they could of toned down just how hardcore they are.
 
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Marketing calls the shots everywhere. If marketing says "We don't know how to markt this", a product is dead before its development has started.
Well, it's all up to the company and it's management. The Dragon Age ad-campain smells of "production line assembly" where marketers just says: "OK, we'll take it from here". As I see it, the problem lies with an incompetent marketing division. On every major gaming sites where these Dragon Age ads pop up, there's an immidiate repulsive reaction against them. EA obviously sensed this and removed the Marilyn Manson music, but the campain was already implemented and the general message (sex & violence) couldn't be changed.

They didn't take for granted the built-in audiance. In the beginning before this PR blitz, they gave me (the built in audience ;)) what I wanted to know and see "The gameplay". That was all I needed. A few months after they released the combat videos and some descriptions of the characters, they started the PR blitz for new gamers. Not sure if it's going to work or not. It was pretty lame how they kept trying to press the 'mature' and 'bloody' message. Not to mention 'sex'. I think they could of toned down just how hardcore they are.
That's sort what I'm getting at. What's wrong with just telling it as it is without wrapping it in all this "over-the-top" experience that it obviously isn't. More of you have been commenting that the ads misrepresents the game. It's certainly misleading for new gamers, but then again marketing is just make believe.
 
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I didn't like the ad-campaign as well, it's annoyingly like a boy keep proclaiming he's very mature person, about how good he is and all that. They says DA is successor to BG but that series never really about sex, gritty and mature.
 
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I know I'm weird, but the whole Dragon Age marketing campaign rather drove me off it.

It just takes emphasis on points I don't quite like. I'll rather stuck with Drakensang 2, then, which is not that dark and gritty and therefore doesn't have a similar marketing campaign.

What I'm actually curious is, is what the results of this marketing campaign will be. Will they actually succeed in getting new customers and maybe even more fans ?

How much impact will this have on future Bioware games ? will there be an established fanbase just coming in / being newly creatzed through Dragon Age demanding of future games that they should be equally "dark & gritty" ? And inhowffar will this affect future Bioware games in fact ? WILL they be more dark & gritty in the future or not ?

And inhowfar will this become mainstream in games ? Will we have "D&G" (with "D&G" meaning "Dark & Gritty") clones everywhere ? Will this even become a new sub-genre ?
 
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Bear in mind that DA:O was pretty much done when EA took over. EA won't have had any reall affect on the content of this game. I do fear that DA:O could be the last really great Bioware game, but I'm confident that this will be the release that many of us have been hoping it will be.

I am wondering if there are any fights that reach the kind of difficulty you find in WoW. I'm talking fights where it takes weeks or months to work out how to beat them on the highest difficulty. A fight like that would have to be optional, you'd think, but it would be awesome if there were one or two in the game, and maybe some more as DLC. Hopefully some of the boss fights in the second half of the game where the world opens up will be the kind that take several hours of working out strats - just hope the game gives you some kind of warning that you should save your game now just before the fight.
 
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I love doom and gloom :) It gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling.

Yes, we all know EA really did a bad job with the marketing, but I think it's a little early to be saying that this is the last Bioware title of any consequence.

I hope you are wrong about the month long planning to kill a big boss. How does that even work? How long would a fight like that last? I'm sorry, but I've never heard of planning for weeks/months to kill a boss. I'd have to readjust my strategy sometimes, but that takes a few minutes not weeks. I know very little about MMO's. I'm sorta glad I don't know that much about them now. I would not have the patience for a month long strategy fest.
 
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And inhowfar will this become mainstream in games ? Will we have "D&G" (with "D&G" meaning "Dark & Gritty") clones everywhere ? Will this even become a new sub-genre ?
Well, EA marketing team has taken a fresh take on Mass-Effects 2 too. This new shit seems to overflow in the marketing department. Hopefully they'll get a plumber there soon.
 
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Same here. It's been a curious case of getting increasingly cynical about it, and then suddenly there's someone actually playing it and describing what it's like, and it sounds all right again. (For a very specific, BioWare-ish definition of "all right.")

I like dark and gritty, but from the looks of it, DA is about as dark and gritty as Plan 9 From Outer Space.
 
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It hasn't affected me since I ignore any marketing. I decided I would get this game like a year ago (when it was supposed to ship for the PC *grumble*), and since I hate any kind of spoilers, I don't watch videos or anything else.
 
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