Marketing vs. gamers - do you see more clearly now?

In recent years, it has saddened me to see so many RPG fans swallow the marketing bullshit that bigger development studios and publishers spew. I'm talking about the kind of gamers who write "We will never see a game like [insert beloved RPG] again!", and "modern gamers expect X and Y, it's too expensive make an RPG with X and Y, [insert recent console focused action-RPG] is the best we can get now"

I hope recent events and more insight into how the industry works by developers like Swen Vincke has caused some of you to question these perceptions. I'll list some of them below:

Marketing fabricated myth:"Time has moved on, [insert genre] is out-dated"
Example of marketing bullshit
Starbreeze regarding FPS Syndicate. “I don’t want people to stop playing the old games, but time has moved on.”
Reality:
Shortly after, Paradox Interactive announces "The Cartel" - spiritual successor to Syndicate. A large number of other PC strategy games are in development. In other news, Syndicate posts abysmal first month sales.
Potential reason for statement
Generate controversy and media coverage, feed into the idea that FPS games are an "evolution" that everybody wants.

Marketing fabricated myth: Turn-based is dead
Example of marketing bullshit
2K regarding FPS XCOM: "Strategy games are not contemporary"
Reality
Shortly after, 2K announces Firaxis is working on turn-based XCOM
"promises to maintain the isometric point of view, ruthless difficulty, and strategy gameplay elements that players hold so dear"
Potential reason for statement
Same as for Syndicate

Marketing fabricated myth: It's not profitable to make a PC-only game
Example of marketing bullshit
PC gamers are all pirates, the market is too small for modern game budgets etc. Basically any statement on PC gaming made by big publishers or console-focused developers.
Reality
Steam grows by 200% per year, PC-focused publishers like Paradox Interactive post record year-over-year increases in profits while EA posts losses in the order of hundreds of millions and "AAA" developers are forced to shut down or lay off people when their ultra-expensive games fail to meet multi-million sales targets.
Potential reason for statement
Avoid clarifying that they are only interested in business opportunities that maximize short-term potential profits for shareholders.

Marketing fabricated myth: The rising costs of production
Example of marketing bullshit
It's to expensive to make a game like X nowadays, gamers demand cutting edge 3D graphics and full voice acting.
Reality
Games are being made at a variety of budget levels and there's no indication lower budget games are stigmatized by gamers.
Potential reason for statement
Simply stating that it's much easier to market a visually spectacular game to non-gamers/casual gamers would generate negative publicity among core gamers.

Example of marketing bullshit
BioWare: "Gamers demand full voice acting and cinematics nowadays, we have to appeal to a larger market blabla"
Reality:
Wasteland 2 backers overwhelmingly support additional content and deeper writing over voice acting and cinematics.
Overhaul Games doesn't think full voice acting is necessary for BG remakes : "We're going to stay with the Baldur's Gate model of only voicing some of the content. We feel it allows for more in-depth writing."
Potential reason for statement
Same as above.

What do you think? Do you still believe the future holds only "streamlined and accessible" games focused on the mass market and everything else is outdated/won't be accepted by "modern" gamers? Or is that just what their marketing departments wants you to believe?

Hm, well, I believe some of your points are right, but I don't believe in some others.

"Turn-based is dead" is imho fabricated, because the business people trulöy believe in it. I firmly blieve that hey themselves believe so !

In theory, it coul be that they belive so because they were presented the wrong data, or did the wrong interpretations of this data (Dragon Age fiasco, LucasArts withdrawing from the Adventure Games market completely, because somone has told them that *pooof!* there don't exist any european Adventure games players anymore !).

I don't believe that this "full voice acting" stuff is fabricated, though. There actually were quite a number of people who thought that the non-full voice acting in Drakensang 1 was a bug !

What I rather believe that the industry has trained its gamers (especially the younger gaming genrations) into "there must be full voice acting or else it is bs".
Same goes for the game magazine editors, who - in my opinion - act from perspective of luxury from ... I think that the fact that they get everything delivered means that their luxury standards should apply to EVERYONE - minus x points in their reviews if their imho too high standards aren't met.

And the gaming hardware industry tells gamers that games like Terraria without HD monitors look like crappy bs, to put it cynically.

So, all in all, yes, I agree to some points, but not to all. Especially I don't agree that "fabricated" statements (aks "facts") aregenerated for evoking media interest. If 2K had said "this is dead", but not much later would develop a game of that "dead genre", then this would be right to say that such a fabricated tatement was developed in order to generate media interest.
But I don't blieve so hen the "dead genre game" is developed by a DIFFERENT company.

To me, in this case, it is rather a company deciding not to sell chocolate ice cream anymore, explicitely stating that "chocolate ice cream is dead" - and another, smaller company seeing this gap and delivering chocolate ice cream to everyon who wants it !

There's always people complaining about something regarding any game. If people thought it was a bug it I'm guessing there was something inconsistent or jarring about its implementation. The closest comparable game released prior to Drakensang was NWN2 and I've never heard anyone thinking the lack of full voice acting in that title or its expansions was a bug.

There's no evidence that RPG fans interested in niche titles demand full voice acting. If anything, Drakensang would prove otherwise since it was a commercial success.

I could be wrong but I think most people are graphic whores. So since so much has been put into graphics in the past 5-10 years, gamers come to expect it now. If you tried to take a step back graphically and put more content and options into games, most gamers would likely be turned off by just the look of the game.

I'm looking forward to Wasteland 2 but only like 20k-30k people have put money down so far. It's generated a lot of buzz and interest but look at their forums. They are populated by a bunch of dumb people who want gay romances and houses and marriage. Some are even asking for real time combat even though the kickstarter said turn based combat. I think these people would fire up Wasteland 2 for a couple hours and get bored of the turn based combat, be upset there were no romance options, and no houses to buy and never play it again. They'd call the game shit that sucked and had bad graphics. And they are the majority.

I think marketing has a way of telling people what to like. Getting them hyped up for crap and then no one says it sucks or notices that it is too crappy because they're too impressed by the visuals or something. I don't get it.

I think you make some excellent points, Sisko.

However, I think it's simply easier to market a visually spectacular game, full stop.

Regardless of whether the genre is RPG or FPS, hybrid or what have you, striking visuals sell games, not only to "non-gamers / casual gamers," but to everyone. You can't really make a POS display showcasing RPG elements.

Even for an indie game released only via digital download, the more striking the key art and the trailer, the better its chances for success.

A well done post and your correct on every point. I hate anything and anyone who works for marketing and the practices they use. Its just the usual bait and switch with words and promises.

I think Kickstarter and fan-based funding initiative likes such could be one of the real punches in the face to the Industry. This could show that gamers funding game can allow companies to take so-called "dead" genres and revive them - i.e. turn-based combat RPG's; isometric RPG's w/ more emphasis on writing and story-telling instead of voice-acting; adventure games; etc etc. As long as the most old school, hardcore and niche gamers support these kind of things, the better off we'll be - since we'll have more variety on the market.

I really don't think old-school style RPG games are dead - Basilisk and Spiderweb are just 2 Indie companies that I can think of that seem to keep cranking out those old-school style of RPG's.

As long as there's too much of the same-same types of games and style on the market - and we all know how well a lot of the big time dev's and publishers aim for this - you just know there's going to be some Indie's that'll aim for other genres and sub-genres.

Problem with full voice-acting is that it likely will cost a lot of $$ - especially in a RPG. Even more so true, if you hire some big names. Since it's costly, the other problem is w/ full-fledged voice-acting, often some of the same actors will voice multiple characters — that can be possibly immersion-breaking, if they ain't good at doing multiple different voice-types and making it hard to recognize who they are. This is why games like the original NWN and PS:T, they succeeded b/c they had unique voice-actors doing only [what the game dev's felt] were the really major important parts of the game.

There's numerous reasons why Syndicate FPS failed like it did. First off , Syndicate FPS failed is probably b/c of brand confusion - series was originally a different genre, so you could be aggravating the original fan-base here. Secondly, the critics didn't think so highly of the game's SP campaign, but loved the MP [which doesn't have a lot of meat to it]. Having not-so-spectacular reviews won't help sell a game at that $50-60 price-tag. Thirdly, Deus Ex: Human Revolution came out last year and was freaking great - did anybody really think Syndicate FPS to be on DE:HR's level?

While some trends in gaming bother me, I don't see all of the ones you listed as bad on their own. It's when one of those trends comes at the expense of another important game element that it becomes a problem. Personally, I don't see why a game can't have great writing...and have it matched with great voice acting. Cinematics...well, it really depends on the game you're playing, but it can be a valuable way to deliver a strong story. I can't say those things bother me, as long as the game itself is highly interactive and nonlinear when you are helming the controls (even nonlinear, story-based games have their place).

It seems to me that there is room out there for a wide variety of games, including the often over-looked isometric, tactical, turn-based types of games. I think Wasteland 2 is showing that. I hope they do well with it.

A number of these reflect the dichotomy between AAA projects and 'B' games - Paradox, for example, is a very different beast to EA. It's about time hardcore gamers stopped worrying about what mainstream developers do and say.

rossrjensen said:

While some trends in gaming bother me, I don't see all of the ones you listed as bad on their own. It's when one of those trends comes at the expense of another important game element that it becomes a problem. Personally, I don't see why a game can't have great writing…and have it matched with great voice acting. Cinematics…well, it really depends on the game you're playing, but it can be a valuable way to deliver a strong story. I can't say those things bother me, as long as the game itself is highly interactive and nonlinear when you are helming the controls (even nonlinear, story-based games have their place).

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Of course there's nothing inherently bad with cinematics and voice acting! It's just that those things cost a lot of money (usually more money than all other production costs combined), and are therefore only possible in games that are easy to market to a large audience.

Of course, developers like Bioware don't outright state that they are only interested in making such games, but will instead say things like "The rising costs of production has forced us to appeal to a wider audience so we're 'streamlining'' down any gameplay/writing/reactivity that confuse and alienate the non-hardcore gamers".

I've seen a lot of gamers who don't realize that it's still viable for other developers to make games with lower production costs that don't have to make these compromises, simple because they buy into this "rising cost of production" argument.

Dhruin said:

A number of these reflect the dichotomy between AAA projects and 'B' games - Paradox, for example, is a very different beast to EA. It's about time hardcore gamers stopped worrying about what mainstream developers do and say.

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Exactly, but many gamers have followed along with the transition their favorite developers made to "AAA". They don't necessarily recognize that the reason that Bioware isn't making hardcore(ish) PC RPG's is because they are interested in a totally different market. Instead they might assume that it's the "evolution of RPGs" and that no one is interested in a partybased game with tactical combat.

Personally, I like marketing - if it is tthoughtfully applied and for a good cause.

I hate it, on the other hand, and find it especially unethical, to use "mind tricks" onto people to make them buying things.

Which means that I'm rather positive towards "old school marketing", so to say.

Not this psychological mumbo-jumbo. Psych is only for those, imho, who are too lazy to carry out a well-crafted "old school" marketing campaign. Lazyness, to cut it short.

Regarding ethics I strongly believe that it is necessary that marketing returns to its original roots again : To inform.
Inform people, and nothing but inform.
And not playing some tricks or so (which implies the image of humanity that "humans are not doing the right choice; hence they must tricked into it". Bah !

People are still possissing a thing called a "Free Will". And they will choose according to their set of experience and information.

I just find it unethical to think that people should buy things a company wants them to. Which is the direct opposite of the "Free Will" concept, imho.

I'm not sure full voice acting is a marketing hype. But there're more than a few gamers who wants their games fully voiced. But my personal opinion about the subject is full voice acting is a plague upon role playing games. Last example for this is the Skyrim. Lots of role playing options in the dialogues are simply missing. This game has 450.000 words of dialogue, if it's not fully voiced more complex and longer dialogue choices can be possible. For ex, you see a criminal walking in the streets but can't inform the authorities. There're lots of potential that simply lost in the game. You see the attention Bethesda showed to the books in the game and you want that for the dialogues as well. I think full voice acting is the real culprit there.

Gokyabgu said:

I'm not sure full voice acting is a marketing hype. But there're more than a few gamers who wants their games fully voiced. But my personal opinion about the subject is full voice acting is a plague upon role playing games.

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You're being much too radical. The voice acting was one of my favourite things about the Gothic series. Also, in Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines they were simply amazing.

All I'm trying to say voice acting is much more expensive than other development costs. Cost/Efficiency rate is much lower than other aspects of the game. And developers and publishers are trying to lower the costs by cutting other more important aspects of the game. Of course I love good voice acting, but it has more harm to the game than its benefit.

I'm working in a firm that making game localizations. I'm a project leader and I have a team consist of 4 people. Sometimes we're working months to translate a game (for ex, Witcher 2), but a voice actor earn much more money from a project than my team's total payment. If the actor is somewhat famous, the payment doubles, triples, even more... Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining of my payment or such, I just want to draw a general picture of the industry.

Larian Studios Swen Vincke has a good article about this. I recommend everyone to read it:

http://www.lar.net/2011/12/19/the-cost-of-dialogue/

@ Gokyabgu

Something I've always wondered, at least for larger dev studios that employ ~50-100 people, do they not in source some of the voice acting amongst the devs or their family members/friends? Or is it always (expensive)professional voice actors?

I do agree though, that VA can be a hindrance as, in addition to added costs, it limits potential dialogue and localization efforts… Admittedly, I do like VA for the most important NPCs in a game.

Cinematics are far less important to me than actual gameplay… A few cutscenes is one thing, but games like the ME1-3 where there are over 60 minutes worth of cutscenes is too much(IMO). If I want to watch a movie I'll plop on the sofa or head to the theater…

@ MasterKromm

Yes, it can be. But the result will be much more amateurish and in the end it can't inspire right emotions at the player and sometimes stands as out of place and funny. Voice acting is a job which must be done by professionals. Voice acting of games is still a new concept and the prices are determined according to the voice acting of commercials, movies and TV series. Average game has more VO than other media, and in the case of RPGs much much more than any game. Result is a big chunk at the game's budget.

As living in a country where not all games are localized we also have a voluntary community and web site dedicated to translating games. We had some VO attempts in the past, but all of them are game trailers and result was not good since VOs were done by amateurs. Recently we found some talented stage actors who like to play games and want to do VO voluntarily. But finding these people is much much difficult.