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Marketing As Part of Game Development
Gamasutra has a piece looking at Incorporating Marketing into Game Development, how business demands can shape games. From the article: "As a game designer, it's easy to forget about improving the experience for the target market in favor of making a 'better' game for yourself. Small developers like Reflexive usually don't have this luxury, and in countless ways, the increased focus on the consumer streamlines the game design process. This focus can scale to larger teams as well: we argue that every element of commercial game design should be prefaced with the phrase 'With Respect to the Target Market.'"
Better marketing does not make a better game.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I cannot argue with this mentality from a business perspective, but there will be reprocussions. You cannot expect to be taken seriously as an artform if your precursor all design decisions with "In regard to the target market."
I like how the article makes a point of distinguishing between well-reviewed games that make money and well-reviewed games that lose money.
It's pretty comprehensive. Because as we all know, no game ever gets anything less than a 7/10 from critics.
Except for Daikatana.
An article about how the engineers should listen to the marketing department more. This one's going to go over GREAT on slashdot.
Wow. The game should target the people it's made for. Fucking genious.
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
Of course a game can be good only on marketing alone. I mean take a look at halo! ~dives and takes cover~ ^_^
This talks about video game design as if it was just a means of making money.
What about the game itself???
The way I see it, marketing has its place, but video games used to be works of art. This new "revenue-optimizing" approach has killed the artistic side of VG design. When the driving force behind the design of a game isn't entertainment, expression, or innovation what are you creating? A "product" with no direction other than its "target's" wallet.
The music industry is killing creativity in popular music, the movie industry is killing innovation in movies, and now the VG industry is removing the art in VG design.
If it wasn't for the underground/independent scene in video games now, I wouldn't bother playing new titles.
I just pooped your party.
"we argue that every element of commercial game design should be prefaced with the phrase 'With Respect to the Target Market.'" YES! This is exactly how great art has always been made.
Marketing is a very strange beast to deal with as far as game development go. In many cases, the budget to market the game is much greater then the budget to develop the game.
Marketing can make sure that the people who would actually like the game manage to buy it. It cannot make a crappy game better, but it can make an average game profitable.
The problem, as I see it, is when the Marketing for a game forces the game to be released at an arbitrary date. The TV and Magazine spots must be purchased well in advance, and the hype machine needs time to spin up. Games ship with bugs because the marketing requires that the game launch on time. Once the marketing campaign starts, in many cases, the game must ship. Especially if the marketing is more expensive then the development of the game.
In a perfect world, the game would be finished, or at least finished enough that its a very stable late beta. But that basically only happens for companies that can get away with saying the game will ship 'when its done'.
The only company I have known to delay a game after the advertising geared up was Nintendo, and that was for Twilight Princess. In every other case, the publisher will either ship and patch, or they will go into "game design with an axe" mode, and just ship a piece of crap that satisfies the "Technical Requirement Checklist" or Lot check tests.
And if a game is low profile enough that it does not warrant a big marketing campaign, they may just axe the title if they dont think they can turn enough of a profit to justifiy marketing the game.
Marketing is important, but not so important that it should dictate the development schedule.
END COMMUNICATION
There is a big problem here. Yes, if you market something no one wants, they won't buy it. But marketing to what you THINK people want is just as costly and stagnates innovation.
No marketing department decided that people WANTED to roll shit up (Katamari Damacy). No, you have to experiment, refine, make things FUN, and THEN let Marketing figure out how to sell it.
Develope only what the loudest idiots say they want and you'll end up with a Homer Simspsons-mobile. Lots of focus-group BS that just don't work together in the end.