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.'"

Comments

Hmmmm...

[Sugar Moose]

An article about how the engineers should listen to the marketing department more. This one's going to go over GREAT on slashdot.

Re:Hmmmm...

[Lord_Dweomer]

Unfortunately, its the truth. As is the reverse. What happens typically is that both sides ignore the other because they think they always know best, and what happens is an utter lack of communication that results in promises to customers that can't be kept, thus, a disappointing product.

Re:Hmmmm...

[helfire57]

Sorry, but this is a common error: you are confusing Advertising and Marketing. Marketing is full life cycle and includes advertising the finished product to the potential end users. In this case, Marketing also contains focus groups (of all sorts), research into the desired market segment, AND brainstorming what should be developed.

Good marketing is done rarely because it is so difficult to determine what the market will want prior to the product being determined.

Re:Umm... No.

[SSpade]

Actually, yes, better marketing can make a better game.

An important part of marketing is understanding your audience and applying that information to the product to, well, make sure that it's a product that people will buy.

There are several obvious ways to do this, of course. One is to make a game that offers the, well, the experience the targeted users want. In other words, to make a good game. For some markets another approach is to base the game on an already well-known character / universe / whatever.

That the latter is marketing driven game development with a crap result doesn't mean the the former isn't marketing driven game development creating a good game.

Re:A step away from art

[Slow Smurf]

You're fooling yourself however if you don't think they knew, or at least think they knew, what their target market was and aimed for that at every step. It doesn't mean "rip off competitors" or "rip off previous ideas" it means figure out who you expect to play your game(boys, girls, small kids or adults, etc) and cater to THEM. For example, you wouldn't make an adults only Mickey Mouse game. I mean, that's an extreme examble, but everyone knows that would be a bad plan...

*note I'm aware mario bros, pac man, and tetris might have had no thought to such things given.

Re:Umm... No.

[Lord_Dweomer]

" Better marketing does not make a better game."

Why am I not surprised that this got modded up by Slashbots. Of COURSE better marketing makes a better game.

You see, marketing is NOT just responsible for letting consumers know about your product...they are also responsible for conducting research to let the designers know what their target audience wants. This is crucial for any game on the market today.

Now what the parent probably meant was...MORE marketing does not make a better game. And that may certainly (although not always) be the case. And I'm going out on a limb and assuming that when they use the term "marketing" they really mean advertising.

I really wish people thought things through before they modded.

Re:Umm... No.

[Trister Keane]

Because we all know that a "better game" and "a game that people will buy" are the same thing. It's well known that "Deer Hunter" is one of the best games ever made.