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Mc-Cart-Before-The-Horsey-ism
By Corvus | May 23, 2006
I have, time and time again, bashed advergames and ads-in-games in my Marketing witchhunt. Please take a moment to note that I chose to capitalize the word ‘Marketing’ in the previous sentence.
Chris, of Only a Game (link), has, time and time again, told me that I’m being a bit harsh. He has pointed out the turn based strategy game, LEGO Spybotics (link), as an example of an advergame done right. Once, in reaction to an particularly vitriolic spew of Marketing Hate, he politely suggested that I figure out what I planned on doing when it came time to market my games. I just have to take a moment to thank Chris for challenging me when he sees me heading out to left field. Thanks, Chris.
Right then. Let me toss out some more pieces that led to this post.
First off, there’s Chris’ well reasoned post, On Branding (link).
There’s my love of the LEGO Star Wars game (link) and my intention of purchasing LEGO Star Wars 2: The Original Trilogy (link), not to mention my call for a LEGO Batman game (have you seen the new LEGO Batman sets? (link)).
There’s the fact that Microsoft has purchased Massive, a move which is shown in the best possible light in the official Microsoft press release (link). I will tell you that if I can expect to have advertisements in every Microsoft product I use, it will be a serious barrier to my purchase of any Microsoft products. I have already eschewed their operating systems and I won’t even name their latest console on the blog (at least until I should break down and buy one so that I can play Fable 2 which will be dependant upon all aspects of Fable 2 being ad-free, from the console’s loading screen to the final credits of the game*).
There’s also the fact that I wasn’t bothered by the appearance of actual motorcycle and SUV products in Tomb Raider Legend (link), but was bothered by the appearance of a soft drink brand in Munch’s Odyssey.
There’s the continuous stream of quality marketing advice from GameProducer.net (link), including their recent Gamasutra feature, The Basic Marketing Plan for Indie Games (link).
All right… on to the point.
If there’s a product to be sold, a service to be explained, and payroll to be met, marketing is a necessary component of every company. The amazing amount of research that has been done on the topic of marketing, and its ready availability in the form of books, seminars, magazines and web sites mean that even small, independent companies can afford to pay attention to their marketing strategies to increase the chances of success. A company that avoids marketing cannot survive, just as a job seeker who makes no effort to market themself will probably remain unemployed.
In fact, Man Bytes Blog, while a useful tool for brainstorming design ideas, complaining about industry trends, enabling communication about storytelling and design terminology, and social networking is, in essence, a marketing tool. The decision to post my philosophies and views, while a cathartic one, is also a reasoned decision aimed at promoting the Honeycomb Engine and our games.
So why all the hate? Let me be clear and state that I’m not bashing on marketing, but on Marketing. The difference? One of priority.
I fear that more and more studios will believe the Evil Aempire’s message that the marketing cart must be placed before the design horse. I see it in all of their titles, even the ones I somewhat enjoy playing. For example, I’m currently playing a rented copy of The Godfather. It’s not a bad game. But it’s not a great game. In fact, we’ve seen this game before. It was called Mafia, not to mention Grand Theft Auto… There is nothing original or inspired in this game. It’s not a terrible playing experience, but it’s not terribly deep or satisfying. I’m certainly glad I didn’t drop fifty bucks on it.
And that’s a positive example of Cart-Before-The-Horse-ism, bland, re-hashed gameplay stapled to a movie IP. It gets much worse, you know it does. From numerous cartoon based games with terrible controls and insipid linear plots, to movie tie-ins with… well, much the same problems. When a game is created because Marketing demands it, and when design is done to Marketing specifications, it brings down the entire industry by lowering the quality median.
If I may get strictly metaphoric for a moment – placing the marketing cart before the design horse is the wrong approach. But that doesn’t mean there should be no cart at all. A strong, able bodied horse can easily pull a cart, even a large and ornate one. It’s simply a matter of ensuring that your horse is capable of pulling the cart hitched to it. Otherwise, you end up with an overwrought cart hitched before a sway backed nag. What sort of ride will you be taking your audience on then? Not a very enjoyable one.
So breed your horses well, game designers. Feed them only the the best kernels of ideas and exercise them daily. Frequently check their medical condition and show them off to the other breeders and horse lovers so they can comment on your horses’ merits. Then, when it’s time to reveal your horse to the public, only hitch them to a cart they can successfully pull.
*That’s easy for me to say now. At some point I may get tired of my idealism interfering with my ability to play games.
Tagged:Carnival, Industry, Social. | 12 Comments »
May 23rd, 2006 at 3:58 pm
Glad to help! Nice to see you grasping the nettle on this one.
You seem to be settling into a position whereby you accept the necessities of marketing, but want to resist when it seems marketing is more important than game design. But in *corporate* game development, alas, marketing will always be more important than game design, because marketing sells units and game design simply doesn’t. This is a general problem with capitalism, specifically with the very notion of a corporation – and it is a problem either our generation or that of our offspring will have to tackle. I can feel this battle gathering.
I’m very keen to explore whether we can collectively create a separate market (on a smaller scale) where game design is more important than both marketing and production values. I’m uncertain if its possible, but on paper, at least, it seems like it might be. If anyone can succeed in this area, perhaps a rising tide will lift all ships. I wonder if Digital Eel make a comfortable living?
Best wishes!
May 24th, 2006 at 12:49 am
You know… I had a post relating to this. And I just realized that I managed to post it to my personal blog, instead of my Game blog. I fixed it.
http://ghostsinthegame.blogspot.com/2006/05/1-at-marketing.html
Basically… you need to start reading Seth Godin’s stuff. I just recently found his blog, but so far he’s managed to say a lot of things that make sense. Sometimes he is still very much a Marketer, but he has a better view of how you can sell things by trying to be different, instead of trying to be on top all the time. It is a very fresh way of marketing, and something that indie developers need to know in order to prevail against corporate market-think.
May 24th, 2006 at 2:19 am
Godin has made a real splash. His blog is read by 4,460 people, which makes it one of the top blogs in the world. The content varies. Occasionally, it is a source of gems. More commonly, it is a source of well crafted fluff. I don’t mean that as a criticism!
The core of Godin’s marketing philosophy is quite simple, though: marketing is storytelling; tell a story worth hearing. He believes marketing is about finding a *true* story worth telling (that lying is a false economy), and also that a good product or service is its own story.
He is the surest proof that there are good people working in every field – even marketing!
May 24th, 2006 at 6:31 am
I’ll have to dig, but I think I referenced an article by Mr. Godin some time back when I discussed the importance of knowing your corporate story.
His message seems very much in synch with my perspective, that marketing ought to work for the product, not the other way around… not to mention stressing that when it comes down to it, story is what’s important!
May 25th, 2006 at 1:25 am
Read this post following the carnival submission. I’m going to include it. I’m also going to state here that I disagree on a number of points. First off, it sounds a little like you understand “marketing” about as well as many marketing folk understand programming (and you know how they sound when they try to talk tech, right?).
First off Marketing != advertising; and you seem to jump off the rails of one and onto the other, mid-post. I think it’s unfair to criticize either without recognizing that they each serve a role in the ecosystem, and that just like game design, programming and art, are valueable when done well, and painfully annoying when done wrong.
On marketing: It’s a two way street. It’s not just the “getting a product in front of it’s potential market”, but also the “recognizing the market has a need/desire for a certain product and trying to get the product team to recognize that”. Anytime a tester has told a programmer (or vice versa) “this level may be fine for you, but it may be too hard for the novice user”, they just did a little dab of marketing. (and you can’t scrub it off, no matter how hard you try).
On advertising, keep in mind that people like you and I are willing to trade off time, money, and quality of experience depending on our position in life, our tastes, etc. The eco-system should allow for a spectrum of different business models, and ad-supported or ad-supplemented media is one of them.
The reason you can buy a newspaper for next to nothing is because there are ads in it. Does it bother you? Yes. Would you rather pay 5x the price for the newspaper? Probably not.
The reason the majority of people watch ‘free’ television is that it’s ad-supported. The number of people paying for premium adless (or ad-less) channels is small.
And in gaming – particularly in casual gaming – there is an enormous audience who prefers to play games that cost nothing. And they are willing to view ads in order to do so.
My 2c.
May 25th, 2006 at 3:14 am
Kim:
This post was a big breakthrough for Corvus! Give him some credit for at least sheathing the big sword before talking about marketing this time.
Although there’s certainly room for debate, I would contend that your example re: novice users and a hard level is an example of game design, not marketing. Yes, it’s true, in other industries marketing provides feedback intended to guide a product to better serve its customers, but in game development it is game designers (and their relatives, usability testers) who take care of the audience.
Let me state, for the record, that in decades of game development, the marketing department of none of the dozens of publishers I have worked with have ever advocated making a change to game content on the grounds of audience needs. Never.
(They have, however, insisted we remove an inter-racial relationship from a game on the grounds that Walmart would not stock the game otherwise.)
The quality of marketing in the videogames industry is, in my personal opinion, poor. (It is perhaps better in certain corners, such as Casual games; I am uncertain). I consistently look for people inside the games industry with strong marketing skills, and I am consistently disappointed. One of the chief problems is this piece of game marketing logic: “our previous games have sold solely to males aged 18-30 therefore all our future games must be made to be sold to males aged 18-30″. Shocking.
Of course, you could rightly counter that this reflects a shifting of some of the traditional roles of marketing to game design inside the games industry. This might serve to explain why ‘advertising’ and ‘marketing’ seem synonymous to so many observers of the industry.
One therefore has a choice as to whether to apply the term marketing in its larger expression to games, despite the differences (as you have done) or to use the term marketing in the context of games to reflect what marketing actually does in the games industry (as Corvus has done). Both these approaches are valid to some extent! But they are also incompatible. As ever, language is a slippery fish.
Damn, I didn’t intend to bend your ear for this long. Sorry for my incessant verbosity!
Take care!
May 25th, 2006 at 7:38 am
Kim: I’m glad you’re going to include this post in the Carnival. Historically, the CoG has not been moderated in any fashion, but is an inclusive, non-themed event open to all.
Please keep in mind that my opinions regarding everything are mine. I do not expect anyone else to adhere to them, as long as their disagreement in no way infringes on my ability to express myself. Further, I respect and welcome contrary opinions. Without them, I stagnate.
I do realize that marketing and advertising are two separate things, despite my lumping the two together in this post. However, I feel that placing advertising in games is a Marketing decision. I feel that my vow to never include advertising in my games is also a marketing decision. Please note my use (and non-use) of capitalization.
To put this in perspective for you: I do not read newspapers. I feel that big business owned newspapers, by and large, are too focused on keeping ad revenue up and not interested enough in reporting the news which might show their sponsors in a bad light. Instead, I collect my news from NPR and various web sites.
I do not watch “free” television… or paid television either for that matter. If there is a show which interests me, I wait for it to appear on DVD. If a show has too much product placement, I stop watching it. My favorite film director is Jim Jarmusch. I aim to own everything he has done on DVD. His latest film, Broken Flowers, contained enough product placement that I will not pay retail for it and I may not buy it at all.
I will play games from web sites that have ads on them. I will not play games which force me to watch ads within the structure of the game itself, not even for a free game. There are plenty of cost free/ad free games I can spend my time on. I will not purchase a game which forces me to view advertisements. Nor am I 100% comfortable playing paid games which heavily feature product placement.
I recognize that I approach this topic from a very extreme point of view. But when I hear anecdotal evidence that expression of a personal or artistic nature was squashed due to “market factors” like racial intolerance… I see red.
P.S. eco·sys·tem, Function: noun – the complex of a community of organisms and its environment functioning as an ecological unit
ecol·o·gy, Function: noun – 1 : a branch of science concerned with the interrelationship of organisms and their environments
2 : the totality or pattern of relations between organisms and their environment
I consider Storytelling and Games to be crucial to the development of culture and society. In fact, I hold Storytelling to be as great a calling as any spiritual path one may take. But to use ecosystem to refer to the industry of game design is to ascribe attributes to it which do not exist. That is not healthy Storytelling and it is exactly the sort of language abuse I lay on the doorstep of Marketing.
May 26th, 2006 at 2:28 pm
Chris: (a) I agree that much of the marketing in the games industry is piss-poor. For that matter, so is much of the game design and a good part of the programming!
(b) your walmart example: I agree with you, but just to play devil’s advocate, there’s an argument to be made that Walmart perhaps has such restrictions because it understands it’s customer better than you do, and thus this was an exercise in savvy marketing (just an arguement – I don’t beleive it in this case either)
Corvus: I have no problem with your ‘extreme position’ on not being subject to ads. YOu are willing to pay a premium for it (e.g. buy shows on DVD vs watching ad-support ones), and that’s fine too. My point was just that consumers should have a choice. That’s all. Is that so wrong? As an example, there are applications out there (I think some of hte music players like winamp maybe? Xfire or Gamespy?) that are ‘free’ but run ads, and offer the customer the chance to purchase the app, and then ads disappear. I think this kind of choice is a good thing.
As for the product placement thing, I agree, it needs to be done well (your tomb raider example). Games that do it poorly will, over time, be panned for doing so. It’ll all work out in the end.
K
May 26th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
p.s. regarding the carnival and your comment:
>Historically, the CoG has not been moderated in any fashion, but is an inclusive, non-themed event open to all
Well, not sure what the others have done. I agree with non-themed (other than games related), but I do think there’s a quality filter that should be applied. SOme of the submissions are just really poor, and worse, some of them are just promotional links to games (perhaps an attempt at *shudder* guerilla marketing!)
I participate in a few other carnivals as well, and the main idea behind most of them seems to be a place to aggregate the best posts from around the blogosphere (I know of at least one that has a hard limit – best 7 posts – that’s it). I think the host has a duty to be a noise filter at least.
May 26th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
Choice==good, it’s true. Further analysis of that statement and the concept of choice as it applies to marketing are beyond the scope of this particular piece of the dicussion. *kniw*
While historically there has been none applied to this carnival, I’m not adverse to a quality filter, as long as it’s clear to everyone who submits and the quality filter never becomes (and I’m not meaning to say you would do this) a doctrine filter.
Thanks again, Kim, for providing feedback and reasoned argument!
June 1st, 2006 at 4:42 pm
ow, my head hurts. i’ve read way too many carnival submissions in one day and it’s killing me. i’m sorry i just couldnl’t get through your post corvus. to be honest i don’t know the first thing about pretty much anything. just a regular girl that loves to game. that said i have to say that as a regular gamer i have no problem with marketing in video games. i actually get a kick out of it and think it’s a great way for smaller companies to get some really great sponsors to back their games. if only we as a consumer could actually benefit in some way… like cheaper games. hint hint… is anyone listening?
June 1st, 2006 at 5:42 pm
Maharet, thanks for making an attempt at reading and leaving a comment! I tend to take the Carnivals slowly and read the posts I missed the first time around in bite sized chunks, so I can relate to your feeling of information overload.
If I felt that the majority of smaller developmet companies were benefiting from the influence of ad-supported games, I’d be all for it. As it is, it’s mostly the large publishers and the marketing firms who are benefiting, while the smaller developers just get the joy of working long hours to crank out games they don’t care too much about (I know that I’m worst case scenario-ing here).
As far as the presence of ads bringing down the cost of games? Not going to happen. After all, not only does it cost even more money to developer fresh ways to get product placement in front of us, there are also all those board members and stock holders who demand a return on their investment.