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"Now you've got the internet. Nobody is looking at ads anymore."
Image credit: Larian Studios, Baldur's Gate 3
According to Larian Studios Publishing Director Michael Douse, marketing is no longer the primary channel for promoting games. In a recent PC Gamer roundtable interview, he stated that consumer attitudes have shifted over the past years, and no one cares about the ads now.
"Marketing is dead," he shared with PC Gamer. "Marketing is dead. It truly is – I can back this sh*t up, man. There are no channels anymore – it doesn't work. You used to have marketing, communication, and PR. Marketing was essentially a retail theory – you were trying to get your box on the right point of the store shelf, and you have partnerships with retail stores. Those pipelines are gone.
Now you've got the internet. Nobody is looking at ads anymore … all of the channels that we would usually market through are no longer really viable. So their function is also reduced by the fact that players just want to be spoken to. They don't want to be bamboozled – they just want to know what you're making and why you're making it and who it's for."
The game developers who participated in a discussion agreed with Douse on that, acknowledging the decreasing significance of marketing, influenced by the overall public sentiment towards advertising.
"Millennials always hated it, and now we have the tools to avoid it," continued Douse. "The best place to market your game is on the store itself. Everything else isn't worth it. We learned that with BG3 – it took us a while."
It is true when we speak about marketing, we could all agree on that. Who enjoys seeing how multiple products are being pushed on us through advertising? So, the industry veterans collectively recognized the necessity of honest and transparent approaches that consumers appreciate, foreseeing their importance in 2024.
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