Cliffy Blogs On Gears

hal · Sep 21, 2005

CliffyB is back from the 2005 Tokyo Game Show where he was showing off Epic's upcoming Xbox 360 title, Gears of War, and he has updated his 1Up blog with his fond memories of the Japanese scene and pontification on game marketing.

One of the journalists asked me the proverbial "How many weapons in the game" my feelings about most game marketing started uncontrollably bubbling to the surface. I wound up going on in a stream-of-consciousness mental dump about how game marketing is so very strange to me. I mean, when they market films do they say "Coming soon: Citizen Kane 2: Rosebud's Revenge: The Wrath of Kane, now featuring 10 actors, 13 sets, and 8 writers!"?

No, they don't. The proverbial movie marketing quote is "You'll laugh! You'll cry! You'll cheer!" And, in my opinion, we need to apply that mentality to game marketing.

Anyways, while Marcus and Dom were tearing shit up by blindfiring, grenading, and mantling over cover I had to wonder - in Japan, will "Gears of War" will be translated as "Super Macho Moleman Wrestler"?

Finally, Cliff hooks us up with a link (clicky-san) to a rather well crafted fan-made Gears of War comic.

PigBear · Sep 22, 2005

I mean, when they market films do they say "Coming soon: Citizen Kane 2: Rosebud's Revenge: The Wrath of Kane, now featuring 10 actors, 13 sets, and 8 writers!"?

LOL! Take that gamejournalists!

edhe · Sep 22, 2005

Game consumers are a lot more geeky than general film consumers though, and tend to appreciate further details and are cynical of film marketing.

*shrug*.

Jackal · Sep 22, 2005

edhe said:
Game consumers are a lot more geeky than general film consumers though, and tend to appreciate further details and are cynical of film marketing.

*shrug*.

I agree with you here. There are so many film critics that it makes SS2 look like childsplay. And game critics just get paid to say what the company wants them to say, anymore these days anyways.

KDR_11k · Sep 22, 2005

There's so many film critics because you don't have to be able to dodge a flak shell to be one.

Bang_Doll · Sep 22, 2005

You don't have to dodge anything to be a game critic, though.

But anyways, I don't think he's true. I mean, game commercials don't always advertise like that. Well, sometimes they do. But I see it more as, there's always somebody asking those questions. The advertisers don't go out of their way to say "with ten actors", but people ask questions like "how many weapons do you have?" 'cuz they're excited about the game and just wanna know as much about it as possible. Sure someone interested in an upcoming film won't ask how many actors are, but they're sure going to find out by searching for the cast list. et. al.

Basically I don't think that is how the video game advertising mentality really is. Well, maybe a little bit, as people above mentioned the average video game consumer is cynical of film marketing, (which is why we should steer clear of that type of advertising -.-) but they're much closer together than I think you might think.

In fact, I think they've become much more parallel as the years go on, as the video game industry becomes more and more Hollywood-ized. (blech)

JaFO · Sep 23, 2005

They may not advertise like that literally, but the gameart and all of the hype certainly is geared towards "X guns, Y levels, Z polygons". There are very few games that advertise with the story/background. We've been pretty much brainwashed into believing that higher numbers make 'better' games.

Also reviews often berate developers if they don't use 'enough' guns, despite the fact that most guns will be pretty crap in design.

IMHO the game-business ought to be mature enough to understand that less is more on every level of the final product.

I've never seen anyone worry about the number of guns or scenes used in movies or any other form of entertainment. At best they're interested in the motivations of the characters, the actors, director, etc.. You don't see anyone asking similar questions about games.

Perhaps game-developers should answer those kinds of number questions with one word : 'enough'

hal · Sep 23, 2005

I don't think you can compare movies to games. One is a passive experience, while the other is interactive. When I watch an action movie I don't care how many guns the people onscreen are using. I just want whatever they are doing with them to be entertaining.

If anything - this line of thought is the fault of the developer and the technology. People have been conditioned to believe that fun comes through the number of objects/weapons/levels with which you can interact... because that's how games are being designed now. This type of entertainment is still new, relatively speaking, and the constantly improving technology brings with it a responsibility on the part of the developer to find better ways to hold the attention of the user.

Bang_Doll · Sep 23, 2005

Heh. I don't know if I can agree with you guys there. Consumers haven't been conditioned for crap - it's the developers who have. Every game that has that high-poly cotton candy, twenty billion guns, thing -- they're the ones that sell. I couldn't count on a calculator how many truly good games have been released in the past five years, that take back seats to ****tier games, because people buy them. All because as the industry has grown, a wider audience full of people with the attention spans of gnats, have thrown their wallets into the arena. Developers have stopped making truly good games because it's so much easier (and probably even less risky) to make a bad game with cotton-candy marketing appeal, because they just sell.

hal · Sep 23, 2005

Graphics != sales. There's no dispute there.

Certainly the developer is going to cater to what they believe will sell and therefore the consumer does take some blame in that regards, but it is also a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts: crap gets made, crap sells, crap gets made, crap sells. Truly innovative games are what is needed to take this industry to the next level - to appeal to a broader audience: immersive, easy to understand, easy to get into, and satisfying to play.

Right now things are at a crossroad. Everyone wants to hit the big bucks and therefore caters to what they believe is the mass-audience. Unfortunately, the pie is not quite big enough and mainstream enough for many developers to make a buck by selling quality games to a niche audience.

But that's not really what I was getting at. In order to achieve the mass-acceptance of passive entertainment like movies ( a medium of which Cliffy was comparing its marketing to game marketing ), developers of hardware and software are going to have to find ways to entice those who are not normally interested in interactive entertainment.

Right now they seem stuck in a "numbers" game. They believe that they will appeal to more people by having "bigger assets" than the other guy - more levels, more guns, more physics, blah, blah. When in reality, that may be true for the (relatively) small market to which they cater. I'm just saying that they need to find a way to reach beyond that mentality if the industry is going to keep growing.

Sir_Brizz · Sep 23, 2005

Let's not downplay the need for movie-like games, though. There are two issues here:

1) The video game industry NEEDS some games that play out like movies. No, not all games should follow this formula, but there has been a severe lack of games that play out like good movies, leaving people who like EXTREMELY good linear paths in the dark ages. Take a game like Halo for example. What ABOUT the story? Halo is more like the "straight up action flick". But where is our Equilibrium? The industry needs games like this because it offers an extension that movie watching doesn't, and loads of people enjoy "playing through movies".

2) Video games give us an extraordinary opportunity to tell NON linear path stories, another thing which we still see little to none of. It seems like making choices in games 10 years ago was more important than it has become today. Even the old Sierra/LucasArts adventure games didn't make you do EVERYTHING that you could do in the game to beat it. That is more choice than most games today give you. This is ruining variety. How can we expect to see "innovation" and "variety" without choice?

One argument people make is that issue 2 has already been resolved with MMO style of play. I disagree, MMO is completely the opposite of the point of variety through choice. For example, I can get on any MMO and play around in it and get nowhere because I don't do any of the quests. However, the only satisfaction I get from completing the missions is that I got more experience. The "story" doesn't lead anywhere except perhaps the next mission.

I'm a firm believer that people don't like making up their own stories as much as they like following someone else's. The advantage to adding choice is to allow people to see how making choices in YOUR story effects the outcome. One thing I think would make a huge influence on gaming is if the first time you played through the game it was linear path, and then any subsequent times you were given several choices throughout the game. What this would do is allow the story writer to tell the story they want it told, and then for "replayability" give the players an opportunity to effect the story.

hal · Sep 23, 2005

I agree.

Bang_Doll · Sep 23, 2005

hal said:
Hal-post.

Yeah, I guess I see where you're coming from.

But do you really want the video game industry to turn out like the movie industry? I think it was fine a decade ago, like Brizz says. Those games weren't marketed like movies.

Oh and Brizz - SCUMM >>>> all. :lol:

And largely agree with your post - though I still do not like to make tangents between the movie industry as it is today, and the video game industry in any way shape or form. It just kinda scares me.

Meh, I don't even know what I'm arguing any more. I'm just rambling... as usual.

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