Question 3: Marketing

How do video game producers market their products to audiences?

Refer to Minecraft to support your answer.

Task 1 - Read the example response and then:

• Use the markscheme to give it a grade /15
• Decide what (if anything) you think was particularly good.
• Decide what could be done to improve it.

 

Introduction

Video gaming is a young industry and many of its marketing strategies are reminiscent of the older and more established practises of the film industry. However, its comparative youth brings novelty. As a result, the video gaming industry, more than any other, has capitalised on the innovation made available by new technologies.

Mainstream marketing techniques

High budget games often employ similar marketing strategies to high budget films. Print advertising (posters and magazines), T.V. and Film teasers/trailers, publicity stunts, etc. are all employed to generate anticipation for the release of a new game. However, the nature of consumption in gaming is quite different to film, and so fans of a game may choose to purchase a game on pre-release. This is obviously financially beneficial to the revenue stream of games retailers and so it may be encouraged by offering in-game extras to advanced customers. Over the last ten years, as games retail has shifted away from stores and more into the realm of online purchasing, this process has become more prevalent.

Video game companies also engage in covert promotional tactics. Deliberate leaks of information about the game, often distributed via online gaming forums or platforms like Twitter.com, are used to encourage a sense of connection between fans and the game. While some film marketing may employ similar tactics (The Matrix quite famously employed just such techniques) it is clear to see why this strategy has more resounding success for the gaming industry; advertisers can be 100% sure that their intended audience engage with technology/Internet etc.  A good example of these covert promotional tactics was the marketing campaign for Grand Theft Auto 5, which even created accounts on twitter that came from the fictional world inside the game. The same campaign also invited fans to the New York launch of the game as a way to generate increased interest on gaming forums. This process is analogous to 'word of mouth' marketing and has the same effect of creating a sense of authentic interest. While this is a particularly effective tool for games within a franchise (i.e. those with an existing fanbase) it may be less effective for 'one off' or new games.

Independent games are less able to capitalise on traditional (and costly) advertising methods, and so they will likely move directly toward 'word of mouth' style marketing strategies, engaging with gamers via online messaging boards etc. Minecraft is arguably the best example of this working successfully. Markus Persson (Notch) - the creator of Minecraft - was a well-known and well respected member of the gaming community and had some reason to believe his game would be popular. The first edition of Minecraft was released in May 2009 on TIGSource, a forum for independent game developers. Increased download speeds and the use of open source code meant that Notch was able to engage in several rounds of beta testing, making steady improvements and developments to the game, all the while engaging a growing audience who became more excited for a final release and more likely to encourage other gaming enthusiasts to purchase the game.

Prosumers

In addition to game development, the democratision of distribution across media platforms like YouTube.com and in more recent years Twitch.com has lead to a secondary industry growing in tandem with the gaming industry. These platforms allow gamers to make revenue by reviewing games, offering tutorials, or simply showing online gameplay. For example, video producer ‘Dream’ has 6 million subscribers on Twitch and 30 million YouTube subscribers. Their content is exclusively focused on Minecraft gameplay. It is easy to see how gaming companies might choose to target such content producers as a source of marketing as they provide a clear link to target audiences in a way that traditional advertising does not. So, Youtube.com will offer advertising space at the start of videos by gaming channels, which reflect the audience for these channels. It is likely that gaming companies will pay a premium in order to selectively use these channels for advertising. It is even more likely that they will enter into direct sponsorship agreements with these channels. Again, it is clear to see that companies with large revenue streams, selling big budget games are more likely to use such marketing strategies; however, gamers tend to be more independently minded, so pre-release/beta versions of games may be sent direct to these prosumers, who may respond even more favourably when playing/reviewing independent video games than mainstream games.

 Co-promotional marketing

While film audiences may well see a film more than once, or indeed purchase a film for repeated viewing, the nature of the experience is not expected to be something that customers will return to on a regular basis. Not so with gaming, where it is clear to see how the psychographics of gameplay (especially competition/community) encourage this repeated use and how improvements in technology (especially in the broadening of Internet bandwidth) have lead to the growth of interactive online play. This then opens up a very different potential revenue stream for video games producers and retailers. It also opens up the potential for an interesting range co-promotional marketing strategies. For example, in April 2020, hip-hop artist Travis Scott collaborated with Fortnite to offer players an in-game concert played out at pre-advertised time slots. Users could find concert posters on walls within the game or social media. Over 27.7 million users logged in for the in-game event. Millions more streamed the event live on YouTube and Twitch or watched the round-up events afterwards. Those who attended the virtual concert could unlock Travis Scott skins and add-ons they would use to get real-life merchandise designed to complement Fortnite-tie ins and new music launches.

 Minecraft's audience is both huge and very well established. The sandbox nature of the game also lends itself to a very unusual co-promotional relationship between owners (Microsoft), players and prosumers. Minecraft Marketplace sells a range of game-enhancing features, including skin packs, texture packs, mash-up packs, mini-games, survival spawns, and adventure maps. The service is available on any device running the bedrock version of Minecraft. Features are purchased with Minecraft coins which are available from the game store and kept in a secure virtual wallet. While exact figures are difficult to source, Microsoft claims creators receive over 50% of each sale. The company collects the remainder, with around 30% attributed to app store processing fees. Again, while figures are difficult to source, the revenue from the marketplace runs into the hundreds of millions every year. Here then we might have a very unusual take on marketing as we could argue that the game has become the marketing tool, for the expansion packs. In essence, the game is the advert.

 This is even more obviously true of the other major revenue streams that Minecraft generates. While the bedrock version of the game has deliberately avoided a subscription model, Minecraft does offer Minecraft Realms in the Java edition, where players can pay to play with up to 10 of their friends, family, or colleagues at the same time. Minecraft shop also sells a variety of branded merchandise for children and adults, including everything from bedding, to Lego sets. Spin-off games are also available, including Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Earth, and Minecraft: Story Mode. As with Minecraft Marketplace, we could make a strong argument that the game itself is the advertisement.

 

Task 2 - Rewrite the introduction to better reflect the content of the essay.

Task 3 - Write another paragraph to make the response more thorough.