We’ve talked about how marketers use video games to market their products. In today’s blog, however, we will discuss how video games utilize marketing to birth successful campaigns as a result.
According to PR Newswrite, the video gaming industry is expected to be worth more than $250 billion by 2025. Without a question, the global gaming market is expanding. Although this is a good sign for all gaming companies, countless studios do not reach their target demographic because of inadequate advertising campaigns. The fact of the matter is that competitive pressure is at an all-time peak, and you must go above and beyond to get the word out about your video game.
What Does The Industry Currently Look Like?
According to Statista, globally, active gamers are expected to increase from 2 billion to over 3 billion by 2024. The Tech Jury states that 70% among these players are over the age of 18. The popularity of video games is particularly high in the United States and China. 60% of Americans engage in video games on a daily basis, with women accounting for 45% of all US gamers. Finance Online goes on to add that Japan, Korea, and Germany are the world’s third and fifth largest gaming markets, after the United States and China.
With these statistics, the exponential growth of the industry with 1/4th of the world’s population behind it can be attributed to the way these products are marketed and presented to newer players and enthusiasts.
Most Recent Successful Marketing Campaigns
Elden Ring
Outcome of the partnering between Japanese RPG-maker FromSoftware and the Game Of Thrones creator George R. R. Martin, Elden Ring is a popular game of the year. It is a mysterious fantasy role-playing game that was released in February 2022.
Originally, the developers just provided one announcement teaser, that additionally lacked actual gameplay. This is a somewhat unusual practice, as most game studios release at least two trailers. The subsequent trailers came after a long wait. The stall, nevertheless, imbued excitement in the audience, culminating in Elden Ring having won the Most Anticipated Game title at the 2020 Game Awards.
Elden Ring’s founder, FromSoftware, is renowned for possessing a natural talent for telling profound storylines. At the start of each trailer, they have been using their impactful storytelling technique to establish curiosity. Each trailer augmented on happenings in the final game and even brought considerable spoilers, but with no context — a superb strategy!
The video game’s publishing house, Bandai Namco, projected the sale of at least 4 million copies before April. However, 13.4 million copies were sold by the end of March 2022. Elden Ring quickly became one of the best-selling games in multiple regions, as well as the fastest-selling Bandai Namco title of all time!
Elden Ring piqued the interest of the target population, and the developers never claimed that the game was “the best one you’ll ever play,” instead emphasizing the reviews from various critics. The rest was down to the public helping spread the word and making marketing simple. Most significantly, the debut trailer grabbed the audience’s interest and made them excitedly anticipate the game’s release.
Wordle
Wordle is yet another well-known game that offers numerous marketing lessons! It has a larger audience on social media networks like Facebook and Twitter, where users frequently share their daily successes.
Among the marketing lessons to take away from this is the importance of simplification. The simple interface and simple rules make the gaming experience enjoyable and reduce frustration. Users do not even need to log in to play, and they can only play once per day. This demonstrates an important marketing lesson: simple advertisements are easily understood. Because the audience has limited time to decode your innovative messages, success depends in trying to keep your messaging clear.
Furthermore, Wordle teaches all marketers how to fully comprehend their consumers and develop games specifically for them. Wordle has a specialized player chunk — people who are housebound looking for a hobby. Wordle’s creator, Josh Wardle, created the game for his logophile partner.
Intriguingly, Josh didn’t even try to satisfy everyone with his simple game — here goes another crucial marketing lesson! While constructing your ads, guarantee they target to draw your relevant audiences, not everyone. This will create your product more noticeable and noteworthy to your core demographic.
The Quarry
The Quarry is a horror film with multiple references to iconic horror films. The game’s narrative focuses around nine summer camp counselors who discover themselves trying to fight bloodthirsty creatures.
The Quarry was made available on June 10, 2022, which accumulated over 12.5 million hours viewed during its initial week of launch, and became the 5th most-watched category on Twitch from June 10 and 16. It left behind some of the most popular franchises, like Minecraft and Fortnite. The Quarry’s prominence was largely due to the captivating live streams of prominent online personalities.
Today, streaming is an increasingly popular advertising strategy, providing audiences with a genuine first-hand experience of the way the game looks, sounds, and performs. Furthermore, these live streams are carried out on well-known websites like YouTube and Twitch, that are readily available. Furthermore, these platforms help all viewers to interact with the streamers and ask questions.
The appropriate influencers are vital for effective live streaming and game marketing. The Quarry received a lot of attention and downloads thanks to its collaboration with CohhCarnage, a well-known gaming influencer and streamer. CohhCarnage’s The Quarry stream lasted 64.8k hours and attracted the interest of 21.6k viewers. CohhCarnage plays and reviews a wide range of games and engages his audience well. As a result, he was the ideal candidate for The Quarry.
PUBG
BLACKPINK is a well-known Korean girl group with international acclaim. The girl group teamed up with the world-renowned, battle royale video game PUBG. The collaboration resulted with what the world refers to as a “metaverse moment.” BLACKPINK has released a computer-generated music video for their new song, Ready For Love. The song takes place in a customized version of PUBG Mobile and features several PUBG images. Even the members of BLACKPINK have an abstracted avatar form. Within the initial 8 hours of its release, their new song received an astounding 8 million views. The video has received over 124 million views on YouTube to date.
PUBG Mobile also hosted its first-ever in-game live performance in July, featuring BLACKPINK. BLACKPINK members’ 3D character variants (Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé, and Lisa) performed at an in-game PUBG live show named “BLACKPINK x PUBG Mobile 2022. In-Game Concert: The Virtual.”
This partnership was a huge success because both parties capitalized on each other’s celebrity and reached out to newer audiences. The collaboration was beneficial to both parties.
Conclusion
Now you know what some of these bigwig gaming brands did to create compelling game marketing campaigns. To not utilize a medium that has 3 billion people hooked in would be sacrilege in our current time of digitization.
Marketers are trained to go niche, but marketing in the gaming industry involves everyone. By crafting a more inclusive, welcoming brand identity, you will attract more attention, and foster greater trust with people.
