Over the years, video game developers have had their own individual struggles selling their products. Here are some of the more famous attempts, and what each one did right, or terribly wrong.
The first and most recent campaign is for the Nintendo fighting game, Super Smash Brothers 4. The developers promoted the game by announcing each new fighter, one at a time. This kept interest high over a year and a half, with Nintendo followers anticipating each new announcement and talking about it afterwards, spreading Nintendo’s advertisement even further. The ad mostly caters to the Experiencers VALS category, by displaying what is new and different in this game from the predecessor, Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Below is the trailer for the character, Mewtwo.
The second campaign is one of the most infamous video game advertisements in history: Daikatana. Daikatana was a game produced by esteemed developer John Romero, who had created some of the first first-person shooter games. He had let this go to his head, and lived a rock-star style life, complete with Ferrari drag racing (seriously). His newest game, Daikatana had already been delayed once and was far behind schedule when this magazine ad surfaced. Please see below. Supposedly targeting Strivers - who may have enjoyed the challenging game the ad was describing - the taunt did not resonate well with anyone, and after the game’s release, it was labelled one of the worst games of all time, and no doubt this ad only worsened review scores.
The third ad is the famed, “Your Mother Hates Dead Space 2” campaign from Electronic Arts. The ad panders towards the Experiencers, who may enjoy the off-beat and edgy tone. The ad basically sat down conservative mothers in front of footage of the game Dead Space 2, and recorded their disgust and anger at the game. This ad received mixed response; many feel it made the whole medium look worse (something which video games aren’t in a position to gamble off of), while others believed it was a humorous jest. Below is the ad which aired on TV.
The final ad may be one of the most successful campaigns in all of advertisement history: R.O.B. the robot, by Nintendo. This ad would seem to target Experiencers, especially with the “Playing With Power” tagline commonly seen alongside R.O.B.. The advertisements themselves were nothing remarkable- just a kid playing with his toys- but you have to learn the backstory to love this campaign. Back in 1983, many video games released were sloppy, frustrating to play, and overall a waste of time and money. After Atari’s E.T. game released, many people gave up on the medium as a whole, and the video game industry went from 3.2 billion dollars in 1983 to only 100 million dollars in 1985. At this point, video game consoles in North America were nearly unsellable, but Nintendo had an idea. They released their Nintendo Entertainment System, not in the electronics aisle, but in the toy aisle. The reason for this, was R.O.B.. R.O.B. was a toy robot that came packaged with the NES, along with two games that used R.O.B. as a controller. This said to parents, “Oh, this isn’t a console! This is just device to run the toy robot…. that also happens to play video games.” It worked, and when Nintendo released the NES to North America in 1985, it sold extremely well. Were it not for this campaign, it is likely the entire medium would have failed, and its cultural influence would have been lost.
In conclusion, each ad worked or didn’t work for their own reasons. Each targeted a different generation in different eras. The Smash 4 ad worked because it knew what people wanted; the new fighters. Because Smash Bros has such a large following, a simple concept became wildly popular, especially with the added support of fans from the series the characters originated from. Daikatana failed for obvious reasons; the developers (mostly John Romero) didn’t respect the consumers, both through the ad and through the repeated delays in the game’s release. Dead Space 2 used shock value to get people’s attention, albeit with a huge blow to company reputation. And the R.O.B. ad targeted a different audience, as the traditional audience did not trust the industry anymore. The takeaway point here is that ads are diverse, dependent on their social environment, and hard to pin to one underlying format.
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