TL;DR: Some studio apparently spent $660 million to make a game and then several hundred million more to market it and spent north of a billion dollars. That shit ain't sustainable and now everything is on fire.
I still do not understanding how marketing budgets on games get that big anymore.
Sure it made sense when every AAA game needed TV commercials and a billion physical displays in every different game store in the world, but that's basically over. Those cardboards and window stickers add up bit by bit.
But now, marketing is literally making a trailer you put on your own Youtube channel and then tweet about it. The only major cost is how many influencers and game journos you pay to directly shill for you, which is still a fraction of an investment compared to the physical costs of old.
The marketing is paying a streamer 100k to play their game for a couple of hours, hoping that some people will buy it, and continue the word of mouth marketing.
Problem is that this only works when your game is good or has a very specific niche.
Streamers are absolutely RAKING it in and the advertisement agencies have no way of measuring the effectiveness.
Every streamer and their mother had a paid sponsorship for xDefiant when it came out and now the game is shutting down. What is 200k eyes on your game when it looks like shit?
We are in the era of the informed consumer gamer where most people will seek out actual real gameplay footage, or watch their brand of trusted youtuber reviews. You can't just make flashy trailers and post ads everywhere because people have become immune to that shit, or simply just use an adblocker. There have been so many games the past 5 years I had NO IDEA about because I just never saw the marketing for it.
Even then, paying 10 huge name streamers 100k is still only a million, while these companies are reaching hundreds of millions for their marketing. And I know most streamers do not cost anywhere near 100k. The Markiplier and Jacksectieye types might, but the rest is a small 4 figure sum and a free copy of the game.
That's my question is how are they reaching the sheer cost of some of these budgets, because they clearly aren't paying tens of millions to each streamer.
...even then, they play as many if not more indy games than AAA (markiplier in particular goes out of his way to play indy games to support smaller devs), so people have a cornucopia of options to compare it to.
...and while I'm not crazy about certain trends in Indie Gaming (low-poly horror for example), I know there's always something out there worth playing that sparks my interest...
You've also got to account for the fact that old games still get market share. One major advantage monolithic studios had back in the day(particularly on consoles) was that eventually, your sega genesis would die, and you'd have to buy their new game on a new console, or else watch for the nostaliga-boner inducing assraming of a collection to come out on the current gen console.
Nowadays, your old favorites are only a click away in an emulation scene that's been working overtime to keep those games alive for the better part of two decades.
...Besides, I'll usually play one game most of the time anyway, then switch to another title. (working on Oxygen not included right now. having a blast)
TL;DR: Some studio apparently spent $660 million to make a game and then several hundred million more to market it and spent north of a billion dollars. That shit ain't sustainable and now everything is on fire.
I still do not understanding how marketing budgets on games get that big anymore.
Sure it made sense when every AAA game needed TV commercials and a billion physical displays in every different game store in the world, but that's basically over. Those cardboards and window stickers add up bit by bit.
But now, marketing is literally making a trailer you put on your own Youtube channel and then tweet about it. The only major cost is how many influencers and game journos you pay to directly shill for you, which is still a fraction of an investment compared to the physical costs of old.
The marketing is paying a streamer 100k to play their game for a couple of hours, hoping that some people will buy it, and continue the word of mouth marketing.
Problem is that this only works when your game is good or has a very specific niche.
Streamers are absolutely RAKING it in and the advertisement agencies have no way of measuring the effectiveness.
Every streamer and their mother had a paid sponsorship for xDefiant when it came out and now the game is shutting down. What is 200k eyes on your game when it looks like shit?
We are in the era of the informed consumer gamer where most people will seek out actual real gameplay footage, or watch their brand of trusted youtuber reviews. You can't just make flashy trailers and post ads everywhere because people have become immune to that shit, or simply just use an adblocker. There have been so many games the past 5 years I had NO IDEA about because I just never saw the marketing for it.
Even then, paying 10 huge name streamers 100k is still only a million, while these companies are reaching hundreds of millions for their marketing. And I know most streamers do not cost anywhere near 100k. The Markiplier and Jacksectieye types might, but the rest is a small 4 figure sum and a free copy of the game.
That's my question is how are they reaching the sheer cost of some of these budgets, because they clearly aren't paying tens of millions to each streamer.
...even then, they play as many if not more indy games than AAA (markiplier in particular goes out of his way to play indy games to support smaller devs), so people have a cornucopia of options to compare it to.
...and while I'm not crazy about certain trends in Indie Gaming (low-poly horror for example), I know there's always something out there worth playing that sparks my interest...
You've also got to account for the fact that old games still get market share. One major advantage monolithic studios had back in the day(particularly on consoles) was that eventually, your sega genesis would die, and you'd have to buy their new game on a new console, or else watch for the nostaliga-boner inducing assraming of a collection to come out on the current gen console.
Nowadays, your old favorites are only a click away in an emulation scene that's been working overtime to keep those games alive for the better part of two decades.
...Besides, I'll usually play one game most of the time anyway, then switch to another title. (working on Oxygen not included right now. having a blast)
Got to be money laundering.
What game? That’s insanity.
Good summary, but it's not just one studio on one game. It's basically all of the AAA developers doing that.