Does Game Marketing Work on You?

Hey duders, coming out of E3 and seeing some discussion about it on these boards, I've begun thinking a bit more about game marketing, and how it's can be unique compared to other forms of marketing, especially film/TV. While both love to use trailers, more often than not movies/tv leverage their trailers to show why you should see their content. They show things like tone, notable actors/actresses, set pieces and some concept what genre or genres they are attempting to nail.

But games are rarely just a single genre. And using a trailer to try to showcase what you do in a game is not entirely easy, especially when you consider that games can be 50+ hours in length. This leads to a situation more often than not where marketing for games tend to be all about the concept. Selling the player, on the concept of playing this game. E3 is this on overload. Everything from trailer music that isn't featured in game, to presenters attempting to set a tone for the trailer by giving archaic/tone setting speeches pre and post trailers.

In this way games marketing is somewhat unique. Sure you may get some set up or the "conceptually pitch" in a TV/Movie trailer, but your guaranteed to get in a game trailer. Hell your guaranteed to get it from any dev anywhere trying to sell a product. Even in games with less story/characters or that don't use CGI trailers you still see an initial concept, then pitched in some way to the consumer.

The other thing that makes games unique in this space is that the quality of a games pitch/concept almost has nothing to do with the quality of the game. Yet, despite that, not only does this type of marketing often make a lot of the difference, if the game fails to deliver on it's vague pitch? It could have extra hype to do the success of it's pitch. See No Mans Sky and countless other games pitched/conceived well, but executed lacking in some way.

My question for you all is, does games marketing work on you? Has there ever been a trailer, or a games pitch that just instantly sold you? I know in the old days for me things like Dead Space and Assassins Creed always did the trick. But has the "pitch" for a games concept, where it's set, and what they say you may do (even though gameplay isn't entirely shown or featured) ever been enough for you at face value?

Partially. There are a few games like Cyberpunk 2077 where I'm pretty interested in because I watched some trailers and I like it's aesthetic and most of what CD Projekt RED has done with The Witcher over the years. But for the most part since Cyberpunk is more of an exception, I care about games more when I see it being talked about by my favorite journalists, YouTube personalities and such; like them talking about what exactly the game is, what genres, what exactly I'll be doing in the game, and I also need to see some gameplay, of for there to be a playable demo or beta if possible. So most of my hype happens towards a game's release as opposed to developers and publishers showing trailers months if not years beforehand.

Marketing works on people. There's a reason so much money is spent on it. People think they can 'outsmart' it, but at best you can be aware of to which extent it works on you and try to be rational about it.

Yup that Cyberpunk trailer sold me on that thing.

@onemanarmyy: I don't always agree with this sentiment. Apple has, historically speaking, spent substantially less money on marketing than its major competitors. Part of the advertising industry is dependent upon data of sales, yes, the other part is dependent upon marketing execs needing to justify their existence. If you have a good product, marketing serves to make people aware of it. I'm not convinced anything beyond that; that is, making a bad game look good, or maintaining a certain level of 'hype' in the lead-up to release is a reliable tactic. If it does work though, you're going to suffer for it later.

Nobody is impressed by Days Gone no matter how many times they put it in front of us, but a couple of Last of Us 2 trailers and everyone is salivating. It's not because one studio is better at lying than the other, it's because it is clearly a quality product on display. All they need to do is make sure we know it exists, and it'll do just fine.

I mean it certainly works to grab attention but it's usually people outside of the marketers that actually sell me things.

It absolutely does, but I also deliberately let it affect me, which is probably true for everyone who visits this website (although they might not realize it). There's a very big difference between watching a random TV show and being exposed to some random frozen pizza commercial and deliberately going to a website to stay updated on all the new different frozen pizzas that are coming out and reading reviews and discussing with other people what they think about frozen pizza. It's very rare that any sort of marketing catches my attention in any way unless I'm already actively seeking it out.

As for specific examples I think the most memorable was the Paul Barnett Warhammer Online pitch.

The more marketing, the more tired I am of the game. It’s a hailstorm of pre-order bonuses and buzzwords for whatever the fuck publisher execs think we want to hear. There is nothing that turns me off like someone trying to build video game hype. The hype is never real.

@purpleoddity: I think you make a valid point, but at some point your focusing in on a knowledgeable consumer versus one who isn't. At the end of the day, as seen with Cyberpunk and countless other games, people have sweet spots that just happens to be the skin or concept that they just like out of the gate.

I think it's less about making a "bad" game look good, and more about some devs not worrying about gameplay. Big budget games are doing this more and more. How many gameplay systems or mechanics are just tacked on from other popular games? Hell I'd argue a lot of Ubisofts approach is come up with a cool concept/reason to develop a game, and then just throw a mix of their own open world ideas and the industries ideas into the jar and call it a game. Would Assassins Creed as a franchise have any staying power if it was just Jim Bob running around in random american city doing generic things? Even if gameplay was better, I'd argue conceptually people simply aren't as interested in that.

A lot of the franchises in games that tend to have staying power are generally all built on initial marketing concepts. You'll notice that games with good concepts are more often than not given more chances to iterate to. Is that just because the industry thinks those concepts deserve the chance, or do sales factor in as well? Because again, a lot of games that do offer that straight up, cool title/setting/reason to create a video game, will sell to people who don't follow the industry just from walking in the store and ready the synposis or seeing the initial concept pitched.

It's kind of the odd thing about games, while gameplay is obviously exceptionally important. The litany of games franchises that have survived actual bad rated/bad playing games to be able to iterate and make better things is huge. AAA games are littered with these things. Most of the 1's in all our popular franchises were badly reviewed when they came out. But sold. At some point I think it' silly to assume marketing and the "pitch concept" by the Publishers/Devs has no part in that.

Marketing works on everyone to some extent. That's said, the particular type of marketing that happens at E3, when people are on stage trying to sell me this game, runs the risk of being particularly cringe-worthy to me. There's also the standard marketing tropes that we can all see from a mile away. To take an example of something that helped sell me on a game I wasn't thrilled about last year, but ALSO that ended in a laughably predictable way that had me shaking my head: Anthem. I like exosuits and power armor, it clearly has the mechanics of game with stats and the like (the abilities and combos look cool!). I could see myself playing this with some friends. But as soon as they shut down that signal or whatever it was and then the voice on the radio is like, "Oh no! There's something else! Go investigate it!" I just knew it was gonna end with a reveal of a big monster that leaps at the players, then cut to a title screen. I was not disappointed. Or more accurately...I was.

But hey, whatever, I loved that Bethesda conference with Todd Howard, even if there are parts of Fallout 76 that I don't like, like the idea of constantly having to rebuild a base that keeps getting nuked.

I tend to be apathetic to most marketing in general, but given that I find most games marketing stuff to be extra cringy, I do my best to ignore it all. I don't really watch trailers and don't tend to watch E3 stuff. But I've also never been the type to preorder games, get limited editions, or even buy most games on day one.

I don't come across marketing materials much, partly because I don't watch any broadcast TV with ad breaks and use AdBlock. The most exposure I have to trailers and what not are at E3 or GamesCom.

Okay, you know what marketing I absolutely hate? The shit they show before movies. The advertisements telling you to get a Coke and a popcorn. Who is this even for? What person walks into a movie theater, sits down, sees this ad and then decides to go get a snack?! People get their snacks BEFORE they find their seats. The other thing is those Cinemark XD ads. They go through this whole spiel about what Cinemark XD theaters have in terms of projectors and sound systems. I don't care. AT ALL. Also, I'M ALREADY HERE. You don't have to sell me on your crazy movie theater tech. You already have my money.

Sorry for the rant, this topic reminded my of that. I know I have an irrationally strong reaction to that.

@bladeofcreationHaha, all good. Honestly I've seen this marketing work on friends. But it's usually never targeted at "hey did you know Coke exists?" and it's more people are iffy on if they want snacks due to the prices. We sit down, movie is taking a while to start pre-trailers etc, they see a commercial for something and it sells them one way or the other on getting snacks before the movie. The "oh that does look good I want that actually" approach if you will.

@hellbrendy I'm not disagreeing regarding marketing with buzz words and pre order bonuses. But I think a lot of people assume "marketing" doesn't work on them when in reality it does. Just because the type of marketing that works on some isn't "pre order to get exclusive garbage" doesn't mean it doesn't work. We like to tell ourselves we care more about the "final product than anything" but that isn't even remotely true. Even amongst game journalists, hell even on this site.

I'll throw a few examples for you. Consider Watch Dogs. Let's presume your the type of person who follows some games coverage. If you happened to see the initial trailer reveal and the game industries reaction to that Watch Dog reveal, you'd presume it could be a good game. How many people bought Watch Dogs just because of that initial hype? And what was that hype? It wasn't marketing or buzz words or pre order reveals. It was literally just a trailer showcasing a hacking open world concept. Again, the CONCEPT of what we do in a game sells us far more than the game does. Even those in the industry are exceptionally susceptible to this.

Another example for you. Mass Effect is...mechanically and gameplay wise, a worse game than Mass Effect Andromeda. I don't think that is even subjective opinion, even those that hated ME: A conceded that the studio really nailed down encounter designs and abilities and the good jump back. Again, mechanically. But the concept was tired. They didn't come up with any good reason to bring us back into that franchise, that universe, and ultimately waste the potential of good gameplay on something that nobody was conceptually on board with. ME however had more warts than one could throw a stick at, and it ended up being the starting point for that franchise, and without us forgiving it's warts and being on board with the concept, there would be no ME2.

Industry is loaded with these examples. Unless it's an arcadey type game, or something where the concept hinges on the gameplay needing to be good, we constantly get caught up in game concepts more than we do quality games. It's why indies struggle to sell and AAA can pump stuff out. Most of the games industry doesn't care about pre order bonuses, and I don't think we should kid ourselves to think that is the only manipulation going on. Game devs realize that they really only need to sell the audience in a pitch meeting for a cool game idea. Provided they do that with any levels good exposure? The game is likely to find an audience.

No marketing works on me, an artificial scripted speech with nothing but praise for any product puts me off immediately, that goes for games too. I don't care about promises or concepts, show me what the gameplay loop is, show me what i'm going to be doing for 10+ hours.
The only piece of marketing i can think of which got me to buy the product was a picture of a chocolate bar on the wall of a dart competition on TV, it was in Germany and i live in the UK so i had to import it but it was the best chocolate bar i've ever had.

Amen.

I'm sorry, I just like how you reference Dead Space as the "old days"

I mean. Yes. Marketing exposes me to games I would have blissfully been unaware of and not bought. But as far as selling me something I wouldn't like or isn't interested in? Not really. I've played such a wide variety of games for such a long time in such big quantities that I know exactly what tickles me personally and can laser through marketing bullshit to find it. I don't really regret buying something because of marketing. I just buy more than I can play because of marketing. Not the worst problem to have tbh, I always have something I'm interested in at the tip of my fingers, and economically it's been a non-issue.

I think I've become too suspicions and jaded to be sold on a game outright by a trailer or a sales pitch. But yes, marketing exposes me to games I wouldn't otherwise know about.

It really hasn’t played what feels like a large role in a long time. I used to get very excited by marketing materials when I was a kid. I remember looking at ads in gaming magazines or later letting postage-stamp QuickTime videos load FOREVER, and getting giddy about what was coming.

These days, I watch E3 because it’s weird and bombastic... just a few conferences, though.

The closest marketing works on me is if the VERY initial pitch sounds interesting, I’ll try to keep it in mind for whenever I hear that the game is out. After that, I don’t see it. I don’t read gaming magazines, even casually glance at ads, watch any media with commercials, I skip movie trailers...I just don’t care about it.

Hellblade was one such game. “That sounds cool. Maybe I’ll play it.” I bought a copy this spring and it was cool.

That cyberpunk taxi driver game is the same way. Hopefully it turns out well and I have a chance to check it out.

I guess it’s marketing that gets this stuff in front of me, but it’s very low-level, often word of mouth stuff x

Usually, it’s either that initial elevator pitch or a series or developer track-record that gets me to keep something in mind for whenever it launches.

the marketing certainly works in as much as building awareness- i often am aware of games before the games media speaks directly to them.

but beyond that- there's so many layers of analysis and opinion between my credit card and the game that i don't feel the marketing department has a direct relationship with me. my purchasing decision doesn't happen until i've heard from 'trusted' sources (friends who own it, critics, etc.), so i suppose the marketing dept. gets me halfway there, but any direct-to-consumer 'calls to action' fall entirely flat with me. ha, it would be pretty funny to have a trailer end with 'CLICK TO LISTEN TO YOUR FAVORITE CRITIC OPINE ON GAMEPLAY' as opposed to 'PREORDER TODAY.'

That is 90% of what they're trying to achieve though. Marketing is not the art of selling stuff to people who aren't interested, it's the art of finding and reaching the ones that are. Ofc they're gonna throw some salesmanship into there as well, but that's not the primary focus. When you watch the newest Battlefield trailer it's not meant to try to sell the game to you, like say how a car salesman will try to talk up a car and negotiate a deal, it's just making sure that the 2% of the people watching it who wanted to buy a new Battlefield game know it's coming out.

As I said before, many people probably don't realize it but you're literally on a website that's part of the marketing machine. Yes, it's an independent arm, but most of the point of the site is still to bring people and games together and it's getting support from developers and publishers to do so. The person that sent GB a review copy of God of War was (most likely) a Sony marketing employee doing their job.

Yes it works on me, and I find it hilarious that people declare "it doesn't work on me". It does. Perhaps the most top level stuff doesn't, but to some degree, it does. It's okay. Our brains are just wired that way.

@ares42 is really nailing it in this thread IMO, so I won't reiterate his points. But still, we visit a site that front faces E3 trailers and their reactions to them. That's marketing. Naturally we have aspects of journalistic integrity, but no matter how impartial anyone is, end of the day, critics are selling the stuff that they critique as well (and marketers know this).

correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't it PR that's typically talking to editorial, and not marketing? i see you point about GB being a piece of the puzzle (if you believe all information good or bad is marketing), but if you follow outlets that purport to take discretion seriously in sourcing their games and opinions, there's usually a line that (hopefully) isn't crossed. jeff kinda has some history with that.

also- isn't it the intention of all for-profit businesses to increase those profits wherever possible? if it was just about "making sure that the 2% of the people watching it who wanted to buy a new Battlefield game know it's coming out." why do the massive marketing spends at all? you can probably find ways to reach your current base much cheaper than trying to convert those that 'don't know they want it.'

edit: i guess if you're defining marketing broadly and simply as 'all efforts by a business to make existence of its product known,' and mission success as 'does a potential customer know we're in the market?' then yes, clearly it works. kinda a low bar though, no?

If it's not marketing what else would you call it ? From a marketing perspective paying some people to hang up giant posters and painting those giant ads for E3 or paying streamers to play their games is ostensibly the same as giving reviewers early copies so that X amount of people will read their reviews.

Of course it works on me. If I know the product exists, that's half the battle for marketing.

I'm on the Autism Spectrum and have found that emotional manipulation really doesn't work on me, the"tugging at heart strings" or depressing imagery doesn't have a huge effect. By the same token petty political pandering really doesn't work on me - I cna usually clue in when I am being heavy handedly manipulated.

There are definitely games I am interested in, but I wouldn't say the marketing worked on me.

Oh and Ubisoft's E3 presentation made me feel incredibly uncomfortable and I ended it after less than 20 minutes. For some reason that kind of Ubisoft presentation always makes me just want to turn it off. In the same way that "Cringe-comedy" (the Office, etc.) always makes me feel weird.

@mellotronrules: It may be a low bar, but let's remember game "hype" can be just as legitimate as it is illegitimate. The inflation of hype by fanboys while not great, still isn't that different from outlets saying "x was a cool pitch and looks really good I'm interested in checking it out." Because that is also likely to drive some level of sales.

And remember, the people we get our information from, like say GB for example, most of them play all new games that come out. At least the big budget ones. They have to to stay informed. So even if some games don't appeal to you, isn't it inevitable that by covering all these games, they at least in part are contributing to these games sales and marketing to some degree?

I think for some people their mindset is "the con is to get to me play the game I don't wanna play, and that isn't happening so this doesn't work on me." No. The con is for them to keep you playing games period. Consider the sheer volume of games coming out. I could tell you right now with absolute certainty a high percentage of the games a majority of us will play over the next several years will be retreads or slight iterations of things we've already played. That is just software development, forget when you start throwing AAA budgeting and marketing in there.

At the end of the day all that advertising doesn't need to hook you with everything, just something. Since the number of people who are likely to try out any given game ranges from different types of groups of new/old players, their tactic of wide spread exposure of marketing continually does it's job of trying to find audiences willing to continue to play their games.

I avoid it like the plague for the most part, skip/disable ads and don't watch TV. If for whatever reason I do get an ad forced on me I 100% will not engage with that product or service out of spite (so I guess it does have an effect, though not the desired one).

I know what I want and I know how/where to find it, I will watch trailers for games I'm interested in and my interest could swing either way from there depending on how much/little they show and I NEVER take them at face value. The only thing that affects my purchasing decisions are track record of the company responsible for the product and independent evaluations by people I know and trust with similar tastes (recommendations by friends / colleagues etc.)

I think marketing works as far as making me aware of games , but rarely so, since i follow the industry and am aware of the bigger games coming out.

Aside from that, it actually makes me less interested the more i see the advertisement/the louder and more obnoxious it is. But i suppose those are meant to grab the attention of those who don't follow the industry as closely. It makes me feel like they're trying too hard to scam me, I'm sure there's a term for this kind of thing.

Of course. I try to avoid it and the marketing will have to be really great to sell me on something by itself, but it certainly gets my attention.

Of course it does, I mean if you show me compelling information I will change my opinion or you will earn my attention. It certainly goes the other way too, last year MvC's trailers showed me that I wasn't going to like the look of that game at all.

I've also seen enough trailers and such by now, that I generally know what I'm looking for. I also know enough marketing gimmicks and such, that I usually don't fall for bullshit smokescreens either.

Last of US II and Devil May Cry 5 were two games I wasn't very interested in before E3 but they showed off some stuff that made me really excited. But all that means is that I will pay closer attention to those games' reception upon release and then decide. Which is what the marketers mainly want in the first place.

I also freely admit that I enjoy the the showmanship of some trailers

DMC v was a ripping good trailer, Fantastic song, nicely paced info reveals, showed decent chunks of gameplay. Really established what the game intends to be imo

I would have said no, but that Last of Us 2 trailer got me hype as fuck even though I kinda hated the first one so...

@devise22: I think you're making a valid point here, but at the same time I think you're on the verge of being slightly cynical about the whole thing. Games are a commercial product, but they are ALSO works of art. People know what type of art they like, and they know what types of games they like to play.

No amount of marketing is going to get me to play Kingdom Hearts, but positive word of mouth from people whose opinions I appreciate MIGHT (well, not in the case of KH, specifically). Some marketing might change my initial impression on a game, as this year did with Anthem. I didn't want a "BioWare does Destiny" game. After what they showed this year (despite the tired and overused way in which they ended the trailer), I'm more interested in it as a game I might enjoy with friends.

I think there's a broad gulf between "hype" and "interest." E3 stage shows rub me the wrong way because they are self-congratulatory and focus on building hype in a way that often disrespects the consumer and feels artificial. This has gotten a lot better in recent years, in my opinion, and these days the REALLY egregious, "FUCK YEAH, GAMERS!" shit is mostly confined to the perpetually awful Video Game Awards.

I don't consider it a "con" to introduce people to games they might like. No one is being tricked into liking video games, after all.

Yes but I will go to the grave before I admit it

It would have to, really, or I wouldn't own any video games or know anything about them. Marketing is, as has been mentioned, mostly about awareness. If you've heard of the game, half of their job has been accomplished. The tricky part is making you want to play it... but again, you can't really say you're impervious to game marketing if you've ever bought a game, unless you always buy entirely at random with zero foreknowledge of what you're buying.

Marketing works on everyone, that's why companies spend billions of dollars on it. How susceptible you are depends on what your actually interested in, every quick look on this site is a potential pitch, you might not be into <VIDEO GAME> but your now definitely aware of it.

@bladeofcreation: Yeah I don't entirely disagree. I think having a earnest conversation with yourself and acknowledging that being deep into the games industry enough to follow and watch coverage, and play a wide variety of games would consider yourself an enthusiast though. And that how we perceive marketing towards ourselves is somewhat insulated from the experience. More often than not even "we" play a big role down the chain in how this stuff gets perceived. Because it goes from the press, to the games journalist (independent and otherwise) to the fans/enthusiasts, to the casuals. All by word of mouth.

Let's not kid ourselves. Games as a product are still bought by impulse purchasing, people who heard one good thing one time, or were sold on one quick concept. All not enthusiasts. It's why the streaming culture is even embraced by some of these bigger companies. Even if we aren't always playing their games, as long as these bigger games are exposed and in the atmosphere, they are being discussed, and ultimately pushed to someone. Let's not forget we live in a post Free to Play world as well, so exposure can lead to easily downloads. Consider the phone market as an example of this in spades. I think when I refer to the "con" I more mean kind of like how pro wrestling is scripted and the audience knows it.

Yes games are art, but they are also a business. Is the next iteration of every sports franchise "art"? If anything sometimes it feels like so much of the conversation revolves around the "Hollywood Manufactured" games and then we wonder why quality little titles can't find audiences etc. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there isn't a place to celebrate what you want to celebrate. Or that indies and smaller studios haven't found audiences and hit. But it's more about how the mainstream coverage niche or otherwise is dominated by the bigger, often less "art" aspects of the industry. Those that iterate heavily on systems and approach it very much like hardcore software development. They combine that with quality customer service. I mean consider the Ubisoft approach entirely, isn't that what it is? Their entire business approach reads like a Software Dev company not a publisher. That isn't negative, don't get me wrong, and I think they clearly employ a lot of talented artists and employees. I'm only pointing out how the fact that they employ talented artists and employee's isn't always the exact reason why their franchises find success. Post content support is the equivalent of customer support in the business world. Selling game pitches to build hype, something Ubi has historically done throughout time at E3 another staple of the business world.

I just think it's interesting how so much of the big coverage that we see is focused on that. And how that leads to overall purchasing decisions. Like Jeff has talked about this on some Bombcats and UPF's and such off and on. Just about wondering what the point of coverage is on some game franchises, like sports franchises, like MMO's. At a certain point even if they release a new product every year or two years, if that product is just masking itself as a service, they we need to acknowledge that. And cover it accordingly.

I think it's telling that you see the best of lists from most of the journalists on these sites and guest and a good 60-70% of them all focus on games that are rarely covered, or are smaller/unknown things with some bigger games sprinkled in. Yet despite that, Game of the Year most years, on all sites by the by, will be dominated by big AAA games, with the odd indie thrown in depending on what hit and who played what. That isn't to throw shade on this site, again more just a comment on how I perceive games coverage that happens.

I think it's probably a bit cynical but I will say I ultimately believe it's pushing forward. We have seen push for more coverage of indies, more new ip's, letting more studios just make what they want to make etc. Business practices are evolving it's not all doom and gloom. However I do think the "too many games problem" is already in entering full swing and it'll be interesting to see how the industry attempts to solve it.

@devise22: Our experience as gaming enthusiasts is definitely different. After all, the average game player is not on a message board on a video game site. The question of "why bother marketing this?" is definitely something to consider. People are going to buy their Maddens and CoDs and Battlefields because they know what to expect and all they really need to know is when the games are coming out.

Part of the reason that AAA games get onto the GoTY lists more is they spend a longer time in the collective consciousness due to marketing. Part of it might also be because they are generally longer than the small indie games, so people simply spend less time playing them. Take 50 random AAA games a year and 50 random indie games, and I bet the amount of time you can feasibly put into the AAA games is, on average, going to be significantly higher.

One of the reasons I like GB is that the Quick Looks and UPF will often include games that don't get coverage otherwise. I've purchased games I saw on UPF or elsewhere here simply because they looked fun, having seen no previous info about them.

I honestly can't think of a time when game marketing actually convinced me to check out a game I wasn't already planning on playing, though I still think its important for generally getting a name out there. What usually happens instead is I come across a game's marketing that pushes me so far into the opposite direction that I tune out the game entirely. This has led me to established some guidelines that I've followed for the last 10+ years. I avoid games that advertise pre-order bonuses, DLC, and "special editions" before the the game itself. I avoid games that split content across different retailers. I ignore games that advertise without using footage from the game. Lastly, I avoid games that separate playable content behind any of the aforementioned marketing gimmicks. This doesn't mean I'm never going to play these games (though often times it actually turned out that way). It just means that I'm more likely to pick them up in a later "Complete/GOTY Edition" package, assuming I'm still interested at all.

For example, though I had a passing interest in Red Dead Redemption 2, the recent news about its editions and locking missions behind them has immediately dropped it from my notice. The idea of paying full retail price for a game and not receiving the full experience is simply unacceptable to me, especially within the same generation that brought us The Witcher 3. Yes, this means I will likely miss out on a few big name titles, but over the last 10 years, I can't think of a single title that has made me regret my stance, but I can think of a whole bunch that reaffirmed my position. Marvel vs Capcom Infinite, Blazblue Cross Tag Battle, Shadow of War, Star Wars Battlefront 2, Destiny 2, and a myriad Assassin's Creed games at this point, to name a few.

Edit: Just realized I was thinking of marketing in terms of "getting me to buy a product" instead of "making me aware of a product". In those terms, sure, marketing works. But, in general, the more I hear a bout a product, the more annoyed I am at constantly hearing about a product. End edit.

I don't think game marketing works particularly well on me, honestly.

I don't watch trailers - especially for things I know I want - because trailers are nearly 100% BS (you are NOT going to play that - unless the trailer is a cutscene you are going to sit through). I rarely watch trailers for movies (like maybe 1 in 50 movies that I see I've seen a trailer for prior to seeing the movie - and almost all of those are exclusively Star Wars trailers - and disappointing movies, for the most part).

Currently I'm playing Fortnite. Only started about 4 weeks ago. I've known about it since before the Battle Royale part was known about. Nothing I ever saw got me excited to play it (starting with the 1st GB unfinished about the Save the World portion), but what got me to download it was actually playing it. Being at my sister's house and playing it on my nephew's PS4 got me to go home and download it.

Through marketing I knew about Fortnite, sure. But if I hadn't actually played it that one day, I don't think I ever would have downloaded it.

But I also don't generally buy games day 1 (or even month 1). I made an exception or two in 2012, and was seriously disappointed (ME3 and Diablo 3). I made an exception for Bloodbourne and was not in the least disappointed. I made an exception this year for God of War and, to be honest, it's a bit meh.

I assume the Unfinished and Quick Looks here on this site are a form of marketing (especially the Unfinished's), and I rarely ever buy games that I see here at GB (I wanted to buy Surviving Mars after seeing the Quick Look, but reading the reviews have made me hold off - and I wanted to buy Battletech until I saw the Quick Look - to give 2 recent examples - oh, and State of Decay 2 looks like a game I'd love, but I don't have Windows 10 or an xbox, so I just bought State of Decay 1 instead).

no

I'll definitely keep track of a game if they have an interesting trailer or a creative setting/mechanic. That being said, I almost never purchase a game without first seeing uncut gameplay. I become suspicious of any game if a developer goes a long time without releasing gameplay footage or the only footage they release features nonstop smash cuts which make it impossible to see the way the game actually flows; too many cuts or too little gameplay makes it seem like the developer doesn't trust their game to stand on its own.

Now, one form of marketing that does work on me, at least when it comes to games, is brand recognition. For example, I knew I would buy Mega Man 11 the moment it was announced because I greatly enjoy classic Mega Man games and I like collecting games from series which I enjoy. I'm not entirely sold on the new mechanics, but I'm already sold on the game itself because, even if it turns out to be a massive disappointment, it's a game I want to collect and something I want to experience firsthand regardless of its quality. New IP's need to work hard to prove themselves beforehand, but a beloved franchise would need to flop rather hard for me to lose faith in any future entries.

I watch e3 press conferences. So yes.