One month from today: BioShock Infinite

captainnapalm said:
Looking at some of the marketing, trailers and box art and such, I wonder, are 2K doing the right thing by trying to appeal to the hardcore shooter market?

The trailers seem to hype the action and disregard the higher brow themes or the central relationship between the two main characters. The box art is just a big image of the gun wielding protagonist, sans Elizabeth. I mean, I've seen so many better images in this thread that would have been so much cooler to use as box art. The one of Elizabeth falling and Booker trying to catch her springs to mind immediately.

Aren't there enough older and more sophisticated gamers around these days that a game's marketing campaign can look to appeal to them? Or would that just kill the game's sales and are they pretty much forced to go 'Look kids, you can shoot stuff a lot!'?
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Chances are the older and more sophisticated gamers that would appreciate a Bioshock game for it's story, atmosphere and cerebral thinking already know about it.

Gotta pump the sales, appeal to the fps crowd.
 
captainnapalm said:
Looking at some of the marketing, trailers and box art and such, I wonder, are 2K doing the right thing by trying to appeal to the hardcore shooter market?

The trailers seem to hype the action and disregard the higher brow themes or the central relationship between the two main characters. The box art is just a big image of the gun wielding protagonist, sans Elizabeth. I mean, I've seen so many better images in this thread that would have been so much cooler to use as box art. The one of Elizabeth falling and Booker trying to catch her springs to mind immediately.

Aren't there enough older and more sophisticated gamers around these days that a game's marketing campaign can look to appeal to them? Or would that just kill the game's sales and are they pretty much forced to go 'Look kids, you can shoot stuff a lot!'?
Click to expand...

A few semi-related points in response to this:

The ads don't need to target sophisticated (or "high-information") consumers because those people are already sold (or not). Ads need to target the broad swath of potential customers who don't spend a lot of time learning about games before release.

The things people love about Bioshock can't be communicated using 30 seconds of a non-interactive medium. They don't have much choice but to show guns 'n shit, because, again, they aren't targeting the person who knows that Bioshock is much more than that. The central character relationship is featured clearly in the TV ad even if it's conspicuously absent from the box art.

Sophisticated consumers in any domain will always be far outnumbered by unsophisticated consumers. Sophisticated consumers can be counted on to find sophisticated content without as much help from advertising. If anything, they are likely more skeptical of advertising. Maybe it doesn't work at all. Publishers leverage their ads where they can make the most impact, and they believe the broader audience is the right target.
 
hey_it's_that_dog said:
A few semi-related points in response to this:

The ads don't need to target sophisticated (or "high-information") consumers because those people are already sold (or not). Ads need to target the broad swath of potential customers who don't spend a lot of time learning about games before release.

The things people love about Bioshock can't be communicated using 30 seconds of a non-interactive medium. They don't have much choice but to show guns 'n shit, because, again, they aren't targeting the person who knows that Bioshock is much more than that. The central character relationship is featured clearly in the TV ad even if it's conspicuously absent from the box art.

Sophisticated consumers in any domain will always be far outnumbered by unsophisticated consumers. Sophisticated consumers can be counted on to find sophisticated content without as much help from advertising. If anything, they are likely more skeptical of advertising. Maybe it doesn't work at all. Publishers leverage their ads where they can make the most impact, and they believe the broader audience is the right target.
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I get what you're saying. Makes sense.
 
captainnapalm said:
Interesting, pretty much addressed my exact issue. His end point: We don't compromise our games, but we may have to compromise on stuff like covers, or marketing in general.

A reality of the industry, I guess. I'd certainly rather have them compromising on that side of things than on the game itself.
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But they do. He admits that they removed most of the RPG elements in Bioshock because they were afraid it wouldn't sell.
 
captainnapalm said:
Interesting, pretty much addressed my exact issue. His end point: We don't compromise our games, but we may have to compromise on stuff like covers, or marketing in general.

A reality of the industry, I guess. I'd certainly rather have them compromising on that side of things than on the game itself.
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No he said they don't compromise their games from a narrative perspective. Like they won't shy away from racism or any other kind of dangerous topic.

If you read the Bioshock 1 postmortem they freely admit they had to dumb the gameplay down to hit the mainstream console gamer. It was originally supposed to be more like SS2 and they realized that wasn't going to be marketable.
 
FACE said:
But they do. He admits that they removed most of the RPG elements in Bioshock because they were afraid it wouldn't sell.
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Well, in that interview he says it was removed to focus more strongly on the narrative aspect of the game and immersing the player in the world.

He also later admits to making compromises in the past by making certain games, but says that Irrational are now in the fortunate position of not having to make any compromises at all.

I think it's safe to assume that Infinite will be the game he wanted to make.
 
I'll never get the complaining about things like the commercials/box art. How many developers are making big budget games as creative as Infinite? I'll gladly take my medicine to get something this cool every now and then.
 
Hotly anticipated titles like Infinite I could never wait for Amazon to deliver. This is something that I would need ASAP.

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And I love Amazon, but Im not risking it for something like this =P
 
Amazon is offering a $30 credit towards 2K Game Downloads for pre-ordering Infinite. Pretty good deal - but I can't think of anything 2K is coming out with in the near future I would want to use it for.

I need enlightenment.
 
Andrew. said:
Hotly anticipated titles like this I could never wait for Amazon to deliver. This is something that I would need ASAP.

02192004193413.jpg


And I love Amazon, but Im not risking it for something like this =P
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Well I can wait I don't know if I will be working or not either at my part time job or hopefully I get a full time job.
 
ArisenDragon said:
I live in NYC but I am going to get it through Amazon.
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Oh I've got a discounted Newegg preorder coming in; I'm just going in person to get the game ASAP and then return the shipped copy to Gamestop later on. Might want to consider the same, especially since I hear Amazon's quite the gamble when it comes to getting timely delivery.
 
PoweredBySoy said:
Amazon is offering a $30 credit towards 2K Game Downloads for pre-ordering Infinite. Pretty good deal - but I can't think of anything 2K is coming out with in the near future I would want to use it for.

I need enlightenment.
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Was wondering the same thing. The only thing I can think of on the horizon is NBA 2K14 and a the XCOM shooter (the former I won't support until they properly support it better on the PC and the latter I couldn't care less about). I suppose I'll just pick up Borderlands 2 for free once it hits $30.
 
captainnapalm said:
Well, in that interview he says it was removed to focus more strongly on the narrative aspect of the game and immersing the player in the world.

He also later admits to making compromises in the past by making certain games, but says that Irrational are now in the fortunate position of not having to make any compromises at all.

I think it's safe to assume that Infinite will be the game he wanted to make.
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I'm fairly sure he said that they had to remove most of the RPG they had because making narrative driven games is fairly expensive and it wouldn't sell otherwise.
 
garath said:
Hay Guys.

72% toward Xcom on Steam pre-order. I think we're gonna make it.
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Since the TF2-items got unlocked it has moved a bit faster. I'll pre-order it on money when my pay arrives. It'll be great. I've got 6 days off from work too starting after Tuesday too. X-Com + BioShock will certainly help keep my busy.
 
Vire said:
I really hope that's not related to a spoiler.
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I'm scared.

Edit: I mean it was already said that today IGN will reveal when their review hits, but is that all we get today? hm...
 
I'm just imagining non-gamers seeing these things and thinking "'Bioshock Infinite' is complete jibberish."

Video games.

Vire said:
I really hope that's not related to a spoiler.
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You worried that "I guarantee" is this game's "would you kindly"?

Or that there's a previously unrevealed Cajun character?
 
ironcreed said:
Look, it's the hype train, err... bus.

Glad to see the marketing for this out in full force. As it should prove to be one that will be worthy of the attention.
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I'm pretty surprised how much marketing there has been so far. Take two is throwing their weight on this one.
 
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