When it comes to advertising, who you are working for is important to know.
This brings me to the two important types of developers in gaming, the AAA developers and the Indie developers.
These two are very different in the roles that they play in the game industry, that’s including how they market their games. On one side you have the AAA developers, who would make up most of today’s game development output and are the major figures in the game industry. On the other, you have Indie developers that also take up a large portion of the game industry, but in a much smaller scale. With these kinds of developers, they not only have different number of people working for the company, like indie developers making up less than 30 compared to AAA having hundreds of employees; but also have different practices when it comes to advertising their games.
Here is just a list of key things these types of companies have when it comes to advertising.
AAA Developers
- They have large sums of money they use for their marketing campaigns.
- Due to the large assortment of money, their advertisements can range from big-budgeted commercials to multiple sponsorships (For example, Sony had a large ad campaign for their Spider-Man PS4 game, and one of them is releasing a major commercial on NBC’s Thursday Night Football, which is one of the most watched nights in sports).
- They likely hire marketers outside the company to advertise their games.
- They can afford any risks or controversy they may take with their advertising, due to large sum of cash.
- They gain the most attention in their advertisements, due to the wide range of them.
Indie Developers
- Don’t have enough money to make big ad campaigns of their games
- They advertise the games themselves, as can’t afford to hire a marketer.
- There advertisements can range from promoting their games on social media sites like Twitter or Youtube, to leaving it by word of mouth from people. You don’t likely see commercials from these developers as they don’t have the money to make one.
- Any sort of controversy that can arise from their advertisements could be detrimental, as they are small companies that can’t afford to lose peoples interest (For example, the Might No.9 controversial commercial that made many people lost interest interiorly).
I suggest watching this video, if you want a clear understanding at what Indie developers try to do when marketing their games, especially if you want to become an Indie developer as well!
Leave a comment on what you think of these differences between the way they advertise their games!
Images used for this blog post:
- https://www.jvfrance.com/metacritic-publie-classement-meilleur-editeur-de-jeux-video-de-2017-165297/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/60izog/fuck_the_aaa_industry_if_this_post_gets_1000/
- https://lists.cheatcc.com/227
Key To Advertising Video Games 