Back packers save the world
Ok, so your customer has seen the ad you placed in obscure.weekly, made the effort to view your clever viral email featuring the talking monkey, wandered over to view the game trailer and then waited for two hours in order to get a bus into the city centre where they rushed into the nearest video game store and began hunting for the dazzling box art they have now committed to memory thanks to it featuring heavily on all your communications. You couldn’t afford to wallpaper the store with it but that’s ok, your customer knows what to look for thanks to a bit of clever wordplay on the ads. Copywriting, as we all know, is the ONLY thing that matters when it comes to marketing.
After ten minutes rearranging the stock on the shelf so that the first letter of each game now spells out a pretty rude word followed by “lol”, your customer has the box in his hands.
Life is good. Close this one sale through the power of marketing and you’re on your way to LA and the big time. Screw the PR, this was all your doing.
But wait. Is that a wobble? Is that doubt creeping into the customer’s mind? It’s been a few hours since he last connected to the Internet and, well, attention spans aren’t what they used to be. Times gone by would see us retaining information from before conception but these days we’re lucky if we remember what we lol’d about on our last Facebook update let alone what game we were about to buy.
Hang on. Where was I?
Oh yes, thank god for Outlook tasks.
He has the box but there’s a wobble. The pack next to yours, by chance of titling and the newly arranged order of things alone, has a pretty similar looking design. The competition’s robot looks even shinier though. And it has a woman standing next to it. Damn, why didn’t you think of that? You have women in your game and the lack of a shiny robot was SUPPOSED to convey the intensity of the battle. You really dropped the ball on that decision didn’t you? Two robots, one battle scarred and one shiny might have done the trick.
So what have you got up your sleeve to nudge the customer in the right direction? In your direction? There has to be something? Online advertising won’t work here. The POS is only being displayed in Bulgaria and the store manager, well, you’ll sort him out once the sequel to last year’s mostly successful game comes out. Then he’ll learn what purchasing power means.
At least the customer is still holding your pack. That’s something isn’t it? If he’s not distracted anytime in the next five seconds then chances are his eyes will get back to it. They have to at some point in order to successfully put it down. You factored for that right? Replacing packaging on the shelf can be a pivotal purchasing moment.
It’s not looking good. Although… that, there. Is that a twist of the hand? Yes. It is. The customer is flipping your game over and looking at the BACK OF PACK. Oh beautiful. This is where you’re home and dry. This is where 80% of your budget went because you knew that this is the meat of the matter. If cover art is the brawn then back art is the brains. And nobody marries the brawn. Right?
Let’s move on.
On the back you’ve thought about the information. Properly. This is where the customer begins to consume information. This is where they learn that there are TWO robots and ONE woman in the game. That’s good. He likes robots but couldn’t deal with more than one woman in a game. It’s not a game for girls.
You’ve thought of the three best features in the game and explained them v e r y c l e a r l y in 4 words or less. You’ve added every variation of screenshot to make sure he knows that there are different terrains, different enemies, multiplayer, single player, puzzle solving, action sequences, storytelling, customisation, personalisation, social networking features, voice activated missile silos, dressing up sections (in armour because this isn’t, y’know, a girl’s game), rollercoaster high adrenaline, face shaking, ball shrinking, horror comedy tragedy grandparent friendly motiondetectingdancecrazysingtillyourvoicebreaksthen come-out-fighting-with-the-girl-on-your-arm-and-the-robots-beneath-your-personally-selected-boots gameplay.
Yep. When it comes to weaving a compelling argument around that back of pack we can safely say you’ve covered every base.
Hold on a minute. He’s put it down. He was only pretending to look at the game whilst he checked out the cute girl choosing her PS3 game in the aisle opposite.
Didn’t think of THAT now did you?
No, cause girls don’t own PS3′s. (joke)
I remember hearing my mate talk about this amazing game cover he designed for a major PS2 release and how they had to change it to something more brash and crude. Was a shame.
Another thing to consider here are the first parties (Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony) also adding to the misery of designing a well informed BoB.
The packaged product on the whole is rapidly being overtaken by the need for first parties to plaster logos and ‘compatibility’ icons all over the place and cover every legal angle with warning boxes, advisory notes and copyright text. Factor in things like the USK and OFLC rating icons on the FoB and there is increasingly less space to truly sell your game in the best, clearly designed way.
For obvious reasons the Nintendo DS BoB is by far the worst offender – space was already a premium and now with the introduction of the DSi there are a whole array of new compulsory lines of text, tables and warning boxes to include if your title happens to include functionality only available on the DSi! Add to that the possibility of a multi-language sku and design more or less goes out the window!