Marketing vs Magazines. Who holds the power?
Research conducted by EEDAR and highlighted by Games Industry Biz “shows” marketing plays more of a role in shifting product than reviews.
This stirred up a bit of a fuss. Nobody likes to believe marketing affects them. Least of all the journalists who hope their reviews carry weight.
So The Guardian came back with their view which was that by looking at the top selling games they had discovered a correlation between high sales and good reviews.
Both camps are correct. Marketing does drive sales and so do reviews.
And it all comes down to Dan Brown.
The way a marketing spend is decided is by sales projections. If a sales team thinks they can get high numbers of sales for a product then it will get a higher marketing spend.
Why do they think it will get high numbers of sales? Because they believe it’s a good game.
Now, what do you think happens with a good game?
It reviews well.
There’s a correlation there.
But correlation doesn’t always indicate causality.
When the publishers of Dan Brown’s latest book got together do you think they said “this is going to review brilliantly”? Did they (or even Mr Brown himself) believe for one minute that critics were going to gush over his literary style and elegant wordplay?
Doubtful.
But they knew that it had mass appeal because The DaVinci Code was a mass appeal hit because the marketing of that book concentrated on the controversial aspect of religion and conspiracy. Which we all love. The easy, child-like style of the book may have helped also.
What both articles could be interpreted as showing is the lack of quality marketing for titles which may not review well but which could have mass appeal. Or maybe it shows the lack of titles with true, Dan Brown mass appeal.