Marketing vs Game Design
Marketing always seems to get a bad rap, with people putting it in the same category as professions such as lawyers or used car salesmen. And sure, some marketers may be…generous with their interpretation of the truth or overzealous in their efforts to let you know how great it is whatever they are selling, by any means possible, but fundamentally I think they are a generous lot. Let me explain.
The Chained Valley, Image from the Blue Traveller Stories
Marketers want to give you things. They want to give you information about the game, the world, the people working at the studio, the story, everything. With no restrictions, and I’m convinced that marketers would start giving out people’s personal phone numbers and addresses to create a more personal connection between potential customers and the developers. And this makes sense. Ultimately, in order for someone to give you their money, you need to give them something in return and the more you give them, the more likely they are to buy it. Game designers and writers on the other hand are often incentivised to hide things, or cover them up, conceal them, or stick them in that one corner you hope people won’t look. And once again, at first glance, this seems somewhat…scummy? But I promise you, we have good reasons for doing this. Writers know that the best story is one people talk about, they theorize about what comes next, character intentions, meanings, and other interpretations. The human mind is hard-wired for problem solving and everyone loves a good puzzle. So when we write, we give readers or players the tools needed to figure out the bigger picture over time, a puzzle to piece together. Just look at Dark Souls, there are whole YouTube channels dedicated to figuring out what the hell is going on there. This is fundamentally anathema to marketers, who want to provide a compelling narrative to viewers to draw them into the world. Just think of all the movies that have been spoiled by the trailer.
This is also true for game design. When we build games, there are some things we want players to know. How do certain mechanics interact, control schemes, the gameplay loop etc. Then there are things we’d rather not have players think about, for sometimes peeking behind the curtain only diminishes the experience. These are things like overly generous hit boxes, forgiving platform limits, and other aspects that serve to make the player feel more skilled than they technically are. Marketing on the other hand might want to expose all of this to show how much thought the designers are putting into the player experience and the level of detail and granularity the UI/UX designers go into to create the best possible product.
Entry to the Siphoned Land, Image from the Blue Traveller Stories
Ultimately everyone is trying to do the same thing. To make a really good product that will sell and allow us to do it all over again, and hopefully, make a bunch of people happy as a bonus. That being said, the different approaches to this goal lead to a lot of the bumping of heads and it becomes a question of compromises and trusting the intentions of your counterpart.
