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"Marketing Is Dead," Says Larian's Publishing Director

"Now you've got the internet. Nobody is looking at ads anymore." 

Image credit: Larian Studios, Baldur's Gate 3

According to Larian Studios Publishing Director Michael Douse, marketing is no longer the primary channel for promoting games. In a recent PC Gamer roundtable interview, he stated that consumer attitudes have shifted over the past years, and no one cares about the ads now.

"Marketing is dead," he shared with PC Gamer. "Marketing is dead. It truly is – I can back this sh*t up, man. There are no channels anymore – it doesn't work. You used to have marketing, communication, and PR. Marketing was essentially a retail theory – you were trying to get your box on the right point of the store shelf, and you have partnerships with retail stores. Those pipelines are gone.

Now you've got the internet. Nobody is looking at ads anymore … all of the channels that we would usually market through are no longer really viable. So their function is also reduced by the fact that players just want to be spoken to. They don't want to be bamboozled – they just want to know what you're making and why you're making it and who it's for."

The game developers who participated in a discussion agreed with Douse on that, acknowledging the decreasing significance of marketing, influenced by the overall public sentiment towards advertising.

"Millennials always hated it, and now we have the tools to avoid it," continued Douse. "The best place to market your game is on the store itself. Everything else isn't worth it. We learned that with BG3 – it took us a while."

It is true when we speak about marketing, we could all agree on that. Who enjoys seeing how multiple products are being pushed on us through advertising? So, the industry veterans collectively recognized the necessity of honest and transparent approaches that consumers appreciate, foreseeing their importance in 2024.

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Comments 2

  • Anonymous user

    It's not even that I'm not looking at ads (which is true, I have a strong 0 ad policy). I've been playing games for two and a half decades. I know what I like and what I don't. I can find games I'm interested in on my own. I just do not pick video games based on ads. Any marketing effort aimed at me is entirely wasted.

    0

    Anonymous user

    ·6 months ago·
  • Anonymous user

    I think it'd be one thing if majority had disposable income, but the fact is everything is gutting for our paycheck these days and it just doesn't stretch as far as it used to, especially on food costs alone.   So we hear these ads, trying to tell us to be tempted by this or that but it's really just exhausting, especially for Gen Z who is used to being able to afford daily fast food joint visits now struggle to put food on the table because wage growth never occurred while capitalism profited but failed to pay their employees.   Soon it won't matter how you ad, where you ad or even what the ad content is if people can't afford it; expect the situation to get worse before it gets better.

    0

    Anonymous user

    ·6 months ago·

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