Brief:
The brief asks us to look at a game or company and look at how the distribute that game whether its with advertising, stunts, rumours or any other forms of media.
The game I have decided to look at is Bulletstorm, the reason I have chosen this is because it is current so that way I can follow its advertising campaign and due to its interesting advertising techniques so far..
Bulletstorm:
Bulletstorm is a FPS Shooter developed by Epic and People Can Fly and published by EA. You play as Grayson Hunt, the leader of Dead Echo, an elite group of mercenaries that discovers they are fighting on the wrong side. When they betray their commander they are banished to the edge of the galaxy and must fight for their revenge.
So the game story sounds fairly similar to most games but a lot of that is where the similarity ends, the gameplay has a very Unreal Tournament feel to it but sets itself aside with interesting ways of disposing of your enemies. You have an electronically leash in which you can drag your enemies to you or fly them into the air and then finish them off in numerous brutal ways. Kick or slide your enemies into the air or against electrical equipment, nails for special bonuses.
Halo 3:
Bulletstorm has definitely set itself aside form other advertising campaigns by doing something quite sur-real and "ballsy" in the game world... by attacking other companies games. The first point of view was against Halo 3, developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft, a large game franchise that has been in existence since late 2001. Halo 3's advertising campaign was another game well done, hidden in secrecy until its release the adverts that were released were human actors and shorts, their most famous being the "Believe" Campaign advert released in September 2007
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The models were all sculpted by hand and the advert was a huge success, causing a viral that spread like wild fire with Tv spots and millions of views. Knowing the success of this advert bulletstorm decided to take their on edge on the trailer with their unique twist, an interesting point to this viral is that you could not access the video unless you had the original link which was www.graysonbelieves.com.
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A clever viral that paid for itself, with people across the world being split by the advert, some rewarding Epic and People Can Fly's unique advertising campaign and others disregarding it completely. In my opinion this is exactly what they wanted to happen, making people discuss this with a worldwide audience made the game heard.
Call Of Duty, Modern Warfare 2:
Another game to hit the forefront was the Call Of Duty Series, mainly COD: Modern Warfare 2 developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision. The Call Of Duty series is one of the longest and most popular franchise that exists in gaming today, with in excess of 12 million players on Modern Warfare 2 online alone. Epic games released a downloadable game Duty Calls for PC in February 2011. The game states on the front page that "Duty Calls is a parody. It is not associated with Activision or the Call of Duty games." although it is clearly aimed at the game and its representatives.
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Throughout the game it depicts several moments from the campaign from COD: Modern Warfare 2 and portrays them in Epic's own unique version. Attacking another major company in the games industry Epic had the same reaction from the community, some were praising their innovative advertising strategy as others were dismissing it completely. This worked even more so than the Halo campaign and created a hug amount of publicity a lot of which was from youtube.com. Many youtube communities posted their opinions of what Duty Calls represents and with hundreds of thousands, even millions watching these videos their again is a large sum of free advertising.
A tweet by Cliff Belinski having a very controversial opinion about the reason behind Bulletstorms release:
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Continuing his advertising campaign by tweeting a comment about a major release Killzone 3 developed by Guerrilla Games and published by Sony by stating that "...the real reason Bulletstorm was built was because Gears wasn't ready for this spring and we needed a product to fuck with Killzone." Having 53,500 followers who will all have seen and read this but not only that will have passed it on to others to read creating even more free publicity.
Fox News:
A recent publication by John Brandon on foxnews.com headed "Is Bulletstorm the worst Video Game in the World?" which had several interviews from different specialists and their fields.
Link:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/02/08/bulletstorm-worst-game-kids/
Although I disagree with almost all the negative points in this interview I am not here to defend Bulletstorm only talk about its advertising feats and this is a big one. Fox News is the most popular news presenting show on American Tv and for the game to be featured on its website is a big marker. Causing controversy between the media, those interviewed and the large gaming community, in return this only spurred the community on to support Bulletstorm.
Conclusion:
I believe that Bulletstorm is a great example of how clever marketing and advertising of a game can hit headlines within the gaming community and the general public. Using simple techniques like baiting other companies into responses either from themselves or their communities to spread the word of your game, posting your opinions on large social networks to get free advertising is another large part of the success of this campaign, allowing others to re-comment on this and post their own opinions at the same time giving yourself even more advertising opportunities.
Bulletstorm has become one of the most anticipated games for 2011 although it was unheard of until late 2010, this is all due to its clever advertising.
I do however see a dramatic flaw in this system, if the game itself turns out to not be as good as it has made itself appear, if it does not live up to the hype, then there will be a lot of disappointed people and a lot of happy companies. Everyone has had that experience where they are told it was the best movie, the best food that they ever had and after seeing that movie or eating that food then they are unfortunately disappointed due to the hype it has received.
