Game Theory 18: Marketing

Recorded on March 26th, 2013 with Brian Fife, James Fingal and Thomas Westberg.

Now that video games are big business - perhaps bigger than movies - they have advertising and promotional budgets to match. It is common to see video games promoted in a way similar to other mass media - billboards and television ads.

The group talks about the way they learn about games, keep up on game news (or at least used to) and the way game reviews and metacritic scores are handled.

They also discuss their game buying strategy, when (if ever) to preorder, and how they track game sales.

Referenced items:

PAX East 2013,
Borderlands Two,
Simcity (new),
A Question of Competence - Tobold,
Square Enix CEO Stepping Down,
Indie Game: The Movie,
Super Meat Boy,
X-Com Enemy Unknown,
Bioshock: Infinite,
Diablo Three,
Guild Wars Two,
World of Warcraft,
Spaceteam,
Rogue WiFi at Super Bowl - Ars,
Elder Scrolls: Skyrim,
Fez,
Minecraft,
The Castle Doctrine,
Steam Greenlight,
Spy Party,
Kickstarter,
Planetary Annihilation,
FTL,
Planescape Torment,
God of War,
Gears of War,
Jerry Bruckheimer,
How Early Reviews Hurt Sales - Ars,
Kill Screen Daily,
GameSpy,
IGN,
Why We Avoid Metacraitic - Ars,
The Verge,
Engadget,
Gizmodo,
Tom Bissell - Grantland,
Catherine,
Daring Fireball,
Joystiq,
Kotaku,
1up,
I’m sorry, Marcus - Quarter to Three,
Steam Mobile,
Humble Indie Bundle,
When TED Lost Control - HBR,
EFF,
Child’s Play,
Gabe Newell Left 4 Dead Sale- Shack News,
Kingdoms of Amalur,