The Importance of Setting Expectations
By Oliver Aston | October 27, 2021
As an industry that deals primarily in entertainment and catering directly to fans, the games industry has seen more than its fair share of crisis situations; particularly in the age of social media, a 24-hour news cycle, and a connected world, it’s become increasingly important to get on message quickly, and with games being a multi-billion dollar industry dealing in some of the most popular franchises of all-time it’s no surprise that gamers themselves are a fickle bunch; historically we’ve seen that even something as simple as a short delay to allow developers to get a breath in can be taken quite hostilely. In 2020 when the hotly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 had a last minute delay of one month developers received death threats and unfortunately this is hardly the first time we’ve seen this type of behavior from gamers. While this is certainly not acceptable it is absolutely a reality that anyone going into this particular field needs to be aware of and as such, perhaps more so then other fields the importance of setting the correct expectations are paramount when developing media campaigns for games.
Under promise and overdeliver is a phrase we often hear tossed around when discussing how to set expectations and it’s crucial when it comes to games, the opposite over promise and under deliver can be deadly to a developer’s reputation, after all the delays the previously mentioned Cyberpunk 2077 received over its eight year development the game ultimately reviewed relatively poorly and suffered many game breaking bugs and performance issues on the majority of commercially available hardware. Ultimately this reception damaged the developer, CD Projekt Red’s previously pristine reputation and ended up tanking their stock, with this in mind here are a few tips and pointers to consider when promoting a game.
Transparency is good, but don’t go overboard
It’s great to have a relationship with your community, and generally speaking letting them know what’s going on with your game if there is going to be a delay or something that otherwise impacts the development is a good thing, but and I’m going to again point to CD Projekt here, if you’re putting out a yellow banner message letting the community know about delay or some other impact production every other month or so is going to slowly erode confidence in your community.
A Shorter Press Cycle is Better
Back in 2015 Bethesda wild the game world with the unveil of the hotly anticipated Fallout 4, even more surprising the game was announced not six months from its release and had a fairly tidy press cycle. This was in contrast to the years of smaller updates we would typically see from the publisher/developer. A shorter more concise press cycle, where the game and the release date are locked in are naturally a lot easier to work around than a project that’s in flux. Microsoft’s Phil Spencer who heads up the Xbox division has gone on record saying that he doesn’t want to “announce games three years out” as ultimately games are very much still in flux and they don’t want to fall into the trap of overpromising and under delivering.
Sometimes, you need to Pivot
“The best laid plans often go awry” that’s true in the games industry as well where leaks and unexpected situations can arise and throw a good marketing plan into flux. As was the case in September of 2020 when the yet to be announced Xbox Series S console leaked just a week before it was set to be properly unveiled by Microsoft. In response, rather than wait for the original event the company went ahead and just tweeted out the announcement and ultimately road was arguably a larger wave of excitement for a cheaper, more affordable console then their flagship Series X that was announced earlier. What I’m getting at here if you need to be fast, you need to pivot, and you need to be ready to change with the flow of conversation, if something leaks it’s best to just go along with it rather than to turn a blind eye and act as if nothing happened. Ultimately, by acknowledging and moving in step with the flow of information you can see better results then what the original campaign may have even delivered.
So, and reflecting on this we’ve learned a few things, the games industry is really hard, gamers themselves are fickle and the conversation can be tumultuous to say the least, however in setting the correct expectations, in being transparent, and by making sure to move with the flow of the conversation rather than against the current PR professionals in the games industry can set themselves and their teams up for success.
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Author’s Bio: Oliver Aston is a senior at CSUN who is very tired. He majors in Journalism with an emphasis in Public Relations and when he’s not running on fumes you can find him playing through the latest releases and casually sipping his 17th cup of Java.
Photo by: CD Projekt RED