American McGee Blasts EA Marketing

[Marshall Honorof]

American McGee Blasts EA Marketing

The Alice dev claims that big publishers' ads are in a "race to the bottom.

In spite of heading up a team in China [http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/alice-madness-returns], recently participated in an AMA on Reddit, and gave a potential reason why. The marketing department at Electronic Arts, McGee believes, tried to "trick" consumers into buying the game and tapped into entirely the wrong market. The trailers, which should have presented a dark, weird, whimsical tale, instead embraced blood and violence, driving away potential players.

McGee brings up EA marketing in relation to bloodier and gorier [http://www.shythesun.tv/] than the average content in the game. "That was a calculated disconnect created by EA. They wanted to 'trick' gamers into believing A:MR was a hard-core horror title, even though we refused to develop it in that tone."

According to McGee, EA wanted hardcore horror fans' money more than it wanted their satisfaction. As long as the game sold, the department was not overly concerned with its market perception. However, McGee believes that this is what kneecapped the game's sales, since it alienated a potentially much bigger audience. "[These trailers drove] away more casual customers, like female gamers, who might be turned off by really dark trailers," he says. The game was not exactly directed towards a casual audience, but the developer argues that presenting a strong female lead coupled with a lighter tone would have made the game a bigger success.

If McGee is to be believed, this was not an isolated incident, nor is he particularly optimistic about the future of marketing videogames. "It's all a part of the race to the bottom EA, Activision and the other big pubs are engaged in. Expect to see it get worse before it gets better."

Source: Reddit [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/16z1lk/ama_im_american_mcgee_game_designer_and_founder/c80qc96?context=3]

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[Erttheking]

Seems like devs are not that fond of EA either.

 

[ANImaniac89]

I have to agree, I loved Madness Returns but it was horribly mismarketed and because of that there probably won't be a 3rd.

 

[Basement Cat]

McGee is certainly correct...in my case.

While I'm not in the 'female' demographic I LOVED the original Alice and played through it again and again until my computer started rejecting certain disks--I think I'll need to change my optics drive soon.

But the bloody and gory trailers didn't appeal to me. Sure the original Alice was dark but it wasn't awash in blood like they had in the trailers where Rabbit's face had the skin ripped off with him and Alice being in a boat floating suddenly in a river of actual blood. That sort of thing has it's place in some games but not in Alice.

Yuck.

The reviews being less than stellar torpedoed my buying Returns...but now...well, maybe I will buy it (and hopefully get the HD updated version of the original Alice which--again hopefully--will work on my computer).

 

[Full]

Um, that game was still gruesome. Not very close to what the trailers made out, mind you, but it was still pretty edgy.

 

[Something Amyss]

Or you know, mayyyyybe your game just wasn't that great?

Do you really think American McGee would admit that he, American McGee made a mistake in American McGee's Alice: something something?

Of course, there is definitely a half-truth here at least. A lot of games, along with other media, get misleading marketing. I've nearly missed out on some of my favourite movies because they were promoted as boilerplate genre flicks. This technique rarely seems to work.

Though I can't speak as to whether or not the quality of AMAMR is good enough for this to be true or poor enough for it to be false.

Still, promotional materials are deceptive and at this point, nobody should be surprised.

 

[Jumwa]

EA IS pretty terrible for making purposely misleading or false ads. I think that's one of the main reasons why I got off to such a sour footing with Dragon Age: Origins. The original official trailer for it called it "a heavy action RPG".

As for Madness Returns, it was a great game, and it definitely would've appealed more to a broader market than what they were going for. It's not so much a matter of 'women don't like horror' as 'people don't like horror'. True horror games are a niche genre, it's why every publisher who has a horror franchise ends up dropping the horror after a while to hit a wider market (just look at Resident Evil or Dead Space for examples).

So under that framework yes, with a wonderful female lead in an interesting story, it could've appealed to a much broader audience, especially women.

 

[Tortilla the Hun]

I have a feeling this will turn into a thread of people proclaiming more hate for the publisher with very, very little mention of what the article is actually about.

I find it unfortunate that the game (which I've never played, though have been curious about it seeing as it's held my interest for some time) may have been more successful with a different marketing approach, but what surprises me even more is that EA wouldn't have tried marketing it to appeal to a wider audience than just sell it as a dark, gory horror (which, admittedly, I would prefer just because I find the idea of a psychological horror-trip into Wonderland rather enticing). I mean wouldn't their goal be to gain as many potential buyers as possible? Though they just likely wanted it to appear edgy, which I wouldn't blame them for, considering that taking the famously mad world to much darker places would be a wonderful, splendiferously-insane joyride.

 

[Pandabearparade]

EA does something that insults and alienates customers? What a shock. Really, my jaw is on the floor here.

 

[The White Hunter]

I have to agree, I loved Madness Returns but it was horribly mismarketed and because of that there probably won't be a 3rd.

I never playde it because of the marketing actually, maybe I should pick up a copy on the cheap sometime..

 

[deanospimoni]

McGee sure has opinions. I have to say, after the temper tantrum he threw here on these forums a little while ago, I am a lot less likely to take his statements at face value anymore. He seems to be blaming EA for his mediocre game doing poorly, instead of taking responsibility.

 

[shiajun]

Well, to be honest, the trailer linked in the article is basically the first cutscene in the game, not some mock-up for merchandising purposes.

The game was pretty twisted and weird, not at all whimsical as American McGee makes it sound. Maybe not as gory as the first cutscene in the game makes it out to be, yet it really gets to disturbing pyschological territory when the whole plot is complete. I'm not too sure the marketing was so off target as he suggets.

 

[Mr.Mattress]

I believe Mr. McGee because They certainly did that with Brutal Legend [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxnho1yTjRo], which they made appear as a type of hack-n-slash adventure game, and it turned out to be a hack-n-slash RTS game.

 

[Kiyeri]

"[These trailers drove] away more casual customers, like female gamers, who might be turned off by really dark trailers," he says. The game was not exactly directed towards a casual audience, but the developer argues that presenting a strong female lead coupled with a lighter tone would have made the game a bigger success.

I've never played any of the games, but a "lighter tone" seems like it would have been misleading too. This game looks pretty dark, not just in a bloody way.

And it's also really easy to point fingers when your baby doesn't do as well as you'd like. If it was a truly fantastic game, a misleading trailer couldn't have done too much harm. The best marketing tool is word of mouth, people telling their friends "Oh my god, you have to play this game. It's amazing." See the spread of Slender, a game with no marketing that I know of, just people saying it would scare your pants off.

Of course, I have no experience with marketing or Alice games, so I could be completely wrong with this. Just one person who doesn't think EA deserves all the blame.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

But the bloody and gory trailers didn't appeal to me. Sure the original Alice was dark but it wasn't awash in blood like they had in the trailers where Rabbit's face had the skin ripped off with him and Alice being in a boat floating suddenly in a river of actual blood. That sort of thing has it's place in some games but not in Alice.

Yuck.

The reviews being less than stellar torpedoed my buying Returns...but now...well, maybe I will buy it (and hopefully get the HD updated version of the original Alice which--again hopefully--will work on my computer).

I never played it because of the marketing actually, maybe I should pick up a copy on the cheap sometime..

Yes, you both should, especially you Copper Zen. The game, while far from perfect, is a faithful successor to the original. It has several returning characters and builds off the plot from the first game. I loved it.

I was actually MORE excited about this game because of those trailers. Dark, psychological horror, which is what I always thought the Alice games were about. I never played the first one growing up (I've played it now because Madness came with a free copy of it), but that's how I thought the game was. I remember thinking for the first few minutes of Madness Returns that the trailers were nothing like the game and I was slightly disappointed. Then that thought vanished and I enjoyed the game. I completely forgot about that feeling until just now.

 

[Fasckira]

Its not really that surprising. The odds are that the marketing team got sent a few beta levels of the game, some screens and a general overview from McGee about what the game was about. The team have then went on to create a campaign around their interpretation based on what they have.

At this point, the chances are even if McGee reviewed it and said "No, you've got this all wrong" I imagine EA would have still said "Tough, we're going with this.". The only way this could have been avoided would have been for McGee to take a more in-depth role in the marketing (which would have been relatively cumbersome).

However, having played the game I would be inclined to say the advertising campaign wasn't that far off. If anything I'd say EA's only fault is making the game seen more interesting to me than what it turned out to be.