Technology

Traditional marketing is dead. No one likes ads. But the amount of people watching game streams? Enormous. Slay the Spire is the typical tale of how streaming sparked a deck building gold rush and it started when a streamer played a few hours and got some word of mouth going.

Marketing is still a very viable approach to figuring out how to sell a product. But ads themselves are actually poorly regarded and when folks are given the option of how to receive retail information, they don't want unstoppable messages for things that don't appeal and will never be purchased. And it sours the brand to viewers who have to watch.

But getting some charismatic people to have fun with your product? Guaranteed to get some eyeballs who are willing to be there. That's what ads will start to look like: appeals to friendship.

Marketing is still working but unskippable billboards on the gates of our entertainment are dying off.

Whatever. The bear sex announcement was a marketing genius move. It got everyone talking about the game. Of course it helped that they then also delivered.

Cities Skylines 2 went the opposite direction.

Here's hoping lessons are learned. Entire generations have learned to be deeply skeptical even with trusted brands.

And, yes, I hope that skepticism and relationship based, authentic(?) word of mouth brings sanity for a while.

Until businesses try to optimize that into oblivion too. We gotta put guard rails in place.

Their marketing dept is probably concerned.

Everyone at Google will think this a challenge. Wrong step to take.

I think a little bit of marketing can't hurt, but purely relying on hype marketig probably doesn't as much, as before, although there will always be people that can be persuaded into preorder by marketing. (Or if you still have a few amounts of studios where you have enough trust in them to preorder)