Video games, a hobby that I am passionate about, and an industry that I keep a close eye on. Especially when it comes to marketing, and how this marketing affects people's understanding of the game.

Video game marketing strategies can be interesting. There are a lot of clever video game marketing campaigns, as well as ones that don’t particularly hit the mark. There is also a third type of marketing for video games, one that straddles the lines of being successful and a little distasteful. I will dub this cheesy marketing. But let's start with a good piece of video game marketing, one that was a perfect storm of fortunate timing and expert craftsmanship – the Battlefield 1 trailer. For context, Battlefield is a FPS, or first person shooter, video game usually set in historical wars. It puts you in the boots of a soldier, and lets you fight enemies using all manners of vehicles and aircrafts. Its direct competitor is the infamous Call of Duty series, which is equally infamous. 

When the trailer for Battlefield 1 dropped, Call of Duty had one of the worst trailer reveals of all time with Infinite Warfare. There are a plethora of reasons for this, but the most commonly expressed grievance was that audiences were simply tired of futuristic settings. The game took place in a future where US soldiers and robots were fighting with each other. This along with a lackluster previous entry in the series means that the trailer failed to strike a chord. That is when Battlefield released a trailer for its new game – Battlefield 1. Battlefield 1 was a sort of prequel to its previous games, with the setting being the first world war. As a quick aside, I say ‘sort’ because the Battlefield games do not feature much of an overarching plot, they are just set in different wars across different periods of history. Battlefield 1 was the farthest they had gone back in history. 

The trailer featured intense, cinematic action alongside striking ambience and attention to detail. It felt like you were truly in the trenches of the first world war, and every action and sound was grounded in realism. It was a far cry from the over the top, almost plastic appearance of Infinite Warfare. These intense visuals and audio alongside the remix of the famous Seven Nation Army song propelled the trailer to 73M views. Even nearly 10 years later, people comment on the trailer talking about how epic it was. As you might expect, the game went on to be immensely popular, and most consider the best entry in the Battlefield series.

This next piece of marketing, however, didn’t hit the mark quite like Battlefield 1 had. It is universally hated, almost so infamously, that other marketers began to make jokes about it. I’m talking about the trailer for Evony Online, a mobile game. Evony Online is a game where you are the ruler of a city. It has very simple, cartoonish graphics as well as rudimentary gameplay. The trailers, however, depict something else entirely. Some ads show Roman soldiers storming castles with miniguns and helicopters. Others show a puzzle game where you are trying to save a man from getting burned in lava. Both of these examples do not portray the actually Evony Online game at all, to the point that it has almost become a meme in and of itself about how terrible the games ads are. Other mobile game companies have joined in on the fun, commonly saying that they ads “are really like the trailers” during a lot of them.

Mobile marketing for video games  isn’t a field known for its accuracy, so the fact that Evony Onlines trailers are so bad that they fellow mobile games are making fun of them says a lot. 

Finally, we have the most fascinating of the two – the cheesy game ads. Ones that aren’t bad pieces of marketing per say, but they aren’t the most tasteful, totally accurate, or even indicative of the game. The example I want to look at is for the hit game Marvel Rivals, a “hero shooter” game where you play as Marvel superheroes on teams of six. It is immensely popular, very fun, and a very polished product. Yet, if you look at the advertisements, many are focused on showing off the attractiveness of the female superheroes with ads many may see as slightly tasteless. They often depict the characters alongside captions with sexual undertones, some of which may even be inappropriate to repeat in this blog post.

Not all of the marketing for the game is like this, most of it is great, but I can’t help but be put off by these strange pieces. Strangely, the tasteless ads are mostly on Tiktok. For what reason, I am not sure. I personally do not like the ads, but despite my own opinion, they did very well for the game. The ads get people to click, whether out of curiosity or outrage. But once they see more of the game, and the quality of the product, they get sold. It is like they use strange ads like bait, to hook players into exploring the product.

In the end, whether video game marketing is good, bad, or cheesy, its ultimate goal is to capture attention and drive people to try the game. While it’s easy to critique marketing strategies, it’s important to remember that a failed campaign doesn’t always reflect the quality of the game itself. Great games can suffer from poor marketing, just as weaker games can be boosted by clever advertising. Ideally, marketing should reflect the true spirit of the game — but when it doesn’t, it’s the players who miss out on experiences they might have loved.

Written By: Caleb Quentel | Marketing Strategist | Content Culture

Thank you for reading!