ARG's as marketing tools

I've noticed from looking at Portal 2 and during previous essays that Alliterative Reality Games keep coming back as a way of marketing squeals of games. As our focus is on marketing and platform i want to explore how ARGs are used as marketing and why they are so popular.

Halo's ILoveBees created by 42 industries led thousands of people the trailer of halo 2 and got a lot of media coverage and also used the method of transmedia reaching out to many around the world. Portal 2 during my research explored how these games can be used to pull back players back into the world of a game even after a couple of years. Portal's ARG was created by Vavle with no marketing company and there are some companies focusing on Args and advertising.

I have found a websidehttp://www.argology.org/ that has everything to do with ARG's to date. In a new survey 12% ARG's are for marketing alone meaning there is a defiant market for companies to create ARG's to market and there are companies out there using them to market.



A basic definition of a ARG : "Alternate Reality Games are, essentially, a big collaborative story. Pieces of the story can be found online or off. They may be websites or email or video clips (maybe on youtube or television) or audio clips (possibly as podcasts or voicemail messages). You might find them at payphones or libraries or city monuments or, even, cemeteries. The possibilities are endless." -Brooke Thompson

ARG's are always changing and are always different so its hard to place a solid pin to what they are. A couple of different ARG developers have tried to define ARG's in there own way like Adam Martin and Tom Chatfield's. I feel that its best to define something in its simplest way and for me that is "A story told through the use of transmedia and social networking"

Portal 2 Co-op Advertising and marketing

Portal 2 Co-op Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A88YiZdXugA

The Co-op trailer for portal 2 shows a new side to portal as it breaks free from the main characters and brings two more to life. It also shows the exciting side of solving puzzles together more than alone. The trailer again focuses on Portal's USP of dark humour and loveable characters but puts its point across as a totally new side of gaming for the portal series. This is the first we are seeing of the multiplayer of Portal but already thanks to the marketing we can see that there is many aspects that we are going to enjoy. The focus on character was much stronger and to the point showing the interaction between player and how only together puzzles can be solved. It also shown the devious side to the multiplayer as one may press a button to lead to the others death combining the dark humour with the characters. The characters also appear to have a bond and human like quality marketing the games personality. The tall thin and short and fat quality of characters build the bond of opposite attraction and variation of character.

Portal 2

Another marketing sheme appeared on the announcement of Portal 2 at E3. Gabe Newell co-founder of Valve Corporation stood on stage to announce Portal 2 being released but more that then announce that Portal 2 will work better on Playstation 3 than any other console. This shock to the audience as Gabe Newell is known for his strong dislike of Sony's Playstation 3 and has repeatly shared his thoughts 'PS3 a "waste of time," says Valve's Newell' This was a strong and bold move for Valve and Gabe as Valve are now marketing there game towards Sony. This would potentially bring more customers to the game as Valve as mainly focused at PC and Xbox releases. He only didn't just announce of Portal 2 and pushing it for Playstation he stated why Playstation players will get more from Portal 2 on Playstation than any other console“best version on any console”, using the console war in Playstation's side which fans will be pulled into game.

Video link to E3 announcement :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8eRjw-xogQ

More than the announcement taking from what happened it appears that the game is more marketing towards fans of the series than trying to win over new customers with the trailer shown during the announcement and how GlaDos a character in the game talks as Newell enters on the stage.

Teaser Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TMLWRQiC-4

This trailer shown at E3 2010 appears to be focusing on the aspect of time and characters, fans and players know that its 3 years since Portal which in the gaming industry is a long time for a squeal, as most today release the squeal a year after the first game. At the beginning on the trailer we see overgrown planets connotating time as past and we see the enemy character coming back to life and saying its been a very long time. Now fans will understand the time past and also understand what this might mean and we see that the things have changed but also things hasn't as we see the buildings repairing themselves so we will get the same environments again but with some new ones. They show some gameplay for those who haven't seen Portal before and they also pull back on the comedy with the enemy character showing they are still focusing on that as there main selling point. I feel that they captured what we expected with the new game and haven't lost what Portal was all about.

I feel that Valve has defiantly looked into how they can get people into the hype of Portal 2 as they have done two every important things. They have strongly addressed there fans and pushed themselves into a new market audience and focusing on them. Why they have done this is easy, they wanted to make a strong point that there much loved game has got a squeal and its gonna be bigger and better than ever but be so much more so they will have to show how much more it is so it can survive as a full title.

E3 - 2010
http://www.nowgamer.com/columns/casual-games/617/portal-2-announcement-microsofts-mistake-is-sonys-gainMark Androvich 11/10/2007 www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ps3-a-waste-of-time-says-valves-newell (2011)

Game Marketing

To start our research in to marketing we have been asked to look at the marketing stratagey used by a upcoming company and what they have done to promote and market there game. This will allow us to get a basic understanding of what games companies do to market there games and we may notice how well they have done or if there advertising and marketing hasnt done well. I mentioned in my first post a couple of games that are to be released not to long in the future and i have decided to look at the game Portal 2 as this game started off a small game in a multipack not as full game on its own, now the sequel is a full title. This makes me wonder if this will change the way they advertise and want to know what they advertise to show it can handle being a full title.

Portal was created by Valve Corporation and released in 2007 as a game featured in a Valve game bundle package for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC. The game also was available to by using Valves direct content system Steam. The game didn't take long to get popular with its new puzzle system and likeable characters. With silly themes and interesting concepts people wanted more out of the game and it became popular online with flash versions of the game. As the game was funny and yet dark and puzzling it wouldn't be suprizing that they would follow on this unique feature of theirs.he game itself is a First Person Pepective game in which you play the protangist that has to save herself using a portal gun to solve many puzzles. The game was said to be too short and as i have played it i agree but the uniqueness of humour balanced out that it was too short because you till got a lot of fun out of the game.

Games during their advertising and marketing have to build a lot of hype to get more people to buy the game on release and following time after. Games that may lack in gameplay and may seem bad can still make a large profit on the way they are advertised. A lot of games market and advertise there game as soon as they are announced. Portal 2 is no different so i will be looking at how Portal 2 has make itself a name before it has even hit the shops, also what tactics it has appeared to use.



I first want to look and understand how a game approach's the world and how they first put themselves out there to the general public to question the game, idea and them to build there own hype through ideas and theories. Valve has used a different method that has been used more commonly now in games and films to hint and market an idea of a sqeual using a ARG (Alturnitive reality game). A sudden couple of updates appeared for the game portal on march 2010 that had some minor changes to the game. Players who downloaded the updates noticed a new achievement about radio transmissions and a hunt began to understand what they had done.

Radios in game had been changed in that when placed onto a pad a light would change to green and play a transmission sound, this would give them 1 out of the possible 26 sounds to find. This lead to a storm of people wondering why this has been put in place as the game was now 3 years old. As players discovered newly added in game radios and new soundclips, players found in the sound files the same sounds and hidden pictures that could only be viewed in a certain software. These images appeared to be stills from security cameras inside the game. Players the guessed that it could be a way of hinting that a squeal was on its way.

Video of Radio transmissions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5bdTlryKes

This viewed shows what happens when the radios are used and what Valve as doe to promote Portal 2 before even it being announced that the game is in production. What it has done is made players come back to the game to get back into the story and make them want to wait for the game, hype already builds before anyone knows the game is being made. They also can get a good knowledge of how many people are still interested in the game after so long by seeing how the world takes this information. I think it was a good marketing strategy because they got more people back to the game and are able to see the intrest of fans well early on. Because of the intrest the ARG was extended with more updates to the original game portal and more images to find. These lead to more conclusive evidence to a second game on the way.

It wasn't until 10th March 2010 that Portal 2 was announced to be in production. I like the way they used the ARG because it fitted with the theme of the game. Portal has a Smart AI protagonist in the game and using hidden data and images kinda makes me feel that the game doing it more that company is setting this up. Also again it was a puzzle to solve like the game itself so Valve must have looked at what they could of done and kept with this to keep in theme and not just shoving the information out, they carefully planned how they were going to begin the marketing of the new game.



http://kotaku.com/5014851/rumor-casting-call-reveals-portal-2-details
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_(video_game)http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Portal_ARG

Introduction to brief and marketing

We have just received our new contexual studies topic and brief for this term. Our current project falls under the title Platform and Distribution of games. In this topic we are coving a area of games we haven't covered yet and start us of in the management of the games industry and the choices made by the games industry.

Our Brief is to create a research blog that we undertake studies that relate to the games industries that effect the Platform and distribution. At the end of this brief a 2500 word essay would have to be produced to be marked. This would be a more condensed version of the research from the blog but refined to point. Our brief explains that this project wants us to understand business and professional skills in the games industry. Learning theoretical elements essential to the practical design process of a commercial or critically successful digital game. Gaining further understanding of the development of game modes and industries.

As an introduction to the new project we had a short talk about understanding and what to look at when looking at games currently being advertised. We have been asked to look at one up coming game and see how its being advertised and why you think it is. Because there are reasons behind all the advertising and learning the process and reasons why is key to understand the current games industry. The advertising also explains more on other areas like platform and game functions.

Also what do we learn about these games during the marketing? The marketing makes the hype and most of all creates the game. A good game can be looked over because no one bought it and a bad game can make profits because more people bought it because the marketing worked so well. Understanding these tools and ways will allow me to enter a games industry with a strong understanding of how the process of a game is created from both the development down to the day its sold.

Games today are advertised and marketed from the moment of confirming the game title and idea so picking a game that is soon to be released it would still mean looking back at all the advertising and marketing the game as already gone through. This makes picking a game to follow difficult due to the time limit of the project because i may not pick up on information that has already been used to market the game and i don't have the time to follow the marketing strategy from the beginning because it could take over a year.

Because my project ends 21st Feb i feel that there are a couple of games i could choose to look at there marketing strategies. These are Deadspace 2, Portal 2, Dragon Age 2 and Brink as these are all being released in around march and april so they are going to start advertising themselves more during the time of this project.


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