The Escapist Bulletin: What Left 4 Dead 2 can teach us

Analyst Jesse Divinch of EEDAR has suggested that when it comes to selling games, good advertising and marketing is more effective than good review scores. Feeling incredulous yet? That’s hardly surprising, as you likely take your gaming seriously and aren’t going to let yourself be swayed by some flashy ad campaign.

Unfortunately, if you're reading this then you are not a typical gamer. The ubiquity of the internet makes it easy to assume that everyone is as well informed about games as you are. Trailers, interviews, previews and ultimately reviews are available from a wide variety of sources and not exactly difficult to find, so surely everyone reads them, right?

Wrong.

Just by frequenting a gaming website, you’re ahead of the curve and have strayed into the realm of the enthusiast. You might not think so, but the knowledge you likely possess is actually quite specialist, akin to a movie buff knowing about cinematography.

For most people, the closest they’ll come to reading a review is glancing at the back of the box - or maybe, just maybe, a tiny thing in a newspaper, barely longer than a classified ad. They don’t care about volumetric lighting or dynamic shadows, because, unlike you, they haven’t the faintest clue what they are.

With gaming being one of the few forms of popular media that still carries a stigma - despite being an absolutely massive industry - it’s understandable that we hardcore gamers want to believe that we are different from other people and that gaming somehow differs from ever other medium.

The truth, though, is that like any other entertainment product if you make a game look appealing on TV or a billboard, or in a magazine or newspaper, people will buy it.

When you realise this fact, the videogame industry suddenly makes a lot more sense. Why is Kane and Lynch, a game that got only middling reviews, getting a sequel and a movie, while Psychonauts, which is loved by critics the world over, languishes in relative obscurity?

Because it’s a lot easier to make a game starring two gun-toting psychos look appealing to an audience of 18-24-year-old men than it is a game about a summer camp for psychic kids, regardless of their actual respective levels of quality.

While the fanboy might be able to find some degree of vindication in this situation, for the more rational members of the gaming community it’s slightly disheartening because it indicates that games are not necessarily made for people like us, but instead for an uninformed public that cares less about the finer points of game design and more about explosions.

It’s easy to feel disenfranchised, but the gaming enthusiast community - a much better term than ‘hardcore’ - is still important to developers. The teeming masses may be lining the coffers, but it’s the enthusiasts who are providing developers with feedback.

So what does this mean? It means that, as a community, we enthusiasts have to make sure we communicate what we do and do not like about a given game, clearly and effectively.

As long as we don’t lapse into ranting, developers will listen to us. Look at the Left 4 Dead 2 boycotters: because they presented their arguments Valve not only listened to what they had to say, but actually went to the trouble of flying them out the Seattle to assuage their fears.

You should never assume that because we’re the minority, we don’t matter. We might be the minority, but if we all speak together, we’ll be heard.