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We believe that the relationship between marketing and game design should be either non-existant, or read-only. The purpose of marketing is to sell a product, not to design a product. The design of a game should stem from two sources:
- aesthetic/artistic considerations These are the only factors which can meaningfully affect the design of a game. Otherwise, the design will be corrupted, the integrity of the project will be lost, and the resulting game will be crappy. This is true in terms of game development, and holds generally for any type of creative endeavor: the more the vision of the producers is diluted by secondary considerations (e.g. considerations beyond the problem domain), the less optimal the resulting product will be. Marketing should simply take the finished product and market it: make it appealing to consumers. Changing the design of the product in order to make it appeal to consumers is basically cheating: the purpose of the product is it's function (in this case, to act as a form of entertainment media), and unless part of that function encompasses consumer appeal (which is the case with some products, such as cola, where the product serves no other real useful purpose) then offloading the marketer's job onto the engineers is a misguided practise. These beliefs are not based on idealism or any concept of "artistic integrity", but simply from a practical evaluation of video games: there is a statistical correlation between games considered great, and games whose design stemmed only from engineering and aesthetic concerns, and which didn't consider secondary issues such as consumer appeal. We also believe that this holds true of any creative endeavour. While some might argue that great doesn't necessarily mean profitable, we're confident that a free market will always generate a demand for a great product. While there are a variety of products which benefit from marketing-driven engineering, such as toothpaste or breakfast cereal, none of these products are the result of the inspired creative process of a group of talented individuals; the only creative process required is that of the marketing department, and the only talent they require is the ability to understand the consumer, and how to appeal to the consumer in advertisements. It is important for the video games industry to understand that, historically, large enterprises have only ever focused on marketing-driven engineering. Considered in this light, many diverse phenomena begin to make sense:
Larger tech companies in general prefer to "develop" technology by aquiring the small companies; this usually reduces or eliminates the productive capacity of the small company, and the large company then markets this stale technology until it "develops" new technology through yet another aquisition. - the erratic success of the video games industry, compared to more "established" commodity industries such as sugar or steel, is due to the fact that while both types of enterprise are involved in marketing-driven engineering, only the latter field is suited to such an approach, since their products are essentially static and require no creative input in the design process other than marketing. The reason that a very small percentage of commercial videogames are profitable is because a very small percentage of commercial video games are worth playing; most aren't worth the retail price, because most are bad games. The reason that there are so many bad games is that very few developers succeed in realising their design devoid of corrupting influences. Games which are produced by game developers are likely to be better games than those produced by marketers; likewise, ads produced by marketers are likely to be superior to those produced by programmers. Isn't this simply common sense? The music industry appears to be combating this problem by trying the alternate approach: instead of trying to produce great music, they seem to be trying to not produce great music. If all products are equally poor in quality, all products will be equally appealing, and consumer preference will be based solely on how well the music fits their desired image and lifestyle, as opposed to how good the music is when considered as music. The music industry is a perfect example of what happens when you let marketing influence production, engineering, and design decisions. That the music industry is in trouble will perhaps indicate to some that their business model is simply not well suited to their product, and that the market (freed by new communication technology) will not support such a model. If they want to churn out bland pap, they should produce oatmeal instead of music. Metanet Software is devoted to producing high quality video games. Our definition of a good video game is very simple: a good game is one which is fun to play. A game which tries to make people think it is fun will never be as successful as a game which actually is fun, because in general, most people know when they're having fun. We just tend to work that way. While perhaps slapping a dozen catch-phrases on a crappy game's box will result in a few more immediate sales, it will also result in the consumer becoming jaded and cynical about the entire range of products, which in the long term doesn't sound like a profitable model to do business under. This is exactly the approach taken by the music industry, and they're paying for it; if they had only invested their money in discovering talented creative musicians instead of in advertising untalented entertainers, consumers might actually care whether or not their actions were hurting the "artists" or the industry. Why not learn from the music industry, and make a good product instead? |
