Video Game Publishers Proclaim the Death of Marketing: It’s Time to Explore the Power of Underwhelming

During an interview with PC Gamer, a publication that caters to the video game industry, one studio executive boldly proclaimed that marketing “doesn’t work anymore.” He made some interesting points, which led me to wonder if the most effective marketing strategy might be to underwhelm rather than attempt to entice and delight. 

Marketing Is Dead

Michael Douse is the publishing director at Larian Studios, the company behind the immensely popular “Baldur’s Gate 3.” The property snagged the Game of the Year trophy at all five major video game award ceremonies: the Golden Joystick Awards, the Game Awards, the D.I.C.E. Awards, the Game Developers Choice Awards, and the British Academy Games Awards. And in Douse’s opinion, marketing is dead. 

Prior to Douse’s lament, “Warframe” creative director Rebecca Ford offered a similar opinion when she said, "Actual players don’t want to be marketed to.” Writing for Games Radar, Jordan Gerblick recounted Douse’s critical response to the state of marketing in the industry:

"Marketing is dead. Marketing is dead. It truly is –  I can back this shit up, man –  there’s no channels anymore. It doesn’t work. You used to have marketing, communication, and PR. Marketing was essentially a retail theory; you were trying to get your box on the right point of the store shelf, and you have partnerships with retail stores. Those pipelines are gone. Now you’ve got the internet. Nobody is looking at ads anymore … all of the channels that we would usually market through are no longer really viable. So their function is also reduced by the fact that players just want to be spoken to. They don’t want to be bamboozled, they just want to know what you're making and why you’re making it and who it’s for."

There are a couple of key takeaways here. First, nobody is interested in ads. As a consumer, I would agree. I block them, skip them, kill them, and ignore them. I have never purchased anything from a sales pitch. I know what I want, I research my options, and then choose the product or service that I believe will best suit my needs. If I go to a website and can’t locate the information I want, I abandon it forever. This is why, in marketing, I have always endorsed the inbound approach: inform, attract, empower, and hope for the best. 

The second point is that customers don’t want to be “bamboozled.” They want to be spoken to. More importantly, they want to know what the company is developing, what it’s about, and who it’s for. I’m not sure this is really happening across most industries. 

Kafka-esque Marketing: Running the Gauntlet of the Gatekeepers

I’ll tell you a little story. A year or so ago, I was tasked by a client with finding the best corporate gift-giving platform for his needs and budget. Seemed simple enough. It wasn’t. I spent the first phase of this project researching the most likely vendors. Once I had selected the companies, things got complicated. None of their sites, and I mean none of them, contained detailed information about the product. They had reviews, client logos, a smattering of vague testimonials, whatever. They offered ambiguous hints at what the platform could help customers achieve – namely, creating gift packages, sending them out, and tracking them. Well, duh. I’m no corporate gift-giving guru, but I instinctively understood that to be the overall process. What all of these sites did promise was a tortuous run through the gauntlet of countless salespeople. I had to schedule a demo. The demo at least filled in the gaps left by marketing. But this salesperson was simply the demo leader. If I had questions, particularly about pricing and contracts, well then I had to speak to a few other salespeople. The pricing person was always the final boss in this tedious, grinding game. 

So, more calls were scheduled. The companies refused to send me a quote listing out all the facets of the deal or any document outlining the features and functionalities of the product. I could only receive this information after battling the various gatekeepers. It reminded me, in the worst ways, of Kafka’s parable “Before the Law,” which appeared in his novel The Trial. And the sales process I endured was just as surreal, frustrating, and absurd. If your sales and marketing strategy is best described as “Kafka-esque,” let me say that you have utterly, miserably failed. But that happens a lot these days.

Sad Website Statistics Validating Marketing Failures

Too many websites bombard visitors with a barrage of pop-up ads, auto-playing videos, unintuitive navigation, and so on. What you infrequently find when you arrive on the landing page is the information you wanted. And even in you take the time to explore, there’s seldom a clear link that takes you to the page you need. Statistics from hosting sites validate this problem. Katherine Haan and Rob Watts collected these datapoints in their article for Forbes Advisor.

• An average bounce rate falls between 41% and 55%, meaning that a significant number of visitors are not engaging with the website beyond the first page. Yikes.
• The average click-through rate is 6.64% across all industries. Not great.
• Users form an opinion about a website in 0.05 seconds. Less than a second to get the core information in front of an audience. Which, as we’ve all seen, usually fails.
• The average conversion rate for e-commerce websites is between 1.84% and 3.71%. Yeah, because you’re forced to confront the Kafka-esque redirection to the gatekeepers in sales and demos.
• About 88% of online users won’t return to a site after a bad experience. I’m one of them.
• Another 61% say that if they don’t find what they’re looking for within about five seconds, they’ll go to another site. I also find myself in this crowd.

Maybe Modern Marketing Needs to Underwhelm

You may want a dazzling website with lots of animations and videos and moving parts, but do your customers? What do they want to see? What do they want to know? What do you think they are most interested in finding? These are the questions you need to ask before launching a marketing and sales strategy that some executive thought would be cool based on his or her version of cool.

Look, I hate the colors yellow and purple. Absolutely loathe them. But if my target audience just adored those sickly hues, you can bet my website would be yellow and purple. You can be sure that I’d be dolled up in yellow and purple for every meeting.

I’ve been asked in the past to populate already designed websites with content. I usually reject those projects. However, I did it once before. It was disastrous. The site was overly complicated, full of interactive containers, animated visuals, widgets that flew into view like those kitschy PowerPoint objects, and just fluff. So, my job was to find a way to cram what information I could into this mess. I gave up because content was an afterthought. There was no way I could provide vital information to prospective customers. Yes, a website should look professional, attractive, and aligned to your brand. But it doesn’t need to be sexy. I hate that term in business. Unless your business is sex. 

Today, content needs to control design. And that content must be real, informative, intuitive, present, immediate, and clear. No games, no luring people into demos, no holding details hostage until the ransom of speaking with sales is paid. Perhaps it's time to underwhelm.

• Exemplify inbound strategies with comprehensive yet direct content that explains exactly what your business is selling, what the product or service actually does, how it helps solve the problem at hand, and which customers will benefit from it most.
• Keep the navigation present and intuitive. Don’t make visitors guess at where things might be. Simple shit, you know? Services. Contact Us. Product Details. Blog. Specifications. Whatever, just be transparent about it.
• In pages that describe the product or service, do just that. Avoid the desire to bamboozle or bait. A blurb about how your service helped a startup grow into a Fortune 100 company isn’t selling me on the service when nothing else on the page tells me how the service works. “Our product is used by every leading retailer in the Southeast.” Okay, good for you. What the hell does this product do? 
• Focus more on community management and engagement rather than cheap sales tactics. I love me some “No Man’s Sky,” and the folks at Hello Games have enjoyed a storied comeback after an abysmal launch. But most fans bemoan the “hype train” strategy of hinting at future updates – only to be disappointed when the release fails to measure up to the hype. Yes, that is bamboozling. 
• Community engagement would be the better play here. Announce when the next update is likely to happen. You don’t have to be specific. Just say “this summer” or “between June and July.” 
• Give details about what it might include: “Space stations will see a massive visual overhaul and a rad new ship will be available for purchase.” Maybe throw in a couple of photos. 
• Explain to customers how the new offering will benefit them: “The forthcoming update will include features that allow players to customize the difficulty level.” Stuff like that, folks.

Let’s face it, the Internet is where consumers perform their research. They’re blocking ads and running away from sites that confuse them. Your website is no longer a bookmark on the Web that legitimizes your existence to search engines: it is the most important informational hub and knowledge portal for your potential customers. It should be treated as such.