Good and bad at games

Sean Dromgoole, founding partner of Some Research – qualitative research providers for the video games industry – on the competitive forces impacting the games industry as it emerges into the questioning light of day.

We’ve just had our own little meltdown in the world of games. Two games journalists were threatening handbags at dawn. Principals were broken. Reputations are in tatters. A man has moved on.

The inciting incident was a paid for tweet during one of our many happy-back-slappy dinners in which awards for marketing are doled out by account managers to those with the most monstrous recent budget.

Squealing about a single paid for tweet on such an occasion is a bit like trying a soldier for shooting a swallow at Passchendaele. That individuals should get over excited is regrettable. That they have thrown light on the darkness from whence they come is worth a deeper look.

Entertainment marketing is not just about persuading people to buy some. It is also the first point of engagement and enjoyment of the product itself. Being excited before you walk in is part of what you are paying for. So it is for film, live music, theatre, even event TV.

Anticipation, hype and excitement are all part of the fun and nowhere more so than with games. Get people to the right pitch of excitement and it becomes churlish not to part with the £40 or so demanded for the next Assassins Creed, or Halo or Grand Theft Auto.

So how then does the reviewing journalist, the critic, help with this vast excitement propulsion engine?

Well, needless to say, bad reviews aren’t quite the thing. Bit of a dead horse at a wedding is a bad review. I know this. I grew up in a theatrical family overly familiar with the territory. Imagine a West End first night after party. A large house in Kensington. A constant roar of over indulgence.

A motorcyclist arrives from Fleet Street at about 3am. He smells of ink. A brief pause, increasingly worried faces pulling apart different papers, shaking heads and after some bitter shouting from the director, party over. All troupe off into a cold night thinking about what they might be doing in a few weeks time.

Nationally famous play, by nationally famous playwright, with nationally famous actors trounced by a nationally famous critic. A critic whose reputation and career, consists in developing a following who believe him or her and place their trust in them. In my family you had to learn to take it on the chin.

But what if you’re in a niche. Under a stone where nobody looks. A vast wealthy industry lurking outside the mainstream. The critics don’t get famous and don’t develop a following. Unfamous as they are, they get treated insanely lavishly. “We can’t send you a copy of the game but you could come and play it with us. We were thinking Crete…?”

Well then, through the walls of moral probity and unassailable integrity, the occasional good review may creep. There have been bad game reviews. Some are quite cutting. A friend of mine once had his game reviewed thus: “Imagine strapping gelignite to your genitals and then detonating it – even that would not be as bad as this game”. But the general vibe is a positive one. We’re all in the same niche together and because it’s all happening in its own little valley, nobody even thinks it might be wrong.

So what happened to disrupt this happy idyll? There are four key elements that boiled this pot over.

Firstly, Apple et al. started selling games for their devices at 79p a pop. Now this won’t affect the big games in the slightest. What big games do, nothing else comes even close to. The intermediate games market however has been decimated and this was where a lot of the same people were also making good money.

Secondly, media like TV, publishing, music and dear old radio, have made watching/reading/listening to exactly what you want, exactly when you want to, true. This has hugely cut the eyeball hours available to games.

Thirdly, the ubiquitous comment section, where real people say what they think of the reviews, after they’ve played the game, can sit uncomfortably next to friendly hyperbole.

Finally, games did go mainstream. There are now regular reviews in The Guardian and The Sun – who knows maybe even the Telegraph is thinking about it.

So less money about just at the moment that mainstream cultural values arrive. General atmosphere of tetchiness and suddenly some ruffled feathers. There may well be more as games emerges from its niche into the questioning light of day.