Some Terribly Boring Thoughts on Responsibility & Crisis PR
A few things have been on my mind about the nature of accountability in PR crises lately, in no small part thanks to Uber’s growing troubles and YouTube’s biggest personality losing deals with major partners. None of this is meant to fully address any one story specifically, but they may come up as examples.
Some PR crises explode not from a single event, but from an accumulation or pattern of unresolved events. Bad PR doesn’t always cause a crisis - perhaps the story only gets a little attention, the news cycle moves on, the situation blows over, etc. But even when bad PR doesn’t result in disaster, that doesn’t erase the slate. That event gets tucked away into the memory banks of the public and media, ready to be pre-loaded into the next news beat. That makes the work that comes after an instance of bad PR (listening earnestly to criticism, being transparent, following through on promises made, etc.) important in how the next potential crisis <knock on wood> unfolds.
Uber didn’t stumble into PR trouble at the start of 2017; it had years of bad PR here and there, quietly accumulating until the right story opened the floodgates and unleashed a torrent of repressed public sentiment. Patterns of behavior with their own snowballing narratives could be drawn together, and those can be especially challenging to rewrite.
Some will enjoy seeing you fail, and how you react to that matters. During a PR crisis, it can be easy to arrive at the conclusion that, because your supporters appear to be with you, the opinions of critics (a group containing outsiders who don’t get what you’re trying to achieve and often seem to celebrate your misfortune) shouldn’t be entertained.
But that can be a dangerous position to do business from - it assumes your supporters are looking out for your best interests; or are doing so for the right intentions; or are rational adults (and not literally children, which is especially relevant when influencer PR on Twitch or YouTube is involved). Being able to divorce criticism from the potential sentiment or tone of those providing it can be valuable in determining which voices to listen to during a PR disaster.
You can be held accountable for the messages you give a platform to, regardless of intent. A sentiment I routinely see is the idea that individual influencers, companies, etc. can’t be held accountable for the toxic and hateful atmosphere of Twitch chat, YouTube comments, Discord channels, tweets, etc. This has always struck me as naive because the very act of those names appearing next to words like toxicity and hate in headlines, news stories, tweets, and public discussion is, by itself, a form of responsibility. Do I think that means every last YouTuber is to blame for YouTube comments being awful? Of course not. Do I think any individual has the power to fully fix that problem? Again, no.
But having a platform imparts some degree of responsibility for what that platform puts out into the world. Even taking PewDiePie at his word that his broadcasting of an anti-Semitic message was a joke meant to highlight a problematic paid service available online, we still arrive at the fact that a direct message of hate was spread far more than an implied message of... whatever the message was intended to be. As a result, his name appeared at length across public discourse next to words like hate and racism. It’s almost irrelevant whether you thought the controversy was fair or not; he could be held responsible for it regardless.
Three years ago, many gaming companies had little idea what to make of gaming’s growing influencer community - those days are fast becoming history. More and more, we’re watching them shift their questions from “who’s the biggest influencer we can get?” to “who can be trusted not to damage our brand with problematic content?” They’re paying more attention to the messages that people with platforms give voice to (intended or not) and making decisions about who to work with accordingly.
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We’re always interested in stories that explore the work content creators on Twitch, YouTube, etc. put in to build their channels, so I appreciated this piece from ProfessorBroman on the increasing pressures some feel to stream all day, every day to keep their hard-earned audiences, especially early on. It paints how difficult it can be to pull away from work when you’re your own boss and everything in life can be framed as a personal profit/loss opportunity cost calculus.
We have, as an industry, defined “growing channels and audiences” as a numbers game of views and subscriptions. But maybe this is a self-limiting view of growth. Content creators are businesspeople, yes, but their business is entertainment. And we rarely talk about the qualitative output of talent, creativity and skill those channels produce - how engaging or expressive or unique a channel is vs. simply how big it is.
The demands of business and entertainment don’t always sync. Creativity requires more than passion. It requires experience. And inspiration. And rest. Gaining those things has a cost. Making room for a life outside of streaming may reduce your lifetime follower increases. It may lower your monthly subscription numbers and donations. You will run fewer ads. If you rely on your channel’s income for a living, those considerations matter.
But maybe it makes the product better. I’m reminded of a post from an improv teacher I admire on “emotional priorities” [edits for brevity]: “Don’t get so obsessed you get unhealthy. Value real friends over status... Take breaks. Miss things... now and then so you can re-charge. If your friend is getting married during the weekend that there are auditions... skip the audition.”
What I like about this advice is that it’s not about how to be the best performer, or do the most performances, or even make money. It’s advice for how to be a performer and not burn out after 2, 5, or 10 years. It recognizes that some of your value as a performer comes from what you do away from the audience.
I have no doubt there are streamers who can work without end while still producing great, creative work and growing their brand. But “stream all day, every day or lose everything” is not a mentality that can healthily sustain the streaming community in the long run. Like traditional artists, content creators have a responsibility to please their audiences, but also to surprise them, to defy their expectations, to give them what is needed over what they demand. And that requires thinking of "growing a channel” in a way that recognizes monetary success, but also values the physical and mental well-being of the host, the respectfulness of the audience, and the creativity of the product.
From quality and quantity of game types to storylines and more, the past year in gaming was one that both impressed and astounded. Some random thoughts:
The fact that mobile gaming continues to trend is great, though we’ve found that UA drives many more downloads than PR. Editors that care about mobile games are tougher than ever to find, even though there are more players than ever. What does this mean as we head into 2017? I look forward to finding out. We envision the rise of premium content once again; games that continue to innovate can make noise in the media, but the flip side of that is licensed products and well-known IPs, which can get traction based on their lineage.
We watched a number of titles reaffirm the influence that Twitch and YouTube coverage can have directly on sales. It’s not easy - in fact, it’s getting more competitive all the time. With rare exceptions, you need a dedicated content creator strategy in conjunction with traditional PR to see results. But I’m continually amazed at the sheer variety of games - games that might have been written off a couple years ago - that make it big on these platforms.
2016 was a year that brought casual gamers and even non-gamers back into the conversation in many ways - Overwatch, Pokemon Go, Clash Royale, and Super Mario Run all broke through as topics my extended family would bring up with me. And while not fully ready to transition yet, I think this holiday season was one in which a number of mainstream consumers started paying attention to 4K technology.
With relatively affordable mobile VR rigs, console-based PlayStation VR, and high-end PC systems, VR finally arrived in 2016. Having played through quite a bit of VR stuff in 2016, I’m a firm believer in the medium. We’re still looking for that killer app though. The entry costs (both price and space/hardware required) as they stand now for non-mobile VR really challenge the question of what constitutes a must-have game in VR. Now that the pieces are in place, I’m interested to see how this sector evolves next.
As I think about the industry now, gaming feels increasingly personal and varied. And it’s not just about the games themselves. It’s about how people find about how them, how we make connections with them, and how we make connections with one another through them. 2016 was a year in which you could totally tune out the real world in VR or go to a park at 10 PM with 100 others in search of Pokemon. It was a surprising year. And that makes me very optimistic for what’s around the corner.
I want to talk a bit about one of the challenges that Microsoft and Sony face now that their 4K resolution display-designed consoles have been unveiled, and that’s the burden of teaching consumers what this next format evolution is, and what it means for their purchasing and gaming decisions and experiences going forward. Because it isn’t just that 4K TV ownership in the public is still low - it’s that strong knowledge of 4K TVs is low, too. And even though 4K isn’t a new term in gaming, I think it’s one most people could afford to not pay much attention to up until now. Why go through all the effort to learn about something expensive you don’t seem to need anyway?
The reveals of Microsoft’s Xbox One S and Scorpio at E3 and, this week, Sony’s PS4 Pro change that. Suddenly, “Do I need 4K?” isn’t such a simple question to dismiss. But nor is it any easier a question to answer, especially if price is a concern. And this is the landscape in which both Microsoft and Sony will operate - one in which teaching the public about 4K technology is as critical as promoting it.
Notably, it’s a burden that is now Sony’s first and foremost to shoulder after quietly letting Microsoft do the heavy lifting since the early reveal of Scorpio at E3. It will do so with the hurdle that, like 3D TV before it, 4K is a feature that really doesn’t translate through screenshots or video - you kind of just have to see it for yourself. And it will do so while having to manage the same air space in which the the PS4 Slim, PSVR, and all the games coming out for them that make them worth owning.
Many of the gameplay trailers at Sony’s event this week came noted with caveats about just what kind of systems are needed to produce those visuals, trying to hype multiple products to multiple audiences without accidentally promising anyone anything they shouldn’t expect with their current devices at home. That’s an inelegant (but still necessary) solution to a challenge that will heighten as 4K gaming consoles begin promotions in other, less-controlled mediums. How will quick game commercials during TV broadcasts manage those messaging nuances? What about box covers? In-store marketing displays? There aren’t easy answers to these questions - they’ll require that both companies (and the third-party developers that follow) maintain a level of forthright honesty with consumers about the real value of this technology, as well as the considerations we should all make before buying into gaming’s next wave.
With so much of our business coming from overseas, we rarely get to see our international clients or business partners face to face. Even at industry-focused trade shows like GDC, we might only get time with clients in the context of a demo or some other work activity. And when you’re holding to a tight convention schedule like that, it can be difficult to find the moments to slow down and really get personal or talk about the bigger picture.
That’s not something we’re happy about. So this past spring, two of Sandbox’s partners - Corey Wade and myself - flew to Europe for a road trip across three countries to visit as many of our clients and industry friends (some former clients) as we could. No agendas or pitching or schedules - just stopping by (announced ahead of time!) to hang out and learn a bit more about their worlds firsthand.
The first stop was Berlin to attend Quo Vadis. If you’re not familiar, it’s one of my new favorite shows, a throwback to the original vibe GDC had about 15 years ago: a nice, casual mix of business meetings, informative talks and great parties. I’ve gone three times now, and it gets better and better every year. If it’s not on your list, definitely check it out: http://qvconf.com.
I had been asked to speak about the legacy of the King’s Quest franchise (which we work on) then and now. It was half history lesson, half modern inside baseball, reflecting on the first game I worked on at Sierra - King’s Quest V - and comparing and contrasting it to the experience of promoting The Odd Gentlemen’s recent, highly praised spin on the series. I prepared an hour’s worth of material, and the most talked-about slide was the one simply listing the system requirements of King’s Quest V - remember when we used to run games on 2 MB of RAM?
Later, we headed to Finland to chill with a bunch of studios, including Frogmind, Next Games, Housemarque and a few others. Finnish game developers are a big part of our business, and Helsinki’s gaming scene is incredibly tight-knit and social, so we try to stop by whenever we’re even vaguely in the neighborhood (this was our third company visit to Finland).
It was a valuable experience. That may not translate immediately on our ledgers - we took time away that could’ve been spent productively in the office. We ate well with friends and did some sightseeing in the places they call home. We enjoyed ourselves. But this wasn’t a business trip. It was a personal trip to spend time with the people we do business with, and their perspectives are ones you might miss if your travel is limited to the demands of press tours and conventions.
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One of the lingering threads from last week’s E3 I keep revisiting is the set of challenges gaming console manufacturers face as they prepare to launch new systems in 2017 at a midpoint in this current console generation. It’s a tightrope, made all the more difficult by the history of console marketing.
PC gamers are generally accustomed to purchasing decisions that balance power against price - when you can spend thousands of dollars on the highest end systems, most users must ask themselves serious questions about what they want vs. what they need out of their investments. Given my budget, am I willing to pay hundreds more for a marginal performance improvement? What selection of components/hardware will give me the most bang for my buck?
That’s never really been the case for the console community. Owning the best possible system (with whatever terms you use to make that judgment) has been a dominant cultural and consumer driver for decades (those forces exist on PC, as well, but the cost of entry to maintain a top-class system is so high as to naturally limit their impact). It’s a culture of exclusives, and by their very definition, exclusives are meant to make some people feel left out.
And that matters now that console makers seem to want to iterate on their hardware more similar to the way phone or personal computer companies do. Announcing a shiny new toy, then immediately having to explain to your audience why they maybe shouldn’t look at it just yet (either because you still want to sell less powerful systems this holiday season, or because 4K televisions are still cost-prohibitive to many consumers) isn’t just awkward - it’s a direct refutation of how gamers have been taught to think for decades.
Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing! Not everyone wants to spend the time and money it takes to maximize every last aspect of their entertainment experience, and I respect a company willing to say to customers, “maybe this specific expensive thing isn’t for you, at least not yet - not everyone demands the same product, and we’re trying to recognize that with the choices we offer.” But that’s a nuanced message, which game companies aren’t always the best at delivering, and gamers aren’t always the best at processing. It’ll be interesting to see how that conversation develops over the next year.
I really enjoyed this article from GamesIndustry.biz on the challenges that a toxic culture poses to esports as they try to go mainstream. It takes the scene seriously by treating its problems honestly, and now that we’re past the question of whether or not esports will have a future, I’m glad we can start to ask more thought-provoking questions about just what that future will look like.
But I worry that the question of what audiences will tolerate from their entertainment is more complicated than presented here.
The argument in the piece is that, ultimately, morals follow money. If esports want to achieve mainstream acceptance, they’ll inevitably have to curb the fringes of their cultures that perpetuate “constant rape jokes, homophobic slurs and racist abuse” or risk losing the greater viewing public.
I want to hope that’s true in the long run, but I’m not sure mass audiences are that simple in behavior and choices. Gaming itself still wrestles with issues like race, gender, sexuality, civility, and more. Professional and college sports have been and remain rife with stories of domestic abuse, sexual assault, cover-ups, and corruption, among others. Twitter has faced persistent criticism for not doing enough to combat and prevent harassment and abuse from its worst users. But all of these mediums are still incredibly popular. In so many instances, a backlash against supporting problematic forms of entertainment or products rarely seems to materialize.
I don’t fully know how to reconcile that. It’s not that I think the public doesn’t care about these things. But I do worry there’s a base level of awfulness we are, collectively, willing to accept - or at least ignore - in the cultures surrounding the products, entertainment, and groups we like and feel a part of, especially when it’s less visible, minority members who suffer overwhelmingly from them. Being an informed consumer is a lot of work - staying knowledgeable about the issues facing the products you buy, food you eat, media you watch, and more requires time and effort that most people can’t be expected to maintain. Yes, there are instances where abuse becomes so egregious that the general public can’t ignore them anymore and collective action shifts into gear, and in those instances, money can indeed be an effective motivation for good. Those are sadly too often exceptions, however, not the rule.
But it’s because of that that I agree all the more that it’s important to be active in pushing for positive change now, as the rules and institutions that will define the next generation of esports are being made. That means pushing for more effective moderation systems, as well as greater diversity and representation in audiences, competitors, and on-screen talent. It means identifying, isolating, and taking visible action against offenders, but also building a support structure in which victims are protected from feeling isolated or invisible. A more mature community - whether it’s esports, traditional sports, gaming, social media, or otherwise - is one in which those things are valued because they make the product and the culture better - and not just because the bottom line is at stake.
This is my personal gaming backlog. I keep it taped to my bedroom wall. When I buy or receive a title, I add it to the list. Many things on this list I obtained with the excited intention to play. Some things I did not, with the feeling I should try them to widen my gaming experiences. But as bundles have grown in popularity, increasingly more of those unintentional games I own end up not making the list at all. I am very good at amassing games at an efficient value. Sometimes I feel bad about that.
A game gets scratched off the list when I feel it is completed. What are my conditions for that? It depends. If the entirety of a game’s achievements can be completed with a reasonable amount of time and effort, I feel the urge to do so. I give myself a pass for Steam/Origin achievements because they personally feel less urgent (even though that judgment is based on nothing) and a pass for achievements I simply cannot do given my available time or skill. I’ve recently started giving myself a pass for achievements which I could acquire through force of will, but for which doing so would effectively ruin my final, lasting experience with a game. I need to give myself permission to fit more things into this category, because the list grows faster than I can clear it, and totally ‘finishing’ one game comes at the cost of possibly never experiencing another. Sometimes I feel bad about that.
All of this is to get the most value out of each individual game as possible.
Games with unlimited value have shattered my backlog. Open-ended games, multiplayer, daily quests, online leveling, roguelikes, etc. make it so that games can never be scratched off the list, partly because they are experiences that can never be beaten and partly because they crowd out those that can. These are games that I like - that I like returning to and feeling good at. Sometimes I just want to play a round or two of a MOBA or shooter or card game, and before I know it, the weekend is already over, with no progress on the backlog achieved. Sometimes I want to replay a finite game I’ve already beaten - I’m hopeless.
I am getting an astounding amount of value out of nearly everything I play. But in doing so, I worry I am destroying the lasting value gaming as a whole has to offer. It’s a privileged problem to have, to be sure - but it feels bad.
As an overall fan of “walking simulator” games (a phrase I’m a little less bothered by as I remember that walking in real life is often rewarding), I enjoyed this recent Jimquisition episode exploring the elements that separate the rising genre’s best titles from some of its less stellar entries.
I think one of the traps these kinds of immersive adventure games can fall into is making the player an observer of a story rather than an active participant, creating something players merely pass through rather than become a part of.
I’m reminded of something I read recently in Seth Barrish’s An Actor’s Companion: Tools for the Working Actor (I am a bad actor):
“Human beings rarely stand and do nothing. We eat, drink, wash, fiddle with objects, clean our fingernails… On the stage, however, I often see actors sitting or standing stock-still for long periods of time. As a result, they look like actors standing in a void rather than real people doing real things in a real place. Give yourself stuff to do onstage, and you’ll seem less stiff and more connected to the environment. P.S. Activities will also relax you.”
This is a huge note on the importance of interaction, even in the most seemingly passive formats. And I think it’s why titles like Gone Home and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter succeed so well even though they violate Jim’s advice about not framing your story as a reflection of a more interesting tale that’s already happened.
For a scripted game in which you can only flip light switches and pick up and rotate objects, there’s a lot of player agency in Gone Home. And that agency – trivial in the lone instances of holding a plastic duck or opening a cupboard or tossing away a piece of paper – is critical to your investment in the overall game world. It makes you a character. Observation and discovery may often overlap, but they’re different ideas, and they produce different feelings within us.
(Otter unrelated to trivial scribbling below; source: Wikipedia)
One of my responsibilities as a kind of editor at Sandbox is managing the overall style and language rules we use in outreach. Recently I was asked: “How do we write the term for [electronic gaming sports]?” I quickly responded, “eSports!” (because it’s what many media outlets use, and it’s what we’ve used before as a result). But when you’re the final word on a subject, you have to be willing to face the possibility you don’t actually know anything at all. So I tried to fact check my own claim, and thankfully, the first search result that popped up was this (fairly old, I know) Daily Dot piece on their own style debate over the term.
Their argument: we don’t randomly capitalize letters in real words that aren’t proper nouns. That’s it. Not a new or groundbreaking point, but it’s never too late to stop perpetuating a mistake. So “eSports” is now nixed from the Sandbox style guide. We’ll still follow client formatting preferences when they exist, but on projects where the question is up to us, “esports” is our new standard.
If I had to make an admission to myself, I think “eSports” came from a place of insecurity. “No, no, it’s a real thing,” it almost shouts. “I know you think games as sport and watchable entertainment is a childish concept, but look! It’s got its own special spelling, which makes it official! And lowercase sports - which we all know are really sports - can still go on being their own thing!” Capitalizing that “s” felt like a way to legitimize the scene while simultaneously safeguarding it against criticism or mockery. But perhaps it accomplished neither.
“Esports.” It’s a word. It’s a real thing. It’s official.
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One of the things I find most fascinating about the rapid rise of esports is watching the story of its first major generation of players unfold. What happens to players who achieve so much at such a young age? What happens to them afterward? That’s why, unfortunate subject matter aside, I enjoyed Vice’s recent piece on an orthopedic surgeon whose most frequent patients are: 1.) MMA fighters, and B.) esports gamers.
It’s routine to see esports teased for lacking physical activity, but the truth is the extensive repetitive motion associated with professional gaming can potentially take a severe physical toll – with real bodily and financial consequences for its players. Given the relatively brief span of time when the mind and body are fast enough to perform the actions per minute required for victory in certain games (with even the mid-20s being considered old for many titles), the potential for a career-jeopardizing injury seems significant. When you then consider that younger demographic isn’t traditionally one to appreciate insurance or the fragility of the human body, it’s even more concerning.
It’s daunting to consider that gaming has very quickly developed a wildly successful multimedia entertainment scene on the efforts and energies of some very young people, many of whom aren’t even out of their teens yet. And as with more common sports, there’s a responsibility to make sure that some segment of the industry exists dedicated to looking out for the lifeblood of that community, whether through preventive awareness, or post-injury care and advocacy. It will be interesting to see how quickly esports evolve (or don’t) to meet that challenge.
When we talk about educational games, we tend to focus on products that are strictly tuned to teach or apply a specific skill. But what about the educational value of exploring mature situations? What label do we give to media that isn’t strictly focused on learning, but still manages to help us grow by challenging how we react to different people, ideas and situations?
Nate Ewert-Krocker‘s recent piece in Paste on Dontnod’s Life is Strange is a nice spotlight on the importance of these kinds of games. Experiences that are mature not necessarily for their violence or sexuality, but for the ways in which they actually inform the process of growing. It’s notable that while literature and film have huge libraries targeted at young adults and teens, the breadth of games for people in this critical age of development is relatively limited. It’s kind of a catch-22: we live in an industry dominated by mature experiences, but pay shockingly little attention to creating things that might actually help young people process them in a healthy way.
I think there’s a fascinating thought experiment buried in here: if you were 13 today, what would you be playing? Which modern games and storylines would speak to your tastes as a young adult? What would you even be allowed to play? What games would you have missed out on because they weren't ‘viable’ at the precise time you happened to be developing? How would all of those factors shape your growth as a player and a person?
I’m personally struggling to answer many of these questions. It’s strange, but young adult themes aren't always the most appealing to explore when you’re a kid. On some level, I identify more with young adult characters and themes as an adult than I ever could at that age (perhaps that isn't surprising given how popular young adult books and films are with adults). I hope that if I was 13 today, I’d be adventurous enough in this open gaming landscape to try new things that challenge my sense of self and the world – but I wish I was more confident in that.
There’s so much to admire in this piece from Polygon last week in which fashion editors from Racked critique the ever-changing look of Final Fantasy’s Cid, the character/archetype who appears in nearly every game in the series.
Cid frequently bounces back and forth between high-fashion aristocrat and form-practical mechanic, but going down the list, I appreciate that the criticism isn’t a straight split between culture and function. While the regal usually beats the modest overall, that’s not always the case, and just like in the fashion world, I’m fascinated to see where workaday minimalism wins out and overdesign goes overboard. It’s wonderful how the editors find implicit character details in these outfits that players might not immediately pick up on; the suggestion that anyone who could pull off this many belts and layers must be a fairly capable person is a pretty clever insight.
Above all, though, I love that two separate but, for outsiders, equally inscrutable institutions – fashion and JRPGs – each have valuable things to say to one another. That there are current, real-world analogues for some of the most fantastic of Final Fantasy’s designs, and that they are debated/puzzled over just as fiercely, makes the works of both worlds just a little more interesting.
…and the sheer sense of betrayal the editors feel when they see the design for FFXV’s take on a female Cid is priceless.
One of the happier little trends of the past year has been Ubisoft’s steady stream of smaller games. Titles like Grow Home, Child of Light, and Valiant Hearts: The Great War have stood out as totally unique from their parent company’s other offerings in a refreshing way. Where AAA products are often announced well in advance of progressively louder campaigns, more intimate games like these have almost felt like they simply appeared out of nowhere.
Yesterday’s feature in Kotaku on what it took to get Valiant Hearts produced is a fantastic reminder that of course games like these don’t just materialize from thin air. As AAA culture focuses increasingly on the security of ever larger blockbuster budgets and returns, if anything, it’s the smaller experiences that can be harder, that can take years upon years of shuffling aside to see through to completion.
There’s also a fascinating argument to consider here as we perpetually wrestle with who may or may not call themselves “indie.” Developed in-house at one of the industry’s biggest publishers, Valiant Hearts is not what we would immediately consider an independent work. And yet the struggle to get it made – the scrounging for resources, the persistent politicking against AAA forces for attention in a hit-focused culture – is undeniably identifiable as an indie effort. Perhaps it’s worth remembering that “indie” as a marketing label can be separate from indie as a shared creative cause.
If you're anything like us, you spent a good amount of time over the holidays on planes, trains, and automobiles. As such, we have some new and old mobile gaming favorites to share. Read on and tell us your own current mobile obsessions.
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Lars Doucet gave us a rather nuanced breakdown last week of how his studio’s game, Defender’s Quest, has fared on Steam since the platform rolled out its discovery renovations earlier this year. When we wrote about these changes in September, we noted that what appeared to be the most powerful new feature was the potential control given to users to shape their own purchasing experience. What we couldn’t predict was how effectively those new systems would work in practice, particularly during Steam’s biggest sales events. Now we have at least some insight:
“Unlike [2013’s] Halloween, which was basically just big sales driven by being lucky enough to be at the top of a big list, our [2014] Autumn sale results seem to have been driven by a much healthier mix of organic traffic -- recommendations, search, the specials list, games under $5 and $10, etc. Sure, we didn't top Halloween, but we made about 30% as much, and all without having to rely on a hand-picked promotion to drive the traffic.”
If Doucet’s anecdotal experience is at all representative, this is perhaps the most important detail. Because no matter how well the top performers do, the metric by which we judge discovery on gaming platforms has to focus on how products do without the favor of gatekeepers. And to that extent, the changes appear at the outset to be an improvement. It’s interesting to take Valve’s claim that “the new store roughly doubled the number of items being added to wishlists” alongside Doucet’s findings that nearly half of all units of his game sold were “fulfilled wishlists.” It suggests that a sizeable chunk of people are finding games and deciding to purchase them at a later time.
That in itself is intriguing, too. As Doucet explains, “…it means that a wishlist-targeted sale can be the second stage of a ‘one-two punch’ discovery process. The discovery queue fills up people's wishlists, and the next sale harvests them.” By offering useful, visible tools for players who may desire a specific title but are not yet ready, for whatever reason, to commit to a purchase, Steam has arguably extended the value of exposure by making it easier to catch some of the dormant interest it creates further down the road. That could go a long way to keeping games sustainably profitable well after release. Given the positive results it garnered without a major spotlight, it’s interesting to note that Defender’s Quest is two years old.
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