They matter, but only to the most casual of gamers or non gamers (ie a non gamer mother asking the gamestop employee what game to get her little timmy). This is similar to how every single movie ever released is “The top movie in america.”
To me, i look forward to GOTY editions of games because of the price advantage. DLC is in my experience discounted less frequently than actual games, ESPECIALLY on consoles where a lot of the time it appears to never go on sale. GOTY editions almost always have a built in to the suggested retail price discount over the previous market price and then they can actually be on sale too.
Also i feel the need to point out that Zombie U was a mega failure and the best way to tell how well it did is that (unless things changed) the maker stated there will not be a sequel. If the wii u had any sort of decent game library at all, this game wouldn’t even be mentioned in polite company.
I disagree with Murbella’s phrasing just as much. According to you only “the most casual of gamers or non gamers” care about these designations, implying that only a non-gamer mother who doesn’t know any better will become convinced to buy a game because of a sticker on a box or look for more information.
With that phrasing you’re dismissing that
- major gaming sites with huge following like IGN, Gamespot and Kotaku (more on that soon) are made up of hardcore gamers and are followed by hardcore gamers.
- these sites take great care in selecting these awards because they know it matters when they call out a game as GOTY or best of E3 - and that their reputations matter to hardcore gamers
- these websites carry weight with the gaming community that reaches well beyond a non-gaming mother. Type in “Titanfall Best of E3 IGN” and you get 38,600 results. Type in “Titanfall Best of E3 Gamespot” and you get 27,600 results. Type in “Titanfall Best of E3 Kotaku” and you get 198,000 results. Of course, not all of these are referencing the articles on these websites - but many are.
And that means from a true gamer perspective this gets your game coverage and buzz. It gets people writing about what makes that game so special. It gets gamers excited about the game and wanting to learn more about it.
Just look at the coverage Titanfall - the game that started this conversation - received from various sites:
Now according to you this doesn’t matter. It only sways the non-gamer. The “non-gamer mother” as you derisively wrote in your post.
I disagree. For those who didn’t get to see Titanfall first-hand they flocked online to find out more. Which is why there are over 300,000 youtube videos on youtube. And the official E3 demo of the game has over 700,000 views. That’s just ONE video… If you add up the views of the top three videos that appear on youtube when you just type in Titanfall, the combined views is more than 1.4 million. That’s a lot of “non-gamer mothers” deciding to watch, I guess.
Of course your favorite review site matters to you, but some sticker on the box saying “we won a bunch of rewards” isn’t going to tell you that, which is why i think those mostly only affect non gamers.
It is kind of a cause and effect question though. Games like Titanfall have a huge hype machine which generates these rewards which generates buzz which generates more hype which generates these rewards which… or something like that. So did the rewards cause the popularity or the reverse?
Also, i’ll be skipping titanfall because i don’t like call of duty and adding mechs (which i do like) isn’t enough to change that. However, nobody is stupid enough to think Call of Duty: Now with mechs will not do amazing and have a large following.
What I don’t understand is exactly what kind of “critics based” advertising would be acceptable to Telefrog and Murbella. Please, explain to me how games should be marketed according to you.
(I also don’t understand why people who vehemently insist that they have no interest whatsoever in the Xbox One, and that it’s a terrible idea, spend all of their time posting in a thread devoted to same. But I think that’s probably come up before.)
Nesrie
3551
Non-gaming parents are heavily persuaded by advertising, whether it’s commercials or on the box. They also like to buy what they are familiar with which is why so many young people wind up with crappy TV and Movie tie-in games. If the stuff on the box didn’t matter, then the marketing folks wouldn’t be putting so much emphasis on it. It’s not blind luck.
Even if interest in Xbone for some is low to non-existent, the console is still a strong competitor to PS4 and PC gaming. What MS does still matters. They are not dead in the water, and it’s going to be interesting to see strong competition unfold.
Two things are puzzling me after reading the discussion above:
- What’s the use of E3 rewards if you can’t use them on your box to promote your game? Why are they given? Seriously not knowing the anser to that: are they (or where they originaly, I don’t know if that changed over the years) meant for developers, for consumers? What is/was the purpose?
- While a sticker saying it won 60 awards at E3 obviously doesn’t make a game good in itself, doesn’t it at least show the game did some things right? Same with movies and oscars? Not saying E3 is the equivalent of the Oscars, but still: it’s an established event isn’t it? So surely winning any price there is an achievement of sorts?
Razgon
3553
The E3 awards are completely meaningless, but are valuable as marketing for people who aren’t knowledgeable gamers. As someone mentioned, parents, people buying the game as a gift and the like might be influenced by the blurp -“Won 60 E3 awards”, even though they most likely have no idea what E3 is. For those are ARE interested in the gaming scene, we mostly shrug and read the reviews of our favorite site, or like here, read the forum posts for impressions.
Edit: I am shocked though, by the PR people using Giantbombs Best of E3 without permission.
Oscars are largely bought through influence and gifts and schmoozing. Or at least that’s the impression I came away with after reading Down And Dirty Pictures.
In my view, elements of what Murbella and Telefrog are asserting are absolutely correct. For example, I agree with them both that some games over hype their GOTY or Best of E3 designations. No problem there. High five, you’re right.
Where they lose me is when they say that this type of industry recognition is “meaningless”… or simply reflects a “cottage industry” patting itself on the back… or that “only non-gamers care” or “moms of gamers” about these designations.
This argument doesn’t hold up against the 1.4 million views titanfall has on youtube or the nearly 200,000 stories that show up when you type in “Titanfall best of E3 Kotaku” into google or what happens when you go to Google trends and type in Titanfall and you get a graph that shows a huge spike in interest in this game around E3. And if you look closely, you will see that the top related search term is “Titanfall PS4.”
E3, and the recognition Respawn entertainment garnered from that show, was a huge boost for Titanfall - a brand, spanking new IP. It helped get them serious buzz in the gaming community. And that’s not meaningless. And it’s certainly more than just “non-gamers” caring.
The problem - to me - is that no one can tell me what those 60 awards were for and who gave them. As I pointed out in the thread earlier six of them apparently came from one body for various things. I’m assuming the marketers of Titanfall are counting each “award” given by every outlet in that number, but again, which ones? Why?
If I pick up a retail movie package and the box has a blurb about winning “Five Academy Awards including Best Picture” that actually means something. There’s an internationally recognized body of industry peers that voted on the movies and found that one to be the best of the year. I can look that up. I can debate it. I can check out a list of the nominees.
60 E3 awards is just a random number placed on a box. Okay, I know now that six were given by the Game Critics Awards group. Okay. What about the other 54? IGN? Gamestop? Ray’s Badass Reviews?
The industry recognition isn’t meaningless, but it means about as much as a movie stating it is “the number one movie in america” and yes, i do believe it is based almost entirely on the hype machine. Kind of like if you’re captured by terrorists and forced to watch the SPIKE video game awards as a form of torture, and you notice that Call of Duty 321 wins the most innovative game of the year.
I’m not sure why you think a lot of people looking at videos of a game with a massive hype machine behind it is surprising or somehow proves that awards are all powerful.
I’m also not sure why you thought these players would not be chomping at the bit for another Call of Duty game.
By the way, i heard games like black & white, Spore and kane and lynch 2 got a bunch of awards. How did that turn out?
Simple enough to answer:
While Titanfall won the most “Best Game of E3” designations (six - the previous record being five) it also won multiple awards in other categories. I forget what they all were but you get the gist - Best Shooter, Best Multiplayer Game, Best New IP, Best Console Game, etc. Combined, they come to 60.
I’m not saying that every game that earned an award or recognition at E3 will go on to become a hit or a critical favorite. That’s never been my position.
But you have said only non gamers care about these things. Your words. And yeah… that’s not true.
Thongsy
3560
Straight up, do you care about the award? You keep saying Titanfall got x views on youtube and searches on google. You make it sound as if it’s that high because it won these awards. Nobody is denying that these awards help promote and hype up the game because that’s what they’re there for. It’s great for marketing and PR but beyond that it does nothing to actually tell you about the game which is why it’s meaningless.
As I’ve said before, these awards carry meaning themselves. Further, when multiple sites are all circling around a title then of course the collective imprimatur of the industry matters even more.
So yes, being designated best in show DOES tell me something about the game - it tells me that industry veterans, people who play plenty of videogames, saw something fresh and exciting about Titanfall. It tells me that I shouldn’t consider it just another shooter. It tells me that perhaps I should read further about this title to understand what makes it so special. It tells me I should check out youtube videos about it to see it in action.
Except (correct me if I’m wrong) the Oscars, and other award shows judge finished product. Even so, something like the Grammy awards is still often held to be meaningless by actual musicians as an example.
Sales and marketing/popularity have sometimes zero relationship to objective quality.
[Forrest Gump] And that’s all I have to say about that.[/Forrest Gump]
Hahaha. Stealing Forest Gump for future use. No credit will be given.
All it should tell you is that you have been sucked into the industry hype machine for a product that is not even released and probably was not even actually played at the event. A 5 minute pre-rendered demo was enough to get an entire industry hot under the collar for what they would have you believe is the next big thing, when nobody even got to touch it.
Don’t feel bad, that’s what marketing is all about. But more discerning people wait for praise that is attached to a released product before making judgement on whether it is worth their hard earned.
For the most part, I do think that is true.
If you buy games long enough, you will buy a stinker based on bought and paid for awards/hype. After that you tend to take anything a publisher tells you with a lot of suspicion.
If you’ve never fallen in to this trap, you’re truly a lucky person.
Proud to say I never touched Homefront! Now that’s a classic example of how having a massive hype machine does not translate into critical acclaim or sales.
