Rate The Marketing

I would personally rate it between "Could be Better" and "Garbage" at this point.


BioWare, for fuck's sake brothers and sisters, you are seriously bungling this lead up to release, and my bias is real...as I'm always trying to be hyped about anything Mass Effect.   There are multiple games releasing later than Andromeda that are doing it much better, so when you release muck like that "Become the Pathfinder" video, complete with re-hashed bits of footage from the PS4 Pro/Cinematic trailers...well fuck, it just blows my Volus mind.

When your biggest fans are left scratching their heads at your efforts, completely befuddled as to why you would not want to promote your game better....it's kind of mental. I've worked in advertising for 10 years and did my thesis on digital marketing strategy, fire your marketing team and hire me on half the credit chits, shit.....I'll do it for a bag of red sand and a week in Azure even XD.

That doesn't actually answer my question. What's the advantage of doing it six months or a year out? Hell, what's the advantage of doing it a month out?

I'll probably have trouble following the answer since I'm pretty much marketing-immune, judging from the stuff I own and the stuff I don't own. But what's the process? I can't imagine remembering a gameplay vid I saw three months ago, let alone keeping it in mind for nine more months. How does that approach work on the people it works on?

I am not a marketing expert. I am basing my judgment on a trend; having gameplay footage released several months in advance is something all triple-A titles do. Does it make the game more hyped up? Does it sell more pre-orders? I can't tell. Whether it works or not, it comes down to individual perspectives, like yours and mine. Although we can't take assume the gaming population at large think have the same perspective as we do.
However, since most gaming companies follow that trend, I believe Bioware is taking an opposite, risky direction with their marketing, especially giving that this fist quarter season is particularly busy with releases. Having something substantial to display in the market as a proof that they have a solid product can't hurt.

I think a lot of that speculation they are doing is based on who they viewed the reaction people had to the Crestwood video and overall the reaction to games changing while in development. If they figured that approach cost them more sales then not having marketing until the last minute they are going to take the route of most profitability.

Yeah, not alone at any rate; but it's enough to search "Mass Effect Andromeda" on Google to find a fuckton of haters. And they hate the game for the wrong reasons, above all. With such a horrible marketing campaign, how could people not become a bunch of raging lunatics? Well, when ME:A is out I'll breathe a sigh of relief and forget all the fuss.

Its been rather meh so far.

I just hope it means they want to unleash a shitload in the coming weeks.

I don't expect a Mike Laidlaw & Mark Darrah kind of streams though.

Which is a shame because those were fun.

The game sure changed a lot in a single year. You could almost say it had only 1 year of true dev time because all the final content and systems were made after this. But, I'm sure almost every game is like that. I think by far the most time in game-making is spent developing the technology and assets and systems to be used and then implementation in the final year is crunch. That's also why ME3 could get away with 1.5 years because ME2 already had all the basics down, whereas ME:A had to start from scratch.

pure basura. i wish i had more hands so i could give it 4 thumbs down.

You know, at this point we're not talking about 'half a year before' any longer. They can barely present anything at all. So far the best 'marketing move' that had happened to MEA is the random -20% (or was it 30?) flash-sale on Origin, which appears to be a bug.

Have you seen BF1 trailers? 600 light years would not be enough to cover the distance between their mark and what we see in MEA vids. Take a look at...well, anything at all. Pick a single random factor and you'll see that BF1 trailer has it better. Real badass effects performed by the same engine, better human models and animations (performed by the same engine, again), f-ing load of distinct gameplay features etc. Their selling their content to people. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a BF fangirl (had only played BF4 to benchmark my old laptop), and I love ME.

Their promo materials look like shit. The only good ones I can think of are the 'Ryders in the Sky' and the very first PS4 4k short demo. Those two voiced by Hale\Meer were nice too, but those barely had any actual footage.

If you want to see what good promo trailer looks like - take a look at Dishonored 2 or Deus Ex MD videos. Those are night and day compared to that 'cinematic' crap we've seen so far. Shitty graphics combined with a handful of cheesy teen-grade one-liners don't make good marketing.

Their 'hey, look, we're taking random 6 people to the space-camp' is the bottom line for me. Note, that I'm very liekly to buy the game nonetheless, just because I loved ME OT so much, and just because I hate those haters who hate something without even playing it first. It's just I won't be buying it because of their 'marketing efforts' (more like 'in spite of').

Aaand your point is?.. God forbids games with 'story, quest and branching dialogues' having a good graphics too?

As for those 'spaces and enviroments' a. BF does have them (all kinds of, including the destructables). b. we don't know how much of those are going to be in MEA c.none of those we've seen so far in their promos are anything near 'breathtaking'.


Not an excuse. It could have been the case with DAI (barely), but it's been 3 years since DAI already. EA is also sooo proud of their shared resources, all those guys from EA-sports Golf game helping with the grass? Sure they could find people to assist with models and avoid the fucking plastic Ken-doll hair. Or (at the very least) to turn the bloody skin\hair gloss down. It's not 12months old pre-alpha, it's weeks before the release!

Also note, that UE had not been built by BW either, and ME1 being the very first BW UE game looked very good compared to its generation (and it still looks good, even with its low-res textures). MEA looks shit at launch...well. at least that's what their vids make us believe (so much of a marketing, hmm?).

I didn't say that. Chill out.

Battlefield has them in a completely different way.

Yes, it is an excuse. Different games run on different engines differently. A specific engine is not going to be perfectly optimized for every single game. DICE made that engine for Battlefield, which is why Battlefield is the best looking thing to run on it. Everything else is being jury-rigged together in an engine that isn't made for that specific game. Sports games are way less demanding on the engine because they're way less expansive. Part of why Final Fantasy XV was in development hell for so long was because they were constantly switching engines, which resulted in them practically having to start development from scratch. It's a big deal. 

Also, they don't look that bad, I think you're exaggerating too much. 

And I said the marketing was bad. Again, chill out. Why are you so angry at me?