“We do all the things we can to essentially brainwash people into liking it before it actually comes out.” — Former Call of Duty director Dave Anthony, addressing a Washington think-tank about how Call of Duty is marketed and why it’s applicable to unpopular national security measures.
Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week …
STAT | 15 per cent — The amount that Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is expected to decline in sales from Call of Duty: Ghosts, according to analyst firm Sterne Agee; the company expects Activision to sell 17 million units, down from 20 million copies of Call of Duty: Ghosts.
QUOTE | “I remain totally convinced that some company, someday soon, is going to create a virtual world that grows larger than Facebook.” — nDreams CEO Patrick O’Luanaigh, talking about the closing of PlayStation Home and how the game foreshadowed the future.
QUOTE | “I do feel like we’re in this kind of historic, golden moment that’s never really existed before.” — Nexon’s Min Kim, talking about the global market that now exists for games, on so many different platforms.
QUOTE | “You must be able to continue to play as long as you want, whenever you want, for as long as you want without paying.” — COO Kristian Segerstrale of Super Evil Megacorp, talking about how free-to-play games should work, and how they are doing just that with their tablet MOBA Vainglory.
QUOTE | “Yes, our partners at @intel were flooded with complaints over a recent opinion piece, and they did pull an ad campaign.” — Game developer website Gamasutra, explaining that Intel pulled an ad campaign from the site after a #GamerGate campaign complaining about Leigh Alexander’s op-ed.
QUOTE | “A decline certainly, but not a terrible collapse.” — ICO Partners analyst Thomas Bidaux, talking about the drop in both the number of game Kickstarters and the amount of money pledged this year compared to last year.
QUOTE | “I also really, really love writing big checks to people who are living hand to mouth.” — Kongregate CEO Emily Greer, talking about why she’s excited about Kongregate’s foray into mobile game publishing.
QUOTE | “They just were offensively bad to a game developer, they were basically unacceptable.” — League of Geeks’ Trent Kusters, talking about the usual board game you’ll find on a tablet, which is why they started work on Armello.
STAT | 44 per cent — The percentage of broadband households that use a game console to stream video; that’s the most common device for streaming, far exceeding the 20 per cent for Smart TVs or the 12 per cent for DVRs.
QUOTE | “We’re stoked about exploring new emergent usage patterns from having the additional screen real estate.” — Turbo’s Yohei Ishi, talking along with other game developers about supporting Apple’s new iPhones.
Image via Shutterstock
Comments
3 responses to “This Week In The Business: A Vigorous Brainwashing”
That first quote is kind of scary. “So yeah, we’re thinking of transforming successful advertisement strategies into will-bending propaganda”.
Welcome to advertising 101? That has always been the basics of advertising/marketing in any product getting the common person to beiieve they *need* the product even though there is literally little to no changes… I mean I know this an old and well trotted out example but just look at the iPhone range. It’s the COD of the mobile handset world!
I wasn’t expressing fright at the way advertising works. I have worked in the industry. My concern is the usage of those (effective) strategies in jingoistic propaganda.