Video Game ADs

Been a while since I posted. Blogs are a silly thing to keep up with, because I really don't want to say absolutely nothing. But after a speaker came into our self promo class I was more inspired to try and keep up with this blog a bit more.

With that I decide to go into Video Games.

Video games are a wonderful medium that within the recent years have been far more popular. It lead me to think about their marketing campaigns. Each one has done different things to sell their games, from commercials to ads. With this I just want to get into the different ads or campaigns that I liked the most. This is only going into the American campaigns, mostly because its the ones I've seen on TV or the internet the most.

Professor Layton
The game is a fun mix of story and puzzles. The art style and score is very original, while coming from Japan doesn't have the anime look that might be expected. The game was released in Japan in 2007 but didn't come out till 2008 in America. What was interesting was that initially the game didn't really get any kind of attention, not until they started this marketing with Lisa Kudrow.

What helped with Layton sales is that they marketed towards a slightly older crowd. It wasn't a game that young children could get into, but the target focused more on adults and women. Coming from someone who worked in a gamestore, we had plenty of adult and older women asking for the "Lisa Kudrow" game when it came out.
With the next game they don't use Lisa Kudrow anymore, but they keep the same format of someone solving a puzzle in the game. Same target audience.

For the third game they went a completely different route. Instead of the people playing the puzzles they made the characters come to life.

I like this ad the most. It was the most creative and fun out of them. I think it's probably the least safe of the three, it doesn't go for that same market of the older female audience. But this commercial is more fun, very fitting of the setting of the game.

Assassin's Creed
The marketing for the first game wasn't as strong as the marketing for the second game. The first game did alright in sales while the second game exploded in popularity.

The commercial for the first game was pretty basic. They played a song and showed off some of the gameplay. The song was familiar, being the same song as the opening of House MD ("Teardrop" by Massive Attack). Overall a pretty safe and dull ad.

The commercial for the second game is honestly a bit more frightening. Each of the targets are implied to be dead. They really don't show it in the eyes but its easy to guess who they are, the victims of main character at the end. It's more dramatic, dynamic and still shows off the game.

Here they go with the same dynamic that the previous did with the live action bits but still includes some of the gameplay, because they're selling the game. What was really sort of impressive was the viral campaign they did with the third game. They were far more aggressive with how they did it and I think it was successful in the hype of the game. Every so often they would include developer diaries, hints at a new multilayer character, just enough to tease the person into buying but not giving away everything.

Call of Duty Black Ops
This is a game that really needs little advertising to sell itself, it's one of the biggest selling games of all time. But the ad they did put out was entertaining and good to their own brand.

Other then the high production value, what I liked most about it was they showed the variety of people who do play the game. It's entertaining and true to the people who do play the game.

That's about all I'll go over for now. Maybe if I find a few more I like I'll point them out. But I think the marketing was a good part of how successful the game was. And how they took previous elements from their older ads and worked on how to improve them.