Video game marketing is dead?

Michael Douse, the publishing director of Larian has given his views on video game marketing, which he thinks is a thing of the past.

Douse spoke to PC Gamer and other developers and media agencies as part of a convention at GDC.

“Marketing is dead,” he said. “Marketing is dead. It truly is – I can back this shit up, man – There’s no channels anymore. It doesn’t work. You used to have marketing, communication, and PR. Marketing was essentially a retail theory; you were trying to get your box on the right point of the store shelf, and you have partnerships with retail stores. Those pipelines are gone. Now you’ve got the internet. Nobody is looking at ads anymore … all of the channels that we would usually market through are no longer really viable. So their function is also reduced by the fact that players just want to be spoken to. They don’t want to be bamboozled, they just want to know what you’re making and why you’re making it and who it’s for.”

Slay the Spire developer Casey Yano reflected on the natural human behavior that is avoiding ads like the plague. “From a very young age, when I saw an advertisement I was like, ‘why isn’t AdBlock blocking this?’ said Yano.

“Millennials always hated it, and now we have the tools to avoid it,” said Douse. “The best place to market your game is on the store itself. Everything else isn’t worth it. We learned that with BG3—it took us awhile.”

It is hard to deny that he is wrong, as Larian produced little to no promotional materials for Baldurs Gate 3, but it still went on to become one of the biggest games of 2023 and possibly one of the best ever.

Marketing is dead in all areas to a point. Consumers know what they want and where to find it, so marketing has become even more complicated as there needs to be less materials but of a much better quality.