Dopass.com

[Again I apologize if this seems fragmented. Writing between customers at work]

If a game fails, who is to be blamed? Should someone be blamed?

Through gaming history there have been many excellent games that just have not sold. Sometimes its due to Shoddy marketing, poor word of mouth, poor company reputation, Wal-Mart could refuse to carry it, to something even as simple as bias of a game selling store employee [“You know, I’ve played that game and I don’t like it, why not buy your son this?”].

The list of games that have been excellent yet poor sellers grows every year. Why GameSpot even has an award category for it.

“The Best Games Nobody played” Pretty much sums up this entire post.
Games like Beyond Good and Evil, Psychonauts, Freedom Fighters, Crimson Skies [PC version] are just a few examples from the PC collections that were pretty low sellers, yet were generally reviewed as excellent games.
Those are the ones that I can remember off the top of my head [and that I own] while I am here at work. I am sure those of you reading this can list far more. Why not add them in a comment. Who knows maybe you can get a few more people to buy them.

These are excellent games with intriguing storylines, fun game play, and in cases like Psychonauts, just plain hilarious to play.

So who is to blame for a game failing? The Marketing Manager? Some lowly guy in the mailroom? The Customers? The Stores? The Programmers? The competition?
While some may disagree with my stance on this, I hope my explanation will let a few people at least try and see my reasoning’s for my position. But if you disagree with me, please post a comment! I am always open to changing my opinions on the subject.

I believe in every case someone is to blame.

Yes you read that correctly. Someone is to blame in every case. This is not an isolated world we live in. it is complex and interconnected. You have connections with every person you meet and through them have affected others. This works the same way in the game industry. Every aspect of the market: from timing, to competition, to even distribution channels need to be taken into consideration.

Get your product out after the Holiday rush, and people will be so far into debt they won’t buy your game for a few months. The Managers are to blame for this.

If people don’t know about your product, they will not buy it. Marketing needs to push the game’s name over, and over, and over again and get the anticipation coming in. Get the hype up and juts get people excited about the game. ID software was excellent at doing this. Same with Valve. Both had very, very long delays on their products, yet they name dropped so often that people never lost focus on the game. Yes I will concede that they both are sequels to an immensely popular franchise, but I feel that my point can still stand with the fervor about them.
People are fickle. They have relatively limited budgets and usually do not do a lot of research before purchasing a game. So they buy what they know will be good: The Halos, the KOTOR’s, the Half-Life’s’, COD series, The Battlefield’s, The GTA series. All are excellent games and deserve the amount of popularity they are given. People buy them because they know what they are getting.

Not so with a new game. Something people have not heard of. Why spend $50 on a game that is potentially good, but in reality it is the equivalent of watching a monkey throwing feces at your couch. Thus the Marketers are to blame for this. Customers too

Competition is also to blame, but you can’t help that. There will always be another game, another product out there to catch someone’s imagination. Yours just has to be slightly better, or at least look it.

And finally your Distribution channels need to be more informed. Work with EB games, Gamestop, Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, etc. Work with them to get their staff knowledgeable about your game and its features. Who to recommend it to, etc. Far to often have I walked into a store asking about pre-ordering or purchasing a particular game, and being taken to the wrong section. Or being told that it is not in stock when its right there on the shelf behind the guy. Not to mention that it does not look good at all when I buy a game and the person at the register at the game store asks me about it as he has never heard of it. [This happened with AA]

So what do you do? How do you solve this? Hire competent people? Of course, but they should be competent in the first place, and in many circumstances they are very competent. Get rid of the competition? Sure I recommend a strategic strike to their headquarters with a single marine loaded down with 10 weapons of varying sizes, and explosive factors. Not to mention a pouch for the keys he will find along the way.
Name drop, name drop, name drop. People will not buy your game if they have never heard of it before, Finally, Educate the store employees about your game. Work with them, give them a pamphlet on the game, and in major markets, send a guy over to demonstrate it. Heck even cheaper, send a videotape.

I feel that a combination of the things I listed above, and probably others I am glossing over [or forget] will hopefully get more people to buy into a new game and franchise.
Get the timing right, Before the holiday season and just before the summertime is an excellent time to put out a game.

I in reality do not know why some amazing games fail or do poorly in the sales charts. A combination of all the above I guarantee take some part in it. And there are a near infinite number of other reasons that cannot be controlled. But the ones above you can control. And hopefully they will give you a slight edge over your competition.

AS you can tell I am just a outsider looking , trying to wrap my head around a subject I only have a marginal amount of knowledge in. Hopefully those of you who have been in the industry far longer will enlighten us with better reasoning’s that I ever could.
If you have not yet, grab:
Freedom fighters
Crimson Skies [PC version]
Psychonauts
Mafia [again PC version]
And others I cant remember at the moment that I hope people throw in.