War Sells...But Who's Buying?

It's interesting how the marketing of video games has changed.  In recent years, we've seen an explosion in casual gaming. That means the relatively quick, cheap gaming on apps or social media that has a wider audience than traditional PC or console gaming. For a while those games were either cutesy games like Angry Birds, or social games like Farmville. But the market is expanding and traditional gamers are playing on their phones, and casual gaming fans seem willing to try new things.

I've mentioned in the past how the AAA war games have settled into comfortable clichés for their TV ads. But now the Finnish company Supercell has been pushing their cartoony war game Clash Of Clans with cartoony violence in their ads, and it has lead to a new level in the evolution of game marketing.

On one hand, the ads feature the sort of lightly satirical humour that plays well in our culture. But it still seems odd to see that applied to gaming. I mentioned on Twitter that I couldn't imagine my university friends and I playing Warcraft while speculating that the wizard was having a bad hair day. Actually, no, that is something we'd probably talk about, it's just hard to believe it was on TV. It was like that time SNL did the sketch with Rob Ford: I'm used to that style of humour, I just didn't expect to see it applied to this part of my life.

Now they're doing ads for Boom Beach, which a more modern war game, and thus, a little harder to joke about.  Again, they're making the ads appealing through their humour.  What's interesting is that they are built more around satirizing the experience of playing games:

• Sometimes you do the same thing over and over hoping for a better result.
• Sometimes you find yourself going through the motions against ridiculous odds.
• You find yourself ignoring the incredible violence of the games.
• Apparently gaming has gotten big enough that they feel they can make these references in the mainstream without alienating people.

In contrast, there is the Game Of War ad featuring Kate Upton.  They eschew references to gameplay itself, instead going for melodramatic narration. They also eschew mainstream appeal by going for a monsters-and-hot-women approach that seems to be aimed directly at twelve-year-old boys. I'm curious whether the ad has made more money for Game Of War or for Anita Sarkeesian.  If gaming culture continues to be displayed in the mainstream media, it could accelerate the evolution of that culture.