Pete Hines, VP of PR and Marketing for Bethesda Softworks, noted that they decided to focus on the aspects of the character that were independent of the genre, his heroic nature and the gritty, realistic tone underlying the story. Second, they worried that fantasy might be seen as too strange or weird for Call of Duty players.
First, all the best-selling games lately seem to be multiplayer games, so how could Skyrim compete with that? There was not way to get around the fact, so it had to become a strength for them. They felt that Skyrim's weakness was being a single-player fantasy roleplaying game.
The Skyrim team also saw their basic mission as expanding the potential audience. The final result: Over 6 million units sold worldwide. Working with key retailers to provide exclusive DLC, Warner was able to increase pre-orders by over 200% over Batman: Arkham Asylum. The three gameplay trailers got over 6 million views, and their Facebook page had almost 850,000 fans. A viral campaign of videos created by different European units racked up a lot of impressions, with costumed actors "crashing" press events and appearing in the streets. The campaign appeared on 120 different magazine covers, 15 million targeted fans across a broad spectrum of social network pages hitting many different Warner Brothers properties. The black and white portrait, with blood, bathed in light, moved away from the classic superhero image to focus on the essential humanity of The Batman. The result was the image called The Wipe, which formed the basis for the visual campaign. They concluded they couldn't get away from his identity as a superhero, but they needed to express the key elements in the character that would make him appeal to FPS and action gamers.īrian Setzer of Trailer Park Video Games said their art director thought of the power of black & white photographs to capture iconic personalities like Steve Jobs or James Dean. The team wrestled with this challenge, looking through the 70 years of Batman's career as a cultural icon. Warner's marketing team wanted to break out of their narrow genre and make Batman appeal to fans of Call of Duty. Her point was that if they wanted to go big against big competition, they needed to broaden their audience to include gamers who weren't superhero fans. "Looking good, there, John," Arons deadpanned. "They were Bobby Kotick, Yves Guillemot and John Riccitiello" - the CEOs, respectively, of Activision, Ubisoft, and Electronic Arts.ĭriving her point home in a way that had the crowd laughing, Arons displayed a slide of Bobby Kotick Photoshopped into The Joker's body, Yves Guillemot as The Riddler, and John Riccitiello as Catwoman. "Batman's greatest foes weren't The Joker, The Riddler, or Catwoman," said Arons. They were Bobby Kotick, Yves Guillemot and John Riccitiello." Russel Arons, SVP Worldwide Marketing, Warner Bros. "Batman's greatest foes weren't The Joker, The Riddler, or Catwoman. Interactive Entertainment made clear, was to make it a top-selling game, not just a top-selling superhero game. The key to the Batman marketing campaign, as Russel Arons, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing for Warner Bros. Despite the differences between the two games, the core goal of their marketing campaigns was the same: break out of a niche market and appeal to a broader audience of hardcore gamers. One of the top reasons to attend the summit is to learn the details of successful marketing campaigns, so two sessions that examined the marketing for Batman: Arkham City and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim were both very well attended. The Game Marketing Summit held in San Francisco on April 17 was a gathering of top marketers in the gaming industry to network, attend sessions, and hand out some awards for game marketing.
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