MerinTB wrote...
but was there any real evidence, even circumstantial, that the video was a positive for the game?
I can't remember any - but that doesn't mean they don't exist somewhere.
I don't know. My dispute is the assumption that it doesn't exist, and the implication that the opinion I quoted represented the majority without evidence to support it.
MerinTB wrote...
Now, does anyone have any previews, reviews, or memes that point to "spiritual successor to BG2" or "it's BioWare, they make good stuff, this'll be good too" as being significant in making DA:O sucessful? I know I saw it all the time.
Indeed, but it was a marketing phrase. And as I said, to a lot of people that means something different. I wouldn't have thought so myself before coming to these forums, but it's the impression I've gathered over a few months reading and posting here.
MerinTB wrote...
Maybe that's confirmation bias. But, Upsettingshorts, I think you are being selective yourself in that you disagree with the point and you fall back on what seems to me to be sophistry to dismiss the point.
My only point is that people shouldn't so casually claim to represent the majority, especially if they then go on to dismiss what they claim is the minority. I was not taking a pro-Marilyn Manson trailer position, for example. Simply calling for a better, more nuanced, less annoying argument. Granted, maybe these kinds of arguments are only annoying to me, but that's just how I react to them.
MerinTB wrote...
"Spiritual successor to BG2" got people excited. How many? I don't know - but there's plenty of evidence that people attached to that and were happy to hear it and, as it result, it can only have helped sales.
Sure, but the idea that it was the sole reason, or that it represents some kind of unbreakable, unstated promise for DA:2 consistently rubs me the wrong way. The fact of the matter from my perspective is what BioWare believes to be what made Baldur's Gate and games like it great might just be different from those fan expectations.
MerinTB wrote...
The "New S*%t" marketing? It's often derided, and I haven never seen any critical praise of it (or anyone other than the occasional contrarian poster) so odds are, at best, it had little positive effect on sales.
Critical response and sales are not necessarily linked, but often are, I'd wager the relationship and true result of the marketing is more complicated than we realize - and without proper figures, figures which EA/BioWare's marketing department genuinely have access to, we're arguing from a position that is basically a collection of assumptions colored by personal bias.
I mean, take the television show
Two and a Half Men. It would be a serious challenge to find a positive critical reaction to that program anywhere on the internet or in print. People who devote enough time and effort to writing about, or commenting on television have a certain approach, a certain standard, and certain genre familiarity. Yet the program gets absurdly high ratings. No matter what impression we can glean from even the most exhaustive internet and print evaluations of Dragon Age: Origins or DA:2, it will never be a comprehensive representation of the millions of customers who purchased the game.
MerinTB wrote...
I can guarantee you one thing - regardless of whatever the "real" effective of that marketing was, it will have been spun one way or another by those in charge and whomever is marketing this new game for them. If I can tell you one thing from my years of working in marketing and market research it is this - it's all BS. They don't actually care WHAT their research shows, they only care that inside of that research are data points that can be manipulated to prove that what they wanted to do anyway is the right thing to do.
Can this not be said of a lot of industries? I'll accept your professional experience as a matter of fact, but would you dispute the general point that forum discussions on the relative success of marketing - for what was ultimately a financial and critical success - without access to that market research are baseless? And therefore arguments that dismissively presume them to be otherwise are specious and unfounded?
Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 29 novembre 2010 - 05:17 .
Retour en haut
