An open letter to Gearbox (about marketing)

Yeah, we’re currently only seeing the PS4 players as I believe the early access has stopped at the moment.

lemmie check…

Yup, it’s over.

Personally, for me, it does. But not for those reasons.
Consoles are probably the least suitable platforms to watch FPS.

Mostly because of how… Hm… how to say that… how unnatural it is to aim on console. It slowly pan like a turret or a robot. It feel slow and awkward; as if we had the Third age & Seniors Competitive Scene.
FPS on console is a pain to watch, to be honest, for me and probably a lot of others peoples.

Tried a little bit myself, but it was weird. People seemed more hyped to play Overwatch open beta a month from now than an open beta they could play now. People are weird…

Responding to original post, sorry if this is rehashed stuff

Ummmmm…

Okay, I am going to try to respond, point by point. There is a moment I might be at a loss… we’ll cross that bridge when we get there!

The game is better now than it was in the CTT. This seems to be the consensus. Great news for you if you, like me, fell in love with the CTT!

Have a great game is more important than the hype machine. Notice what Gearbox/2K is doing here: They are learning from their mistakes! Building an absurd amount of hype for a game with a small playerbase in the beta tests just tends to lead players on. It builds a game up to an unobtainable status of “wow” and can only let players down in the end. Yes, I get frustrated when I talk to people at work who I want to have check out this game and they say “what’s that?” but it’s a necessary frustration. I can build the right amount of hype and my friends know what I like and if that coincides with what they like. The other thing this does is it doesn’t give people a chance to lose hype. Too many games build hype WAY up a year before the release, 6 months before the release, just to lose all steam if there is a setback or just a lull in the hype train. What I believe 2K is going to do is plaster the hell out of everything once the weekend hits, pushing the Open beta, putting the game front page on Steam, and then not letting up for the 2 weeks leading to the release. This will start to build momentum leading to the release instead of building momentum leading to… nothing.

All games’s successes come down to player base. The larger the player base, the better the success. That’s really the definition of success in any field! The larger the customer base, the better the success.

Blizzard has an entirely different game in Overwatch. Overwatch is to TF2 what Battleborn is to DotA. They are extensions of the original formula, be it in playstyle or features. People talk about Overwatch because Blizzard has Unteen Gazillion Dollars to keep a hype train going for two years thanks to milking the WoW addict farm they built. Blizzard is spending so much money on advertising and fancy looking story trailers for a game with no presented in-game story, it makes me wonder how much is actually going into the game itself. Obviously not much since it isn’t even a full game.

Bill Gates can’t compete with Blizzard in terms of Marketing budget! Also, I assume 2K knows a bit more about where they need to put their money than you, no offense. If you are a marketing executive with a masters in marketing and you run one of the worlds largest marketing firms, my apologies :stuck_out_tongue:

The first problem I see is that you are putting this in terms of the Loony, probably the most absurdly named currency in history! The game is being released at the same retail price as Overwatch: $60 USD. The Season Pass is priced cheaper than it was for Borderlands 2: $20 vs BL2’s $30. Most people who follow Half-life would pay $60 TODAY for a chance to play it, so I don’t know what you’re talking about. Every game released now that isn’t on a screw you F2P scheme costs $60 if it’s AAA and usually around $20 for indie. If you think dropping the price is going to make Battleborn look more competitive, you’re opinion is very skewed. If you think that Gearbox/2K giving away a free copy for every purchase of the game makes it look like a strong competitor in the game industry, you are bat**** crazy dude. I don’t know how else to say that. “Here’s a game we have worked really hard on, put in a full story mode, a very deep set of PvP modes, built it up around being a competitive eSport, oh, and to show you how much confidence we have in our game, we are going to now give away free copies to everyone because we don’t want you to think we are afraid of the big bad Blizzard.” Do you see now nuts that sounds?

It’s not bold for a AAA title to BEFORE RELEASE start giving away free copies of a game, it’s stupid! Was it bold for Germany to try to invade Russia? No, it was stupid. Why would giving up before even starting be a good tactic? Have you seen a bad review for this game from the people in the early access? Have you seen these forums dead because everyone would rather play Overwatch? Why are you, like so many other people, dead set on this game being dead in the water? We have a HUGE community of players foaming at the mouth ready to play this game. A lot of them are planning on playing Overwatch as well, but most everyone here knows they are two different games. Why do you think a game with a $60 price tag and a full multiplayer coop campaign mode and unique PvP modes is going to die to a PvP only title with a $60 price tag?

PS, I just read the Post Script about you not knowing anything about marketing. I take back my conditional apology.

PPS, I guess I was not quite speechless so much as full of words! I tried not to cuss, but that was a bat**** crazy idea to give away free copies.

PPPS, I love post-scripts.

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Been trying to get friends to try it all weekend (before April 12, because some might be busy with dark souls 3 and incursion update in division) and not getting much luck. I keep telling them this is one of those games you have to try to like. If ever you guys release another cool looking video that’s maybe around 4-5 minutes long, do market it and let the fans know! :smiley: Bootcamp was awesome but some of them are a little lazy and didn’t want to watch 10 minutes.

I’ve also been harassing my friends to try out the beta. I think most of them will and seem genuinely interested in the game, however every single one of them started hissing and backing away when they saw the price (80$ here in Canada). If I can’t get them to invest the money now, perhaps an eventual sale will convince them later down the road.

So I saw the title had marketing in it sooooo…

I have to agree that marketing these days is a big thing for the success of the game, I’m saying for the case where even if a game is very good if it doesn’t have good marketing and also a lot of marketing, a clear message, it can diminish a lot the success of the final product.

I’m telling all the above cuz I’ve saw, as it happened to me also, that until I have tried Battleborn ( this weekend on PS4) I had low expectation from what I’ve saw in trailers or in the news, but after playing it that perspective changed in a very good way, the game feels great.

That’s why I strongly agree that the marketing shouldn’t be ignored and the production team should keep an eye on those marketing guys to give it all, as there are many games out there and people might confuse the game with another Smite or Overwatch and prolly won’t even bother to try it out.

Thanks,
Alex

This is a playlist I made to clarify things for my friends who might need some info on the game, it might help for spreading the word to everyone’s circles :slight_smile:

The reality is that Battleborn has it’s crap together, they have great marketing right now, at cons they always get tons of players I think that the problem came with a weak start. First of all, you just need to look at the oldest videos on their channel, they’re horrendous and don’t make the game look good at all. Not to mention they debuted in a magazine which itself only has a niche audience. So really, they’re doing great, they fixed all the problems they were having and I really think from here on out they really just need to hope for some publicity from the beta.

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That is based on what?
Please don’t say you “know” that because there are a so many people in the beta, all numbers that the internet offers show a weak start.

I’m kind of feeling like you misread my post, I clearly said “they really just need to for some publicity from the beta”, what I meant by this is that they need to hope for some popular games journalists. And that first bit was just saying that there adds are really good.

Also, what is based on what? Cons or having crap togethor

Sorry I just realized that your English just makes not that much sense, maybe its me because I’m not an English native but I doubt that.
[quote=“Kickpuncher,
post:66, topic:1319115”]
at cons they always get tons of players
[/quote]

Cons is negative followed by your positive statement (tons of players), so the whole list has only positives.

[quote=“Kickpuncher,
post:68, topic:1319115”]
I clearly said “they really just need to for some publicity from the beta”
[/quote]

Just need what? That sentence has no predicate and therefor no meaning, what makes the “i clearly sad” part kind of funny.

Your cons was “tons of players” and having (their) crap together basically means that they work well so again both things mean that its a good start full of people. So on what do you base that?

I believe he was referring to trade shows. Comicon and pax and stuff.

Oh, you are probably right, that makes more sense.

‘Con’ is being used here as an abbreviation of ‘convention’, I believe.

I believe Battleborn has the correct amount of hype and the correct amount of us fanatic fans. Too much hype creates a train moving too fast to stay on the rail. Not enough hype means you reach your destination after everyone has already committed to taking other trains which arrive earlier. Battleborn’s earlier previews were a bit lacking and many streamers said the same thing. The Closed Technical Test turned some people off due to certain issues with the maps and the character balance (I am looking at you old Phoebe!). Most streamers who have said these things have redacted those statements since being in the early access. Simple things like moving the contested heal building from the middle of the Meltdown map to be push points at the super minion spawns and fine tuning character balance (looking at you new Phoebe!) really show a lot of polish. Let’s just hope my Montana doesn’t still get stuck in The Algorithm due to being too tall and awesome =)

The point is, Gearbox didn’t make Battleborn out to be something it wasn’t. They didn’t push Battleborn into this goliath, promoting it’s features to impossible to meet expectations. 2K and Gearbox have handled this game very well, kudos to them!

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Oh lol yeah sorry for that, I was in a bit of a hurry when I wrote it, Con did refer to convention and I meant “the really just need to hope for some publicity from the beta”

At first people sad its only because of Europe times, than its only because its only a PS4 beta but now the open beta is running on all platforms and the picture is still the same, YouTube, Google, Twitch, they all rank Battleborn far behind Overwatch.

K2 has either made a bad job with the marketing or the simply lost to the money of Blizzard.

Its kind of sad that a good game has hardly the beta players to get a full 10 player game without waiting for so long (the skill matchmaking isn’t even activated).

I think they really have to make something drastic to either get more players (like lowering the price) or to keep all the players they have now on the low populated servers until some more join.
But by now I feel that K2 will just keep ignoring that and waits till they put in on steam sale.

Your statements are not entirely accurate. First off, it’s 2K, haha. Secondly, they picked a difficult week to hold an open beta. This week, we saw the beta for Doom, the release of Dark Souls III, AND Blizzard decided (of course, nothing to do with Battleborn) to host a very open beta this weekend last minute. A lot of people wanted to use this Open Beta to decide whether or not they liked the game. I have quite a few people that played on Wed and Thursday and said, “Yeah, that’s a helluva lot of fun, it’s preordered” and then spent the rest of the weekend in Dark Souls 3 or running obligation raids in other games or playing Overwatch for a comparison or playing Doom because… well… BFG9000!!!

The point is, just because the youtube search doesn’t bring up a million things doesn’t mean the exposure is lacking to make this a successful game at the price point. The game has the right amount of content for a full priced release and lowering it before release simply equates to 2K being scared of the big bad Blizzard, which isn’t the case. The only people making the Battleborn vs Overwatch thing a huge deal is us because we assume Battleborn needs to sell better than Overwatch to be a success. In reality, Overwatch will sell a stupid number of copies because there are so many people who feel Blizzard can’t do any wrong (real money market place in D3 anyone?) and Overwatch will sell a strong number of copies and have a player-base large enough to be competitive. It’s the long game Gearbox and 2K are looking at here and while I don’t think they have done everything right, I think they are doing a fine job. This open beta has sold so many copies of this game just by being as complete as it is. We need to lay off them because we think we know more about marketing than 2K.

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I agree that a game does not need the number of players like the “almighty” Blizzard to be successful, but that its even behind the pay to win, no brand paragon cant be a good sign, and that we have waiting times to find a group without an active matchmaking while the game is free is an even worse sign for me.

I really hope the game is going to be successful but by now I fear that its already doomed to end on the -80% steam sale list with no one online to play.