An open letter to Gearbox (about marketing)

Battleborn Battleborn General Discussion
#63

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

#65

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:

#66

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.

1 Like
#67

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.

#68

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

#69

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?

#70

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

#71

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

#72

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

#73

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!

1 Like
#74

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”

#75

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.

#76

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.

2 Likes
#77

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.

#78

The reason we can’t find groups without waiting a minute or two is because it’s an open beta test which will be wiped. People use it to check the game out and then preorder it and wait for release. Only a handful of people beta test to find bugs and get the most of the experience. This is not indicative of how many people will play the game or how many have it preordered. You are reading too much into it and apparently don’t have much experience with beta tests, which is fine. Free to play games will always boast more players because they are counting accounts. Paragon is basically a cleaned up Smite. It plays as slow (average gameplay speed) with long skill cooldowns including an arbitrary timer on attacks making it feel more like LoL than TF2 from a pace standpoint.

In either case, I don’t know how you are comparing the communities. One game is in a short Open Beta and the other has early access, which is basically released in the current gaming market. What you feel about it being doomed sounds like it’s not based on much. Day 1 and day 2 of the PC open beta, there wasn’t more than 20-30 second wait queues. Currently, the queues are probably longer because the game DOES try to match groups with groups, level averages, etc, even though you aren’t using the ranked system. The longer the closed beta goes, the more spread out the players who are sticking it out are going to be, obviously making match times take a minute or two. I still have yet to wait more than 2 minutes for a match, and that’s not bad. It means that when I run with 4 other people and we get matched with a 3 and 2 premade or a 4 and 1, there are a good variety of groups playing. Basically, stop dooming the game in your mind because you don’t seem familiar with how this all works.

#79

Here’s a good marketing idea(although not super easy to make): Give one character(Reyna?) a “Tracer pose” taunt(tapping her booty and shouting “TRACE THIS!”),so we can taunt Overwatch while we taunt each other.

It might bring over all Overwatch fans who opposed the censorship AND it would surely make minor controversy.

I doubt Blizzard would be able to come up with any kind of response to that,being so politically correct and careful about everything, and such a mockery would suit BattleBorn setting perfectly!( I mean,come on,BB is “naughty” in terms of SWJ, “Cripple check!” and ALL ISIC lines.I love ISIC,I think even if I didn’t like the game I’d play it just to play him,sorry,a side rant there,can’t contain my anticipation levels) image

This idea might be due to how BattleBorn absolutely destroyed my Overwatch hype, which in comparison is a shallow, uninteresting game, utilising the most “safe” ideas and game modes with NO character customization nor items or campaign co-op mode. What Gearbox did is simply brilliant and I just wish we had the means to stick our tongues out and fart in the general direction of Overwatch ;D

2 Likes
#80

Careful bruv
Your post could get flagged for being too sexy :stuck_out_tongue: pft.

#81

you want “too sexy”? THISimageis too sexy. Extreme close-up,you can see all the holo-holes and everything!

1 Like
#82

Imma petition for ISIC’s holo-skull to be censored. Skulls are evil.

No they’re not. They’re awesome

#83

What do you think gys and girlls, how much ppl will buy this game. 2K and Gearbox had terible marketing for this game. I heard for it like only 3-4 month ago. There was no closed beta so ppl can get know with game on Twich and formus. Game is exilent… I did 40-50 hours in open beta and had soo much fun. I pre-purchase Deluxe edition but still… If game die it will die couse 2K and Gearbox Marketing team failed. They should get fired immidiatly. Terrible work from them. Blizzard make so good job on geting ppl hype about Overwatch and in the same time 2K and Gearbox did 0 work on that field. I asked at least 20 of my friends, hard core gamers, like month ago about Battleborn and thay all say “What is that?”. So two possibility here: 1) Sale will go solid and we will have ppl on servers to play with. 2) They will be forced to switch on F2P so they can get more players in game but in the same time they need to make game profitable to hold servers up so we can expect some Micro-Transaction model. About price of game, well its totaly worth this money, Include so many characters, skins colors, + pre order gold one, maps, mods… all for this price, Many ppl cry about not be F2P, but if game was f2p we will get like 10 characters and no skins possible. So to buy 15 more characters at lets say price of 5$ each, well do a math.
So sad… this game is awesome in so many ways. I hope it will be succes. I cheers for you 2K and Gearbox and pls fire marketing team for this game. I 100% support this game as a man who plays games for 20 yrs, and I think this is a rly good game, not solid, GOOD game. Also do not compare this game with Overwatch, its apsolutly difrent game with difrent idea. (Sorry to all for my bad gramar)
Cya on battlefield Battleborns!