The Liquid Architecture blog

Industry Gamers ran an interview snippet (via MCV) that as a brand marketer, gamer, and marketer of game brands really caught my eye.  In the runup to Modern Warfare 2’s release, Infinity Ward community manager Robert Bowling talks about how developers need to be as hands-on as possible with marketing their game.

Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling

It makes complete sense, and I’m sure it’s a “duh” concept for anyone that works with food and beverage, CPG’s, etc. in a marketing capacity.  But the sad fact of the matter is, this kind of thing hardly ever happens in the games industry.

Somewhere along the line we appropriated Hollywood’s shitty confusing approach to marketing, where the people most directly involved in the creation of a game are usually the ones least involved in marketing it.  It’s tough to say how exactly this got started.  After all, in the bedroom coding commodore 64 and Amiga days, pre-retail, the developers WERE the marketers, as well as the QA testers, instruction manual copywriters… all of it.  Of course, “marketing” was more or less a matter of taking out an ad in the back of an enthusiast magazine and attending the odd trade show.

At any rate, big kudos to Bowling and Infinity Ward for taking the reigns themselves.  I’m sure Activision would be more than happy to just line up the troops, cut a check and send them off marching in whatever direction they chose.  But having the IW guys at the top of that chain has kept the promotional machine for this juggernaut of a game focused and coordinated.  Most importantly, they understand the Modern Warfare audience on a much deeper level than the sum whole of any team from any agency they retain – even a videogame specialty practice.

Bowling started using Twitter to get minute details about MW2 directly to passionate fans

I can’t even begin to count how many interviews I’ve seen where a developer, hyping his newest game, blames the failure of his last one squarely on marketing, and how the team responsible either didn’t get the game, didn’t get the audience, or both.  Hopefully Infinity Ward’s attitude takes hold with other AAA developers, so that excuse can finally be put to rest.