At Larian they don't think much of classic marketing measures.
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»Marketing is dead and I can prove it«. A bold announcement with which Larian's Director of Publishing, Michael Douse, sparked many discussions. However, given the success of Baldur's Gate 3 and, before that, Divinity: Original Sin 2, his word obviously carries weight.
CEO Swen Vincke has also intervened and once again found very clear words to criticize some of the gaming industry's habits. Your core message: Traditional marketing supposedly works much worse than most people believe.
This is how the Larian developer explains his dislike
Douse said in a roundtable interview that marketing is dead in his eyes and that people just want developers to talk to them normally PC gamers: »We have the Internet. Nobody looks at advertising anymore.« Shortly afterwards, he followed up with a long thread on X (formerly Twitter) and describes, Larian's experiences marketing Baldur's Gate 3:
“We spent A LOT of money trying out the best companies in the industry for this crap and they didn't come up with anything good.”
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Link to Twitter content
For him, classic marketing strategies are nonsense, instead what counts is direct and honest communication with the potential fan community. In the age of social media, this is easier than ever before if you keep a few things in mind. According to him, these are the most important factors:
- Find your own target group online.
- Speaking the players’ language, truly understanding their wants and needs. This strengthens the trust of the community, which wants transparent exchange and does not want to be served with advertising.
- Forming real “social resonance” that respects people and is respected by them. According to Drouste, traditional marketing often fails at this point.
- Instead of advertising and setting quotas, you should rely on real communication and only express yourself when you have something substantial to say.
He uses Google Stadia as an example of his flippant saying, “Marketing is dead.” The cloud gaming service was announced around the same time as Baldur's Gate 3 and was completely discontinued in January 2023 after lack of success. “But they had all the data,” Drouste mocks in his thread.
1:45:23
Middle finger to the AAA industry: Baldur's Gate 3 was no coincidence
With his clear position against traditional marketing, Douse doesn't seem to be at all alone at Larian. CEO Vincke jumped at him on X and wrote as comment to the thread:
Good morning! If you work in the gaming industry and are in a marketing meeting where someone is polluting the air with the words “user,” “product,” “conversion,” “KPI,” etc. – share this thread and tell them that a Cure has been found.
how do you see it? Do you share the Larian bosses' viewpoint that it's best to just communicate normally with the community and build trust? Or do you believe that widespread marketing with numerous analysis tools, target group models and advertising measures leads to the success of games?