Leading developers at Larian have strong words against traditional marketing and PR campaigns. They believe you just have to talk to people normally
For him, traditional marketing strategies are nonsense, instead, direct and honest communication with the potential fan community counts. This, in turn, is easier than ever in the age of social media if you pay attention to a few things. According to him, these are the most important factors:
- Finding your own target group online.
- Talking the language of the players, really understanding their wants and needs. This strengthens the trust of the community, which wants a transparent exchange and does not want to be presented with advertising.
- Building real “social resonance”, respecting people and being respected by them. According to Drouste, traditional marketing often fails at this point.
- Instead of advertising and setting quotas, it is better to focus on real communication and only speak out when you have something substantial to say.
He uses Google Stadia as an example of his flippant phrase “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 a lack of success. “But they had all the data,” Drouste says in his thread.
“Marketing is dead and I can prove it.”  A bold statement that has sparked a lot of discussion among Larian’s Director of Publishing, Michael Douse. However, given the success of of course, his word carries a lot of weight.
CEO Swen Vincke has now also intervened and once again found very clear words to criticize some habits in the games industry. Her core message: Traditional marketing allegedly works much worse than most people think.
RE this dumbass marketing thing. Yes, we don’t have a credited marketer. I know it’s weird. We paid A LOT of money to trial the industry’s best agencies for this shit and they came up with nothing good. We learned some genuinely meaningful, replicable things from it.
– Very AFK (@Cromwelp) April 26, 2024
This is how the Larian developer justifies his dislike
In a roundtable interview with PC Gamer, Douse said that marketing is dead in his eyes and people just want developers to talk to them normally: “We have the internet. Nobody watches ads anymore.” Shortly afterwards, he followed up with a long thread on X (formerly Twitter) describing the experiences Larian had with marketing Baldur’s Gate 3:
“We spent A LOT of money trying out the best companies in the industry for this crap and they delivered nothing good. “
Douse doesn’t seem to be alone at Larian with his clear stance against traditional marketing. CEO Vincke joined him on X and wrote as a comment on the thread:
Good morning! If you work in the games industry and attend a marketing meeting where someone is polluting the air with the words “user”, “product”, “conversion”, “KPI” etc – share this thread and tell them a cure has been found.
How do you see this? Do you agree with the Larian bosses that it’s best to just communicate normally with the community to 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?
