Dear game developers; marketing isn't evil

Brian Baglow works in the game industry as a marketing and PR man. Last month he gave a presentation to a room full of Scottish game developers and it's worth a watch. Okay; it's full of NSFW swearing but this is a Scottish gaming sessions so it's only natural.

The first section is titled "Developers: stop being shit" and that outlines one of his key points. We're moving through an era when it was really quite hard to publish a game; everything was locked up with big publishers and console builders. Its now far easier to make games and put them in the hands of people who want to play them without this drama - but, somehow, oppertunities are being missed. Developers seem unwilling to promote their games; they argue that good games don't need hype. Some feel that marketing may well be eeeevil!

Baglow disagrees.

I'm glad he made the point that marketing does not need to be expensive and that game developers can do marketing themselves. In his rundown of what "marketing is..." I get the feeling he might be light on digital, ironically, but he certainly makes the point about marketing being social.