Games and Marketing

Following the previous post, it should come as no surprise that I read some of these marketing blogs as do many others.

Is it because:

• Marketing is human beings at their most creative and sexy?
• When you think about marketing, you increase your self esteem, because you have to believe in yourself to sell yourself?
• Marketing is the only ethical means we allow to manipulate other's opinions, similar to the way that Dale Carnegie's books operate?
• Marketing and business really are the essential powers of our world, and so are important in their own right?

I don't know. Maybe all of the above.

The subject of marketing intersects the subject of games in numerous ways:

• Game developers have to market their games to game publishers.
  
• Game publishers have to market their games to game retailers and the public.
  They're doing a pitiful job with that right now. It's not that they don't have products to sell that are good. They do. What they are not doing is selling the sexy. I want to see a few well placed ads in Newsweek, in computer and video game journals, or as ad placement in movies. Outside of the traditional media, they have to think how to hit the web 2.0 crowds.
  
• Game players have to market themselves during games in order to win.
  Not only during negotiation games, but also trading games, cooperation games, and any game where you need to present yourself as more or less than you actually are.
  

All potential subjects for some good posts.

Yehuda