Hello everyone!  I had a quick vacation since the last Opinionated, but you might be happy to see what I did with the vacation:  I composed and performed the musical score to the new game "Millennium Man Meets the Y2K Bug."  Check out this gem of coolness at http://www.boredgames.com as it gears up for worldwide distribution soon.

Since today brings us the release of the Unreal Tournament demo for all the graphics cards (as opposed to the previously exclusive 3dfx release), I thought I'd make a couple comments about the marketing challenges ahead.

There are quite a few strategies that may be involved if Epic and GT make the big pushes necessary for giant sales figures, but number one among them is brand loyalty.  Forget the debate about whether a large portion of the gaming public uses the internet to play, or whether the Q3's or UT's single player approaches will attract a mass audience - the real question facing UT is whether Quake loyalists would be willing to make the switch.

Considering the timing of their press releases, it's pretty obvious that Quake 3's concept was followed by Unreal Tournament, just because it looked like a new and interesting direction to take the market.  This may put off die-hard Quakers right away, but I'll explain why that shouldn't be an issue.

Did you notice how many robot toys came out when the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers became popular (the resurrection of Voltron, Transformers, Exo-Squad, Battletech, etc), or the way tv and movie studios like to make similarly-themed movies and shows at nearly the same time?  Armageddon and Deep Impact, Stir of Echoes and The Sixth Sense, Matrix and The 13th Floor, ER and Chicago Hope, and other competing pairs are made every year.  Faster than you can say "The Munsters and The Addams Family share the same concept," you'll realize why studios do it.  If one is popular, there's a good chance another product can capitalize on the first's popularity.

The key for Unreal Tournament's success, however, is to overcome the strong loyalty id has instilled in its players; when some people stick only to Q1 online, and ignore Q2, that audience is tough enough to reach.  Competing against the brand loyalty of all id's popular shooters is fine in single player (how many magazines had "Quake Killer" on the cover?) but not easy online.  A very strong message will be needed to change their deathmatch habits.  As the folks at Epic and GT noticed though, brand loyalty also applies to hardware.

Humor columnist Dave Barry noted that arguments would take place in the past where kids would demonstrate brand loyalty to their favorite car manufacturers in this fashion:

Teen1:  Ford is better than Chevy.  Fo Mo Co!
Teen2:  Chevy is better than Ford.  Fo No Go!
(they fight)

But it's not just in the past.  As idiotic as it sounds, I just saw a car yesterday with a bumper sticker declaring "I'd rather push a Ford than drive a Chevy," as if a company's name is more important than the product it created.  This also happened with every video game company in recorded history, where some jerk would declare that the Nintendo/ Sega/ Atari/ Coleco/ Sony/ TurboGrax16/ NeoGeo/etc games are cool, while their major competition's game console is crap.  In all seriousness, every gaming platform had very good games and very bad ones, and the quality of each console or company always depended on whether or not different people liked different games.  Entertainment is always subjective, and if you feel you're having more fun with an old ColecoVision game than with a Playstation, you are.

Don't let that get in the way of the rabid brand loyalists though!  Although many users have fueled the time-wasting "Mac vs. PC" debates on Usenet for years, computer video cards are a recent subject of this behavior.  Immature fans of the NVIDA chips mock 3dfx users for lack of 32-bit color while equally immature 3dfx fans snap back by calling their rivals "nVidiots" and say they prefer 16-bit and extra speed.  Why come to virtual blows when both cards are so good?  Can't we all just get along?  

The answer is obviously no, so just ignore those people and pick your next card based on the feature list you want, not the brand name.

Absurd brand loyalty aside, some companies have done an indisputably good job.  They are excellent targets for partnerships, not just for their name or momentum, but quality as well.  3dfx had a high profile among gamers longer, got a hot new distribution deal with STB and has a better long-term reputation than their relatively new competitor.  It also was practically made famous by Quake.  If Unreal Tournament wants to compete with Quake's newest incarnation, sharing promotion with 3dfx is a great way for it to pick up gaming credibility.

Bundling Unreal with the Voodoo3 3000 and 3500 cards makes it cheap and tempting to Quake players, and the extra-early Voodoo-only UT demo was another nice move for cross promotion.  3dfx got some nice press with a beautiful game and UT caught the eyes of gamers with Voodoo chipsets.  It's all good press, but here's the biggest coup de grace (pardon my French) of the bunch: The Voodoo3 includes a coupon for Unreal Tournament.

It's common to include older games or demo games with a card, but the full version of a not-yet-released game is very uncommon in this industry.  Instead, it sounds a lot more like the classic marketing example of The Gillette Razor Principle.  Way back before electric shavers became common, smooth-skinned folk plugged cheap blades into relatively-expensive handles to shave.  The blades were the parts that wore out, so people bought many more Gillette blades to keep shaving with their "free" razor handle.

The Gillette Razor Principle is famous in the history of marketing because it shows how free samples can motivate people to become lifelong customers.  I don't know the exact details of the deal between Epic, GT, and 3dfx, but I bet Unreal Tournament's sales won't be as high in the short term as they otherwise would have been without the bundle.  The Voodoo3 cards have been flying off the shelves so many would-be customers already own coupons for the game.

Gillette was able to generate massive long term blade sales with a minor short term loss in product giveaways and I believe that the UT bundle could cause the same effect.  When included with the fast-selling Voodoo3 cards, UT will have a huge installed base of online players.  All you have to do is mali in a coupon.  Why wouldn't you give it a try?  In a way, they may not be pushing Unreal Tournament to those Voodoo3 owners so much as Unreal 2 or UT2.  If you like what you get now, the inference is that they can deliver more of the same later.

This crafty little marketing plan is likely to draw more attention to the Unreal franchise, and that's the kind of thing that may give it a chance to wrestle multiplayer consumer loyalty into their corner en masse - a feat that no FPS has been able to do since id created the genre.  It will be very interesting to see how the Q3 and UT duel pans out this season - especially if a non-deathmatch internet game like Team Fortress 2 comes in and creams them both...it's food for thought.

If you have a need to share your opinion on this article then please feel free to write/share your opinion in our Discussion forum.

Copyright 1999 - All rights reserved Hilbert Hagedoorn