It’s no mystery that for a game to be successful, it needs to have a strong and frequent player base. But it is the players’ feedbacks that have the greatest effect on whether that player base grows or shrinks. The game community is strongly influenced by reviews of published game titles, which ultimately determine the overall success of games.
Traditional Word of Mouth
The literal word of mouth is still a major marketing communication tool for game publishers and powerful within the game community. Recommendations and positive feedback within small group of gamers (friends, colleagues, acquaintances) that play together stir up interest, brand awareness, and encourage trying new games, leading up to sales and possibly a loyal player for that title. As a gamer myself, I find traditional word of mouth very effective as this is my primary way of knowing about new games as I ask my group of friends while playing a game for new recommendations.
Let’s not forget the game “Flappy Bird”. This mobile game is the perfect example on how traditional word of mouth can make a game widely known and very successful. Every gamer was talking about it at the time, telling other people how addicted and fun or frustrating it was, and provoking them by asking what their highest score was. People were persuaded to try it through word of mouth, reactions, and some peer-pressure.
The New Word of Mouth
With so many game platforms, social platforms and forums, the new word of mouth, or as I like to call it: “word of fingers”, has gone digital. This new version of word of mouth as a marketing tool has a far greater effect in the game industry than its traditional version as it has a bigger reach in connecting, informing and affecting the whole game community. Popular platforms that sell games online, such as, Steam, provide a written review section of actual users that have tried the game, and even showing the number of hours that they have invested playing it, when searching for a particular title. The Steam platform also summarizes the overall feedback provided by players giving it a rating between 7 categories, from Negative to Overwhelmingly Positive. Word of fingers has an immense effect of the decision of new users in buying or trying the game, determining the fate of published games.
Word of mouth is a powerful marketing communication tool in the gaming industry that could help small organizations become very successful, as it did to “.Gears”, a 2 people game developer studio, generate around $50,000 per day in in-app ads revenue with Flappy Bird. It could also affect very negatively to big game publishers, like Activision, as it did recently with its newly released title “Battlefield 2042”, causing the company to lose millions of dollars and probably deciding to make it free to play game. The game community relies heavily of word of mouth, whether traditionally or through its digital version, word of fingers.