The Day of the Announcement — On the Breathless Defense of Marketing

Taylor Rioux
2 minutes ago
6 min read

The shows and marketing blitz surrounding Summer Games Fest seems to be winding down after a week of nearly non-stop trailers and announcements for games across every major platform, bookended by a PlayStation State of Play and a Nintendo Direct. Nintendo’s presentation has been of particular interest to me for a few reasons.

To start, it was extremely reliant on remakes, remasters, and re-releases as part of its showing. Nintendo has already received some flak recently for playing things too safe, and will likely continue to do so as long as they fall back on their mascots and re-releases as heavily as they do currently, but that’s not really why I take issue with the moment. Nintendo is, ultimately, delivering what its audience wants. As a company, specifically the de facto “family-friendly” game company, it behooves them to act accordingly.

Rather, I am a bit disturbed by the lengths people ostensibly in the video game press space are willing to breathlessly uphold Nintendo’s marketing efforts. This sort of thing is not inherently unique to Nintendo’s games, but they do enjoy the benefit of a shield from criticism that very few companies could ever hope to see. Even the mere idea that a game announcement showcase could underwhelm someone is enough to elicit disdain.

Nintendo right now seems to exist firstly as a guardian of IP, a hegemonic cultural force who exists to embody some vague notion of "play" in a diminishing monoculture. they harshly discipline any copyright violators out there who might try and do anything with their work or stretch it beyond their rigidly defined bounds. with every big release Nintendo ordains to reassert its own dominance over the idea of childhood "magic" and "play" in the games realm with their mainline franchise games, all so tearful adults and their children can rake over some money to re-experience some lost past. and to be fair, many times these mainline Nintendo games are still broadly more creative than what other mainstream games will offer, if only because Nintendo has been grandfathered into this role culturally. but the parameters that they're working within are still very limited due to their role as the hegemonic family-friendly company. even when they are wilder, the experiments in these games can feel just as much like they're stiffly holding the medium back from exploring its true potential than they are expanding it. especially when you go beyond their specialty realm of playful mechanics and into content that challenges audiences in any kind of ideological way. the recent surreal creepypasta Mario 64 romhack B3313 has really stuck with me specifically because it's the kind of experience Nintendo never could, or would, provide. and it recontextualizes that in a very haunting, if sometimes slightly juvenile, way.

From Liz Ryerson’s “i played some games for Steam Next Fest”

When people, like Ryan Easby here, go to bat for these companies, it almost invariably ends with the same question: “Do (the people who didn’t like the trailers) even like games?”

Yes, I love them. I love them more than anything in this world, save my son and wife. I love the medium. I love the ways in which we can express and experience a multitude of feelings and stories through play and interaction. I love how they exemplify the intersection of visual storytelling, the written word, and tactile interaction in a way that so few things can touch. But I suppose that’s the disconnect here — I love the games.

If the idea that someone, in some far-off place, being less excited for a game that another person wants is enough to dampen appreciation for it, I have to question the strength of that appreciation. Because it seems to me that, in such cases, the excitement is not about the game itself. The anticipation for the game is what matters.

But these sentiments are not limited to the random musings of writers on social media — they are elevated to the default position of many organizations in games media. When Gavin Lane of Nintendo Life writes “Lots of known quantities, sure, but that's been the case with Switch 2 since launch and it's unlikely to change…As for the knowns, it would be churlish to complain” and “You can't argue with that lineup”, he presents it as statement of fact. The status quo is the ideal, and its righteousness is set in stone. There can be no difference of opinion here, unless you were some sort of barbarian.

In a now-deleted post on Bluesky, IGN’s Logan Plant bemoaned how knowledge or rumor of the existence of an Ocarina of Time remake being put out into the wild a few weeks before the announcement “ruined” it. But what has been ruined by this knowledge? An Ocarina of Time remake has been a near inevitability for some time, with credible rumors of its existence circulating for years. What has been lost by some guy on the internet saying it is happening? The game will still be made. I suspect he means the “surprise”.

The most important thing in this scenario is not whether the game will be good, nor is it about what the remakes entail. There is very little curiosity surrounding these announcements as to what the games will actually be, as so few care to ask themselves the ”how” or “why” of this season's latest big reimaginings. The only aspect that really matters is maintaining collective excitement; being surprised and letting everyone know that a thing exists — and that you want it — is “the point”.

Ryan Easby writes "I cannot get over people calling that Direct bad. Do you even like games? Were your eyes shut?

In his defense of marketing, Ryan questions other people's love of video games. He is not the first to do so, nor will he be the last.

I suppose this is just a symptom of the games media space being one dominated by enthusiast press rather than critics or the sort of investigative journalists that one would expect to examine and uncover truth. Every breath in relation to these press events must uphold the marketing. After all, if we’re not getting excited about games, what are we even doing here?

Actually, what are we here for? And who is “we”? Examining this requires some introspection and admission on my part, of course, but I hope anyone who reads this will join me in thinking about their own purpose.

Reviewers of games are often asked to adhere to embargos before producing coverage. These embargos may be as small as agreeing to hold coverage until a specific date, or as extensive as avoiding speaking about major segments of the game itself. When reviewers accept these embargoes, we are tacitly agreeing to participate as marketing for the game in question, even if only marginally. Even if your analysis lands in the negative, the mere adherence to the company's terms for the time, place, and content of the written word makes it so.

Despite this, there is a difference in the way individuals in the space approach the work. I have often held that there is a distinction between the product review–style writings of major outlets* and the more analytical approaches to criticism often found at the edges of the independent space. There is value in both, and doing one or the other is not necessarily some sign of elevated status, but they are different.

Product reviews work well for the general gaming audience, aiming to tell readers what the thing is and if they should buy it. The same people doing them are often the same voices engaging in developer interviews and news articles on the latest games. I cannot stress enough how great it is for me to go to a site like IGN and be able to learn everything I need to about what a game is and who the people behind it are. This is work that keeps me informed, and (perhaps just as importantly) it is not work that I want to do.

In their piece If You Ask Nicely, Autumn Wright has many points I agree with, but one in particular has stuck with me.

“Upholding feelings—especially feelings as pretextual as fun and excitement—is not the work of a critic. Nor is upholding particular feelings IGN's work as a publisher of reporting and criticism. ‘If we’re not getting excited about games, what are we even doing here?’ is not an argument. It is pure ideology.”

The place of the critic is not to endlessly maintain the excitement generated by the ads a company shows. That is not the place of a journalist, either. Many of us in the space wear (or have worn) multiple hats regarding reporting on and examining games, and coming to terms with the “access journalism” aspect of it all is certainly a struggle I experience. Yet, I imagine that the impetus for most writers joining the field was not simply to carry water for companies. None of us has played any of these games in full, so who does it serve to drown out dissent?

I cannot fathom why it would be important for critics or journalists to shield any of these companies from critique. The marketing didn't land for some people. How does that dampen another person’s enjoyment of the game when it is released? If one truly, deeply cares and is excited for the games that were announced, why would they be concerned with denigrating the naysayers over their reception to a trailer?

In his piece Abundance Reigns, Nicholas Capozzoli ends with the following line:

“By declaring ourselves beyond the trenches of critique, our interests beyond the purview of critics, we are fooling ourselves, proclaiming that by cutting off the spited nose, we have somehow ended up with so much more face.”

Games writing has been decimated by layoffs, cuts to budgets, and the closures of many outlets over the last few years. Jobs and opportunities are limited, and positions are precarious. Many of the most effective and talented writers I know struggle to find consistent work. I know how hard it is to be here. I know the pressures many face in doing the work. But I have to believe games writers can be more than corporate sycophants, that there is value in approaching marketing with a little skepticism. I have to believe that my excitement or anticipation for a game does not mean I must carry the torch for a developer over a game I have not even played.

If I am to be asked, “do you even like games?” or “if we’re not getting excited about games, what are we even doing here?”, then the answer is simple: I am here because I love games, not because I love corporations. What are you here for?