Modern Warfare 2 Sales Unhindered by Controversies

Both GameSpot and GamePolitics reported yesterday that despite the recent controversies surrounding Modern Warfare 2, which is launching next Tuesday, game sales are projected to be huge.

Even USA Today picked up on the story:

"By all indicators, we anticipate Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will be the biggest entertainment launch of all time," says Tony Bartel, executive vice president for merchandising and marketing at GameStop. "As of today, the number of pre-order reservations we've taken for the game is the highest for any title we've ever sold in our 6,200 store network."

James Brightman wrote for Industry Gamers, saying:

Ever since E3 pundits have been predicting huge sales for Activision's upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which many believe will be the top selling title of this holiday season and possibly all of 2009.  Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter, as part of his Activision earnings preview, put in his own two cents.

"We expect global sales to exceed $500 million in the first week following launch, and think that the company can easily sell 10 million units in Q4," he stated.

I think that Infinity Ward's ability to shrug off all the contention surrounding Modern Warfare 2 -- from the removal of Dedicated Servers, to the content leak, to the homophobic advertisement -- essentially comes down to a point I made in a few of my earlier blog posts: gameplay is the best advertising you can get in this industry. Publishers and franchises are to videogames what authors are to novels, and directors to movies, but even moreso.

Dropping $59.99 + tax on a game requires a much greater deal of trust in the product (and its creators) than buying a DVD or novel, or even purchasing a movie ticket. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has become a staple of the online FPS multiplayer experience. Many gamers, casual and hardcore alike, are likely to overlook a transgression or three in order to recreate or enhance the entire they had playing the original title.

Pre-Launch Character Creation: a Uniquely Game-centered Way of Advertising

Set to release next week (November 3rd), Dragon Age used a pretty interesting concept as part of their pre-launch advertising. As Brendan Sinclair of GameSpot reported on the 13th, potential players can visit the official website and use the Character Creator feature to physically design Dragon Age: Origins protagonists. These characters can be fully exported to the actual PC retail copy when the game is released.

This is an advertising technique that is distinctly unique to the gaming industry -- it can't really be replicated in book publishing or film production. My guess is that, aside from getting already devoted fans excited, the idea is to help build a sense of attachment to whatever character you make, so much so that you'd be willing to purchase the game to see them "brought to life." On the other hand, it also can express the overall "tone" of a game fairly well using visual cues: the quality of the graphics engine, the style of the fashion, the art direction of the character models, and so forth.

This isn't the first time EA has hyped a game's release by giving players a sneak peek at its character creation tools. The publisher released Spore Creature Creator in advance of Will Wright's Spore, as a free download (with limited features) and as a $5 retail package.

Though Spore might be one of the most over-hyped games in history, it's possible that this tactic of allowing people to see the character creation process assisted in building the raging wall of buzz that surrounded the game pre-release. Though the character creation tool doesn't allow for a taste of gameplay like a demo might, it can be more easily downloaded from something as user-friendly as an official website, and promises a sort of continuation between a prospective customer's online behavior (designing up a quick character), and their gaming behavior.

Cover Art: the Last Chance to Grab Players

A couple days ago Gamespot ran an article referencing NPD research that "40% of gamers impulse buy."

As for what factors played into an impulse purchase, 40 percent said the game's packaging was a "very important" or "extremely important" factor in their decision.

This was higher than the 33% that mentioned the importance of a referral from a friend, the 25% that said the in-store demon was a critical factor, the  21% that liked the recommendations from other shoppers, or 19% that felt like the sales clerk played a big role in what title they picked up. This should be moderately good news for videogame advertisers: it's a lot easier to control the packaging of your product than the buzz which surrounds it, let alone the aptitude of the salesperson behind the counter.

The reason that the cover art is so vital, in my opinion, is that for most games it is a clear indication of "what type" of game it is, and what type of player will enjoy it. Now, judging a game by its cover is bound to result in some more expensive mistakes than judging a book by its cover, but overall there are some pretty integral semiotic codes that go into the construction of cover art.

Though Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare earned great ratings from game reviewers across the board (and the History Channel games, generally, have not), it's clear to see that in both cases art work is likely to catch the eye of gamers who like war games. If you have already played and enjoyed game like Call of Duty 4, you're probably going to be more inclined to buy The History Channel: Battle for the Pacific just from glancing at the cover art. If the game is being sold at a reduced price (which it probably is: Battle for the Pacific is likely available used, and even new, it's old enough that it's not going to have a whopping $59.99 price sticker), you'll be even more persuaded.

The beauty of semiotic coding as advertising in cover art is that the same codes tend to be transferable not just from game to game, but also from movies, novels, comics, etc. To give an example...

A movie poster for a well-known, much-loved franchise: Star Wars. For many fans, this movie is the epitome of the space-faring epic, not only a classic but an definitive work in the genre of science fiction. It is a -- to put it likely -- wildly successful application of the "good versus evil" theme to the world of aliens, spaceships, and intergalactic battles.

Here's the cover of Mass Effect, an incredibly successful science fiction RPG:

I'll let you guess what the game is about.