Valve are being rather bold about their advertising spend for Left 4 Dead. $10 million, we’re told, quite a lot. Don’t they know that a gentleman doesn’t know how much is in his advertising budget? Anyhow, a lump of this money is being spent on TV spots, which are of course already on the internets. Of course posting adverts is just what they want us to do, so, er, we’re doing it ironically.
It’s something of a treat to see an advert for a game that doesn’t make you want to set your PC on fire and take up knitting. I wonder what someone who’s never heard of the game might think, watching that. There’s possibly a risk of zombie-fatigue in the general populace, but I think that might make things look intriguing enough to get past it. Sort of like how Charlie Brooker’s Dead Set couldn’t be a more traditional zombie story, but is done well enough for that not to be a problem.
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Weylund: it’s not us, it’s you… ;-)
I’m a frequent commenter here and have a fair share of both agreements and disagreements with people. You Grandstone are among the few names I don’t recognise, so playing the troll gambit is a bit rich.
My first post in this thread was not in response to another poster, as would be indicative of a troll. My first post was me expressing an opinion as equally consistent and contrarian as other posts. I hadn’t picked up on some sensitive issue on which a storm could be provoked like a troll would. I didn’t know anyone was going to respond, no one had to respond. I thought my post was pretty unremarkable. I wasn’t expecting someone somewhere behind a keyboard to get that “Someone is WRONG on the internet!” reflex kicking in where they percieve the offender to be a threat to the free world and fight it as such.
Go read my first post and see how utterly boring it is. Now read the responses and consider wether they were really proportionate given the tone and the number of them.
Yay, pointless discussions about developers selling out and the evil of EA for teh win!!
And EA bashing is soooo 2007! They are now the good guys and Blizzard/Activision are the new evil of video game publishing.
Move with the times, people!
Do all the zombies look like EA empolyees? Just wondering…
!!! 10$ million wasted on advertising… what’s the world coming to? !!!
I’m sure the game will do reasonably well regardless of how good the game is, just look at the recently released not-so-great Spore, but damn 10 million is a lot of money, especially when they take just about every opportunity they got to promote it through their own Steam.
@PHeMoX
I’m assuming that they’ve done the calculations and have realised that it will net them more than enough extra sales to make up for the advertising costs. I’ve got a friend who is currently looking at buying a 360, but doesn’t know where to start with the gaming media, and thus all the games he’s mentioned to me have been ones which have had television advertisments recently. Sure, he’s not an idiot and subsequently went to check out reviews and forums, but for people who don’t check the gaming news regularly it may be the only chance they get to here of a game.