In this exclusive Gamasutra interview, Midway's CMO Steve Allison discusses the publisher's marketing tactics, including cutting ad costs with celebrity interviews, strategically cancelling games, and spending nearly a million dollars testing game concepts.
Allison is particularly forthright on market-led testing of game concepts, commenting:
“God bless everyone in product development," said Allison. "Product development folks are so focused on things they think are cool, that we end up with every game concept as post-apocalyptic shooter, robots, mechs. There is a place for that, but there’s a place for a couple of those games. We’re going to see ninety-percent of those games fail, and ten-percent make it.”
In addition, the cancellation of the Snoop Dogg and John Singleton-associated Midway title
Fear & Respect was touched on in similarly frank style by Allison:
"We killed Fear and Respect,” Allison explains, “because we have enough data-points to know the hood thing is basically dead. It would be dead before it came out. And you don’t want to come out on a dead vibe."
You can now
read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, including a number of other interesting opinions on today's game biz (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from external websites).
