The Impact of Poor Brand Management on the Video Game Industry

Video game studios are ignoring the customer-brand relationship.

When a big name in video games tasked me with finding out what was really destroying the video game industry, I was frustrated to find that one of the biggest issues was also one of the easiest to solve.

In my last two articles, we covered how the video game industry’s entry barriers were drastically reduced, and how using the software development cycle to exploit customers had become codified as a best practice. Now, we’re going to touch on another common practice: ignoring customer expectations and throwing away customers’ pre-existing relationship with an established brand.

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It's becoming increasingly common for developers and publishers to radically mutate a brand rather than nurture its evolution. This seems to come from a combination of failing to investigate the relationship existing customers have with an established brand. The result is often the introduction of culturally trendy design and story elements that are simply off-brand.

When Battlefield V’s announcement trailer dropped in 2018, it faced a considerable amount of criticism. The trailer featured several eccentricities uncommon to the flagship brand, such as a quippy female amputee sporting blue Celtic war paint who beats a German soldier to death with a barbed wire-wrapped cricket bat. It was a marked departure from the relatively grounded and serious tone that the market had come to expect from the parent brand’s previous entries.

Ironically, Battlefield V’s ultimate premise and story would’ve fit well with Battlefield’s sub-brand, Battlefield: Bad Company. If EA had simply published Battlefield V as another installment in the Battlefield: Bad Company series, the game likely wouldn’t have faced as much initial backlash, nor would it have ended up as the commercial disappointment that it was due to that backlash.

Arkane Studios’ Prey ran into a similar issue. Release in May 2017, it was claimed to be a reboot of the original 2006 Prey game by Human Head Studios. However, Arkane never intended the game to even be associated with the Prey series, let alone its recycled intellectual property.

According to former Arkane Studios Creative Director Raphaël Colantonio, Bethesda Softworks—their publisher—demanded the studio shoehorn their game into the Prey franchise. Ultimately, the 2017 release of Prey had nothing to do with the original game or its abandoned sequels, save for the theme of a lone protagonist being relentlessly stalked by aliens.¹

In a podcast interview with the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, Colantonio bitterly addressed the idea of simply co-opting a brand for marketing clout: “It’s a sales mistake. We’re going to get backfire from [fans of the original game]. These ones are not going to be happy. Then the [segment of the market] who did not like [the original] Prey, they’re not even going to look for our game.”²

And he was right because, as Colantonio confessed, Prey’s “sales were horrible”.

Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs franchise is another case study of this arrogant mistake. The first installment was a gritty contemporary cyberpunk neo-noir released in May 2014. By July of the same year, it had sold 8 million copies. Its sequel, Watch Dogs 2, ditched the grittiness and neo-noir elements to present a much more lighthearted and comedic take. Like Battlefield V, this tonal shift was met with backlash, too. Although it did catch up with time, Watch Dogs 2 still took nearly three and a half years to match the sales its predecessor had achieved in just two months.

Another example is Activision Blizzard’s latest entry into their Diablo series. Attendees at BlizzCon 2018 were expecting news for the next PC-platformed installment, but what they got was an announcement for Diablo Immortal—a mobile game that many in the audience felt was just a pay-to-win cash grab (turns out, they were right³). The game’s predecessor, Diablo III, sold 3.5 million copies on launch day,⁴ raking in US$210 million in its first twenty-four hours. By contrast, Diablo Immortal took nearly three weeks to make just US$24 million.⁵

Then, there’s Baldur's Gate III. The two previous entries in the Baldur’s Gate franchise were published by Interplay Entertainment subsidiary Black Isle Studios. But after significant financial difficulties, Black Isle was shut down and Larian Studios picked up the rights to continue the series. Larian was previously known for its critically-acclaimed Divinity: Original Sin series, which had distinct storytelling, art style, and gameplay.

When Larian brought their house style to Baldur’s Gate III, they initially found themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. Returning Baldur’s Gate customers were expecting pausable real-time (or “real-time with pause”) gameplay, but were introduced to Larian’s trademark turn-based tactical gameplay. This deviation alienated a portion of the franchise’s core audience. On the other hand, Larian also annoyed the studio’s core audience who felt they had been cheated out of the next entry into the Divinity: Original Sin series. Both groups seemed to agree, whether correctly or not, that Baldur’s Gate III was just the next Divinity: Original Sin sequel with a misappropriated label.

There are countless more examples, but the theme remains the same: companies that don’t research—or simply choose to ignore—the relationship existing customers have with established brands are making an unforced error. As a result, they split their customer base, risking goodwill, sales, and ultimately money.

Fortunately, some of the games mentioned in this article still managed to find success. They did it either by pivoting away from their original consumers (Activision Blizzard’s Diablo franchise is increasingly considered to be an online gambling brand⁶⁷) or by allowing sales to accumulate through the sheer passage of time. But those are the exceptions—not the rule.

1. Ngan, Liv. “Arkane really didn't want to call Prey (2017) ‘Prey’”, Eurogamer, 31 Aug 2022, https://www.eurogamer.net/arkane-really-didnt-want-to-call-prey-2017-prey

2. Kusters, Trent. “Weird West with Raphaël Colantonio | The AIAS Game Maker's Notebook Podcast”, Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, 29 Aug 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kAZYxRjztQ

3. Galekovic, Filip. “It Costs $110,000 to Fully Gear-Up in Diablo Immortal”, Game Rant, 4 Jun. 2022, https://gamerant.com/diablo-immortal-pay-to-win-legendary-gems/

4. Cork, Jeff. “Diablo III Breaks PC Sales Records”, Game Informer, 23 May 2012, https://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/05/23/diablo-iii-crushes-pc-sales-records.aspx

5. Robinson, Andy. “Diablo Immortal has reportedly earned Blizzard more than $24 million”, Video Games Chronicle, 18 Jun. 2022, https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/diablo-immortal-has-reportedly-earned-blizzard-more-than-24-million/

6. Maxroll. “Maxroll Discontinues Diablo Immortal Branch”, Maxroll, 29 Jun. 2022, https://immortal.maxroll.gg/news/maxroll-discontinues-diablo-immortal-branch (https://archive.ph/WL8sa)

7. Brown, Andy. “Maxroll stops ‘Diablo Immortal’ coverage due to ‘predatory’ monetisation”, 1 Jul. 2022, https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/maxroll-stops-diablo-immortal-coverage-due-to-predatory-monetisation-3260038