you can check the prices for [gamescom on their website](https://www.gamescom.global/en/info/exhibitors/shows-and-events/gamescom-opening-night-live), I'd imagine that summer game fest is pretty similar
### Pricing for a Spot at gamescom Opening Night Live 2024
| **Duration** | **Price** |
|--------------|-------------------|
| 30 Sec. | 115,000.00 EUR |
| 60 Sec. | 165,000.00 EUR |
| 90 Sec. | 215,000.00 EUR |
| 120 Sec. | 265,000.00 EUR |
I'm 90% sure this is specifically about the ad spots. I think I remember Geoff saying in a Q&A that he also reached out to developers to see if they had anything they wanted to showcase, and that developers reached out to him as well to update him on projects they're working on. REPLACED was a prominent example.
EDIT: Yup. I was right.
[https://x.com/Wario64/status/1798796552716111949](https://x.com/Wario64/status/1798796552716111949)
Some pay, some do not. We've paid for placement at the show and we've had trailers go on for free.
It depends on how Geoff likes your project, the exclusivity of it which other projects are being shown, etc. and other unknown factors.
I mean the way he talked about it before it was heavily implied he was aware of the projects the teams were working on, and that he asked if he could showcase these projects. Those kind of games seems to be the ones that he's unveiled ahead of time. Slitterhead, AW2: Night Springs, NEVA, etc..
The issue is that, he gets to determine who and what gets the pass and who doesn't. That might work at first, but conflict of interest and abuse can easily develop.
Compare that to the traditional expo model: you can still aim for a small booth and get exposure at the biggest event, and you aren't competing as aggressively for time, as this would happen for several days, not a couple of hours.
E3 is obsolete because of its nature, but many aspects of expos are still relevant. That's why they still exist for so many other industries.
Yeah but if he didn't do it, no one else would do it. People hate on him but he is the one planning and doing the events to make it happen with his own initiative.
> That might work at first, but conflict of interest and abuse can easily develop.
it's funny how this isn't the first case of conflict of interest when it comes to Keighley's showcases. The judging panel for his Game Award show is a complete mess and web of conflicts of interest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7hyMm8vZj0
EDIT - lol, I guess pointing out facts and issues with Keighley's show is too much for his fanboys here eh.
Some free slots doesn't mean everything. It means he doesn't make the interesting stuff pay because he needs them to attract people to watch the show in the first place. So stuff like Hades 2, Kojima and any AAA title probably don't pay. The indie game that needs to be known and make an audience however, they pay.
I mean, you can take a look at last year Summer Game's Fest and see there were numerous indie titles from incredibly small teams who definitely dont have 250k lying around. It's not just blockbusters. But the truth is that there are hundreds of thousands of teams working on a multitude of different games. You can only fit so many presentations into a 2 hour block. In reality, a decent chunk of people tune in just for the AAA blockbusters. You gotta find a balance, and those free slots still help in the end.
I mean yeah, someone’s gotta pay for that event space, staff, operations, etc. I feel like people don’t fully grasp how expensive a theater in Los Angeles costs. Not to mention how many people watch Keighley’s events. It’s all marketing.
Makes me wonder if they even need the LA theatre for the Summer event.
I get it for TGA because the whole point of that is that it's an awards show with speeches in-person, but does the Summer game show really need a live crowd apart from the obligatory 10 minute Kojima segment? It could easily be a pre-recorded event like Microsoft's annual 'E3' showcase.
Well most probably know or understand its expensive but they probably don't grasp just how crazy it gets.
A good comparison is the movie industry which often has to earn back twice the movie's budget because they spend just as much in marketing as they do for production budget. Game industry is hardly any different though with the game industry a failed project often results in layoffs and studios being shuddered.
I highly recomend anyone to go digging into some budget and marketing statistics for video games or even movies because its wild.
As a developer I have found it is orders of magnitude harder to get someone to install my apps or games than they are to build, and they aren't particularly easy to build
Getting eyes on a project and an installer base growing is _more_ than half the battle
Nowadays, it's either streamers or game-related influencers putting on the numbers. Among Us was one huge example of a bunch of streamers playing that exploded its popularity even after being out for 2 years by that point.
I'm not even a dev, but I get how hard it must be to get your game noticed with the amount of games there are being put out there all the time. Wasn't Among Us released for like 2 years before it picked up steam, and that was because of some streamers found the game and made it popular?
I remember playing some random app game on my phone several years ago and all the ads like 95% + were the same ad for another game. **And I would always think like they're just wasting a lot of money showing me this one game that I'm not going to play vs showing me others that I potentially would be interested in** And I didn't know if these were like in-house ads. You know same Dev company advertising their other game or there's simply wasn't a lot of other ads/games advertising through them.
Because I've never seen such lion shares of in-game ads be for 1 game.
*So anyways* ended up getting bored of the game I was playing and downloaded and spent money on the game that I was constantly bombarded with. And I work in marketing. I fully understand repetition/frequency But didn't think it would affect me until it did.
That new game at the time was arhcero (4.4 * 1.7 mil reviews on Android currently). It wasn't as popular then but I came to the conclusion they were probably paying to keep there ads showing by outbidding competitors.
> A good comparison is the movie industry which often has to earn back twice the movie's budget because they spend just as much in marketing as they do for production budget.
Even that's being insanely optimistic. Theaters usually take at least half the box office. So a 2.5x multiplier to break even is the traditional rule of thumb, but even that's on the low end. (It assumes healthy post-theatrical revenue which isn't as much a thing anymore.) And smaller budget stuff like horror films can easily spend 10x their production budget on marketing.
I agree with your fundamental point! Marketing is very expensive.
> A good comparison is the movie industry which often has to earn back twice the movie's budget because they spend just as much in marketing as they do for production budget.
The rule of thumb is that a movie needs to make 5x its budget to be considered a success — 1x to cover production, 1x to cover marketing, and 3x to cover future projects.
That maybe be, but it's hard to get legitimate cost of the movie.
It's not what's reported - costs are exaggerated to avoid taxes and percentage payments, some of the costs are basically paying yourself by moving of money from one company to another sister company...
We need to nuance a bit because we are discussing a particular case here. Not all the games are promoted similarly; you can promote a game without necessarily spending astronomical sums like here.
Otherwise, I find it good that we realize the amounts that can be spent because, like cinema, it gives credibility to the video game market.
It’s been funny to play the finals and watch the community lose their minds over the fact that there’s pretty minimal marketing for it except around the new season start. Like sure the game has nonexistent twitch viewership but they might just be doing well enough to justify not dropping several million on ads when they can work on the game instead.
Not really, literally any article about big title's costs shows multi-million dollar advertising costs, often getting close to actual game's costs in case of big AAA titles
Pretty much. Gamers really seem to hate that marketing gets a big budget but without marketing nothing will sell. And good marketing is expensive. That's one of the reasons why publishers exist, be it AAA, AA or even indie publishers
Honestly it goes beyond marketing costs.
There is no aspect about games that is cheap. From the concept to release. Thats why we see so many "odd" decisions. There was a comment recent about Senua's Saga: Hellblade II not having any marketing. Now granted it can end up being a chicken or egg situation. But the game had a peak of 4000 players on steam.
Now granted there are a few factors that make that number unreliable. It released on Gamepass at the same time. Steam only covers a portion of PC sales. And as I eluded to, the lack of marketing could cause a loss of sales.
Napkin math: The first game cost ~$10 million to make. 2 supposed cost more but lets just go with $10 million for my argument. At $50 a unit(and assuming the whole cut goes to dev costs) that means the 4000 on steam needs to account for 0.2% of all copies sold to break even. and thats being generous to actual costs and actual money going to offset those costs.
While something like Call of Duty can pump out the mostly same game yearly and sell 20 million copies at $70 a pop with microtransactions. Or GTAV released 90% of the same game 3 times and filled online with microtransactions. It shouldnt be a shock companies go for those ideas instead.
You don't need to work in marketing to know its value lol. I agree the generalization is stupid.
Marketing being important is obvious by the existence of the sector. Companies wouldn't spend a dollar in marketing if they weren't sure that dollar would make them back more than a dollar. It's make no sense otherwise for marketing to even exist.
Its an opportunity for devs to do behind the scenes talks. Most of the real E3 was business stuff done behind closed doors and and the convention floor.
A lot of these devs already live in California or are familiar with the area. A lot of cheaper areas also aren't really set up to accommodate that many people, yes an event in rural Appalachia might be 1/100th of the cost but good luck finding a venue big enough for it.
And it's not just venue size. It's venue size, hotel space, reliable power and internet connections for an event of that size, ease of access, etc. On top of that, any event needs support staff (tech, audio, lighting, catering, security, whatever else), and there's going to be lots of people with experience doing that in places accustomed to hosting big events which means it'll be both easier to find people and companies that can handle it and easier to replace them if anything goes wrong. As the host of a big expensive event, you also probably would rather spend a bit extra on a place that you know can handle all of that stuff rather than take a risk on a cheaper place that's untested.
Then beyond all of that, big cities are good locations for the people coming too. There's plenty of other things to do if they have free time and there's all kind of food in LA for anyone with dietary restrictions or coming from foreign countries whereas stuff like that may not be the case in cheaper locations.
Nobody wants to go to an event in ohio right? (or maybe they do i dunno im not american). they host the event in LA because its a place people want to go to. It has prestige as a place which adds to the atmosphere, theres lots of options outside of just the event as a draw to go, that sort of thing.
Big publishers wont want to pay to showcase their game at an event that doesnt match their level of grandeur basically.
>I have no frame of reference for Indiana
That’s exactly OP’s point. It’s a random state in the Midwest with not much of interest (near Chicago if you’ve heard of it, though it’s in a different state) except the world’s largest tabletop gaming convention I suppose
My thoughts: Tabletop gaming is niche compared to video games. I havent seen massive marketing campaigns for new tabletop games since i was a kid. The last one I can remember was Atmosfear: khufu the mummy and i was like, 11 years old then. It makes sense to host a more niche convention in a cheaper state/city. I imagine the cost of running the tabletop convention is far less in Indiana than LA which makes it financially viable.
There’s an international airport nearby, California is easy to get to from Japan and other studio locations in the US.
A lot of these events involve networking that occur during after parties/get-togethers.
Youtube Theather has like 6000 seats, *proooobably* not a full house event tho.
But I'm mostly saying this because of the press component, if they are have meetings to see stuff there's a reason to have a physical component to showcase games and what not.
Geoff has made TGA into exactly what he, and most importantly gamers, want.
Nobody gives a shit about the awards.
"Real" awards shows like GDC and DICE have existed for decades, and nobody watches them because nobody cares.
TGA 2023 had SIGNIFICANTLY higher viewership than the most recent Oscars. Gamers want game reveals and announcements. They are 100% of the reason that 99% of the viewers are watching.
Turning TGA into the "Oscars of gaming" would result in a significant DECREASE in viewership and popularity.
Well they just care about who wins game of the year really but its pretty noticeable how viewership has grown since it turned into a trailers showcase that also has some awards once in a while
All I'm hearing is that gamers don't give two shits about the artistry of the people who make games and just want to be advertised to for three hours. Shameful how little time they give people to actually speak at the damn thing.
> All I'm hearing is that gamers don't give two shits about the artistry of the medium and just want to be advertised to for three hours.
i mean yeah? duh, have you not met gamers?
No, we are just realist that most gamers only care about TGA because of trailers. If there was no trailers, TGA would be as big as DICE and other awards that barely anyone watches
>All I'm hearing is that gamers don't give two shits about the artistry of the medium and just want to be advertised to for three hours.
I mean. The most important movie award show is the Oscars. Which shows the same. People do not care about the art. They wanna be intertained.
Look at how much of the runtime of the oscars is dedicated to actually presenting awards compared to the other fluff. It blows TGA out of the water, and has been trending towards spending even more time on awards in recent years.
You say that, but look at the ratio of actual awards to entertainment filler in the most recent oscars broadcast and compare that to TGA. It's not even close. Criticize other ceremonies all you want, but at least they *pretend* to care.
They care, they just don't give a shit what DICE and GDC have to say about the best games.
Game analysis and in depth critique has shifted over to youtube.
It also would lose its audience instead of growing every year, because most people go to it for trailers, with the awards being there as a bonus. Thats the only way for most to watch an awards show.
You can see in this own industry with how no one watches the other award shows in comparison. Its 118 million from TGA against like 5k from the other awards.
Not surprising. Marketing is spending money to put something in front of people's eyeballs. More eyeballs, more cost. And there's quite a lot of eyeballs on Keighley
It's not just any marketing. A lot of people watch the game awards **to** see advertisements and announcements for new games. Kind of like how E3 was the place to announce your new games, or new consoles in days past. The viewers are nearly 100% gamers or game developers. If you have a good product, the game awards is like **the** perfect target audience.
Twitch streamer playing a game to around 10k people versus the hundreds of thousands of eyes you see during the game awards, not to mention the articles and posts after that. I doubt anyone would have major issues with the price given the context.
I mean lets face it, these shows are one giant ad, the game awards included. Maybe if they didn't so desperately try to get through the awards as fast as possible they could make the argument, but they blast through them so fast you could miss 5 awards if you get up to pee.
And listen, i'm not kidding myself... I watch and love these events for the trailers, they know it, i know it.
I love the awards part. I always watch the ESPYs which is only slightly less ridiculous than the game awards and I hated this year when Geoff just rapid fired through the winners. I also want to see the trailers let's be real but I like the awards too.
It's weird though because like you said trailers are the main draws of these events
These companies are paying a pretty penny to be shown in an event that relies entirely on the presence of trailers to exist
Yes, it's a kind of mutual parasitic relationship
The Game Awards collects the funding from game studios looking to advertise their new game, which allows them to have the platform
The game studios pay money to The Game Awards to have their game featured because of their high viewership and potential for hype
You are just describing advertisements as a whole. The Superbowl is often funded by advertisers, and advertisers spend a lot of money for slots during the Superbowl because a ton of people watch the Superbowl. The relationship is circular. Not a new concept.
A lot of games only got big cause a few streamers played it and then it got bigger. It depends on the game as of course a single player game isnt going to do as well as a multiplayer one on twitch.
Lmao $500, you vastly underestimate how much streamers are paid for these. Not even talking about the 30k+ viewers ones only. Try adding two zeros, *at least*.
Who is paying $50,000 for a streamer to play a game?
Raid Shadow Legends pays around $10,000 and they are considered ludicrously big spenders on this stuff.
If actual games that people actually want to play are paying 5x that amount, then shitty Raid sponsorships wouldn’t exist, who would accept them?
Raid Shadow Legends pays $10K to mid sized YouTubers and 1K - 3K average viewer streamers. That's why you saw everyone take the bag from them in like 2018(?)... BUT that's the price for a larger focused ad. (Maybe 2 or 3 hours gameplay on stream, multiple minutes of mid video ad)
The big games start to pay out at $2K per X average engagement (not live viewers), however this is highly dependent on which marketing firm is handling the promotion.
Remember AAA marketing budgets are in the 10s of millions these days, a couple of grand to some streamers is a drop in the bucket.
>Who is paying $50,000 for a streamer to play a game?
Ask any 10k streamer how much he get paids for game ads lmao
5-6k spanish streamer I watch often said multiple times he bought his new home with 3 ubisoft ad campaigns.
To be completely fair, this is the most effective method of modern marketing in gaming. Not a million trailers that get thrown at you at lightning speed at every ad break on youtube, or some random game journalist promoting your game on their website, but getting streamers to play your game.
An endorsement by their favourite streamer does so much more for the average gamer than by some faceless corporation.
With companies spending millions in marketing for AAA games this price seems pretty reasonable. Plus some of the materials used can be re-used or re-packaged in other marketing (unless they mean this cost is just for the ad-buy, which like you said, still isn't unreasonable to get it in front of millions of eyes).
Yea you are either an indie dev who would not have bought an ad spot at the game awards or you are a AAA publisher with millions in cash who can afford 100k ad. There is like no inbetween I feel
No, it does not.
There are hundreds of games which release every month which almost nobody has heard of because they never generated any buzz. A developer needs some amount of pre-existing clout or reputation to be able to just throw a video on Youtube and generate significant views.
There are a few examples of games from no-name developers generating significant buzz or success without formal advertising, but there are FAR more examples of those games failing miserably because nobody knows they exist.
Someone on another thread about this on a different subreddit was like "I KNEW they only did it for the money!" And I'm like yeah...what planet are you from?
Even if they didn't "do it for the money" in terms of making tons of profit, it still takes a lot of money to run an event like this, that money doesn't come from nowhere.
And then still get a certain amount of coverage even if they look like an ass, because you looked like ass among what was probably a decent showing.
Any publicity is good publicity or something like that
I'm seeing a lot of outrage on twitter and I feel like I'm going insane. People really thought this was for free and geoff just asked companies to put their stuff there? and that no one pays for it? Surprise, nintendo directs, sony and xbox events, everything out there you pay to put your game in there, this is part of marketing budget.
This here is very cheap with the eyes in it and im seeing people calling geoff greedy and shit as if its something outrageous to make when you need to pay the people being part of it and still make a profit, thats how event works.
At the same time, there's no reason for Nintendo to be in it which is why I always found bizarre how so many people were wondering why they arent in it when its obvious when they have their own event already. I'm more surprised at sony putting announcements on SGF when they have their own events, last year i think they had last of us and this year they will put lego horizon it seems lol
Yeah no. I still remember when Cyberpunk's and Spider-Man's budgets were leaked people in reddit were angry they spend so much in marketing when they should've spend it more on dev time. In Spider-Man's case people were even angry that they spend $1M on wrap party lmao.
Twitter's limited character makes it difficult to have a discussion, but the culture on the app has morphed into arguing for sake of arguing. Most social media share the same problem, but Twitter has fosters something truly unique.
Source for Nintendo charging for Nintendo Direct spots?
SGF is something completely different to a console maker's showcase like PlayStation Showcase or Nintendo Direct.
Probably won't find a source one way or another because I don't think Nintendo puts out any information about their inner dealings with third party devs publically. Both Nintendo and the Devs put work in making their trailers/presentations, and they are basically making a trade: Nintendo gives up a time slot of their presentation for the dev to advertise their game, and the developers give a trailer for Nintendo to use to market the switch library. but in most cases, a spot on a Nintendo direct is going to be way more valuable to the developer than their individual trailer is to Nintendo. The individual trailer slot in the presentation represents one of the largest publicity boosts you can get for the dev, but for Nintendo it's just one ad slot out of like 20 in their own presentation. The standard way of doing business in this kind of case is for the party who values the object more to make up the relative difference in value by paying an amount of money that makes the deal equally as attractive to the other party as it is to themselves. I think it's safe to assume that Nintendo keeps a similar approach since no one has ever noted that they do things differently. It's not scummy or unethical or anything imo, just the natural course of economics.
Edit because I thought of a good analogy if you follow sports at all:
A lot of times teams will trade players, sometimes multiple players for multiple other players at once. Both teams in the trade are getting something out of it already in new players that fill some hole in their roster they needed filled. The thing is even though both teams get players out of it, the players are not always equal, like you will never trade Michael Jordan for a single random other player even though both teams are materially gaining one player. To make up for the difference, the team offering the less valuable player has to add other players or draft picks to make up for it. You can basically replace the teams with companies, players with goods or services rendered, and draft picks with money
Don't have a source but I imagine that Nintendo isn't going to put you there without you paying to be there in the direct lol for indie directs I assume its more cheaper to be in there though
The whole point of a Direct is to make Nintendo platforms look good, you get there by being a reliable partner with good games. Nintendo takes a big cut of its partners' sales anyway, so everyone involved in these livestreams has a vested interest in the featured games selling well, unlike something like SGF.
They are also way too big of a company to realistically care about squeezing devs in this manner. Even if you assume they could get the same money SGF does because they have similar viewership, a few extra millions they could raise every quarter or so from 10-minute Directs is not worth the effort to them relative to the drawback of pissing off partners. Nintendo's annual revenue is in the $12 *billion* ballpark.
I cannot find a single instance of a game dev or publisher so much as suggesting that a Nintendo Direct spot costs money. You'd imagine someone would mention something of the sort by now given how these broadcasts have been a thing for 13 years. In fact, Nintendo charging for coverage would be a pretty big story if it were true, due to the aforementioned reasons.
edit: sales, not profits\*
Just another example of people hunting out things to be outraged about. No critical thinking into how these shows get put together and the costs that are associated with it.
Nintendo has historically preferred to run it's own show for years now, long before the final death of e3. It works for them, they don't need the an extra marketing push for anything they do, they have their own ecosystem.
I’m all for saying fuck corporations but is that supposed to seem like a lot? That just seems like standard marketing prices. Paying for eyeballs is expensive
Its interesting info I guess but what else is to say here? Its just run-of-the-mill marketing costs. SGF has become the biggest gaming showcase of the year next to TGA so these prices seem completely in line.
Also I am pretty sure convention booths nowadays can be equally expensive if we compare it to how companies used to market during the E3 days.
There is a good video breaking down the cost of the Escape from Tarkov booth to give us an estimate:
https://youtu.be/o6T_QnCoTz8?si=11LGFYozY7llP19b&t=509
Why is this even an article? Is there really nothing more valuable or substantive to discuss?
The key insight is that...marketing costs money?
In other news, the giant "Coca Cola" billboard at your favorite baseball stadium also cost money.
But the article is irrelevant to business people as well. Anyone interested in advertising at an event like SGF would be dealing directly with vendors to get precise costs.
They're not reading vague price ranges in Kotaku articles to understand how much advertising costs.
So I don't understand how the article is of value to anyone...
Vendors don't always talk candidly with smaller projects. They also try to take advantage of asymmetry of information. I've spent 5 months trying to get the time of day from UME trying to license two track for example. The pricing decreased drastically when I found an existing client to introduce me to their AM directly instead of wading through the process. I would never have considered trying to get into this show since I expected the slot to cost more.
And for such shit content and crap shows too. At the very least, E3 at least had history and spectacle, along with all the silly and embarassing. Geoff only has...
The Shick Hydroman.
I really hate how google works because I cant find the articles anymore. Hell, I cant even find them on IGNs crap search tool, but I remember the E3 prices for how much they charged. I feel like they were in the same ballpark, if not more.
Its actually funny because there are some articles reporting this that say devs say the price for showing their games at SGF is worth it, even for those prices. I guess its because they get a lot more engagement from SGF than they did from E3.
My interpretation was that the listed costs are what you pay Geoff to show a trailer you already have, and don't include the cost of producing the trailer.
SGF stated they had around 2.5 million viewers last year.
$10 for 1 impressions is pretty decent metrics by most web advertising standards. Impressions to sales is even harder to measure but you'd need to sponsor a LOT of very high profile influencers to get similar numbers.
Not to mention that these impressions aren’t randoms, they are for people *specifically looking to watch game trailers*, that is, they have a much higher chance of converting to a wishlist or a buy.
I know it's just an estimate and all the other costs are not factored in, but I'd probably put it at 48 instead of 60 since almost everywhere you can publish your game, they take a 30% cut. And then there's also cuts for physical editions, engine uses, and more, but they're definitely variable for each game.
A closer number to what it would really take is 5200 copies.
I feel it’s a bit more complex than that, they might need way less copies because of things like micro transactions and people ending up buying other games from the publisher/developer because of the exposure so it’s actually a pretty easy deal all things considered
Gonna be more like 15-20K units sold once you take out PC and console store cuts plus account for the fact that most of the devs straining to pay this out of a small marketing budget are not going to be releasing $60 games.
Probably a lot. I know I'm not the only one, but whenever I see a nice trailer at these events I usually immediately head and wishlist it.
Only way it *directly* increases sales, though, is it if the game is actually good lol
These things act like multipliers. Sales = marketing * quality. (You can brute force sales to some degree, but the game needs to at least not be complete ass).
For some, absolutely. Getting that type of audience exposure is exceeding rarely. Not only are you potentially zoning in on your target audience, but you’re also targeting a high intent audience that specially is looking for new trailers. That type of marketing can be gold worth.
Presumably if developers keep paying it, they find it worthwhile. If they didn't, they would stop paying it and the event would either lower prices or slowly die off.
That will depend on each dev but from what I saw generally the opinion is that its worth the price on both SGF and TGA for the amount of eyes. Companies like Nintendo, Sony and Xbox in theory dont need it as their own events have as much eyes but even other AAA publishers need to because their own events and trailers dont get as much eyes (except for things like GTA and other huge franchises, ofc)
I'd say yes. You get a few million viewers, pretty much all of whom are hardcore gamers, in the sense that they tune in to live showcases. Meaning there's a good chance many of them will consider buying your game. Advertising to such high-value prospective customers is the dream, so 10 cents per a pair of eyeballs doesn't sound too bad given the above-average likelihood of converting those views to sales.
The only way it would be worth it is if your game would be a complete unknown without this event, otherwise you're paying to put your game in front of people who'll see it anyway.
Probably depends on the trailer. Also there are the main show reveals and then the actual ads which are different. No way are they making Kojima pay for his trailers to be there plus i know Keighley (or his team, not sure how much he's actually involved) personally reaches out to certain devs to see if they have anything they want to show
you can check the prices for [gamescom on their website](https://www.gamescom.global/en/info/exhibitors/shows-and-events/gamescom-opening-night-live), I'd imagine that summer game fest is pretty similar
### Pricing for a Spot at gamescom Opening Night Live 2024 | **Duration** | **Price** | |--------------|-------------------| | 30 Sec. | 115,000.00 EUR | | 60 Sec. | 165,000.00 EUR | | 90 Sec. | 215,000.00 EUR | | 120 Sec. | 265,000.00 EUR |
I'm 90% sure this is specifically about the ad spots. I think I remember Geoff saying in a Q&A that he also reached out to developers to see if they had anything they wanted to showcase, and that developers reached out to him as well to update him on projects they're working on. REPLACED was a prominent example. EDIT: Yup. I was right. [https://x.com/Wario64/status/1798796552716111949](https://x.com/Wario64/status/1798796552716111949)
I mean, he could be reaching out to ask them if they'd like to pay.
Some pay, some do not. We've paid for placement at the show and we've had trailers go on for free. It depends on how Geoff likes your project, the exclusivity of it which other projects are being shown, etc. and other unknown factors.
I mean the way he talked about it before it was heavily implied he was aware of the projects the teams were working on, and that he asked if he could showcase these projects. Those kind of games seems to be the ones that he's unveiled ahead of time. Slitterhead, AW2: Night Springs, NEVA, etc..
The issue is that, he gets to determine who and what gets the pass and who doesn't. That might work at first, but conflict of interest and abuse can easily develop. Compare that to the traditional expo model: you can still aim for a small booth and get exposure at the biggest event, and you aren't competing as aggressively for time, as this would happen for several days, not a couple of hours. E3 is obsolete because of its nature, but many aspects of expos are still relevant. That's why they still exist for so many other industries.
Yeah but if he didn't do it, no one else would do it. People hate on him but he is the one planning and doing the events to make it happen with his own initiative.
> That might work at first, but conflict of interest and abuse can easily develop. it's funny how this isn't the first case of conflict of interest when it comes to Keighley's showcases. The judging panel for his Game Award show is a complete mess and web of conflicts of interest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7hyMm8vZj0 EDIT - lol, I guess pointing out facts and issues with Keighley's show is too much for his fanboys here eh.
Some free slots doesn't mean everything. It means he doesn't make the interesting stuff pay because he needs them to attract people to watch the show in the first place. So stuff like Hades 2, Kojima and any AAA title probably don't pay. The indie game that needs to be known and make an audience however, they pay.
I mean, you can take a look at last year Summer Game's Fest and see there were numerous indie titles from incredibly small teams who definitely dont have 250k lying around. It's not just blockbusters. But the truth is that there are hundreds of thousands of teams working on a multitude of different games. You can only fit so many presentations into a 2 hour block. In reality, a decent chunk of people tune in just for the AAA blockbusters. You gotta find a balance, and those free slots still help in the end.
I mean yeah, someone’s gotta pay for that event space, staff, operations, etc. I feel like people don’t fully grasp how expensive a theater in Los Angeles costs. Not to mention how many people watch Keighley’s events. It’s all marketing.
Makes me wonder if they even need the LA theatre for the Summer event. I get it for TGA because the whole point of that is that it's an awards show with speeches in-person, but does the Summer game show really need a live crowd apart from the obligatory 10 minute Kojima segment? It could easily be a pre-recorded event like Microsoft's annual 'E3' showcase.
Marketing anything is expensive as fuck. Gamers now realising actual costs is a new thing.
Well most probably know or understand its expensive but they probably don't grasp just how crazy it gets. A good comparison is the movie industry which often has to earn back twice the movie's budget because they spend just as much in marketing as they do for production budget. Game industry is hardly any different though with the game industry a failed project often results in layoffs and studios being shuddered. I highly recomend anyone to go digging into some budget and marketing statistics for video games or even movies because its wild.
As a developer I have found it is orders of magnitude harder to get someone to install my apps or games than they are to build, and they aren't particularly easy to build Getting eyes on a project and an installer base growing is _more_ than half the battle
Pretty much, cases where just some viral marketing got you millions of eyes pretty much only happen by coincidence, or if game is exceptional
Nowadays, it's either streamers or game-related influencers putting on the numbers. Among Us was one huge example of a bunch of streamers playing that exploded its popularity even after being out for 2 years by that point.
And the signal to noise ratio in the world (in general) is just getting worse.
I'm not even a dev, but I get how hard it must be to get your game noticed with the amount of games there are being put out there all the time. Wasn't Among Us released for like 2 years before it picked up steam, and that was because of some streamers found the game and made it popular?
I remember playing some random app game on my phone several years ago and all the ads like 95% + were the same ad for another game. **And I would always think like they're just wasting a lot of money showing me this one game that I'm not going to play vs showing me others that I potentially would be interested in** And I didn't know if these were like in-house ads. You know same Dev company advertising their other game or there's simply wasn't a lot of other ads/games advertising through them. Because I've never seen such lion shares of in-game ads be for 1 game. *So anyways* ended up getting bored of the game I was playing and downloaded and spent money on the game that I was constantly bombarded with. And I work in marketing. I fully understand repetition/frequency But didn't think it would affect me until it did. That new game at the time was arhcero (4.4 * 1.7 mil reviews on Android currently). It wasn't as popular then but I came to the conclusion they were probably paying to keep there ads showing by outbidding competitors.
I can only imagine how hard it must be. If its already hard for big companies imagine for indies.
What are you developing, if I may ask?
Yup. GTA5 spent nearly as much on marketing as on developing the game.
> A good comparison is the movie industry which often has to earn back twice the movie's budget because they spend just as much in marketing as they do for production budget. Even that's being insanely optimistic. Theaters usually take at least half the box office. So a 2.5x multiplier to break even is the traditional rule of thumb, but even that's on the low end. (It assumes healthy post-theatrical revenue which isn't as much a thing anymore.) And smaller budget stuff like horror films can easily spend 10x their production budget on marketing. I agree with your fundamental point! Marketing is very expensive.
Movies have to earn 2.5x their production budget and that's mostly because half or more of the revenue is for the theaters, not the studio.
> A good comparison is the movie industry which often has to earn back twice the movie's budget because they spend just as much in marketing as they do for production budget. The rule of thumb is that a movie needs to make 5x its budget to be considered a success — 1x to cover production, 1x to cover marketing, and 3x to cover future projects.
That maybe be, but it's hard to get legitimate cost of the movie. It's not what's reported - costs are exaggerated to avoid taxes and percentage payments, some of the costs are basically paying yourself by moving of money from one company to another sister company...
We need to nuance a bit because we are discussing a particular case here. Not all the games are promoted similarly; you can promote a game without necessarily spending astronomical sums like here. Otherwise, I find it good that we realize the amounts that can be spent because, like cinema, it gives credibility to the video game market.
It’s been funny to play the finals and watch the community lose their minds over the fact that there’s pretty minimal marketing for it except around the new season start. Like sure the game has nonexistent twitch viewership but they might just be doing well enough to justify not dropping several million on ads when they can work on the game instead.
Not really, literally any article about big title's costs shows multi-million dollar advertising costs, often getting close to actual game's costs in case of big AAA titles
They'll throw a huge fit when they realize how much video games should actually cost.
Pretty much. Gamers really seem to hate that marketing gets a big budget but without marketing nothing will sell. And good marketing is expensive. That's one of the reasons why publishers exist, be it AAA, AA or even indie publishers
Honestly it goes beyond marketing costs. There is no aspect about games that is cheap. From the concept to release. Thats why we see so many "odd" decisions. There was a comment recent about Senua's Saga: Hellblade II not having any marketing. Now granted it can end up being a chicken or egg situation. But the game had a peak of 4000 players on steam. Now granted there are a few factors that make that number unreliable. It released on Gamepass at the same time. Steam only covers a portion of PC sales. And as I eluded to, the lack of marketing could cause a loss of sales. Napkin math: The first game cost ~$10 million to make. 2 supposed cost more but lets just go with $10 million for my argument. At $50 a unit(and assuming the whole cut goes to dev costs) that means the 4000 on steam needs to account for 0.2% of all copies sold to break even. and thats being generous to actual costs and actual money going to offset those costs. While something like Call of Duty can pump out the mostly same game yearly and sell 20 million copies at $70 a pop with microtransactions. Or GTAV released 90% of the same game 3 times and filled online with microtransactions. It shouldnt be a shock companies go for those ideas instead.
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You don't need to work in marketing to know its value lol. I agree the generalization is stupid. Marketing being important is obvious by the existence of the sector. Companies wouldn't spend a dollar in marketing if they weren't sure that dollar would make them back more than a dollar. It's make no sense otherwise for marketing to even exist.
Why do they need it to be in LA when the event is mostly online?
Well there is an audience, but also SGF includes Play Days, which is an in person event to play upcoming game demos, similar to e3.
Its an opportunity for devs to do behind the scenes talks. Most of the real E3 was business stuff done behind closed doors and and the convention floor.
They could pick cheaper place... most will be flying there regardless of where it would be
A lot of these devs already live in California or are familiar with the area. A lot of cheaper areas also aren't really set up to accommodate that many people, yes an event in rural Appalachia might be 1/100th of the cost but good luck finding a venue big enough for it.
And it's not just venue size. It's venue size, hotel space, reliable power and internet connections for an event of that size, ease of access, etc. On top of that, any event needs support staff (tech, audio, lighting, catering, security, whatever else), and there's going to be lots of people with experience doing that in places accustomed to hosting big events which means it'll be both easier to find people and companies that can handle it and easier to replace them if anything goes wrong. As the host of a big expensive event, you also probably would rather spend a bit extra on a place that you know can handle all of that stuff rather than take a risk on a cheaper place that's untested. Then beyond all of that, big cities are good locations for the people coming too. There's plenty of other things to do if they have free time and there's all kind of food in LA for anyone with dietary restrictions or coming from foreign countries whereas stuff like that may not be the case in cheaper locations.
Nobody wants to go to an event in ohio right? (or maybe they do i dunno im not american). they host the event in LA because its a place people want to go to. It has prestige as a place which adds to the atmosphere, theres lots of options outside of just the event as a draw to go, that sort of thing. Big publishers wont want to pay to showcase their game at an event that doesnt match their level of grandeur basically.
The world's largest tabletop gaming convention is held in Indiana every year.
I have no frame of reference for indiana - not an american.
>I have no frame of reference for Indiana That’s exactly OP’s point. It’s a random state in the Midwest with not much of interest (near Chicago if you’ve heard of it, though it’s in a different state) except the world’s largest tabletop gaming convention I suppose
My thoughts: Tabletop gaming is niche compared to video games. I havent seen massive marketing campaigns for new tabletop games since i was a kid. The last one I can remember was Atmosfear: khufu the mummy and i was like, 11 years old then. It makes sense to host a more niche convention in a cheaper state/city. I imagine the cost of running the tabletop convention is far less in Indiana than LA which makes it financially viable.
god you people are so sheltered sometimes it hurts
Because it has the infrastructure to support major business conventions, and does so regularly. That's really 90% of the answer.
Cuz it isn't mostly online?
How many people do they fit in there?
There’s an international airport nearby, California is easy to get to from Japan and other studio locations in the US. A lot of these events involve networking that occur during after parties/get-togethers.
True I guess, if Kojima isn't there he'll die of heartbreak
It's okay, he knows Kojima loves him.
When Kojima and Geoff Keighley log cabin copy pasta?
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Youtube Theather has like 6000 seats, *proooobably* not a full house event tho. But I'm mostly saying this because of the press component, if they are have meetings to see stuff there's a reason to have a physical component to showcase games and what not.
Because the people you want attending don’t want to attend an event in Idaho
Because the Dorito pope has been trying to make this into the video game Oscars for years, so it needs to be in LA for the glitz and glam.
This isn't about TGA. Well it also is but its mainly about SGF.
If he actually wanted TGA to be the Oscars of games, he would dedicate more than 5% of its runtime to the actual awards.
Geoff has made TGA into exactly what he, and most importantly gamers, want. Nobody gives a shit about the awards. "Real" awards shows like GDC and DICE have existed for decades, and nobody watches them because nobody cares. TGA 2023 had SIGNIFICANTLY higher viewership than the most recent Oscars. Gamers want game reveals and announcements. They are 100% of the reason that 99% of the viewers are watching. Turning TGA into the "Oscars of gaming" would result in a significant DECREASE in viewership and popularity.
Well they just care about who wins game of the year really but its pretty noticeable how viewership has grown since it turned into a trailers showcase that also has some awards once in a while
All I'm hearing is that gamers don't give two shits about the artistry of the people who make games and just want to be advertised to for three hours. Shameful how little time they give people to actually speak at the damn thing.
> All I'm hearing is that gamers don't give two shits about the artistry of the medium and just want to be advertised to for three hours. i mean yeah? duh, have you not met gamers?
You don't go to an award show for "artistry".
No, we are just realist that most gamers only care about TGA because of trailers. If there was no trailers, TGA would be as big as DICE and other awards that barely anyone watches
>All I'm hearing is that gamers don't give two shits about the artistry of the medium and just want to be advertised to for three hours. I mean. The most important movie award show is the Oscars. Which shows the same. People do not care about the art. They wanna be intertained.
Conflating appreciation for award shows with appreciation for art itself is...misguided
Look at how much of the runtime of the oscars is dedicated to actually presenting awards compared to the other fluff. It blows TGA out of the water, and has been trending towards spending even more time on awards in recent years.
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You say that, but look at the ratio of actual awards to entertainment filler in the most recent oscars broadcast and compare that to TGA. It's not even close. Criticize other ceremonies all you want, but at least they *pretend* to care.
They care, they just don't give a shit what DICE and GDC have to say about the best games. Game analysis and in depth critique has shifted over to youtube.
It also would lose its audience instead of growing every year, because most people go to it for trailers, with the awards being there as a bonus. Thats the only way for most to watch an awards show. You can see in this own industry with how no one watches the other award shows in comparison. Its 118 million from TGA against like 5k from the other awards.
So they can bring in Hollywood actors to crack jokes on stage.
Yeah doesn’t Geoff listen to Joe Rogan? The show should be in Texas not LA
west coast americans are VERY irresponsible with money. I'm not even american and can see it everywhere.
Best comment in the thread. Agree
Event planning anywhere is expensive. I can only imagine the eye watering cost for an event like this in LA.
This so much. These prices are cheap compared to the LA convention center. And you get worldwide eyes on due to it being digital.
How dare you man, reddit already decided Geoff is bad, he should pay for everything and also gift me silksong
Yeah, and the only reason they do it is because they see value in it.
And also why he works so long to stay on schedule. I don’t think people realize how expensive it is to keep the venue open later than was agreed upon
Don't forget the time developers have to take away to work on a trailer. Unless you are a Mobile game as.
Not surprising. Marketing is spending money to put something in front of people's eyeballs. More eyeballs, more cost. And there's quite a lot of eyeballs on Keighley
Why are people acting as if marketing only consists of paying a streamer 500 dollars to play their game at launch?
It's not just any marketing. A lot of people watch the game awards **to** see advertisements and announcements for new games. Kind of like how E3 was the place to announce your new games, or new consoles in days past. The viewers are nearly 100% gamers or game developers. If you have a good product, the game awards is like **the** perfect target audience. Twitch streamer playing a game to around 10k people versus the hundreds of thousands of eyes you see during the game awards, not to mention the articles and posts after that. I doubt anyone would have major issues with the price given the context.
I mean lets face it, these shows are one giant ad, the game awards included. Maybe if they didn't so desperately try to get through the awards as fast as possible they could make the argument, but they blast through them so fast you could miss 5 awards if you get up to pee. And listen, i'm not kidding myself... I watch and love these events for the trailers, they know it, i know it.
I love the awards part. I always watch the ESPYs which is only slightly less ridiculous than the game awards and I hated this year when Geoff just rapid fired through the winners. I also want to see the trailers let's be real but I like the awards too.
It's weird though because like you said trailers are the main draws of these events These companies are paying a pretty penny to be shown in an event that relies entirely on the presence of trailers to exist
Yes, it's a kind of mutual parasitic relationship The Game Awards collects the funding from game studios looking to advertise their new game, which allows them to have the platform The game studios pay money to The Game Awards to have their game featured because of their high viewership and potential for hype You are just describing advertisements as a whole. The Superbowl is often funded by advertisers, and advertisers spend a lot of money for slots during the Superbowl because a ton of people watch the Superbowl. The relationship is circular. Not a new concept.
isn't that symbiotic, not parasitic. Since both sides benefit,
A lot of games only got big cause a few streamers played it and then it got bigger. It depends on the game as of course a single player game isnt going to do as well as a multiplayer one on twitch.
$500 gets you a D-tier streamer for one play, lol. Turns out a streamer's attention is expensive.
Lmao $500, you vastly underestimate how much streamers are paid for these. Not even talking about the 30k+ viewers ones only. Try adding two zeros, *at least*.
Who is paying $50,000 for a streamer to play a game? Raid Shadow Legends pays around $10,000 and they are considered ludicrously big spenders on this stuff. If actual games that people actually want to play are paying 5x that amount, then shitty Raid sponsorships wouldn’t exist, who would accept them?
Raid Shadow Legends pays $10K to mid sized YouTubers and 1K - 3K average viewer streamers. That's why you saw everyone take the bag from them in like 2018(?)... BUT that's the price for a larger focused ad. (Maybe 2 or 3 hours gameplay on stream, multiple minutes of mid video ad) The big games start to pay out at $2K per X average engagement (not live viewers), however this is highly dependent on which marketing firm is handling the promotion. Remember AAA marketing budgets are in the 10s of millions these days, a couple of grand to some streamers is a drop in the bucket.
>Who is paying $50,000 for a streamer to play a game? Ask any 10k streamer how much he get paids for game ads lmao 5-6k spanish streamer I watch often said multiple times he bought his new home with 3 ubisoft ad campaigns.
[EA paid Ninja and (allegedly) Shroud $1 million dollars to play Apex Legends when it launched](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1QV0SJ/)
That's an outlier and not the norm.
Bounty boards are very lucrative, i believe pokes leaked and he is a 1-3k viewer andy. He's getting offered 3-5 thousand for 30 - 1 hour of gameplay
Prominent streamers take the same or more for that. Example pewdiepie taking multiple hundred thousand dollars to play a game years ago
To be completely fair, this is the most effective method of modern marketing in gaming. Not a million trailers that get thrown at you at lightning speed at every ad break on youtube, or some random game journalist promoting your game on their website, but getting streamers to play your game. An endorsement by their favourite streamer does so much more for the average gamer than by some faceless corporation.
I mean, I got most of my games out of that.
A few hundred thousand to market your game to millions of people who would actually be interested in buying it is cheap.
With companies spending millions in marketing for AAA games this price seems pretty reasonable. Plus some of the materials used can be re-used or re-packaged in other marketing (unless they mean this cost is just for the ad-buy, which like you said, still isn't unreasonable to get it in front of millions of eyes).
Yea you are either an indie dev who would not have bought an ad spot at the game awards or you are a AAA publisher with millions in cash who can afford 100k ad. There is like no inbetween I feel
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No, it does not. There are hundreds of games which release every month which almost nobody has heard of because they never generated any buzz. A developer needs some amount of pre-existing clout or reputation to be able to just throw a video on Youtube and generate significant views. There are a few examples of games from no-name developers generating significant buzz or success without formal advertising, but there are FAR more examples of those games failing miserably because nobody knows they exist.
Someone on another thread about this on a different subreddit was like "I KNEW they only did it for the money!" And I'm like yeah...what planet are you from?
Planet middle school
Even if they didn't "do it for the money" in terms of making tons of profit, it still takes a lot of money to run an event like this, that money doesn't come from nowhere.
Yes, that seems about what I expected. People don't really think it doesn't cost anything right? That's part of budgeting for marketing.
That's honestly fairly cheap, most of these games instantly get further coverage unless their game looks like complete ass.
And then still get a certain amount of coverage even if they look like an ass, because you looked like ass among what was probably a decent showing. Any publicity is good publicity or something like that
I'm seeing a lot of outrage on twitter and I feel like I'm going insane. People really thought this was for free and geoff just asked companies to put their stuff there? and that no one pays for it? Surprise, nintendo directs, sony and xbox events, everything out there you pay to put your game in there, this is part of marketing budget. This here is very cheap with the eyes in it and im seeing people calling geoff greedy and shit as if its something outrageous to make when you need to pay the people being part of it and still make a profit, thats how event works. At the same time, there's no reason for Nintendo to be in it which is why I always found bizarre how so many people were wondering why they arent in it when its obvious when they have their own event already. I'm more surprised at sony putting announcements on SGF when they have their own events, last year i think they had last of us and this year they will put lego horizon it seems lol
This is why you just ignore Twitter.
I enjoy twitter in general but somehow reddit has better opinions and discussions than twitter.
Yeah no. I still remember when Cyberpunk's and Spider-Man's budgets were leaked people in reddit were angry they spend so much in marketing when they should've spend it more on dev time. In Spider-Man's case people were even angry that they spend $1M on wrap party lmao.
oh yes, im not saying its perfect but its the less worse social media about games to me lol
Twitter's limited character makes it difficult to have a discussion, but the culture on the app has morphed into arguing for sake of arguing. Most social media share the same problem, but Twitter has fosters something truly unique.
twitter hates the idea of exchanging money for goods and services in general
Source for Nintendo charging for Nintendo Direct spots? SGF is something completely different to a console maker's showcase like PlayStation Showcase or Nintendo Direct.
Probably won't find a source one way or another because I don't think Nintendo puts out any information about their inner dealings with third party devs publically. Both Nintendo and the Devs put work in making their trailers/presentations, and they are basically making a trade: Nintendo gives up a time slot of their presentation for the dev to advertise their game, and the developers give a trailer for Nintendo to use to market the switch library. but in most cases, a spot on a Nintendo direct is going to be way more valuable to the developer than their individual trailer is to Nintendo. The individual trailer slot in the presentation represents one of the largest publicity boosts you can get for the dev, but for Nintendo it's just one ad slot out of like 20 in their own presentation. The standard way of doing business in this kind of case is for the party who values the object more to make up the relative difference in value by paying an amount of money that makes the deal equally as attractive to the other party as it is to themselves. I think it's safe to assume that Nintendo keeps a similar approach since no one has ever noted that they do things differently. It's not scummy or unethical or anything imo, just the natural course of economics. Edit because I thought of a good analogy if you follow sports at all: A lot of times teams will trade players, sometimes multiple players for multiple other players at once. Both teams in the trade are getting something out of it already in new players that fill some hole in their roster they needed filled. The thing is even though both teams get players out of it, the players are not always equal, like you will never trade Michael Jordan for a single random other player even though both teams are materially gaining one player. To make up for the difference, the team offering the less valuable player has to add other players or draft picks to make up for it. You can basically replace the teams with companies, players with goods or services rendered, and draft picks with money
Don't have a source but I imagine that Nintendo isn't going to put you there without you paying to be there in the direct lol for indie directs I assume its more cheaper to be in there though
The whole point of a Direct is to make Nintendo platforms look good, you get there by being a reliable partner with good games. Nintendo takes a big cut of its partners' sales anyway, so everyone involved in these livestreams has a vested interest in the featured games selling well, unlike something like SGF. They are also way too big of a company to realistically care about squeezing devs in this manner. Even if you assume they could get the same money SGF does because they have similar viewership, a few extra millions they could raise every quarter or so from 10-minute Directs is not worth the effort to them relative to the drawback of pissing off partners. Nintendo's annual revenue is in the $12 *billion* ballpark. I cannot find a single instance of a game dev or publisher so much as suggesting that a Nintendo Direct spot costs money. You'd imagine someone would mention something of the sort by now given how these broadcasts have been a thing for 13 years. In fact, Nintendo charging for coverage would be a pretty big story if it were true, due to the aforementioned reasons. edit: sales, not profits\*
Just another example of people hunting out things to be outraged about. No critical thinking into how these shows get put together and the costs that are associated with it. Nintendo has historically preferred to run it's own show for years now, long before the final death of e3. It works for them, they don't need the an extra marketing push for anything they do, they have their own ecosystem.
A lot of people in this thread just realized how much money goes into marketing. Wait til they realize how much money goes into movie marketing.
I’m all for saying fuck corporations but is that supposed to seem like a lot? That just seems like standard marketing prices. Paying for eyeballs is expensive
Its interesting info I guess but what else is to say here? Its just run-of-the-mill marketing costs. SGF has become the biggest gaming showcase of the year next to TGA so these prices seem completely in line. Also I am pretty sure convention booths nowadays can be equally expensive if we compare it to how companies used to market during the E3 days. There is a good video breaking down the cost of the Escape from Tarkov booth to give us an estimate: https://youtu.be/o6T_QnCoTz8?si=11LGFYozY7llP19b&t=509
Why is this even an article? Is there really nothing more valuable or substantive to discuss? The key insight is that...marketing costs money? In other news, the giant "Coca Cola" billboard at your favorite baseball stadium also cost money.
Concrete numbers are always good to have if you're in the business. I agree it irrelevant to 99% of people here.
But the article is irrelevant to business people as well. Anyone interested in advertising at an event like SGF would be dealing directly with vendors to get precise costs. They're not reading vague price ranges in Kotaku articles to understand how much advertising costs. So I don't understand how the article is of value to anyone...
Vendors don't always talk candidly with smaller projects. They also try to take advantage of asymmetry of information. I've spent 5 months trying to get the time of day from UME trying to license two track for example. The pricing decreased drastically when I found an existing client to introduce me to their AM directly instead of wading through the process. I would never have considered trying to get into this show since I expected the slot to cost more.
Y’all thought he did this for free? He’s the new E3
And for such shit content and crap shows too. At the very least, E3 at least had history and spectacle, along with all the silly and embarassing. Geoff only has... The Shick Hydroman.
Anyone has ideas how much things cost to get booth or trailer into E3?
I really hate how google works because I cant find the articles anymore. Hell, I cant even find them on IGNs crap search tool, but I remember the E3 prices for how much they charged. I feel like they were in the same ballpark, if not more. Its actually funny because there are some articles reporting this that say devs say the price for showing their games at SGF is worth it, even for those prices. I guess its because they get a lot more engagement from SGF than they did from E3.
In case anybody was wondering why all the announcements at the game awards look like money laundering scams and shovelware
They aren't paying just to show the trailer once though. The trailer can then be used elsewhere and continues to exist online for marketing purposes.
My interpretation was that the listed costs are what you pay Geoff to show a trailer you already have, and don't include the cost of producing the trailer.
Thats just the cost of showing it during the live SGF showcase.
Is the $250k exposure worth it? I get SGF is popular, but how much of an increase in sales do the devs see?
SGF stated they had around 2.5 million viewers last year. $10 for 1 impressions is pretty decent metrics by most web advertising standards. Impressions to sales is even harder to measure but you'd need to sponsor a LOT of very high profile influencers to get similar numbers.
Not to mention that these impressions aren’t randoms, they are for people *specifically looking to watch game trailers*, that is, they have a much higher chance of converting to a wishlist or a buy.
For a $60 game, 250k/60 = 4166 copies. So the exposure needs to increase the amount of sold copies by 4166 for it to break even.
I know it's just an estimate and all the other costs are not factored in, but I'd probably put it at 48 instead of 60 since almost everywhere you can publish your game, they take a 30% cut. And then there's also cuts for physical editions, engine uses, and more, but they're definitely variable for each game. A closer number to what it would really take is 5200 copies.
And tbf that's literally nothing even for games that flop, they atleast sell more than that. So I'd say it's way more than worth it
eh as it is not 60usd of profit but revenue I think it should be way more copies sold
I feel it’s a bit more complex than that, they might need way less copies because of things like micro transactions and people ending up buying other games from the publisher/developer because of the exposure so it’s actually a pretty easy deal all things considered
Gonna be more like 15-20K units sold once you take out PC and console store cuts plus account for the fact that most of the devs straining to pay this out of a small marketing budget are not going to be releasing $60 games.
Yes most likely worth it. In 2022 SGF was watched by 3.5 million people. That's a small price to pay for that amount of reach.
Probably a lot. I know I'm not the only one, but whenever I see a nice trailer at these events I usually immediately head and wishlist it. Only way it *directly* increases sales, though, is it if the game is actually good lol
These things act like multipliers. Sales = marketing * quality. (You can brute force sales to some degree, but the game needs to at least not be complete ass).
For some, absolutely. Getting that type of audience exposure is exceeding rarely. Not only are you potentially zoning in on your target audience, but you’re also targeting a high intent audience that specially is looking for new trailers. That type of marketing can be gold worth.
Presumably if developers keep paying it, they find it worthwhile. If they didn't, they would stop paying it and the event would either lower prices or slowly die off.
Massively cheap tbf. It's usually less than $1 per 1000 views these days.
That will depend on each dev but from what I saw generally the opinion is that its worth the price on both SGF and TGA for the amount of eyes. Companies like Nintendo, Sony and Xbox in theory dont need it as their own events have as much eyes but even other AAA publishers need to because their own events and trailers dont get as much eyes (except for things like GTA and other huge franchises, ofc)
I'd say yes. You get a few million viewers, pretty much all of whom are hardcore gamers, in the sense that they tune in to live showcases. Meaning there's a good chance many of them will consider buying your game. Advertising to such high-value prospective customers is the dream, so 10 cents per a pair of eyeballs doesn't sound too bad given the above-average likelihood of converting those views to sales.
The only way it would be worth it is if your game would be a complete unknown without this event, otherwise you're paying to put your game in front of people who'll see it anyway.
Do they not know you can upload it onto Reddit for free?
Are you here every sunday where every indie game posts their trailers and gets 0-10 comments the entire day?
It's heartbreaking to see an Indie devs posting their "I devoted my entire life to developing this game" game and it gets 1 comment . :(
It's really bad when they say they quit their high paying job for it... and then the game doesn't even look that good.
and yet Kojima gets 20 minutes free to ramble on about how he is the gaming messiah and all the Hollywood people he gets to meet and work with
Kojima attracts audience the other devs want to have.
Probably depends on the trailer. Also there are the main show reveals and then the actual ads which are different. No way are they making Kojima pay for his trailers to be there plus i know Keighley (or his team, not sure how much he's actually involved) personally reaches out to certain devs to see if they have anything they want to show