Got Game Entertainment Escapes the Game Press by Flying to Capri

Electronic Gaming Business, May 19, 2004

Games marketers know that in order to expand the franchise for the product they need to place stories outside of the usual suspects. If game companies want women, then why aren't we seeing the Sims or casual online gaming topics in any of those women's monthlies? Isn't anyone pitching these markets?

It turns out that getting coverage of specific titles in the general or specialty press is tougher than it looks, despite all of the buzz surrounding this industry. PR pros tell us that magazine editors and TV programmers still don't recognize how much their own audiences of women, hobbyists, and niche enthusiast groups are into gaming, and many editors are wary of how audiences will respond to seeing video games discussed in their trusted monthlies.

With the recent release of the adventure title A Quiet Weekend in Capri, Beverly Cambron founder, Rocco Media (www.roccomedia.com), has succeeded twice now in getting press placements for niche titles from her client Got Game Entertainment (www.gotgameentertainment.com). This Italian-made adventure title is a relatively crude production by contemporary U.S. design standards, but it has the unique hook of using tons of still images of the actual island of Capri and its inhabitants as game characters. In addition to playing the adventure, gamers can simply take a visual tour of the island. "[Capri] was different," says Cambron, "I knew there was the possibility of going outside of the adventure gamers. This would be a good entree."

While getting reviews for adventure titles from the major hardcore game venues is nice, Cambron usually focuses her energy on the niche genre sites like JustAdventure.com. In releasing Capri this spring, however, she was up against two strong franchises, Syberia II and Crystal Key II. Rather than try to fight these competitors for headlines, she did an end run around them.

"Travel writers are always looking for something new," says Cambron. "Capri was so simple to use that if you never played a game before you could be up and running right away." She focused on the travel category, but instead of pitching editors directly she went for the writers. "The travel industry has a huge number of freelance writers, so I found a company that distributes press releases exclusively to them, TravelWriters.com." She re-fashioned the game's press release to target the travelogue aspects of the game and its use of Capri citizens. Knowing the price points are so important to travel shoppers online and in certain magazines, Cambron also pitched the game as a way of visiting the island without paying for the trip.

"I can't tell you the response," says Cambron. The game was featured in the May issue of Budget Travel magazine, which praised it for "let[ting] you experience the Italian island in fairly authentic ways: hailing taxis, fumbling with change, and picking up a poorly printed map from the tourist office." The game also made Time magazine, ands blurbs about the title have been showing up on travel sites around the Web.

We think that the best part of Cambron's plan was going directly to the travel writers rather than the editors. The writers themselves have more credibility in pitching an offbeat idea like a game review in a travel magazine than would a PR person and most of them should know the editors better.

To go outside the core venues games marketers need to start thinking outside their own box. "I think about these games in story fashion, for identification, attachment to heroes. They are like little books," says Cambron. For an earlier Got Game title, The Watchmaker, she latched onto the main characters, who were female lawyers. She ran ads for Watchmaker in a professional newsletter specifically for female attorneys, and the game did quite well. Going outside the core also requires that marketers think about their games differently and see the many different ways audiences can engage a title apart from good game play.

Contact: Beverly Cambron, 214/284-4100, press@gotgameentertainment.com

[Copyright 2004 PBI Media, LLC. All rights reserved.]