Consumerism has need to build a relationship with the consumer, so it is, and so it always has been. There YouTube's ADS, but click on them, was invented precisely for this reason, to entice, to inspire, to manipulate and push to buy, to draw something strong and immediate in the eyes and mind of the beholder, to the point of moving the threads of money world. Take for example i trailer cinematic, these were not invented for the purpose of present something to people, but with the specific goal of pushing them to go to the hall. If we analyzed the construction of a trailer, the words used to present the work-film in question, the images selected and the song used in the editing phase, we would find ourselves in front of a language visual that has little to do with art or with cinematographic expression: it is about business pure and raw, nothing else. All to bring people into the room, to inspire in them feelings and above all a certain one confidence towards what they have in front of them, towards something they don't really know, but which are pushed to admire, to approve, projecting on us a whole series of expectations which will find their culmination with the spending of money. It's about sensations previous to the purchase of a type of manipulation that has still found thriving roots even today in the world of Games. cyberpunk 2077 is just the umpteenth example of a market that not only limits itself to presenting something, but which in its position reaches a series of extremely personal and subjective.
The cinematic example above is only for to introduce an extremely important emotional mechanism. When it comes to trading, a lot of people tend to keep out emozioni, cutting off one of the fundamental elements that the consumer manages to achieve invest whenever he approaches advertising. If the trailer of a film succeeds, through some communication tricks, to build trust on nothing, leading to an essentially piggyback purchase, think about what you managed to create by talking about Games. Here it is not just about love or passion, but about real emotional investments, generated by a type of manipulation that not only wants to exhibit something, but what he wants bind oneself, from the beginning, indissolubly to the personal imagination of the beholder.
It was the experiments on the communication business to lead to all this, to take us to where we are today, in an era where people are not only led to buy, but are updated continuously on something towards which DON'T they have too much power. Don't get us wrong, the purchasing power moves everything, but advertising has evolved, it has transformed, designing the current strategies, which torment and accompany every moment of our life with a extension of interest that more often than not deceives and disilludes. Let's take for example the development followed step by step with the aforementioned game: Cyberpunk 2077.
I believed it so much! And now?
Cyberpunk 2077 is just one of the most recent examples of this very contemporary attitude. The game has had quite a long development, in the course of which the developers (CD Project Red) they managed to makes you fall in love the general public of theirs idea. Because that's exactly what it is, one vision to which a lot of people have believed from the beginning. The whole was expertly powered, step by step, with various videos, trailers, interviews, statements on the matter, images and sentences with effect. Then… there were all the postponements. What has this advertising approach led to? Simple, the consumer is in love madly about something it doesn't have may really tight in your hands, which was never hers, of something towards which it has projected various emotions, but above all his own confidence.
We live in a time when people not only build solid personal trust in something they do it doesn't exist yet, but there they also invest their own money. Here the concept of before, regarding cinema, comes back here amplified. Contemporary commercial communication, in the field of video games, not only manages to excite ahead of time, but goes further, and it does so through the concept of pre-order.
In a society where everything goes very fast, where no one ever has time to do anything, advertising is able to exploit the situation to get a new out of it. step forward manipulative, adapting to a system that turns off creativity in favor of something else ...
Everything runs, you in love with something that does not exist towards which you have total confidence, and you have fear that someone else gets it right before you. Individualism remains the basis of consumerism, in this case, then, even more, manifesting itself in an attitude that leads to a pre-purchase (also encouraged by some particular small "bonuses"). This, of course, does not only happen with Cyberpunk 2077, but with all the video games in which more money is invested today. There is this hurry in the air, fear towards the next, desire to consume everything immediately, in a "now" that many times lays the foundations of one superficiality in the approach, which begins and ends with the purchase, unfortunately.
Advertising always wants something from us. There is no doubt about this. With the internet, however, the situation has also touched unprecedented chords. The web has given us the opportunity to to comment anything, to express our point of view on everything, without too many limitations. This "freedom" has also transformed advertising itself, making it become something else, breaking - at least in appearance - the distances before. This has transformed the approach of the consumer himself who, now, not only buys, but puts his mouth on the creation of the things he wants to consume.
Cyberpunk 2077 and the pressure ...
Cyberpunk 2077 is just another example of this attitude, which most of the time starts right from the development houses themselves. These, in an attempt to interest others in their present work, build some communication ways through the internet (post on twitter, Facebook and so on), which in many cases push fans to to comment openly everything, to express an opinion that impacts (this depends) on the work itself in progress (let's take for example what happened with the film by Sonic and with its design, modified following comments on the web).
Attempting to build a dialogue with the consumer, however, it has not always turned out to be there winning strategy, even going so far as to denote a certain insecurity general in the events and a not too creative interest, but mainly aimed at commercial massification, let's think of the various polls made by the development houses, designed to read the approval rating of the general public. These have sometimes also influenced the progress of some specific projects, leading to questionable narrative choices ...)
Furthermore, in many cases the so-called "hype" - the excitement generated by this kind of general operations - has outlined a fame difficult to manage by the developers themselves, by its own proponents who found themselves wearing it insults and looks quite evident, as direct. In our present not only us we love ideas of the others, by pre-purchasing them, we want them immediately in our hands. There is this common rush, impatience in wanting to consume something that slowly takes shape. Impatience that we have been able to witness with the aforementioned Cyberpunk 2077.
With each postponement, people complained, expressing their infinity disappointment towards the development house itself, ininadmissibility of a delay. The illusion does not allow for delays, does not admit distractions, does not admit problems or mistakes. Who should we point the finger at then? Towards this absurd hunger, this desire, too feroce, of the consumer himself, or towards an advertising system sick that first pushes the purchase and the emotional bond, but then fails to hold up against the illusion it has built?
Some remnants of a time that cyclically returns
Over time we have seen several times negative effects of advertising, both on the consumer and on the video game itself, leading to important "false starts" and the fall of myths that remain anchored in the subjective imagination of those who believed in them. With No Man's Sky we have an example of this kind of attitude. An advertising campaign that seemed to promise who knows what, only to reach a launch that mainly sprouted lira of those who had believed in it, with a title that did not in the least live up to the expectations built in the promotional phase. Not to mention what happened with the saga Kingdom Hearts, with its third installment announced long before its release, which sparked a flood of emozioni in the fans, with aexpectation so long and apparently infinite that the publication succeeded, at least in part, in dampen it the definitive welcome.
Or we could talk about Final Fantasy VII Remake, who bet a lot both on the legend of the name it bears, and on the nostalgia it inspires, as well as on an expectation that literally consumed the fans. Following the release, however, he did not thrill mainly due to some changes they had not mentioned during the promotion, leading to general responses conflicting and to one lightning fruition. It was talked about for a few days, only to disappear in the sea of releases of that period.
A very curious approach also took place with Blizzard to his Blizzcon 2018, in which the release of a new one was hinted at Diablo. All that excited the fans to the point of leading them to a very bitter disappointment, just as their expectations were met with Diablo Immortal, title built on mobile. Consumers and advertising therefore go hand in hand nowadays, in a relationship in part morbid not to be underestimated at all. This was probably one of the errors of CD Projekt Red, to underestimate the expectations that they themselves had built over the years, and then, also as a result of various problems internal of the house, improvising an exit that brought only a general bitterness.
Cyberpunk 2077-like puffin promises
We live in a society where all information possible are easily within our reach, in which inquiring about something is extremely easy and immediate. We are also immediate in choosing, and it is precisely this immediacy that most of the time has generated curious situations, in the commercial field, in the history of Games. It almost seems like people don't understand power and it interests of images and words, many times also fed by us journalists with a 'naivety which often touches the child. Yet we are free to choose, analyze, reflect and select without necessarily having to do it to drag from the various marketing operations they would like promise us who knows, to then aim mainly at our portfolio.
We are the generation ofhype culture, we criticize our parents for their "love" towards television and we hurl ourselves against the emptiness of this, but then we let ourselves be dragged like nothing on the surface of this river that has the same identical roots, but with different means. The market does not live without money, it does not breathe, it does not evolve; will always aim for that, even when it comes to video games. However, the key to everything lies in the awareness personal, which is when you buy something, in understanding a trailer, a post and all these mechanisms that, just like in love, sometimes even break our hearts.
