“It’s [not Just] in the Game”: the Promotional Context of Video Games

2017, Kinephanos issue no.7, ISSN 1916-985X, edited by Ed Vollans, Stephanie Janes, Carl Therrien and Dominic Arsenault. https://www.kinephanos.ca/2017/introduction-its-not-just-in-the-game/

Articles

• Introduction: “It’s [not Just] in the Game”: the Promotional Context of Video Games (Ed Vollans, Stephanie Janes, Carl Therrien & Dominic Arsenault)
• Exploring the Myth of the Representative Video Game Trailer (Jan Švelch)
• Now You’re Playing with Adverts: A Repertoire of Frames for the Historical Study of Game Culture through Marketing Discourse (Carl Therrien & Isabelle Lefebvre)
• Man’s Best Enemy: The Role of Advertising During Atari’s Launch in Brazil in 1983 (André Fagundes Pase & Roberto Tietzmann)
• “The most Cinematic Game yet” (Ed Vollans)
• Marketing Authenticity: Rockstar Games and the Use of Cinema in Video Game Promotion (Esther Wright)
• Configurative Dynamics of Gender in Bioware’s Marketing for the Mass Effect Franchise (Leandro Augusto Borges Lima)
• Pervasive Games Beyond the Promotional Tools: Approaches of Aesthetic Pervasiveness in Consumption of Experience (Thaiane Moreira De Oliveira)
• Not actual game play, but is it real life?: Live-action footage in digital game trailers and advertising as gamerspace (Theo Plothe)
• Quality of Video Game Trailers (Zeynep Tanes-Ehle & Sara Speedy)

Introduction

In 2003, the authors of Digital Play made a strong case for the study of video game marketing and its integration in historical accounts of the medium. Yet despite such a call, little has been done to account for the forms, history and practices of promotion relating to gaming. This issue of Kinephanos seeks to address this key element of gaming culture. It builds on and develops our understanding of game promotion and representation at the point of sale and wider advertising contexts, shedding light on the context in which videogames are consumed, and their position within the marketing of popular culture. By focusing on the consumer experience of game playing, studies have run the risk of suggesting that games appear in the public domain with little positioning. But in fact, promotion is antecedent to new products and feeds into the wider experience of awareness as much as it shapes consumer desire and consumption practices, while being a testament to the idealised audience and the positioning of games; and thus of historical, and discursive significance.

Far from just focusing on the audience experience, the papers in this issue also develop meaningful dialogue within and without the study of videogames,  covering a whole range of communicative practices and promotional texts, which typically serve a dual role: informing and educating audiences as to the availability and possibilities of a new product, yet simultaneously holding back key information. As work on promotion by Kernan (2004), Hardy (2010), Grainge & Johnson (2015) has collectively demonstrated, the creation, form, and consumption of promotional material offers a unique insight into the workings of an increasingly competitive and lucrative industry, and this is demonstrated aptly throughout this issue. The papers herein discuss the intersection of promotion with many different perspectives, from audience expectations and game experience to the history of games, globalization and feminism, to film aesthetics, authenticity and gamification.