Home Gaming Titanfall’s a tricky thing to market

Titanfall’s a tricky thing to market

1 min read
16

NOPE

If you followed last year’s E3 and Gamescom conferences, you’d no doubt have seen quite a bit of hype for Respawn’s mech-battling, free-running FPS Titanfall. It’s had two bits of news that have cast doubt, in the public perception, on how good the game will be; its lack of single player, and more recently, the controversial 12 player cap. Respawn’s admitted that the game is a little tricky to market.

It’s mostly the lack of a single player element that’s making it hard to convince people to jump in though.

“It’s actually been really tough trying to accurately market Titanfall,” producer Drew McCoy said on NeoGAF. “If you look at what we’ve done, its a lot different than what most FPS games do. Without a bunch of highly scripted [single player] moments to recam from different angles, the usual ‘movie-like’ trailer is just about right out.

“Instead, we’ve decided to show unedited gameplay segments that last 3-5 minutes (so far – more footage coming, of course!) to show the ‘flow’ of the game,” he continued. “Starting as a Pilot, taking on AI and other player Pilots, wall running around a Titan, earning your Titan, climbing in, battling other Titans while stomping on humans, ejecting, etc. There’s a huge amount of gameplay mechanics available at any one time, and encompassing them in a few minutes is actually quite hard to do.

“Its also why we took an extremely early pre-alpha build of the game to events like Gamescom, PAX, etc to let normal dudes hands-on time with the game. There’s no amount of polished marketing that can replace playing the actual game.”

It’s really true that. As the resident FPS naysayer,  I had zero interest in Titanfall – until I actually got the chance to go hands-on with the game Odd though; developers and publishers have been shoe-horning multiplayer in to games as a selling point and here we have a developer of a game built around multiplayer, admitting that without single player it’s kinda hard to sell.

Last Updated: January 13, 2014

16 Comments

  1. Gr8_Balls_o_Fire

    January 13, 2014 at 15:02

    LMAO @ the funny header pic

    Reply

  2. Hammersteyn

    January 13, 2014 at 15:07

    Nothing worse then not being able to play a game when the internet is off or if the servers are down so they should do what COD and BF does.Adding a shoddy SP campaign will allow them to charge AAA price with a season pass that costs almost as much as the game.

    Reply

  3. Admiral Chief in Vegas

    January 13, 2014 at 15:09

    What about SP bots?

    Reply

    • Umar digs KOS-MOS

      January 13, 2014 at 15:11

      HAHAHA, Clear signs of a PC gamer…..Ahh my Dota training days against bots … #SP

      Reply

  4. iAmWeasel

    January 13, 2014 at 15:13

    We keep hearing from Lagz about how good Titanfall was when you all played it, so why don’t you tell us why exactly it was good? I’m not doubting your view but am interested to know what made it so good.

    Reply

  5. TiMsTeR1033

    January 13, 2014 at 15:20

    Never been a fan of pure MP games, I mean Bf games at least have a somewhat decent SP experience.. I honestly see Titanfall the failing game of this year.. I mean besides addictive gameplay what new stuff does it bring to the table? BF4 had new engine, levolution, ect I haven’t seen anything that has made it stand out from a traditional pew pew to me.. Perhaps the game may be good but how long will that fun last for…

    Reply

    • CarloD1974

      January 13, 2014 at 16:07

      Loads of my friends have not touched SP for BF4. They want the MP experience, and have no desire to play the SP

      Reply

    • Sean

      January 13, 2014 at 16:24

      Titanfall is a mix between single and multiplayer (Mingleplayer) in my eyes. The problem is that it doesn’t seem excel in either category.

      Fans of Single Player/casual FPShooters seem to like the 12 player count and the AI. Fans of larger FPShooters want to exchange AI in favor of more living combatants.

      All of the online FPShooters I’ve ever played, only used AI until a human player connected…if at all.

      Respawn has successfully created a niche game it would seem. I’m not quite sure where it fits in.

      Reply

  6. Captain GUZ

    January 13, 2014 at 15:41

    Hi

    I found this EA marketing online

    Reply

    • Guest

      January 13, 2014 at 16:06

      Loads of people went straight to MP with BF4. They will “one day” finish it. Wont affect my gamine experience. If the internet is down, I will play another game

      Reply

      • Rags

        January 13, 2014 at 16:13

        Yup, still got to play it too.

        Reply

  7. Jim Lenoir (Banana Jim)

    January 13, 2014 at 18:00

    This game has been a hard-sell for me. I didn’t “get” the initial hype (because it looked like Brink with an unhealthy dollop of Call of Duty bloody jam splatter), and while I’m sure the preview built was exciting, the way it was hyped just started to rub me the wrong way. I’m still not convinced that it won’t be an pair of old shoes… especially now after EA botched Battlefield 4’s launch. I’ll be very surprised if Titanfall had a smooth launch or even deliver on half the promises Respawn have been making.

    But, I expect the usual suspects (polygon et al) to rate this game extremely highly and then months later the community reviews and forum chatter will question the launch reviews. We’ve been down this road before. At least, we can count on some consistency and predictability in it all.

    Reply

  8. Mighty Meh

    January 14, 2014 at 08:57

    I say screw single player!

    Battlefield didn’t become what it is today because of 1942’s deep single player experience, same goes for counter strike.

    I’m pretty sure that Battlefield 4 wouldn’t have been half the bug clusterf#ck it was if it just dropped the rather terrible single player campaign and just had 32 player AI.

    I for one think that the logic behind the limited player cap is also a good move. Imagine 64 mechs running around on a map, it would just be a quake deathmatch with mech skins.

    I really hope that this game is as good as it looks but don’t get me wrong, I’m sure as shit not gonna pre-order, not after being burned by EA’s “promises”.

    *Rant Over =D

    Reply

  9. Jim Lenoir (Banana Jim)

    January 14, 2014 at 10:33

    Just a simple question, have we seen xbone footage yet? The fact that so close to launch and we haven’t seen footage for the bone should make everyone a little weary. I’m going full “Arthur Gies”, and my prediction ifor Titanfall is that’s it’s going to be “an old pair of hobo shoes”.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Check Also

FIFA and EA Split? How Did it Happen and What Now for the Future of the Franchise?

In life, there are many staples, peanut butter and jam, bread and a toaster, and in gaming…