Why Do Video Games Have The Best Advertising?

Oh, how far we've come...

Advertising in general has changed since video games came onto the scene in the late 1970s. Where before you had low budgets and wheezy directors trying to pack a paycheck to retire on, you now have ads that cost millions directed by respected professionals. But one thing really stands out: your average video game ad has, over the last five years or so, not only gotten way better, it’s hosed most ad campaigns. They’re funnier, edgier, have a unique spin: in short, they’re everything every ad is supposed to be.

But why? What’s unique about gaming that it inspires great, or at least edgy, ads? Why has game advertising come so far, and so quickly? The answer lies partially in the game companies, and partially with the gamers themselves.

It wasn’t always like this. As a quick poke around the Internet will tell you, pretty much all the tacky cheapness and terrible ideas of the 1980s and 1990s manifested themselves in video game advertising. But, thankfully, the bad taste of that era is now dead. Well, for now. Fashion designers are worse than necromancers when it comes to bringing back the dead, but they can’t infiltrate advertising anymore. And it’s gotten to the point where a good ad can turn around the fortunes of any game.

Take, for example, “Dead Island”. It was supposed to come out three years ago, and had essentially vanished off the map until this trailer:

Undeniably it’s a compelling short film, and it did its job: everyone’s excited for “Dead Island” after forgetting about it. But here’s what’s kind of jolting: name a movie trailer that was this compelling in the last ten years.

Kind of hard to think of one, isn’t it? Movie studios, despite having the money and certainly the motivation, as a bomb will lose them millions, never make trailers like this, despite people complaining about the staleness of most movie advertising.

But far be it from us to imply that “Dead Island” is the only compelling video game trailer.