Getting Attention

Getting Attention

There is not one game publisher in the world that wouldn't want their upcoming game on a major enthusiast game magazine cover. But what about if you got on the cover of Time magazine or the front page of USA Today? More and more we are seeing that having that kind of attention of the game industry can lead to mainstream publications getting the jump on enthusiast outlets for major scoops. Snider, for example, posted up the first word on the Desparate Houswives game that is being developed by Liquid Entertainment last March in USA Today. Writing for Time, Grossman was the first US journalist to write about playing actual Nintendo Wii games several days before Nintendo showed off those games at E3 last month.

So if journalists write for such a media outlet, will they get attention from game publishers that they wouldn't get from the traditional hardcore gaming media? In a phone interview, New York Times writer Seth Schiesel told us, "Actually, I think it's almost the opposite. Doing a big story with us is not necessarily going to sell them a lot of games." Morris agrees, saying, "Not really. As I mentioned (before), it’s two different audiences. Those companies certainly want to reach out to a wide audience, which we reach, but the core gamers are their bread and butter and represent the majority of their income right now. As long as an outlet reaches a significant number of either audience, I would think that it’s an important outlet to a publisher or console manufacturer."

When asked the same question, Kim gave us a different answer, "Yes. For the simple reason, that EW reaches a whole different audience. The person who reads EGM or visits GameSpot and IGN, is more than likely a dedicated gamer who keeps track of product announcements and release dates. And a game company absolutely needs to get product news out to these enthusiast books and websites. But getting a story in EW or Newsweek or Rolling Stone is about hitting a reader who might be hearing about a particular game for the first time." For his part, Grossman told us, "I can't speak for those companies. I know Nintendo and Microsoft (and I would imagine Sony) are looking to expand their audience beyond the hardcore scene, and I think Time can help with that. But that's as far as I'd go."

Snider gives us the last work on this subject, saying, "I wouldn’t say that. I would say they target the news that they have or want covered to the media that it fits. The companies regularly court magazines such as Newsweek and Time at the same time they are courting EGM or Game Informer. Having said that, when I am working on a fairly large industry story, game publishers and hardware makers want to make sure they get to bend my ear because they know we don’t always devote that much space to coverage. In the case of the enthusiast press, companies know that they have to constantly feed the beast and may be able to get them to cover incremental news that USA TODAY might pass on."