-Who was responsible for the marketing of LA Noire?
Lick Creative were the company responsible for creating the advertisements and promotional material for LA Noire.
-List all methods of marketing used to promote the game – consider viral and guerilla marketing techniques as well as more traditional methods.
The game was given a lot of promotion online via Rockstar’s Facebook page and YouTube account which will have given the game a lot of viral promotion as people could easily share this information with each other and post it in online forums. There was a lot guerilla advertising used as well.One example of this was posters used in the London underground to spell the word ’LIAR’. This would have been effective as the underground tube station is used by thousands of commuters daily and this can possibly grab the attention of upper or middle class as well as lower class commuters.
-When were the trailers released for the game? List dates and analyse what was shown in the trailers.
: 2006, During 2006 a teaser trailer was leaked to promote the game. It doesn’t really give any background information about the game or it’s story however.
: 16th December 2010 – Trailer 1, in 2010 the first official LA Noire trailer was released. It was about 1 minute and 10 seconds and mostly gave the audience a preview of the graphics involved in the game.
: 24th January 2011 – Trailer 2, at the start of 2011 Rockstar Games released a second official trailer. It is about a minute and a half long and shows more detail about the story. Compared to the first trailer there is a bit more graphic imagery however this is used to captivate audiences.
: 7th April 2011 – Trailer 3, in early 2011 Rockstar Games released the third official trailer for LA Noire. This trailer went into more detail about the vice cases that are involved in the game.
-Give examples of how synergy was used to promote the game.
Synergy was used heavily to promote the release of LA Noire. Rockstar Games created and released the soundtrack for the game, which was comprised of the music scores and tracks from throughout the game. The release of this soundtrack coincided with the initial release of the game and would have appealed to a wider audience as someone that had listened to the soundtrack could have become interested in the game a bit more as to the style of music that it contained.
-Were there any particular deals struck between Rockstar and the platforms?
There was always an original deal between Rockstar and Sony, in which any game that Rockstar released was to be made available to PlayStation before any other console. The release of LA Noire however broke this deal as it was released on all major platforms at the same date. This caused some controversy for Rockstar.
-How was desire creation built around the game before its release?
The first real teaser that was leaked to the public for LA Noire was first released during October of 2006. It gave a backdrop for the game as it is set out as a sort of 1940’s Noir style movie however it doesn’t really provide much information about the game. It is a lot different to the trailers that were released around late 2010 – early 2011 which showed more about the story and a bit more graphic content. It did however show that Rockstar could take a step away from making games such as the GTA franchise, which may have proved intriguing for fans of Rockstar Games.
-How were British audiences targeted in the marketing of the game?
There was a wide advertisement campaign used across the UK for the release of LA Noire that used both guerilla and mainstream marketing techniques. There was a section in the ‘Metro’ newspaper, which is a free newspaper that is native to the UK, which displayed the front page of the paper as a 1940’s American style document. This was done solely to show what kind of game LA Noire is and to put it in the public eye.
Also people that preordered the LA Noire game from certain different UK retailers were given a unique DLC to download upon the games release.
-How have Rockstar maximized their potential revenue streams?
Rockstar have maximized their revenue streams by releasing various types of merchandise for their company and games. It is possible for people who play and enjoy their games to buy merchandise ranging from posters to clothing that fits the style of the game. Also Rockstar struck a deal with Amazon.com so that they people download and stream music tracks from the GTA games radio stations directly form the Rockstar website.
-How can you access/purchase the game?
The game can be bought from various different videogames stores and electrical retailers. Also it can be ordered and dispatched to you online. It is also possible for the game to be bought and downloaded directly to your games console over the PlayStation store by PSN or XBOX Live. This usually a lot cheaper as you don’t need to pay for things such as the packaging of the game and the disk.
-What are the implications of gatekeeping for the target audience?
The implications towards gatekeeping are that the target audience of the game is only shown what they want to see. In the case of the game trailers, the audience are shown lots of interesting moments of the cutscenes in which there is fighting, murder and other such things however they don’t show the parts between these in which people need to think to work things out as these could be frustrating points in the game in which the player, especially younger people, might lose interest. If they are shown these more boring parts of the game in the trailer then younger audiences, who might only want the game to be full of action, definitely wouldn’t show as much interest.
-Once you have purchased the game how have Rockstar maintained the desire creation?
Once the game has been bought then there many ways that the game can still create desire. Like most games that are released for 7th gen consoles there tends to be a lot downloadable content released over a wide range of time. This is used as desire creation as it keeps the target audience in anticipation over what the next DLC will be and what it will be like
