Broken Promises Marketing. Relations, Communication Strategies, and Ethics of Video Game Journalists and Developers: The Case of Cyberpunk 2077

IF 2.4 2区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION

Games and Culture Pub Date : 2023-05-09 DOI:10.1177/15554120231173479

Piotr Siuda, Dariusz Reguła, Jakub Majewski, Anna Kwapiszewska

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Cyberpunk 2077 's negative reception stood in striking contrast to the pre-release hype around the video game built by the producer's marketing campaign and the gaming press. This study examines a selection of gaming websites, to consider their pre-release Cyberpunk 2077 coverage and the discrepancies between these early reports and the released game. Using inductive conventional content analysis, framed as thematic analysis, 148 press articles were investigated divided into nine subcategories, and three categories. These articles told an almost exclusively positive narrative, promising great performance and features. The uncritical reception of publisher information by journalists allows the authors to propose the notion of “broken promises marketing”. The article contextualizes this term in the gaming ecosystem, arguing that over-optimistic marketing is amplified through features of the online press ecology. Finally, the results are considered from a business ethics perspective, with a set of communications recommendations for both journalists and game publishers.

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失信营销。电子游戏记者和开发者的关系、沟通策略和道德:以《赛博朋克2077》为例

《赛博朋克2077》的负面评价与制作人的营销活动和游戏媒体在游戏发行前的大肆宣传形成了鲜明对比。本研究考察了一些游戏网站，分析了它们在《赛博朋克2077》发行前的报道，以及这些早期报道与发行游戏之间的差异。采用归纳传统的内容分析方法，以主题分析为框架，对148篇新闻文章进行了调查，并将其分为9个小类和3个大类。这些文章讲述了一个几乎完全积极的叙事，承诺伟大的性能和功能。记者不加批判地接受出版商的信息，使作者提出了“失信营销”的概念。这篇文章将这一术语置于游戏生态系统中，认为过度乐观的营销通过网络媒体生态的特征被放大。最后，我们将从商业道德的角度考虑结果，并为记者和游戏发行商提供一系列沟通建议。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Games and Culture Multiple-

CiteScore

7.20

自引率

7.10%

发文量

期刊介绍： Games and Culture publishes innovative theoretical and empirical research about games and culture within the context of interactive media. The journal serves as a premiere outlet for groundbreaking and germinal work in the field of game studies. The journal"s scope includes the sociocultural, political, and economic dimensions of gaming from a wide variety of perspectives, including textual analysis, political economy, cultural studies, ethnography, critical race studies, gender studies, media studies, public policy, international relations, and communication studies.