Yesterday I was arguing with a LinkedIn influencer about the expectations that EA had on Dragon Age: The Veilguard. His point was that the game had 1.5M players instead than 3M expected by EA. So the game was lacking appeal for the players.
My point, instead, was that a game that reaches that impressive number (in only 2 months) is definitely an appealing game. Then the game can be good or bad. But for sure it has appeal. The expectations set up by EA execs, instead, were out of reality. The error was theirs, not developers mistake.
He told me that the budget invested in marketing was enormous (no data added) so that the game should have had more players. Plus, the fact of having players doesn’t mean that every player bought the game. That is true, but today if someone decides to invest part of their free time in your game is a miracle. Today we have lots of distractions, it’s hard to reach Elden Ring’s numbers, just to make an example.
The problem is that today we are still setting expectations too high in a landscape with serious distribution and attention challenges. I haven’t played Dragon Age. The Veilguard (I have no time), and I read many different opinions on it. The game is a good game, and it’s appealing. But it was a deception for EA, because of their expectations on it. Those are hard times for forecasters.
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