Marketing

I was at the local Fry’s Electronics last night perusing the PC games aisle when The Settlers 7 caught my eye. I had written about the game’s a while back, describing the differences in regional cover art. So the first thing I noticed about the box was that the art looked better.

I criticized the original US cover (which you can see here) for trying to be too ‘badass’ and creating false expectations about the game’s content to people unfamiliar with the series. I’m sure a lot of other gamers felt the same way because Ubisoft made subtle changes to the cover art.

The original cover looked gritty and desaturated, like the opening battle of Fellowship of the Ring or Gladiator. The cover was split down the middle, showcasing the kingdom management on the left and the military strategy on the right. But because the original cover looked gray all around, it compromised the artist’s message. Both sides looked angry and ready for war. The man on the left had short, military-style haircut. The man on the right was decked in armor. If I didn’t know anything about The Settlers, I might think the game was about a rebel army fighting against an evil empire.

The new cover does a much better job make the two halves distinct. The most obvious way they emphasized the contrast was by adding color. On the left, the town looks cheerful under blue skies. On the right, the military stands ready, flanked by a fiery red backdrop. Secondly, the man on the left was altered with long, unkempt peasant hair. Although he’s still exhibiting an intense scowl, he no longer looks like the leader of a rebellion, ready to pick up a sword and bash some imperial skulls.

The more I look at this new cover, the more I like it. While the design is still somewhat misleading about the game’s actual art style, it has a clearer message about the player’s role in the game as both kingdom overseer and military commander. Plus, the purpose of the cover is to get people to pick up the box. What actually sells the game is the back cover, which remains largely the same regardless of region.

Yesterday, I posted about the regional differences in Heavy Rain‘s cover art as an example of unnecessary bluntness in design. The European cover is minimalist and creepy while the North American cover is a jumbled mess of characters, boobs, and guns. The moral of the story: Europeans understand subtlety, Americans don’t.

The Settlers 7 showcases a different but equally common type of regional tinkering. Take a look at the comparison below.

The European cover on the left shows a jovial, colorful village with all three facets of the game (commerce, exploration, and conquest) represented. The North American cover on the right screams: ‘military, war, darkness, KILL!’

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The game Heavy Rain has generated considerable debate about the definition of gameplay, the role of sex in narrative, and even the futility of having regional differences in box art. While the European cover features a simple but haunting picture of an origami seal in the rain, the US cover goes for a more blunt approach by adding the protagonists in the background. The European cover is effective and subdued like Hitchcock’s terrible moments of silence while the American version is ‘in your face’ with guns and boobs.

I assume the reason for two separate covers is that somewhere along the marketing chain of command, someone decided that Europeans are more capable of subtlety while Americans must be titillated by skin and violence. It would have been cheaper to just use the same graphic for both releases. So this suggests it was a conscious decision made by some marketing genius that backfired terribly.

The backlash was pretty scathing to say the least.

In the past, a lot of companies adopted a policy of ‘too bad, so sad.’ (See: Ico). But what I really liked about Sony’s approach is that they went ahead and retooled the European art and released it anyway as an alternate cover. Gamers who hate the current cover can head over to Flickr and print the high resolution image for themselves. Voila! Critics appeased. No recall necessary. Crisis averted.

More companies should try this approach. The only real downside to providing downloadable cover art is you save the game pirates a few hours they would have otherwise spent editing your existing cover with Photoshop. Meanwhile, you’ve diffused a inane nitpick that would have otherwise derailed your entire game. So the positives really outweigh the negatives here.

Links:
Alternate Cover Art (flickr.com)