作者：Alex Moore

我将在本文探讨一些在游戏行业尚未理解透彻的东西。人人都知道什么是品牌，但却鲜有人知道如何将其运用于游戏。它为什么很重要，又将如何影响你的游戏？

让我们先从一件琐事开始说起吧。我最近进入了一家大型零售商场的厨具区域，发现一个橙色的炖肉浅锅十分抢眼。它以半价出售，我拿起一只锅走到收银台，很开心自己得了一个大便宜。在排队买单过程中，我仔细地观察了它的盒子，突然发现它根本就不是一个Le Creuset的炖锅，而是其他品牌的产品。

我很清楚自己手中拿的东西质量也够我用上好几年，但它就不是我想要的那个牌子，所以我把它拿回了货架离开了商场。

看，这就是品牌的力量。

brand(from myadvertisingsolutions)

什么是品牌？

品牌具有许多吸引力，在此我只选择其中两项我认为与游戏行业关系最紧密的层面进行说明。

第一就是品牌体验。其宗旨是确保用户知道自己所购买产品的质量如何。这并不是说所有品牌的产品质量都很上乘，而是让用户对自己所购商品产生心理预期。在此品牌的用途就是消除用户的风险意识，为其注入一种安全保障。这正是人们在旅途中会去麦当劳的原因——他们事先就知道自己会买到什么东西。而进入靠近麦当劳的本地汉堡店可能就会面临风险了。有些人就是喜欢冒险，找到新事物。但也有些人就是喜欢品牌所给予的保障。

第二个就是品牌形象，名望或者炫耀资本。我穿的是Diesel牛仔裤，所以自我感觉更好。我们都深陷不同品牌之间其实并无多大差别，但我们就是极力想证明自己的选择才是最好的这种处境。

这与游戏有何关联？

那些热销的游戏，例如FIFA和《使命召唤》都吸引了大量用户群体——其规模远超过那些阅读游戏杂志、网站和论坛贴子的用户。那么他们是如何找到游戏的呢？

很显然，市场营销在这里发挥了重要作用——要推销东西你就得为人们介绍产品。这正是我们难以从行业内部了解的东西：主流杂志上的一篇简短文章或仅有数百字的评论，其对销量的影响可能要超过PC Gamer上长达数十页的长篇大论。因为在后者发布文章，基本上不会有什么作用。

值得注意的是，品牌并不仅仅意味着大规模的营销。没错，动视每年的确投入大笔资金在美国橄榄球超级杯大赛为《使命召唤》打广告。品牌不仅涉及资金和游戏质量，它还与大众市场对游戏体验的了解有关。这也是为何大型发行商每年推出的续作都会有众多粉丝捧场，因为这正是市场的需求。

打造品牌

品牌的困难之处就在于，你需要花很长时间去创造品牌知名度。成功的品牌并非一日炼成——苹果目前是世界第二大品牌，十年前它却还是个不知名的公司。那么，假如你可能只会发布一个版本的游戏，你又该如如何为游戏创造品牌？

我想这下在是游戏与电影最接近的地方，所以我们最该向电影取经。在许多电影中，品牌并非电影本身的名气，而是导演或创作班底的招牌。1979年的《超人》电影之所以能够获得投资，就是因为有Marlon Brando这个响当当的名号。尽管他在电影中只出现了几个镜头，但他的名字还是让电影名气大震，虏获了许多观众。

但在游戏行业，单个人很难成为一种品牌。并且这也不是什么好事：例如，Sid Meier如果要发布第一人称射击游戏，估计也不会太顺利，因为他的品牌是战略游戏。而AAA游戏是由许多人的大团队联合制作而成。

组建一个特别的开发团队也许很管用，这方面的典型是Team Ico。但这并不是很管用的方法，因为很少游戏公司能够让一整个团队共同效力于不同项目，因为有许多人会因为不同项目或离职等原因而离开团队。

所以目前最可行的方案就是打造公司品牌。Take Twok在推广Rockstar这一品牌上表现出色。与许多公司一样，它在《侠盗猎车手》真正成名之前就做了大量工作——直到PS2上的《侠盗猎车手3》（GTA3）问世 ，Rockstar才算是功成名就，而其品牌就是制作开放世界，基于故事的游戏。《荒野大镖客》和《LA Noire》并非Edinburgh工作室制作，但它们却打上了Rockstar游戏的标签，销量超过万百上千万份。如果没有这种品牌连襟优势，它们还能获得如此成就吗？它们本身就是优秀的游戏，销量应该还是会很理想，但应该不会如此出众。

由此可得结论，你有可能在游戏行业中利用品牌获得优势。这可能需要时间的积累，但却非常值得一试，如果运用得当就可以得到巨大收益。你的企业形象也将得到大幅提升，只要你能够持续推出质量相当的作品。达到那种质量工非易事，因为项目开发总有个期限，还有那么多支付成本，创造这种质量的最关键人物就是你自己和团队成员。所以要确保你妥善对待下属，让他们也向公司投入应有的热情——让他们觉得自己也是公司蓝图的一个组成部分，而不仅仅是来领工资的人。

品牌维护

最后要注意的一点是，品牌形象也很容易被破坏。几款糟糕的游戏就可能让你精心塑造的一切付之东流。市场也许会宽容你一次，但不会原谅你第二次。当你的品牌被破坏时，你的公司也会陷入麻烦：优秀游戏的销量也会因糟糕的声誉而下降。这是所有公司都可能发生的情况，也是人们重塑品牌（包括更改logo、更换名称）的一大原因。

另外还要考虑到品牌饱和度的问题。警惕一些过份手段，因为这会让人们厌倦。当你达到这种境界时，就该想想如何为下一次迭代注入新鲜活力了。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Do games need brand?

In this article I’m going to talk about something which doesn’t yet feel fully understood inside the games industry.  Everyone knows what brand is, but very few people know how to apply it to games.  Why is it important, and how can it affect your game?

Well, to start with, here’s a small anecdote.  I was in the kitchen department of a big retail store recently when a cast iron casserole dish, in orange, caught my eye (not dissimilar to the one pictured).  It was on sale for half price.  I picked one up and headed to the counter, happy and cheerful at the bargain I was getting.  In the queue I looked at the box a bit more and suddenly realised that it wasn’t a Le Creuset casserole dish at all, but some other brand.

I have no doubt that the item I had in my hand was of equal quality and would happily serve me tasty stews for years to come.  But it wasn’t the brand I wanted, so I returned it to the shelf and walked out.

Such is the power of brand.

So what is brand?

Brand comes in many flavours, and I’m going to look at the two which I think are most relevant to the games industry.

The first is the brand experience.  The aim of this is to assure customers as to what the quality of the product is that they’re buying. This isn’t to say that every brand is of outstanding quality: this is instead about consumers knowing ahead of time what they’ll get. The purpose of the brand here is to remove the sense of risk, and instead instil a feeling of security in the customer.  This is why people will go into MacDonald’s when they’re on holiday – they know ahead of time what they’re going to get.  That small local burger bar next door is a risk. Some people relish in taking those risks, finding the new thing.  Others love the security that a brand will bring.

The second flavour is the brand image, kudos, or bragging rights.  I’m wearing Diesel jeans and therefore I must be better.  We end up in a situation where there really isn’t any discernible difference between brands, but we’ll have big fights in the playground to prove that my choice is the best.
How does this relate to games?

I’ll get to soon.  Before I do, it’s important to understand a bit about how the games buying market works. The games that sell in huge volumes, such as FIFA or Call of Duty, appeal to a very wide audience – far more people than the relative few who read gaming magazines, websites and post on forums. So how do they find out about games?

Well, obviously marketing is very important at this point – to sell something you need to tell people about it.  And this is where it can be difficult to understand from inside the industry: a small article or review of a few hundred words in a mainstream magazine (in the UK we have Nuts and Empire for instance) can be far more influential to sales figures than a 10 page mega-article and cover in PC Gamer.  I know: it makes no sense.  It simply shouldn’t be.

An important note here is that brand isn’t just about marketing clout. Yes, Activision spend a lot of money each year advertising Call of Duty at the Superbowl. But there’s something more than just money and the quality of the game. It’s to do with the knowledge from the mass market that they know the experience they will get from that game.  That’s why yearly releases can work, and why we get so many sequels.  It’s what the market wants.
Creating brand

The difficulty with brand is that it can take a long time to create that brand awareness.  A successful brand may have taken a very long time to get there – Apple is now the second largest brand in the world, yet ten years ago they were looked down upon many. So how do you create a brand for your game when you may only release one version of it?

I think that this is where games are the closest to films and, because of this, can learn the most from them. In a lot of films the brand isn’t the film itself but its director or its cast. The 1979 Superman film only got funding because it had Marlon Brandoattached to it. Even though he was only in a few scenes his name gave the film the brand it needed to get audiences in to theatres. From that point on the film stood on it’s own credentials.

It can be very difficult for a single person to become a brand in the games industry though.  And, in fact, it’s not necessarily a good thing: it’d be very tricky for Sid Meier to release a first person shooter as his brand is strategy games.  And AAA games are made by many, many people.

Building up a specific development team can work really well, Team Ico being one of the biggest that comes to my mind.  This isn’t always practical though – companies rarely have the luxury of keeping a whole team together for multiple projects as people get pulled off to help on other projects at different times or, indeed, left the company altogether.

So the most obvious course is to build up your company’s brand.  Take-Two have done a great job in promoting Rockstar (or, possibly, Rockstar have done a great job of supporting Take-Two…).  As with a lot of companies it took several goes at Grand Theft Auto before it really took off – GTA3 on the PS2 was the game that really shot Rockstar into the limelight, and from there their brand has been to create seemingly open world, story led, games.  Red Dead Redemption and LA Noire weren’t made by the Edinburgh studio, but they were branded as Rockstar games and have sold millions of copies.  Would that have happened without the brand image attached to it?  They would have sold well for sure as they’re good games, but I doubt they’d have sold aswell.

To move towards some sort of conclusion then, it is possible to use brand to your advantage inside the games industry.  It may take a while, but it is worth building up and will reap huge benefits if you are successful.  Your company image should be the strongest it can be, and the only way to do that is to be consistent in the quality you put out.  Achieving that quality is not going to be easy when there’s deadlines to meet and bills to pay, and the people most important in creating this quality are yourself and your staff.  Make sure you should treat your employees well and ensure that they are invested in the company as well: make them feel a part of the bigger picture, not just the next pay cheque.

Looking after your brand

Yes, I know, I just concluded already.  Damn it.  A final note on brand though – it can also be damaging.  This is a tricky area because all you have carefully created can be washed away with a few bad games.  The market will forgive you once, but it probably won’t a second time.  Once your brand is damaged your company could well be in trouble: sales of a great game could very easily be hampered by a bad reputation.  This happens across all companies and is a large reason for rebranding, from changing of a logo to a completely new name.

Brand saturation also needs to be considered.  Overdo something and people will get bored, or decide not to buy every single year’s instalment because they don’t see the worth.  Once you hit that point you should hit the breaks and ease off a little, and find out how to inject new life into your next iteration.（source：altdevblogaday）