What marketers can learn from tech giants’ gaming missteps

Amazon’s in-house game studio has failed to release anything in eight years, while Google is reportedly shutting down Stadia Games. How is it possible that the two corporations, which supposedly know everything about us, can’t make a game people actually want to play? What does it say about technology and creativity in gaming?

The good: tech providing the infrastructure for modern gaming

If you look back at the major shifts that shaped the games we love today, you will always find a tech giant providing the infrastructure somewhere in the background.

A decade ago Apple, Google and Facebook helped to make the free-to-play model a commercial success, lowering the barriers to entry, inviting everyone (especially the Kardashians) and changing game design forever.

More recently, Google and Amazon helped move games to the cloud. Epic Games works closely with AWS to deliver Fortnite, the phenomenon that tipped gaming over the edge into mainstream culture. Games are increasingly designed to be enriched over time, from a typical solo adventure like Assassin’s Creed to sports titles like NBA 2K. It’s also a tipping point for marketers, with more opportunities to show up in these ongoing virtual worlds.

So for the likes of Amazon and Google, it’s tempting to create their own games and drive cloud service revenue. But it’s when tech decides to be the center of attention that things can go rather badly.

The bad: tech moving into the game content creation

Former employees at Amazon and Google’s game studios report the same core issue: cultural misfit. The company cultures of tech giants did not provide the right environment for game devs to thrive, and the graft did not take.

While the world may be waking up to the fact that most gamers are not angry teenage nerds, one misconception seems persistent: the underappreciation of games as an art form, or at least a creative industry like any other. When tech giants decided to move into the film industry, they did not start up an entire in-house production studio to create the next Avengers blockbuster from scratch. Instead, they provided financial support and tech assistance, and let people focus on what they do best in the right environment.

So why operate differently with gaming?

This is presumably because a game eventually becomes a piece of software, something tech giants built most of their empire on. The fact that the chief executive of Amazon Game Studios had never worked on a game before is pretty self-explanatory. According to a former employee in Wired: “Amazon’s obsession with documents, spreadsheets and data wasn’t nurturing a creative environment”.

Software makers obsess over endless optimization, while game makers focus on storytelling, immersion and emotion.

Yes, game devs must improve their work conditions. But their creative process also demands a healthy dose of chaos, where everything and anything can go wrong, which can’t happen through spreadsheets. Games have always blurred the lines between commerce and art (just like good marketing). It’s a story as old as arts and sciences: if creativity is key to engineering, you can’t engineer creativity.

The great: enabling creativity to thrive

Tech giants excel when they don’t just provide the backend, but a platform for creativity to thrive.

Apple decided to focus on the indie game scene with its highly recommendable Apple Arcade service, supporting those who ‘think differently about gaming’.

Microsoft made a strategic decision, even before Xbox, to help game devs publish their titles. It is a great example of smart acquisitions and letting people focus on what they do best. With Xbox Game Pass, it is also building the so-called ‘Netflix of gaming’, leveraging data centers while allowing smaller developers to achieve popularity in this crowded market.

What can we learn as marketers?

Behind every game lies a gang of passionate thinkers, makers, artists, coders, writers and producers, who are often overworked and underpaid.

But they’re in to create and delight people. So let’s approach games like any other form of creative expression, be it music, cinema or literature, and recognize the creatives that make it a reality. When a movie or music touches us, the artists behind it become part of the emotional connection. The same applies to gamers with gaming.

Maybe tech firms can find inspiration in the Pixar playbook, a company that managed to maintain its creative culture throughout the different stakeholders and mergers. As Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull said in his book Creativity Inc: “There are two parts to any failure: there is the event itself, with all its attendant disappointment, confusion and shame, and then there is our reaction to it. It is this second part that we control.”