MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
In the Feb/Mar issue of MCV/DEVELOP we featured our annual PR Panel, bringing together the good, the bad (in a good way) and the beautiful people of games PR to give us their take on what’s been going on in our beloved industry over recent months.
The magazine feature was essentially a “best of”, so to complete the collection here are all the interviews complete and uninterrupted. So far we’ve had Suzanne Panter, Alex Verrey and Mike Hendrixen. Now it’s the turn of the Outrageous Danielle Woodyatt!
MCV: What’s been your personal PR highlight of the past 12 months?
Danielle Woodyatt: I’d say one of our key highlights of the last 12 months was celebrating Warframe’s 10 year anniversary, and our 7th (now 8th) year working with Digital Extremes. In January, Warframe was the number one selling game on Steam, which is an incredible achievement for an 11 year old game. We also got to work with our friends at New Star Games games again (double whammy) on their retro inspired racer, New Star GP. 2023 was definitely a good year. The wonderful teams we got to work with made it one of our best yet.
What’s been the biggest comms faux pas and what should’ve been done to avoid it?
With any announcement, it’s so important to have your finger on the pulse with your audience. In Unity’s case, they clearly missed the mark, which resulted in lots of backpedalling. Not good from a comms perspective. It’s OK to get things wrong, but when it affects the relationship and trust you’ve painstakingly built with your community, it can be difficult to recover from. Know your audience and have an open dialogue with them. Your comms success depends on it.
Redundancies have barely left the news for 18 months. Aside from the loss of talented colleagues, what has been the implication for PR and comms?
This past 18 months is probably the worst we’ve seen for job losses in our industry and doesn’t seem to be slowing down. We’ve seen the LinkedIn posts and the number of people looking for work is staggering and unsettling for the creative industry. Aside from the pool of development talent affected, so many incredible journalists and media outlets have been affected too. From a PR and comms perspective, our approach has to be even more focused. It’s so important to connect the right media to the right games. Press are under more pressure than ever, so we’re even more conscious of making every email pitch we send worthwhile.
We saw some great games released last year, but the sales numbers didn’t appear to line up with the acclaim. Have there been too many good games? What’s going on?
The pandemic is still having a knock on effect. Lots of great games were delayed, which all seemed to start hitting simultaneously. Post-pandemic, there’s less demand, not only because gamers are no longer stuck indoors, but many people are struggling due to the cost of living. Investing time and money into multiple games simply isn’t possible for most people, regardless of how good they are.
Are the days Twitter/X (aka Twix?) and mass-email-pitching numbered. What will replace them? AI? What will replace them? AI?
Relationships are still our most valuable asset in PR. X still has its place for now and while we’re seeing lots of folks migrating to newer social media platforms, like Threads, Mastodon and BlueSky, our approach from a comms perspective stays the same: build personal relationships and figure out how each individual prefers to be approached. For some it might be email, and others, a good old fashioned phone call. There’s no one size fits all approach when it comes to effective comms and we don’t expect that to change anytime soon, even considering the rise of AI technology.
It’s been suggested that ‘information overload and standing out’ are the biggest PR issues right now. Would you agree and how are you attempting to overcome such challenges?
Yes, we agree with that sentiment 100%, but with PR and Comms, we’re always dealing with those issues. While it’s not a new issue, it is compounded with more games on Steam, fewer journalists, and hundreds of content creators spending hours talking about games. Where we succeed is by having great relationships with the media, being as generous as possible, understanding their schedules and focus, and when to press or let off the acceleration pedal.
