Titanfall has landed; here’s our Titanfall review.
I sort of think mechs sell themselves, but I’m an idiot and my marketing experience amounts to getting local newspapers to cover a charity I once worked for (yeah, I’m a rad guy). Titanfall producer Drew McCoy explained, on NeoGAF, that marketing Respawn’s upcoming mech n’ run shooter has been really tough, primarily thanks to its lack of single-player.
“Its actually been really tough trying to accurately market Titanfall,” says McCoy. “If you look at what we’ve done, its a lot different than what most FPS games do. Without a bunch of highly scripted SP moments to recam from different angles, the usual “movie like” trailer is just about right out.”
Rather than go down the traditional route of capturing footage and putting a cinematic spin on it, Respawn’s been showing 3 – 5 minute gameplay clips, unedited, to show off the combat flow “starting as a Pilot, taking on AI and other player Pilots, wall running around a Titan, earning your Titan, climbing in, battling other Titans while stomping on humans, ejecting, etc.”
This is also why Respawn was letting folk get their hands on the pre-alpha build at Gamescom and the like. “There’s no amount of polished marketing that can replace playing the actual game.”
McCoy also tackled the issue of the small player counts per battle. “None of us are diluted [sic] enough to think we’re making a game that fits every gamer.” He then asks why higher player numbers translate into a more fun game.