As Seen On TV: The Impact of a Reluctance to Advertise on Female-Led Games

Sometime around the start of the holiday season in 2008 was when I first saw it. Mirror’s Edge had never been on my radar before, but as soon as I saw its advertisement during the commercial breaks of whatever show I had on at the time I became enchanted. Parkour and freerunning wasn’t especially popular yet and the idea of playing a woman freerunner was exciting for me as a gamer. My dad must have been at least somewhat enticed by it too, because the next time we visited GameStop he bought it for the both of us. Although video game ads aren’t as frequently used or as popular a marketing strategy as they are for movies or television shows, the exposure they offer, especially for audiences who might not have otherwise been familiar with the game or franchise, is certainly valuable. If I had never seen those commercials, I doubt I would have come across Mirror’s Edge, at least not until I looked back at games I’d missed playing anyway. Given the power of influence advertising has even had in my short consumer lifetime, it seems strange that games with female protagonists, which developers seem to believe are so difficult to sell, wouldn’t use commercials and other advertising strategies to appeal to increase their sales.

Unfortunately games with female protagonists are notorious for being under advertised. Whether its out of a fear of wasting resources on a game they view as too “risky” or a simple general sense of doubt towards the purchasing power of a game with a female lead, a lack of confidence in games with female protagonists leads to lesser spending and lower budgets. Lower budgets naturally lead to less money being spent on creating commercials and the like. With little to no advertising, the game fails to get the kind of exposure other big name titles might garner through a mixture of reputation (if a sequel or from a big name studio) and advertising budget. With less exposure, it’s only natural that there would be fewer sales, and fewer sale figures only further to decrease confidence in the market for games with female leads, which then fuels the lack of confidence present at the beginning of the process. It all becomes a vicious cycle that gives some producers the idea that games with female main characters don’t sell.

In fact, in 2012, Penny Arcade released a report which found that games with a female protagonist were given less than half the marketing budget as games featuring a male protagonist. It concluded, after a discussion with analyst Geoffrey Zatkin:

We know from our previous article that marketing spend is one of the few, if not the only, things that can overcome negative reviews. Television commercials, ads in magazines, and even shelf space in stores are all for sale, and the more you have to spend the better your game will sell.

Games with only female heroes are given half the marketing budget as games with male heroes. That’s an enormous handicap that cripples their ability to sell well. “Games with a female only protagonist, got half the spending of female optional, and only 40 percent of the marketing budget of male-led games. Less than that, actually,” Zatkin said.

So is this a self-fulfilling prophecy? Do publishers send female-lead games out to die without proper support? “I think it might be, and I think in some cases, though this is a guess, that these games may be considered more niche, and you advertise niche games less,” Zatkin said.

Until games with female protagonists receive comparable advertising budgets to those with male leads and, as in the case of Evangeline from Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation (until the re-release anyway), aren’t relegated to low-selling platforms, assuming profitability will only perpetuate the faulty cycle of blame.