A THOUGHT FROM YRS TRULY


MJ Widomska, Founder and Director at YRS TRULY, on video game marketing taking itself too seriously, and why you can (and should) market with flair and whimsy instead


have a pretty solid way of dealing with it: I temporarily trade worrying about the current global instability for worrying about the instability of fifteenth-century Bohemia. In other words, I play Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. I’m far from alone in my tendency to use video games for escapism – it’s one of the top motivators for play. Games are fun, silly, delightful, immersive, bold, jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring. They are a culmination of years of hard work from talented teams, hundreds and thousands of people, each playing their small part in building something that, hopefully, makes players feel entertained. Yet, does video game marketing accurately reflect the innate entertainment value of games? In other words: are we taking ourselves too seriously? My reflections have been spurred by an excellent skeet (sorry) by Adam Jenkins, Associate Creative Strategist at Edelman, and a Magic: The Gathering content creator. To quote: ‘everyone in videogames marketing needs to be silly again.’ I asked Adam to elaborate: ‘I think there is almost a desperation to come across as deep and thought-provoking when it’s not always the right call. The current global climate is shitty, our social feeds are full of the worst of humanity 24/7 and then my escapism of choice is being marketed to me (and sometimes by me) with so much brevity that it can become emotionally numbing.’ Curiously, as an industry, we tend to celebrate video games marketing when it’s at its silliest: Among Us, Fall Guys, Cult of


W 36 | MCV/DEVELOP April/May 2025


hen the existential dread of living in deeply unprecedented times gets a bit too heavy, I


escapism, too: and yet, even its more serious productions are marketed with flair and whimsy. (Oppenheimer! The Substance! A Complete Unknown!) It’s great if you can do something extra- fun. Collaborate with Greggs. Send Ben Starr dressed as a joker to the BAFTAs. Put a sword in the Tower of London. Create a spoof trailer for your own game. Grow mushrooms on life-sized armour. Get creators to compete in a game that’s not designed to be competitive. Make a visual novel. The point is, games marketing can be as entertaining as the games it markets – we just need to try.


“Games are escapism in its most immersive form, but this


rarely translates into how games are marketed”


the Lamb, Vampire Survivors. Yet, it seems like the baseline marketing tactics become the be-all and end-all of most games: pay key influencers to stream, send keys to press (and remaining influencers), use social media to update players, and on and on. Games are escapism in its most immersive form, but this rarely translates into how games are marketed. Film and TV deal in


While bigger studios have the budget to go fun and go big, they can still learn from the indie space, where taking the silly route has been the way to go for years. The indie marketing agency Future Friends is arguably one of the key influences behind the trend, so I asked its co-founder, Thomas Reisenegger, for his tips on making your marketing extra silly on a budget: ‘Being indie is all about finding your players. Be honest, make mistakes, laugh about it, reference that niche Mitski song and most importantly, if you can pull it off: be funny. Being genuinely funny is hard to do, but cheap – it often takes just one person to have the right brainrot internet humor to really boost an indie campaign.’ Whatever your budget, allow your marketing to be unashamedly silly. We’re all craving entertainment and escapism: we’re bombarded with derivative AI content, stuck in a scrolling loop, and fed fake Reddit stories turned into vertical video. We can do better than that. Great games marketing should stop people in their tracks. It’s time to stop taking ourselves too seriously.


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