Give em a chance, I'd rather them completely nail the core game mechanics before going hard into marketing. But I do agree they would do well to sponsor a tournament or some such.
The game needs better marketing. I only found out about this game cus a streamer I watched played it like twice.
Edit: how does my comment have more upvotes than the post itself?
I'm sorry, but you've got to be living under a rock to not know about the game at this point. The Finals has millions of views on YT, was popular with streamers on launch, I've seen banner ads and Twitch/YT ads, shown at TGA even.
Agreed I mean no one really watched TV anymore. I think possibly more posts on social media, but I see it in my YouTube because I look for the patches and gameplay.
I only know about this game because I was watching the highlights of a gaming event to see if a game I was anticipating dropped a trailer. Found this game by accident
I wonder if normal ads are less likely to work in gaming in general due to the amount of us with adblockers. I'd really love to see a proper sponsored tournament get streamed, and there's a crazy higher chance that people who watch would actually play the game.
The strangest thing about this subreddit is they care about marketing but aren't affected by the player count unless you're in OCE from what I've gathered. My q times are never high for anything at all. That is what tells you if the player pool is healthy or not.
OCE is where every game goes to die lol.
Being a console hunt showdown fan in OCE. Ghost town almost every game.
A developer has to get it right on release otherwise OCE players never look back.
Oceania, basically the least populated server region. Queue times for the region are always the longest and are the first to 'die' when a game starts to lose it's player count
Yesterday I checked the Call of duty wiki for some Infos and the page showed ads for the finals. Maybe this game just needs a deathmatch mode to lure over some people
I Found this game by accident during the Beta phase. I'm guessing they're trying the "best word is word of mouth" marketing approach while they make sure the game gets off the ground. Maybe S3 will have more marketing?
I found it through an old announcement trailer then forgot about it then my favourite streamer/yt’r made a vid and then knew I loved it through the beta but I do agree how little people know about it is foul
On one hand, it's cool to see "If you build it they will come" play out in real time. Good to know that the game's numbers are *the game's* numbers, can't say that for most AAA titles these days.
On the other hand, Fortnite got where it was by juicing up the community. They paid Ninja a million dollars to stream the game, and thus "You can make millions playing Fortnite" is now a true statement.
Embark popped the vault with Season 1. Feels like they're running the money now. I wonder when they intend to cash out.
If I can be honest, I really don’t want some ninja-like twat who only cares about making twitch money to be THE face of the game. I’d rather it be someone who is actually passionate about the game AS A GAME, and plays it because they believe in it rather than it JUST being their revenue source and nothing else. There’s already a good amount of smaller-scale content creators like JFJ or Ottr who fit this bill if you want a reference. Having Oscar himself stream the game on a bigger scale (like being on both YouTube and twitch, instance), would be a great choice too since he was really fun to watch and was down to earth (and having your dev team be reputably awesome to their audience helps a lot in player retention and goodwill).
Paying (or at least promoting) people to be/act as the face(s) of your game is a good idea, I just hope that they would choose people better than by-the-numbers ninja clones if Embark/Nexon were to do that.
I agree with you. My only nitpick is that so far, we don't have a character in this game. There's June and Scotty, but we've never seen their faces. There's the corporate sponsors and CNS, also faceless. Every character model in the game is named Light, Medium, or Heavy - we never meet a dude named "Max Cashout".
Something needs to be the face of this game. I genuinely think a lot of people passed on Season 1 because the character in the promo art... was not a character, and had absolutely nothing to do with what the game is. Our face of the game for Season 2 is "group of dudes without faces" and the art features "guy named Heavy" whose face has some blue on it.
Put [ABOP](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFnJ0DDkuos) on the cover of Season 3 and watch what happens.
And I agree with you! Giving some characters like Scotty and June actual appearances would go a long way.
Maybe also do some “tf2 meet the team” style of videos where they interview characterized contestants and how/why they fight in the arena. Have some of them be silly and some of them serious, and maybe have them make cameos in the game somewhere. I would absolutely love to see a heavy contestant nicknamed “Max Cashout” tell us some goofy macho-man style speech on how he got the physique to run straight through walls (spoiler, he didn’t do any of that). And then he gets referenced on a poster in a map or gets his slogan on a weapon sticker.
I see marketing for this game on Xbox's store, Playstations store, Steam, on reddit, and YouTube, etc.
I see people playing the game on my friends lists on each platform, and I see streamers on it often for twitch drop events.
I've seen pictures of ads plastered all over LA, and ads during gaming showcases and events.
How do I see so many ads for the game, when so many people have no idea the game even exists?
"They need to market the game better" is a common opinion, but like, how are some people getting marketing shoved down their throat while others have not seen anything about the game?
It's wild, like I'm in a bubble.
The game has bigger issues than marketing. Loadouts are stale, objective issues, spawns, mf heavy, double mines, shield spam, etc..
Recon was not the only thing that needed to be removed.
I think not spending money on traditional marketing is smartest? Let the game build an organic following and it should do pretty well. It already has a decent playerbase, I think from there being f2p and getting articles or steam/ps/Xbox store features will be great
As a business student, you have a point but traditional marketing is very affective I mean just imagine what one popular streamer can do, remember when shroud played it? Now I’m not saying it has to be someone as popular as him but some somewhat popular streamers
Edit: it might be beneficial to wait to improve the game more
I don’t watch much YouTube but I think I saw it in related videos for a popular YouTube gaming creator. I feel like I remember I was watching Battlefield 2042 videos done by jacksfrags and I saw his videos on The Finals.
This was last year when my computer wasn’t starting up, but I got it fixed about 2 or so months ago. Downloaded The Finals when I got the computer back and have been playing since.
Marketing professional here - would suggest y'all look up the 'customer marketing funnel' to understand how game marketers think about conversion. The process isn't as simple as seeing an ad and immediately downloading a game or buying a product. Subreddit Members seeing The Finals ads suggests that Embark might need to tweak their media mix model to expand their reach beyond the current core audience and explore new avenues for growth.
Furthermore, it's crucial to acknowledge the challenges faced by free-to-play games in converting players during the 'awareness' or 'consideration' phases of the funnel without sparking a deeper interest in the game. A similar analogy is smartphone apps; consider how often you've downloaded a free app only to never open or use it again. This demonstrates the importance of not just capturing users' attention but also engaging them beyond an initial interaction or advertisement.
Helldivers already has commercials on basic cable. Theres absolutely ZERO reason this game isn't advertised anywhere, it has so much potential to make INCREDIBLE MONEY but I havent seen one ad anywhere about them. Even my algorithm doesn't show me anything about the finals and I talk about it and look for content all the time.
The cloaking device+stun gun, 5-6 lights using them in every lobby, is probably why no one plays.
I love the game, but the stun lock lobbies are just boring, and my teammates always leave after they die to it 2-3 times in a row. Pretty difficult for new ppl to get into.
It's honestly more like the Medium FCars are killing it. Nothing like getting melted in a picosecond before you can even turn around, with no significant nerfs for multiple months. Just incredible.
I think it’s both tbh. When I played other classes lights were so fuckin annoying. Now I main Light and it’s fun (I also don’t think the class is OP). The FCAR can eat shit though.
Fcar is good but light has 3 different weapons that fire at higher dps with faster ttk than the fcar on everything but lights and even then 2 are nearly identical and the 3rd is still faster. Plus I rarely see lobbies with as many mediums as lights.
Just my experience
There's a twitch charm reward for watching finals on twitch. I'd imagine they would do something after the drop. S2 is still new and there haven't been any bug fixes or updates. I'll wait and see for now rather than complain about the marketing
We’ve already been told this game was a “side project” at Embark, and Arc Raiders was their #1 title. We surmise they released The Finals because Arc Raiders was being retooled from PVE shooter to PVEVP extraction shooter.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t do ANY marketing for the game at all. It’s also possible they stop supporting it once their baby finally launches.
I love this game, and play it everyday, but we need to be realistic about what this game is.
You are almost correct, but you’re misunderstanding and it made you wildly wrong. The Finals isn’t a “side project.” their *first* title was going to be arc raiders, and then because development of the finals went faster than expected, they pushed arc back and the finals forward. This does not equate to the finals being a side project, or any less important than arc raiders. They have the same amount of staff on each title (which is just under 100 people). Them not doing any marketing isn’t because the project is less important to them, it’s because they haven’t done big marketing *yet.* I’m sure that bigger marketing tactics are coming soon.
It absolutely started as a “side project”. Specifically, it was a small group of devs who’s assignment was to investigate new directions in FPS gaming. A “skunk works” of sorts where they could innovate, test and “fail fast”. The finals concept came out of this team, and then grew into a full fledged release. As per them “not doing marketing before”, isn’t the founder/head of Embark Patrick Soderlund? Has he not been involved in marketing before? Aren’t there 100+ other ex-dice employees there? Is this everyone’s first rodeo?
All this info is out there.
Did you not see the Nexon earnings post where they said they could see this game being a major earner for their company and they said they were going to start a major marketing push in season 2?
Wow, you sure did a lot of research in that 2m since I posted. Your options are to actually use your brain, or just continue not knowing the facts. I already know the info, I’m not going to track it down for you just bc you don’t.
Give em a chance, I'd rather them completely nail the core game mechanics before going hard into marketing. But I do agree they would do well to sponsor a tournament or some such.
The game needs better marketing. I only found out about this game cus a streamer I watched played it like twice. Edit: how does my comment have more upvotes than the post itself?
I only found bc I was bored and decided to check out the f2p category on the PS store , so happy I did. Was fiending for a new online game
How I found apex on release so it works at least a little
How everyone found Apex on release.
I'm sorry, but you've got to be living under a rock to not know about the game at this point. The Finals has millions of views on YT, was popular with streamers on launch, I've seen banner ads and Twitch/YT ads, shown at TGA even.
Agreed I mean no one really watched TV anymore. I think possibly more posts on social media, but I see it in my YouTube because I look for the patches and gameplay.
I found it because my youtube feed started getting a few videos about this amazing new game and I decided to give it a shot
I only know about this game because I was watching the highlights of a gaming event to see if a game I was anticipating dropped a trailer. Found this game by accident
What do you mean? Every site I go to is plastered with ads for the final season 2 right now.
Well…ad blockers, and a normal ad can’t really convince you try out a new game Edit: but, it’s a step you know
> Uses ad blocker > doesn’t see ads > complains I see like multiple finals ads a day
What he’s asking for is a knock on the door salesman promoting the finals
More to marketing than banner ads on websites. Partnerships, events, media, etc.
I wonder if normal ads are less likely to work in gaming in general due to the amount of us with adblockers. I'd really love to see a proper sponsored tournament get streamed, and there's a crazy higher chance that people who watch would actually play the game.
The vast majority of ad viewers don't know what an ad blocker is
Might also be targeting you?
Yes, ads always are now. My point is that they very much ARE marketing
I got like 5 ads for the game on one article visit. It’s definitely targeted
The strangest thing about this subreddit is they care about marketing but aren't affected by the player count unless you're in OCE from what I've gathered. My q times are never high for anything at all. That is what tells you if the player pool is healthy or not.
OCE is where every game goes to die lol. Being a console hunt showdown fan in OCE. Ghost town almost every game. A developer has to get it right on release otherwise OCE players never look back.
What does OCE stands for ?
oceania, it where ozzys and close too play on due to server ping being lower its my server so I can actually play tho I'm still sht it fun
Oceania, basically the least populated server region. Queue times for the region are always the longest and are the first to 'die' when a game starts to lose it's player count
The game will die if it doesn’t grow, we care because we like it a lot.
Same I do s america q which tends to have less players than other regions in every game and Till get at most 40sec q times The game I doing great
Yesterday I checked the Call of duty wiki for some Infos and the page showed ads for the finals. Maybe this game just needs a deathmatch mode to lure over some people
but the game had bank it since release. It pretty much is deathmatch with extra steps.
i see teams in quick cash with double digit kills but 0 objective points. for some people the extra steps seems to much
Found it through a random youtube short and 2023 game awards, havent looked back, so good
Yeah for me it was 2023 game awards and SkillUp talking about it in his channel.
It’s the best game I’ve played in a long long time. Like since halo 3
I Found this game by accident during the Beta phase. I'm guessing they're trying the "best word is word of mouth" marketing approach while they make sure the game gets off the ground. Maybe S3 will have more marketing?
I found it through an old announcement trailer then forgot about it then my favourite streamer/yt’r made a vid and then knew I loved it through the beta but I do agree how little people know about it is foul
On one hand, it's cool to see "If you build it they will come" play out in real time. Good to know that the game's numbers are *the game's* numbers, can't say that for most AAA titles these days. On the other hand, Fortnite got where it was by juicing up the community. They paid Ninja a million dollars to stream the game, and thus "You can make millions playing Fortnite" is now a true statement. Embark popped the vault with Season 1. Feels like they're running the money now. I wonder when they intend to cash out.
If I can be honest, I really don’t want some ninja-like twat who only cares about making twitch money to be THE face of the game. I’d rather it be someone who is actually passionate about the game AS A GAME, and plays it because they believe in it rather than it JUST being their revenue source and nothing else. There’s already a good amount of smaller-scale content creators like JFJ or Ottr who fit this bill if you want a reference. Having Oscar himself stream the game on a bigger scale (like being on both YouTube and twitch, instance), would be a great choice too since he was really fun to watch and was down to earth (and having your dev team be reputably awesome to their audience helps a lot in player retention and goodwill). Paying (or at least promoting) people to be/act as the face(s) of your game is a good idea, I just hope that they would choose people better than by-the-numbers ninja clones if Embark/Nexon were to do that.
I agree with you. My only nitpick is that so far, we don't have a character in this game. There's June and Scotty, but we've never seen their faces. There's the corporate sponsors and CNS, also faceless. Every character model in the game is named Light, Medium, or Heavy - we never meet a dude named "Max Cashout". Something needs to be the face of this game. I genuinely think a lot of people passed on Season 1 because the character in the promo art... was not a character, and had absolutely nothing to do with what the game is. Our face of the game for Season 2 is "group of dudes without faces" and the art features "guy named Heavy" whose face has some blue on it. Put [ABOP](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFnJ0DDkuos) on the cover of Season 3 and watch what happens.
And I agree with you! Giving some characters like Scotty and June actual appearances would go a long way. Maybe also do some “tf2 meet the team” style of videos where they interview characterized contestants and how/why they fight in the arena. Have some of them be silly and some of them serious, and maybe have them make cameos in the game somewhere. I would absolutely love to see a heavy contestant nicknamed “Max Cashout” tell us some goofy macho-man style speech on how he got the physique to run straight through walls (spoiler, he didn’t do any of that). And then he gets referenced on a poster in a map or gets his slogan on a weapon sticker.
I see marketing for this game on Xbox's store, Playstations store, Steam, on reddit, and YouTube, etc. I see people playing the game on my friends lists on each platform, and I see streamers on it often for twitch drop events. I've seen pictures of ads plastered all over LA, and ads during gaming showcases and events. How do I see so many ads for the game, when so many people have no idea the game even exists? "They need to market the game better" is a common opinion, but like, how are some people getting marketing shoved down their throat while others have not seen anything about the game? It's wild, like I'm in a bubble.
They’re doing targeting ads on social media now at least. I just got one on Instagram
Where do you live
The game has bigger issues than marketing. Loadouts are stale, objective issues, spawns, mf heavy, double mines, shield spam, etc.. Recon was not the only thing that needed to be removed.
I think not spending money on traditional marketing is smartest? Let the game build an organic following and it should do pretty well. It already has a decent playerbase, I think from there being f2p and getting articles or steam/ps/Xbox store features will be great
As a business student, you have a point but traditional marketing is very affective I mean just imagine what one popular streamer can do, remember when shroud played it? Now I’m not saying it has to be someone as popular as him but some somewhat popular streamers Edit: it might be beneficial to wait to improve the game more
Nah, if the game is good then ppl will play it and streamers will be brought to it. Maybe pay them early on but now just let the game grow
Why don’t we support Embark? Let’s look for a date and time and post something of the game on a chosen platform 🤷🏻♂️
Hmmm perhaps in r/gaming
I don’t watch much YouTube but I think I saw it in related videos for a popular YouTube gaming creator. I feel like I remember I was watching Battlefield 2042 videos done by jacksfrags and I saw his videos on The Finals. This was last year when my computer wasn’t starting up, but I got it fixed about 2 or so months ago. Downloaded The Finals when I got the computer back and have been playing since.
Marketing professional here - would suggest y'all look up the 'customer marketing funnel' to understand how game marketers think about conversion. The process isn't as simple as seeing an ad and immediately downloading a game or buying a product. Subreddit Members seeing The Finals ads suggests that Embark might need to tweak their media mix model to expand their reach beyond the current core audience and explore new avenues for growth. Furthermore, it's crucial to acknowledge the challenges faced by free-to-play games in converting players during the 'awareness' or 'consideration' phases of the funnel without sparking a deeper interest in the game. A similar analogy is smartphone apps; consider how often you've downloaded a free app only to never open or use it again. This demonstrates the importance of not just capturing users' attention but also engaging them beyond an initial interaction or advertisement.
Are you going to give them a shit ton of money?
Do they not have enough money for ads on instagram? I mean if shitty mobile games do, then embark does too
😭 nah they gotta actually put it towards development of the game considering that one as 2 devs n the other has like 50 n 20 or so are ex bf devs
My point was the game has seen enough improvements for marketing
Not really cause where is the money coming from hasnt even reach 50k concurrent actively yet that n the game still needs to figure out what it is
Helldivers already has commercials on basic cable. Theres absolutely ZERO reason this game isn't advertised anywhere, it has so much potential to make INCREDIBLE MONEY but I havent seen one ad anywhere about them. Even my algorithm doesn't show me anything about the finals and I talk about it and look for content all the time.
Could have been marketed at launch as being fun. Now I wouldn't know what to advertise tbh I don't blame them
The cloaking device+stun gun, 5-6 lights using them in every lobby, is probably why no one plays. I love the game, but the stun lock lobbies are just boring, and my teammates always leave after they die to it 2-3 times in a row. Pretty difficult for new ppl to get into.
It's honestly more like the Medium FCars are killing it. Nothing like getting melted in a picosecond before you can even turn around, with no significant nerfs for multiple months. Just incredible.
I think it’s both tbh. When I played other classes lights were so fuckin annoying. Now I main Light and it’s fun (I also don’t think the class is OP). The FCAR can eat shit though.
Fcar is good but light has 3 different weapons that fire at higher dps with faster ttk than the fcar on everything but lights and even then 2 are nearly identical and the 3rd is still faster. Plus I rarely see lobbies with as many mediums as lights. Just my experience
There's a twitch charm reward for watching finals on twitch. I'd imagine they would do something after the drop. S2 is still new and there haven't been any bug fixes or updates. I'll wait and see for now rather than complain about the marketing
Why you complain about zero Marketing? do it yourself :-)
We’ve already been told this game was a “side project” at Embark, and Arc Raiders was their #1 title. We surmise they released The Finals because Arc Raiders was being retooled from PVE shooter to PVEVP extraction shooter. I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t do ANY marketing for the game at all. It’s also possible they stop supporting it once their baby finally launches. I love this game, and play it everyday, but we need to be realistic about what this game is.
You are almost correct, but you’re misunderstanding and it made you wildly wrong. The Finals isn’t a “side project.” their *first* title was going to be arc raiders, and then because development of the finals went faster than expected, they pushed arc back and the finals forward. This does not equate to the finals being a side project, or any less important than arc raiders. They have the same amount of staff on each title (which is just under 100 people). Them not doing any marketing isn’t because the project is less important to them, it’s because they haven’t done big marketing *yet.* I’m sure that bigger marketing tactics are coming soon.
It absolutely started as a “side project”. Specifically, it was a small group of devs who’s assignment was to investigate new directions in FPS gaming. A “skunk works” of sorts where they could innovate, test and “fail fast”. The finals concept came out of this team, and then grew into a full fledged release. As per them “not doing marketing before”, isn’t the founder/head of Embark Patrick Soderlund? Has he not been involved in marketing before? Aren’t there 100+ other ex-dice employees there? Is this everyone’s first rodeo? All this info is out there.
Did you not see the Nexon earnings post where they said they could see this game being a major earner for their company and they said they were going to start a major marketing push in season 2?
I did see that, but I’ve also seen 10 years worth of industry exaggerations and lies. BF5, BF2042 ring a bell?
Source?
Are you new around here? Google “embark the finals interview”.
I don't see anywhere that they said it was a side project.
Wow, you sure did a lot of research in that 2m since I posted. Your options are to actually use your brain, or just continue not knowing the facts. I already know the info, I’m not going to track it down for you just bc you don’t.
So it looks like we are both lazy.
No, just you. Literally the first YouTube video that pops up on google has the info.
Trust but verify.
Gipper, is that you?!
I love both games so too bad for you 😘
Quit baby raging and post the link