Question about Spark'd and budget marketing vs improvement

Beardedgeek

So... I finally, watched some Spark'd.
It is exactly as pointless, fake and boring as i suspected it to be.

But more importantly, why? And if why, who paid? I hope EA got a freebie, because paying any kind of that kind of money into a marketing campaign (which is what this is, it is 100% about marketing) instead of putting all that money and more into fixing and responding to feedback is the wrong decision.

It does indeed highlight a number of issues at least:
1. Sims is not a game that is meant for any kind of competition.
2. Simmers are not naturally competitive people
3. Fake Drama is Fake Drama.
4. Sims 4 is not a good tool to tell stories in.

Now can we please go back to fix the game?

alanmichael1

I didn't like Sparkd either, but I think it would be naive to believe that the franchise can survive without marketing. I hope they know what they're doing. For me the strange Sparkd shows underlined the growing cultural separation between America and Western Europe, something that I have also felt while watching recent Hollywood movies. Everything is so exaggerated and artificial without charm.

babajayne

In the articles about Spark’d it cites the sponsor and it’s EA.

I would definitely rather see the money spent on development.

logion

I assume that it was an investment that they did to get new people interested in the game, mainly people from Buzzfeed.

It also sounds a lot like what EA's CEO Andrew Wilson talked about when he said that he wanted to bring competition and social interaction to the sims. Maybe this was Maxis effort to do that.

Beardedgeek

logion wrote: »

I assume that it was an investment that they did to get new people interested in the game, mainly people from Buzzfeed.

It also sounds a lot like what EA's CEO Andrew Wilson talked about when he said that he wanted to bring competition and social interaction to the sims. Maybe this was Maxis effort to do that.

Well it is 100000000000000000000 times better than actual in-game multiplayer. I mean the guy doesn't give a (insert flowers here) about players or games, he would love to turn Sims into Fortnite.

SimsLovinLycan

Reality competition shows are lame as it is. They've been a plague upon out television sets for the past 20 years, and I long for their complete obliteration. That being said, a Sims-themed one is basically the burnt scrapings at the bottom of the T.V. stew pot. It should never have happened.

Then again, it's also a sign of how far this franchise has fallen. Good word of mouth and people sharing the game with friends, family, colleagues, and online viewers used to be the main way that people learned about and got into this series. That sort of word-of-mouth advertising doesn't work nearly as well for TS4 because of its increasingly glaring flaws, so they've had to resort to something as crass and base as a reality T.V. competition because, to them, it's cheaper than actually fixing the game.

Simmingal

I do feel like EA really should sort out that marketing biased budgeting of theirs

we keep having this or that marketing campaign when really they should just give developers more room to make awesome packs and updates so people want to play even without some ridiculous advertising

and also yes i hated sparkd edit style so much because they were constantly trying to make things toxic even when everyone in the show was tryna have wholesome vibes

popstarsley

Budgets don’t necessarily work like that. If they didn’t do the show, doesn’t automatically mean that money goes to development instead.

I have a feeling this opportunity had more to do with the leveraging a tie-in with Buzzfeed and promoting the game via their channels to reach younger audiences. There were huge Buzzfeed as campaigns, sponsored articles about the game and the show, and of course the Buzzfeed Multiplayer tie-in with Kelsey I. That advertising alone was probably worth 100x the production value of the show itself.

Beardedgeek

popstarsley wrote: »

Budgets don’t necessarily work like that. If they didn’t do the show, doesn’t automatically mean that money goes to development instead.

I have a feeling this opportunity had more to do with the leveraging a tie-in with Buzzfeed and promoting the game via their channels to reach younger audiences. There were huge Buzzfeed as campaigns, sponsored articles about the game and the show, and of course the Buzzfeed Multiplayer tie-in with Kelsey I. That advertising alone was probably worth 100x the production value of the show itself.

I am well aware how budgets work; it is just very typical of large companies to continue to try to hype a knowingly faulty product.