Seth Godwin once said
“The internet eliminates geography”
which I believe to be the absolute backbone of digital tribes.
Digital technology has been the best thing in erasing barriers in communication since the telegraph. The great thing about digital is observation. Here, individualism dissolves as users find others with similar interests and hobbies.
In researching Digital Tribes, I discovered that I myself am part of many. I’m an avid gamer and am extremely in tune with all that goes in the industry. From pre-release development to post-release financial figures. With this, I decided to research digital tribes in the gaming community and boy, are there plenty.
Mostly recently, an exceptional example of a business/developer marketing to
their digital tribe would be Insomniac Games, who in September, released the record breaking highly successful and high earning Spider-Man PS4.
Prior launch, creative director Bryan Intihar, art director, Jacinda Chew and community developer James Stevenson would all interact with eager fans, answering questions and retweeting fan art. Since the launch of the game, they have used the very successful in-game photo mode to share creations that the fans have made.
During development They watched several YouTubers discussing their game and would often take on-board gamer/consumer advise.
For example, YouTuber and founder of the “Spidey-Squad” Evan Filarca suggested that the game should feature the option to perform free-style tricks while swinging from webs over NYC. Two weeks later in a gameplay trailer, the team featured said tricks. Even giving Evans tribe its own in-game mention once the game released in September.
Moving on to some moments of backlash in the gaming tribal community. In 2016, Publisher Activision announced its 13th game in its and highly successful Call of Duty series. The past few games were drastically different to past settings, being much more fast paced. For quite some time, fans of the COD series had been pleading for the series to return its roots as the “boots on ground” game it once was. Instead, the 2016 entry was to
be Infinite Warfare, set in the year 2054. The trailer became the third most disliked YouTube video of all time (3.7m). A year later, the series returned to their roots and released World War 2 which was received quite well. While Infinite Warfare’s trailer was being ripped apart by gamers, competing publisher EA, Battlefield 1 (although their 15th entry) received great praise being set in the first World War. The trailer received 2.2m likes and won over many COD fans as a result.
This year however, due to a poorly planned marketing campaign and the fear of financial jeopardy has delayed the upcoming Battlefield V (although the 16th game in the series – I know these titles don’t make that much sense anymore, but we still buy them). The game has received negative attention for their trailer featuring major historical inaccuracies and forcing an apparent SJW agenda in the game. Game Devs handled the situation on Twitter in a way that brought more negativity.
I believe the message here is that a good business knows when to listen to their consumers but a great business knows when not to.
In 2014, Ubisoft was under serious negative spotlight. Along with Sony’s PlayStation 4, Ubisoft decided to jump on the hype-train and release a number of launch games with the console. The two most notably being Watch Dogs and Assassins Creed Unity. Both games suffered an abundance of problems.
Assassins Creed Unity, the eight entry into the historically set action adventure games. The game was also shown off at E3 2014. The game itself looked and played amazingly. Upon release, the game was poor. Bugs, glitches and obvious drops in frame rate. The game was full of pointless microtransactions, some even costing up to €99.
In 2015, due to some poor PR in relation to female characters being non-playable in AC Unity due to time restraints in the animation department – Ubisoft were under a lot of heat. Later that year, Ubisoft announced for the first time in six years, there would be no annual release of Assassins Creed in the year 2016. Ever since Assassins Creeds first entry in 2007, fans of the series have pleaded with Ubisoft to establish a game in Ancient Egypt. 2017 saw the successful return of the series take place in exactly just that setting while its most recent entry, AC Odyssey has been deemed the best game in the long-running series by many.
There is a lot of opportunities existing in these tribes. The modding community are also another vital tribe in gaming. These skilled gamers are able to code and programme assets themselves, creating in-game objects, audio and even entire different modes. An example to why these people are so important is the fact that Athy native, Brendan Greene modded the popular Arma 2 to have a Battle-Royale mode.
This mode is so popular today that Fortnite is in existence. This free to play game has so influential right now that both Call of Duty and battlefield are including their own battle-royal modes. are the number one trending games in the industry right now. Fortnite earned $296m in April.
Another great example of digital tribes in the gaming community are our vast oceans of endless forums. Here gamers come to discuss upcoming games, current gaming news and even nostalgic games from the past. Said forums can be found on reddit, Gamespot and IGN.
It’s safe to say that digital tribes do indeed exist in the gaming community and will continue to be as active and important as they are today.
UPDATE: 03/12/2018:
The most anticipated game of the year was released October 26th. Earning a record breaking $725m opening weekend, the game is currently listed as the highest rated game for current-gen consoles. Since then, Rockstar (the developer) has gone on to launch the games seriously anticipated online mode via a public beta. Although early reactions are positive – if not neutral, many gamers have a problem with the level of grind involved and the poor reward system that follows. In light of this, Rockstar has issued a statement saying feedback is appreciated changes will be made.
Jack Tells All 