Feature: 'Steve Allison On Marketing Midway'

In this exclusive Gamasutra interview, Midway's CMO Steve Allison discusses the publisher's marketing tactics, including cutting ad costs with celebrity interviews, strategically cancelling games, and spending nearly a million dollars testing game concepts. Allison is particularly forthright on market-led testing of game concepts, commenting: “God bless everyone in product development," said Allison. "Product development folks are so focused on things they think are cool, that we end up with every game concept as post-apocalyptic shooter, robots, mechs. There is a place for that, but there’s a place for a couple of those games. We’re going to see ninety-percent of those games fail, and ten-percent make it.” In addition, the cancellation of the Snoop Dogg and John Singleton-associated Midway title Fear & Respect was touched on in similarly frank style by Allison: "We killed Fear and Respect,” Allison explains, “because we have enough data-points to know the hood thing is basically dead. It would be dead before it came out. And you don’t want to come out on a dead vibe." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, including a number of other interesting opinions on today's game biz (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from external websites).