Marketing games is certainly different than it was years ago. With so many gamers being active consumers, as in they often have their ear to the ground and know what they like, it can be hard to get someone to buy something with a bus ad or TV commercial.
This is a sentiment shared by Larian's Michael Douse. The publishing director for the Baldur's Gate III developer outlined his opinion when speaking to PC Gamer. "Marketing is dead. It truly is - I can back this shit up, man," he began.
"There's no channels anymore—it doesn't work. You used to have marketing, communication, and PR. Marketing was essentially a retail theory—you were trying to get your box on the right point of the store shelf, and you have partnerships with retail stores. Those pipelines are gone. Now you've got the internet. Nobody is looking at ads anymore ... all of the channels that we would usually market through are no longer really viable," he continued. "So their function is also reduced by the fact that players just want to be spoken to. They don't want to be bamboozled—they just want to know what you're making and why you're making it and who it's for."
We still see plenty of adverts nowadays, but it often feels as if gamers are already following the developers, publishers, and genres they want to see ahead of time. To get something to really cross barriers in the vein of a Baldur's Gate III is rather rare nowadays, but it can be done.