Sidhe Interactive
Marketing
Scenes from Sidhe Interactive's Rugby Leauge 2 game (Click to enlarge)
Throughout development of a game the team works with the Sidhe marketing department and the publisher's marketing department. Project development depends on whether a game is an original, or is a franchised or licensed product. However the process is generally the same.
Publishers often want to buy intellectual property from the developers of a game. Sidhe kept the Gripshift copyright, which means if Sidhe does a sequel, they can negotiate from a position of strength.
Developers often work on games where the copyright is owned by someone else as buyers often want something they feel safe with – such as a Harry Potter game – rather than risk buying a new game they haven't heard of. Buying a film licence in order to develop an associated game means there is an established audience but the licence costs a lot.
In some cases Sidhe develops design and marketing documents. These identify who the market is and why the game is going to be successful; looking at precedents, competitors, the 'x' factor in the game.
A demonstration game is put together for marketing purposes. This is a very iterative process but the advantage of this over a prototype in that it has all the graphics but is only a small portion of the game. Sidhe uses this when pitching to publishers around the world in the hope that one will come on board and fund the rest of the development. At this point the team would be expanded to work on the game as a whole.
In order to be able to sell to a wide audience the company set out to make sure Gripshift had the lowest rating; these being done through the Entertainment Software Ratings Board. This was not a problem graphically or code-wise as there is nothing, such as blood, which would lead to a higher rating. However with the music (using New Zealand artists) some words, e.g. 'champagne' had to be bleeped out otherwise it would have been put up to a teen rating. There are some stores which won't stock games over a certain rating.
