With esports starting to see a lot more frequent media exposure, it’s undoubtedly becoming a space many are eager to join. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the gamer product landscape.
Esports is not far behind the health and fitness industry market where a seemingly never-ending line of products enter the market promising a bigger, stronger and leaner you. In the case of esports, it’s more a better, faster and more professional you.
Sit behind your screen, invest the hours and you too can be a professional gamer. Or so goes the marketing message. Unlike traditional sports, becoming a professional gamer is perceived to be within one’s grasp. And there are all sorts of products to help you get there.
But like the fitness industry, it’s incredibly rare that a new technology is kept secret and made exclusive to one brand for long. Like the protein powders of today, gaming mice try to pack in the highest DPI (Dots per inch) in order to differentiate themselves from the competition. As with protein powders, it’s not always ideal or even necessary to have the highest serving of protein to have a truly beneficial product.
Barring the release of a brand new technology, many product manufacturers catering to budding professional gamers are pretty much the same.
It really boils down to a contradiction of an age old adage your dad probably told you when that girl you asked out to prom said Uhh, no. “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover”.
It is VERY much about what you present on your cover (I’m looking at you Apple zealots) that will sway the spending habits of a young, proud gamer. That’s not to say you can cover up a terrible product with some fancy packaging make-up (really, that only works for Extreme Makeover) but you can certainly pique the interest of a gamer by presenting your product in a way that aligns with their preferred tastes.
How?
Find out what games they play.
Everyone has an artistic style they prefer and video-games bring those preferences to a screen that a gamer has complete control over. Not only do they love the game, they relate to it’s aesthetics on a very personal level. Go ahead and ask a DOTA2 or League of Legends player why they aren’t initially willing to try out a competing game title. Now virtually high-five me. It is really so much about visuals and your customers have already communicated to you what they want.
I buy a lot of gaming merchandise to get a feel for what brands are trying to communicate to their customers and it’s always slightly perturbing to see a neon coloured box with robots on it. Really, when did Robots become the gaming standard? And this applies doubly to those robot advertising videos. Yes, we play games with zero robot-presence but you know what, please show me a sequence of two reject scrap-heap droids fight each other to the death then reveal your product soon after. Excuse me while I collect my wallet that I threw at the screen instead of at your online store.