Piotr Siuda, Dariusz Reguła, Jakub Majewski, Anna Kwapiszewska
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Cyberpunk 2077 's negative reception stood in striking contrast to the pre-release hype around the video game built by the producer's marketing campaign and the gaming press. This study examines a selection of gaming websites, to consider their pre-release Cyberpunk 2077 coverage and the discrepancies between these early reports and the released game. Using inductive conventional content analysis, framed as thematic analysis, 148 press articles were investigated divided into nine subcategories, and three categories. These articles told an almost exclusively positive narrative, promising great performance and features. The uncritical reception of publisher information by journalists allows the authors to propose the notion of “broken promises marketing”. The article contextualizes this term in the gaming ecosystem, arguing that over-optimistic marketing is amplified through features of the online press ecology. Finally, the results are considered from a business ethics perspective, with a set of communications recommendations for both journalists and game publishers.
期刊介绍:
Games and Culture publishes innovative theoretical and empirical research about games and culture within the context of interactive media. The journal serves as a premiere outlet for groundbreaking and germinal work in the field of game studies. The journal"s scope includes the sociocultural, political, and economic dimensions of gaming from a wide variety of perspectives, including textual analysis, political economy, cultural studies, ethnography, critical race studies, gender studies, media studies, public policy, international relations, and communication studies.