For those wondering about the minimalism of the new marketing strategies, Nirolak provided some insight in the MEA release date thread that was very helpful in informing me why more companies are going this route:
So basically, EA is hoping it can start a huge information rush at the end of January (per Shinobi) and carry the momentum for two months of heavy marketing, thereby saving a ton of marketing money and losing potentially few, maybe no, and in a bizarre sense maybe even increasing sales.
See, this would make more sense...
... If we didn't already have three years of insufferably vague, pointless fluff and nondescript, barely informative teasers.
See, they HAVE been showing off the game. EXTENSIVELY. But they've been showing it off BADLY. They've been focusing on the same material, the same focus, over and over for ages. But they haven't shown off the stuff that most Mass Effect fans actually care about, instead focusing on the more banal aspects of the game. And they've been doing a substandard job now for multiple years and multiple press conferences.
This isn't them going "silent" so much as it is being SO uninformative and stingy with any worthwhile content that it's currently backfiring and causing fans and journalists alike to wonder if the game has been suffering development difficulties, whether the game is being rushed to launch, and whether - after all these years - there is actually something substantial there at ALL or are we merely being strung along on a never-ending trickle of false hopes and dodgy gameplay demos.
The Gamespot guys summed up how I've felt this go-around; I'm a HUGE Mass Effect fan, but for the prior three games I saw what they were doing and went "I KNOW this is going to be awesome!", but for this game, for years now to this very day, I instead keep going "I HOPE this will be awesome".
I've said before how I think cramming all worthwhile info into a giant, massive tsunami of marketing a couple months before release is a horrible idea. For starters, the anti-hype has kicked in already and I think EA SEVERELY misread those charts about how influential marketing can be, because this is a very unique case of a possibly great game dropping the ball with material to the point its most ardent fans are concerned and underwhelmed at a point when they should be ecstatic. EA has to recover that lost ground, and it's stupid and insulting that they even have to do that since marketing's only job is to build excitement and anticipation for their game - not address the issues of their own prior marketing.
But as I've said before, spacing meaningful bits of marketing out over the months and years allows that content to stand out and form a strong, solid impression of that particular feature, world, story beat, character, gameplay mechanic, etc. The public doesn't have a good attention span, so it might make sense to cram it all in at the end, but that instead creates a giant sea of info noise where no one feature or character or mechanic stands out and it all just mingles together in a collective fog of info. It's a poor way to build or maintain hype because it's trading a slow crescendo to a bombastic finale (Launch Day) to instead a PAINFULLY slow hype cycle where 95% of the time is spent promising that the good stuff is coming. It would be like a long movie promising that the final 10 minutes of its 3 hours will be worth it, but how long do they expect you to wait? Now, instead, stretch that time out over 3 years, and that's the marketing cycle of this game.
I've said it before, but there IS an art and a tact to marketing and info distribution, but even by what Bioware/EA has revealed to us fails on its own merits because it misses fundamental presentation tactics and good advertising design. It's disjointed as all hell, lacks any sort of game cohesion, and leaves viewers more lost than engaged, depriving fans and viewers of context, substance, or connective tissue to formulate an idea of what the "complete package" of the game even remotely is. That's marketing's one and only job - to get players interested.
They are failing, in my opinion, and I've cut them more breaks than almost anybody. I'm fully in on this game, but exclusively based on the pedigree of prior games - NOT this one.
And I'm not cynical and I don't want to be negative about it. Geez, I want to be excited for this game. I want to tell you all how hyped I am. I want to discuss how interesting Vetra looks, how lively the planet stations are, how intuitive the controls look, how immersive the dialogue appears, and how imaginative the new galaxy is. I want something - ANYTHING - meaty to chew on and, in turn, discuss with my friends, fellow fans, and everyone here.
And the frustration at my inability to do so, due to how little we actually know, and how vague and inconclusive everything else is, leaves me with the entirely wrong emotions for how I want to feel. Everything we've seen is so tenuously described, so abstract in presentation, so disjointed in execution, it can only remind me of my lowest point with the series:
... I'm so sick of speculating about this game.
