Consumers Vs. NBA2K20 Twitter Edition.
1. For this assignment I decided to focus on one of the biggest social media pillars in Twitter and the biggest basketball game on the market in NBA2k20. Although regarded as the highest selling basketball game of all time and a very good track record of the franchises games NBA2k20 was not a hit with the community to say it lightly. With the public bashing of the digital marketing director Ronnie 2k with the #FireRonnie2k that was trending during the week of the games launch as well as #FixNBA2k20 monecur trending on twitter this game to put it lightly was trash. What interested me about this product was the absolute slander it got on twitter and the extreme hate that the community manager gets on ever single little thing he does.
2. With NBA 2k, 2k's value proposition is quite an easy one to sell as they are the only real life simulation NBA basketball game on the market so they can sell it to any desperate basketball fan looking to play with there favorite stars and teams in a video game cause there is literally no competition for that spot as NBA Live does not release games anymore. This makes It easy for 2k as half of the time they don't even try to improve the game all that much or add new features simply because they don't need too and still with doing that there product is going to sell the same.
3. I can list so many bad things about the game that people rag on about the game but finding three good things might be tough as twitter fucking hates this game lol.
Bad:
Good:
4. NBA 2k20's launch advertising consisted of trying to sell a new badge archetype system for youre my player, Selling a new story mode for Mycareer a season system to youre my park as well as new events (but it was really just the same park as the year previous) and having the WNBA in the game for the first time ever. None of the actual gameplay really made this the highest selling game of the year because all of the gameplay was super glitchy but what really sold the game to the new comers was the addition of the WNBA into the game which added a much bigger female audience to the game.
5. For the launch of the product digital marketing director went on to Various NBA talk shows to promote the product such as The Jump on ESPN, Sports Center, and even doing his own livestreams. They also to reach to there target market they had you tubers and streamers alike in there commercials playing and promoting the game. They also had pop up ads in there previous game to tell everyone to go buy NBA 2k20 and giving them a discount if they pre-ordered the game through the promo code on 2k19. The marketing team really stooped to pretty ugly practices in marketing for this game as Ronnie2k on his livestreams promised multiple things in the game that would never even be added into the game such as new pie charts for youre my player and a new park to play against youre friends online in and this really upset the community as people went out and bought this game because of the lies Ronnie2k had sold us. The biggest marketing challenge for this brand was the fact that the game wasn't finished and didn't build or create anything new for the latest installment of the franchise. Having to sell a broken product they gave false promises by saying they had features in the game that actually weren't in the game and not fixing the game they were about to release.
6. The company did not respond to the consumers well at all as for the first month or so in the game there was absolutely no where to contact for help as there was no and still no community manager, 2ksupport.com is terrible as the only thing it tells you to do is reboot your console, and requests from players are nearly ever heard from the developers and nothing usually ever gets fixed by the devs. This was definently a bad decision because the players get treated like shit through the entire lifecycle of the game and the only thing they ever want you to do is spend countless amounts of dollars for vc because half the game is locked behind loot boxes and in game purchases and even when you purchase stuff in game they won't even help you at all if you have a problem with any glitches. And worst of all you have the digital marketing director and the face of the franchise going on stream and lying about the product and saying certain NBA players are dickheads as well as telling people in there streams who were talking bad about him that like saying "I will make a good game when youre mom explains to me how she puts up with you as a child".... Yes he actually said this lol.
7. If I was the brand manager I would definitely act a lot more professional and actually try to listen to the community but the biggest thing I would try to do would be hire a community leader as well as implement a support system and try to help hire more developers so I will actually have a good product to promote and to my make consumers happy. The consumers should be the number one priority and right now 2k is not doing that as a company as they keep releasing broken games and ghosting them as soon as they release them. Really putting in more time and money into the game will be a necessity as the owner of 2k is a cheapskate as with having a multibillion dollar company he still won't hire more developers for his games as well as making insane prices and in game purchases and basically creating video game gamboling systems in an E for everyone game. There is so much wrong with NBA 2k right now but under all the mess of what is on top when you get to the core is a really good game but it just need some tweaking and new additions to the game to really make it great again.
8. I learned from this assignment the toxicity of some company's and they lengths they go to too make consumers wallets bleed and the lengths they will go too the tear there consumers down. The developers for the game at least the ones who talk to the community such as Mike Wang, and LD2K are really talented guys and great people but they can't fix the product by themselves as they need good communication from the top to the bottom and right now this company has no communication at all as they don't even have a community manager or a support line as well as a CEO that will give them the money to hire and make one. This made me realize how much 2k is in a lost state right now but all hope is not lost as with the release of the PS5 coming up they can definitely win me over again with a good game.
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