Every year, the video gaming industry honors some of the biggest names in this sector at the annual Game Awards ceremony in downtown Los Angeles. This lavish event celebrates past achievements and gets industry insiders under the same roof. This year, we saw gaming studios like Hazelight Studios take home the most prestigious honor. They won the Game of the Year and the Best Family Game awards for the action-adventure online game It Takes Two.
The 2021 Game Awards
Like most award shows, the Game Awards has multiple agendas. For many watching — the remote version of the event accumulated 83 million live streams in 2020 — the awards are just an exciting add-on feature. The main attraction, it turns out, is seeing the premieres and debut trailers of upcoming games.
The 2021 Game Awards did not disappoint. Several new games were announced, and viewers were given new, in-depth looks at hotly anticipated titles. By far, though, the most talked-about game of the night was the upcoming fantasy game Elden Ring developed by FromSoftware.
The Marketing Build Up To Elden Ring
For the second year in a row, Elden Ring won Most Anticipated Game of the Year, a nod at the game’s popularity that’s only going to grow more now that a new trailer for the dark fantasy action RPG dropped at the Game Awards. News that fans can order exclusive pre-order bonuses for Elden Ring has also added to the hype around the game. They can also purchase collectors’ editions of Elden Ring.
It’s not surprising FromSoftware decided to market the game this way. Offering incentives to attract traditional players to new games is something we’ve seen done in gaming for the past few decades. For instance, any game mechanic, such as the glory kill system in Doom (2016), is designed to appeal to a player’s motivation. In other words, game mechanics are incentive motivation systems.
Conversely, gaming platforms have also used bonuses and promotions to incentivize new players to try traditional games. For example, online casino platforms tend to do the latter. For years, online casinos have offered dozens of incentives to new customers to get them to play conventional games like blackjack or roulette. For instance, according to the review site CasinoSmash, most platforms offer new players free spins bonuses, which is where you can get free spins with no deposit to win real money. What that means is, when you get free spins with no deposit, you get access to a no deposit bonus. This bonus lets you keep whatever you win with no additional strings attached.
What Do We Know About Elden Ring?
The new trailer for Elden Ring focuses more on the game’s cinematic story. It also explores the lore and narrative foundations of the game, created by George R.R. Martin, the author of the A Song of Ice and Fire series. Martin’s series became so popular in the late 2000s that it was turned into an HBO television series in 2011.
Elden Ring is set in the Lands Between. Players will start the game with a linear opening, but they will soon be able to move around the open-world map. They can explore the six main areas of the Lands Between, in addition to catacombs and fortresses. Elden Ring will feature elements similar to those in the Souls series and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
Fortunately for PlayStation and Xbox Users, Elden Ring is coming to these platforms on February 25, 2022. You can also access Elden Ring, played in a third-person perspective, on Microsoft Windows.
The gaming industry is one where past successes still play a role in future achievements. Elden Ring is one of the most anticipated games of the year, and it’s proving that way not just because of its cinematic story but because players are receiving several different promotions ahead of the game’s release.
