What was EA thinking with that Knockout City ad?

[Camjo-Z]

So in yesterday's Nintendo Direct they had a trailer for an upcoming dodgeball-themed game from EA called Knockout City, except instead of making it about the game or its characters like any normal trailer would do, it was mostly devoted to a goofy Drawn Together-esque setup about a bunch of completely unrelated parody characters being on a team together, with the pixelated Princess Charm being a notable standout with her extremely good animation and spunky personality.



Immediately after it ended I thought "okay, I can't be the only one who found that initial premise to be cooler than the rest of the trailer" and sure enough, look up Knockout City on Twitter and most of the discussion is people more interested in the parody characters rather than the actual game (with Princess Charm in particular getting a ton of fanart). Hilariously, one of the artists who worked on the animation revealed in a now-deleted Tweet that it was done by a different studio and that they knew almost nothing about the game:

So where does EA go from here? Will they add the characters from the trailer to the game to ride the unexpected wave of popularity, greenlight a completely new game starring them, or do nothing and simply let this go down as a huge marketing fail that sold people on a game that doesn't actually exist?

 

[_zoipi]

Really shows how EA cares about this game. This will be another case of Rocket Arena or Ninjala.

 

[Deleted member 401]

Princess Charm has developed quite a fan art following...

 

[Deleted member 21709]

Bizarre and disconnected strategy. The princess was the only thing I remember from that presentation.

 

[KamenSenshi]

People will get over it. The character types seem to be in the game just not the particular designs from the "interviews".

 

[DeoGame]

It was weird. I think the goal was to show the game has four quadrant appeal to all gamers, but I just wanted to play the game where pottymouthed RPG Maker Princess, WoW Orc, Jonesy, and Seargent Calhoun and Ninja's lovechild play dodgeball.

 

[Heruderu]

EA? Probably do nothing.

The premise of the ad had me way more interested than the game, though I think the game looks fun and EA did it a disservice by messing up the ad.

 

[samred]

I spent the second half of the trailer saying out loud over and over, "What the fuck?" Exact same takeaway here.

EA sure knows how to doom lookalike games-as-a-service products. (Remember Rocket Arena? Which isn't even a year old yet?) How Apex Legends crawled out of their PR team's ooze to success is still beyond me.

 

[DeoGame]

I spent the second half of the trailer saying out loud over and over, "What the fuck?" Exact same takeaway here.

EA sure knows how to doom lookalike games-as-a-service products. (Remember Rocket Arena? Which isn't even a year old yet?) How Apex Legends crawled out of their PR team's ooze to success is still beyond me.

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Apex was shadowdropped so it was designed to be picked up on a whim and ended up taking the world by storm.

 

[PAFenix]

Like.... I was waiting to see a big orc guy in the game but no he's just....playing a dude in the game. Same with the princess lol

The non-gameplay aspects of the trailer were definitely more interesting than the game itself, unfortunately.

 

[Deleted member 21709]

I spent the second half of the trailer saying out loud over and over, "What the fuck?" Exact same takeaway here.

EA sure knows how to doom lookalike games-as-a-service products. (Remember Rocket Arena? Which isn't even a year old yet?) How Apex Legends crawled out of their PR team's ooze to success is still beyond me.

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I know it is, but Apex Legends doesn't feel like an EA game to me.

 

[akilshohen]

Really shows how EA cares about this game. This will be another case of Rocket Arena or Ninjala.

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I thought it was something connected to Fortnite at first.

 

[Soap]

Reminded me of the awful raid shadow legends YouTube adverts.

 

[Goddo Hando]

at least they used a good song in the trailer with Love's Seven & Seven

 

[Cokomon]

Yeah, my initial thought before the dodgeball game play was shown was, "is this some sort of smash clone or hero shooter starring parody video game characters?"

 

[Raigor]

I spent the second half of the trailer saying out loud over and over, "What the fuck?" Exact same takeaway here.

EA sure knows how to doom lookalike games-as-a-service products. (Remember Rocket Arena? Which isn't even a year old yet?) How Apex Legends crawled out of their PR team's ooze to success is still beyond me.

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Are you seriously comparing the indie offering with Respawn titles?

EA Originals label was all about picking indies and give them a spotlight, they were never going to do crazy stuff with marketing and exposure.

 

[not_smiff]

They messed up. I want to play as the cartoon characters in a party game of some sort. The game looks kinda cool but I'm distracted now

 

[GamerJM]

The thing I actually wanted the most out of the trailer was a game with a bunch of characters from completely mismatching art styles. It would be really fun to have an RPG with a pixelated princess and a WoW-looking orc.

 

[aceldama]

Hilariously, one of the artists who worked on the animation revealed in a now-deleted Tweet that it was done by a different studio and that they knew almost nothing about the game

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When I read something like this it just makes me think the publisher doesn't have that much faith in the game.

 

[Meelow]

Like.... I was waiting to see a big orc guy in the game but no he's just....playing a dude in the game. Same with the princess lol

The non-gameplay aspects of the trailer were definitely more interesting than the game itself, unfortunately.

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I'm not going to lie, when I saw the Big Orc guy I thought it was from World of Warcraft, I was like "Are we about to see WoW come to Switch?! :O"


Nope lol.

 

[mrmoose]

Yeah the disconnect was unreal. I was like "hey, a mishmash of character designs in a coop game? I don't know how they'll do it but cool" and then the actual game footage came on and it was like Ninjala 2.0?

 

[Djalminha]

Honestly I was pretty distracted and thought the game was a new mode for Fortnite. The levels seemed huge for the player count and mechanics, it looked pretty bad but what do I know.

Princess Charm is cool though, EA should donate her to an RPG or something.

 

[IDreamOfHime]

It felt like a trailer that was being interrupted by intrusive youtube ads for shitty mobile games. Very meta...but that's not actually what they were going for.

 

[Regiruler]

I don't really like hodgepodge art styles tbh so I'm fine with that being absent from the game, although if they were actually trying to implement that in the character design somehow they did an abysmal job.

 

[Servbot24]

Looked like a game developed by a market research team to me.

 

[Plinkerton]

Maybe they realised their game looks like Generic: The Video Game, and decided to add a bunch of unrelated characters into the trailer in the hope that even one person would care.

And it clearly worked. This thread wouldn't exist otherwise.

 

[Niklel]

Personally didn't like this trailer. Though it was Fortnite until they showed the gameplay.
As for the gameplay, it looks like it's going to be another "Rocket arena", tbh.

 

[IneptEMP]

Reminds me of that ad for the game Blur. I don't think ads using made-up characters with conflicting artstyles really works

 

[whoamiifnotwhoiam]

I found it so weird. When i saw the Knockout City gameplay starting to roll i was like... Did they mix the trailers? It was so out of place. The animation itself is top notch though, amazing work from the people who did it!

 

[Lord Fanny]

Really shows how EA cares about this game. This will be another case of Rocket Arena or Ninjala.

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Yeah the disconnect was unreal. I was like "hey, a mishmash of character designs in a coop game? I don't know how they'll do it but cool" and then the actual game footage came on and it was like Ninjala 2.0?

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I thought Ninjala ended up being pretty successful?

 

[mrmoose]

I thought Ninjala ended up being pretty successful?

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I didn't mean it like this thing is going to fail, it was just wildly different than what I was expecting given the build up.

 

[Richietto]

Yeah I thought it was a me problem for thinking it didn't make any fuckin' sense.

 

[Camjo-Z]

Maybe they realised their game looks like Generic: The Video Game, and decided to add a bunch of unrelated characters into the trailer in the hope that even one person would care.

And it clearly worked. This thread wouldn't exist otherwise.

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Well, if the goal was to get people talking about a game that they wouldn't have otherwise, then mission accomplished. I'm not sure if those people will go on to actually play the game though.

 

[Zomba13]

I was much more interested in the dodgeball game separate from the weird talking head videogame characters. That was distracting and weird and needlessly confusing. The dodgeball game looked like a fun Splatoon or Ninjala style competitive multiplayer game with a unique gimmick.

 

[larrybud]

I thought the interview scenes were real, real boring and perhaps even a tad cringey. just completely flat and trying way too hard. but I guess it's made more with kids in mind

 

[Edge]

It was so awful I would already bet money on the game being DOA and never being talked about a week after release.

 

[Don Fluffles]

I'm in the opposite end. I can't be the only one who found the script so clichéd and cringy.

I personally look forward to the gameplay though.

 

[QisTopTier]

Reminds me of that ad for the game Blur. I don't think ads using made-up characters with conflicting artstyles really works

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RACE LIKE A BIG BOY

rated everyone 10 and up

 

[NLCPRESIDENT]

Looked like a game developed by a market research team to me.

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.

 

[NinjaScooter]

The game itself didn't look all that special to me, but it seemed pretty obvious that the way it was presented was meant to be "This is the game other game characters play" which is why they went with the super generic WoW style orc, CoD style soldier, and retro 2D princess. I doubt most people who watched it are going to read that much into how it was presented, or that its going to have some negative effect either way on how the actual game itself is received.

 

[NightShift]

The game totally feels like it had a FAR more interesting pitch. With the trailer as well as the very Jet Set Radio looking logo, you'd expect it to be a lot more visually interesting. I bet the devs were forced to stick strictly to the safe cartoony artstyle because Overwatch.

 

[aiswyda]

I spent the second half of the trailer saying out loud over and over, "What the fuck?" Exact same takeaway here.

EA sure knows how to doom lookalike games-as-a-service products. (Remember Rocket Arena? Which isn't even a year old yet?) How Apex Legends crawled out of their PR team's ooze to success is still beyond me.

Click to shrink...

Oh my god my SO was talking about Rocket Arena last night and I fully thought he was talking about Rocket League until I read this right now and realized that's a different game.

 

[Gangster Gastino]

It was awful.

 

[GlowingBovine]

I was thoroughly confused because I was only able to half pay attention and I remember thinking "These in-game models don't look like the talking head portions..."

Such an odd marketing decision.

 

[ILikeFeet]

the reveal was strange. the game looks boring and it's like they tried to come up with something to make it interesting. but even then, they settled on something that was of no relation to the game

 

[Statux]

I loved Soldier Guy and I will play anything that stars him

 

[Hero of Legend]

I agree that to me if must've been HEAVILY focus-tested. It does reek of being too similar to Overwatch and Fortnite and yeah, the trailer characters gave a very different vibe than it ended up being.

It's sad since this is the team behind Mario Kart Live, formed by the founders of Vicarious Visions. The pedigree is there, but feels very wasted at the moment. I hope Velan have another new IP in the works directly with Nintendo.

 

[HustleBun]

It was a really, really bad trailer. Wow/Moba/COD jokes are so old and played out. It was also really ballsy to show all those different character artstyles only to reveal that the game itself looks really plain and devoid of any personality.

People seemed to love that princess though. Shame she has nothing to do with the game.

 

[ghibli99]

Yeah, I had no idea what I was watching, and was waiting for it to somehow tie everything together, but... it didn't.

 

[ChristianH94]

I mean honestly, I'll tell exactly what they were thinking, "how do we get people to pay attention and talk about a dodgeball game?" Whether or not they were successful was another story. This game looks sort of fun but as much as i hate to say it, I can guarantee if they just showed gameplay alone with just text that said like "NEW DODGEBALL GAME, MULTIPLAYER MAYHEM, FREETOPLAY!!!" nobody would care