Cary Kwok has been doing public relations since 1999 and specifically video games since 2006. A lot has changed in that time.
“Almost 20 years ago, PR was still very much geared towards core gamers,” she says GamesIndustry.biz. “We’ve been working with gaming-loving media to ensure the game takes center stage and that we’ve had great Metacritic scores. It was very important to be able to talk to the core. But by 2022 there will still be a lot of people who wouldn’t call themselves gamers but play video games. The audience has changed dramatically.”
For the first 11 years in the sector, Kwok worked for Golin, representing Nintendo during the transformative Wii era, before joining Rogers & Carr to manage Activision Blizzard’s lifestyle PR for five years. In October she left this team to join BerlinRosen to lead their first steps into the games industry.
“After the end of last year with everything going on with Activision, I just felt like I needed a change and I needed to do something different,” she says. “I took this as a great opportunity as it’s time to do game PR differently, not always the same age.
“I think this is a time when the games industry needs something different, and I think we just need to bring different elements to the table together for the industry.”
First of all, gaming PR teams face a wider range of challenges than they have faced in past decades. The spate of reports exposing toxic workplaces and other issues at companies ranging from AAA giants like Activision Blizzard and Ubisoft to indie darlings like Fullbright means PR teams must help these firms convey what instead of promoting video games, they do the problems and fix their reputations. While still promoting video games.
Kwok’s advice to any company facing such scrutiny is that whenever possible, “prevention is better than crisis management”.
“There are still skeletons in companies where it’s slowly being uncovered,” she says. “You have to admit it. PR is all about messages, not lies or spiders. If the truth is actually being told, I think it’s really important for the company to admit it and not try to deflect it or try to use something else to cover it up and divert people’s attention.
“If you keep saying ‘I’ll do better and we’ll put all these things in place’ as a checkbox and not necessarily as a serious attempt to improve the situation, you’re just delaying communication, you’re delaying storytelling. You might buy a few rounds of messages, but eventually people will come back and check on you. The story will not go away. Brands just need to realize that if you have done something unfortunate in the past that needs to be corrected, correct it. As humans, we don’t expect perfection – especially in the gaming industry at this point – but we eagerly seek and seek improvement and change.”
Inevitably, such companies need to do PR for their upcoming games; They’re still a business, and companies need to sell products. But when we promote upcoming games, there will inevitably be questions from the media — and that’s how, says Kwok, it’s meant to be.
“Brands just need to realize that if you’ve done something unfortunate in the past, you need to put it right.”
“When people watch your game, they look at who you are as a brand and what you do with your people,” she says. “As a brand, you should expect it, and every time it comes up, you have to make sure you’re consciously making a lot of effort to improve the situation for a reporter to ask, ‘What are you doing in this situation?’ and you really have some good progress to share, it’s a chance to share this with the wider public to show that you’re really changing and trying to improve.
Reflecting on her own experience as an Activision Blizzard representative, Kwok says the situation “came upon us… no one was expecting it.” The most immediate task was to coordinate the approach – which is particularly important when topics relating to your company are covered so extensively.
“Employees read stories every day, just like reporters ask these questions. So what’s being told internally — whether it’s through Slack channels or internal emails — versus how executives communicate externally with media, that’s extremely important,” she says. “I think they did an amazing job in that. There is still a work in progress as they commit to doing better things, I believe they have done it. Have they gotten to the point where they can get back on track? It’s subjective depending on who you’re talking to.
“It’s a slow process to rebuild a brand, so preventing it in the first place is far more important than trying to fix it afterwards. It will take a year to build a brand, but it will take 10 years to rebuild if something like this happens.”
Another PR challenge is whether or not to take a stance on broader issues outside of the game. In this year alone, we’ve seen publishers and developers speak out against the invasion of Ukraine and the repeal of abortion rights in the US. Game companies are becoming much more active when it comes to speaking out on political and sensitive issues, but this needs to be handled properly.
“Brands tend to jump in and just go for it because they feel like they’re expected to say something,” says Kwok. “But making sure your stance on a given issue fits who you are and that you can back it up with what you believe in and that your actions speak as loud as your words – all of that is really important.” It may not be as important as it used to be where it hasn’t been a focus area for games PR in the past, but it’s absolutely a must.”
Even without these challenges, PR’s role has expanded as video game audiences have grown – something Kwok has dabbled with since her days at Nintendo. The platform owner’s mission, especially during the Wii and DS era, was to bring gaming to the masses.
“Unfortunately, it took a pandemic for it to really become established the way we envisioned it,” she says.
This requires further changes in how PR is handled, she says. In her experience, game companies typically split who is responsible for their communications, often into a corporate communications team, one for internal communications, and one for product PR. But with a much broader audience — or perhaps more accurately, so many audiences — that may no longer be the ideal approach.
“Brands tend to jump in and just try because they feel like they’re expected to say something. But it is important that your attitude suits you.”
“It’s paramount now to make sure you have a cohesive function that overlooks the different audiences, or that all those different aspects need to be in much closer contact as they communicate for the benefit of cohesive storytelling – whether you’re telling your staff the story or whether you’re telling the fan,” she says.
She continues, “How do you tell a story about games and a game and the studio behind it while making sure it resonates with as many different types of audiences as possible?”
As gaming audiences have grown, Kwok emphasizes that it’s still important to reach core audiences through avid and specialized gaming media – even at a time when publishers can promote games directly to consumers, or YouTubers, Twitch streamers, and other influencers court to appear as such evangelists.
“Your core gaming audience is still very used to going to core gaming enthusiast media to get their feedback, their scores, their reviews, and to understand how their peers view a given title,” says you. “It’s absolutely worth it. Even though the gaming audience has grown, you still have your core audience as early adopters for all games, especially franchise fans.
“I think there’s a need for other types of media, or even potentially more enthusiastic media, to be able to speak to the broader audience and to know and recognize that the audience is very different from what it used to be – maybe broadened even more into mobile gaming coverage. Mobile has had a hard time catching even the attention of your top tier gaming enthusiast media for many years, but mobile is way more relevant than it used to be and way more important than it used to be.
Again, Kwok emphasizes how much gaming audiences have changed and the importance of having a diverse spectrum of voices on your team to better understand how to reach that audience.
“You have to make sure you talk to them from the start,” she says. “You need the same level of diversity internally when planning your messaging to reach that larger audience.
“This industry was very male-dominated and we know that. I am pleased that more effort is being made to bring in this diversity. Honestly as an individual I’ve never been able to say who I am so out loud, as an Asian American female working on the agency side and I really feel like I should use my experience to help clients to help. I felt like I always had to minimize who I am and try not to look different in order to fit into this core audience world. But it’s a good sign that after 20 years I feel comfortable showing who I really am and why I’ve earned this seat at the table and why it matters to me.”