Marketing Through a Trusted Crowd of Humans Works on Me and I'm Glad to be Playing Hades

Ask your brain and wallet if Hades is right for you.

Anyhoo. Hades is so good.

I buy new games infrequently. My estimation of someone who buys games often is average one or more games a month. If you're talking weekly game purchases that's someone who buys games with great frequency. Once every 3 to 6 months is about how often I buy a new game.

I finally finished Spiderman on the PS4. Once I got into it after shelving it for a long time I'd say it took about 5 months of being my go-to game to complete the main quest and all the side quests and collecting.

What to play next? I have more DLC to play in Borderlands 3. I'm playing the Love and Tentacles adventure. Solid choice to return to, that was my go-to game for over a year. Variety is nice too. Maybe there's other options out there.

People kept talking about Hades

Marketing through a trusted crowd of humans works.

Traditional marketing works too. Put together a product people love and share it with the world in campaigns coming from the company that made the game. That's a healthy approach that will reach a lot of people given investment in marketing. The audience will get a chance to know about a new game they'll likely love.

The Supergiant Games team did a great job making a game that people would want to talk about. Combine that with doing the hard work of getting the word out worldwide for the early access and full game releases and that's a great game company machine.

Because I buy games infrequently I'm not always on the hunt for new game information. The regular messaging getting the word out about Hades missed me.

But the people in my social feeds talking about Hades didn't miss me. My hunch is this is a hybrid of Hades fans genuinely celebrating a game they love combined with paid promotion to help more people notice the love happening. Total hunch educated guessing and I'll share why. It's a mix of considering how social platforms operate, the need for folks at a game studio needing to market a game, and how we humans are always looking for what to trust. Our social feeds give us a signal of what to trust when we start celebrating a particular idea, story, character, or product.

Social trust signals and buying stuff reminds me of a project.

A few years back I was a co-designer and co-builder of the original Awesome Shop for a big retailer based out of Minneapolis, MN. Feel confident I can talk about it publicly since we did multiple public speaking engagements as a team back in the day. A portion of Awesome Shop's hypothesis was that engagement and purchases would follow what people saw the crowd liking. We tested these ideas and observed this resonance between people loving certain products and that's a signal to others.

As a UX designer I work to be aware of the mechanisms what features, products, things I'm presented. I wonder how they got there and why.

I went from not knowing the game Hades existed, to kind of wanting the game, to deciding for sure I should learn more, then buying the game. Feels like design mechanisms doing their work, like a well made and well met funnel or user journey.

When people talk about something and are sharing their honest love and celebration of the thing, that shows up and feels different than an ad campaign. If there are or were ads for Hades, they haven't reached me. I learned about the game from people in my social feeds. People in my feed were creating fan art, fan fiction, and talking about their experiences playing the game.

Marketing through a trusted crowd of humans works on me.

UX design is a powerful practice. Creators and companies using design well put it to use with great respect, inclusion, and principled ethical goals. I get suspicious of any feelings around someone shaping my behavior. If it's nudged and shaped by an organization's product and I don't feel like we're on the same page. If I feel talked at not spoken with. If there's a choice ahead I'm not ready for, convinced, or feeling a trust signal and that's when an app gets cheeky with word choices, I start to back away and look for other options. Worth noting where things can go wrong.

I see that Hades funnel and celebrate the magic of it. Learning that the game Hades exists and I saw enough people in love with the game to buy it, that's a service I appreciate. The systems of game development, publishing, marketing, social awareness all worked together so well and that's kind of amazing.

So many parts to that picture. So many places it could go wrong but it didn't.

Signal gets sent. Starting from a company making a great game to an audience's genuine love of the game to some person who infrequently buys games finding out. Signal received.

Why am I talking about UX in what should be a reading-watching-playing journal post? I like to think about systems as its own practice and reward. Also, it's useful to collect real examples of how systems work with and on us humans.

Focusing on the game itself, I've played a few hours so far and have the Nintendo Switch version and I love it. What can I say that hasn't already been said? Still though, I don't mind adding a few drops in the ocean of positive regard for Hades.

Why I Wish to Add to the Hades Love Party

Hades takes every moment it can to be charming with feedback and empowering with choices. Every character leaves a distinct impression.

The action game aspect of Hades is a battle through a randomly generated dungeon map and encounters with creatures who want to harm you and sometimes creatures who want to help. Weapons, magic, bonuses are there to choose and manage and experiment with to see what helps you get through the dungeon. You feel powerful yet keep finding dangers just a little beyond and get outmatched. But then you get to try again.

When you lose all your health, it's back to the House of Hades and that's where you do more management and character interaction.

It's a story of Zagreus, prince of the underworld who feels ready to leave the controlling grasp of his father, Hades. As you run through the underworld and fail, you earn ways to permanently make you stronger. Many of the magical creatures and gods around you want you to succeed.

You're a young adult working to find a way into the world beyond your home of origin. Get out of my head Hades. I'm not a young adult anymore but still, how resonant is that theme?

Hades has a resonant story, incredibly well done art, music, game play, and level design. I know this because I'm thinking of the characters, humming the tunes, and thinking of solutions to the dungeon encounters even when I'm not playing.

I get why people are making fan art and stories and talking so much about Hades.