The Bard's Tale Developer Diary #11

In GameSpy's eleventh installment to their Bard's Tale developer diary, InXile's marketing manager discusses several ways the team has marketed the game since day one. A snippet:
Just like the print ad, our trailers are the brainchildren of the development team. Our latest trailer just came out so I hope you have a look-see and tell me what you think. The concept came from our art director, Maxx Kaufman, who said, "why not act out the print ad?". It sounded like a great idea to me but I came up with other trailer concepts to do my job properly. After considering some good alternatives we collectively chose Maxx's idea and then we enlisted a video production company who was comfortable collaborating directly with our animators (an invaluable resource). Once again, the marketing product was an outgrowth of the development team.

I could ramble on for quite a while about numerous other examples of how the development team was directly involved with the marketing of the game but I think you get the point. When you read interviews with Brian Fargo, the answers are actually from Brian and not some PR person who is pretending to be him. When you hear quotes about the game, it's from the creators, not someone who was working on a budget title last week. I strongly believe this marketing model is good for gamers because what you see about the game (The Bard's Tale, in this case) is true to the game and true to the team who made it.