Q&A: Stefano Petrullo from Renaissance on PR challenges in the year ahead

Well that was an interesting year. According to most commentators, not the best in terms of marquee games, but, as ever, plenty of evidence in the games we did get that the industry is as creative and forward-looking as ever. If nothing else, 2023 will be every bit as fascinating when we come to look back on it.

It wasn’t just about the games of course. Events were back in a big way (apart from E3 of course), NFTs went away just as spectacularly, and we had the year-long soap opera of Microsoft and Sony’s custody battle over Activision Blizzard. How those played out from a comms perspective and what will shape the PR challenges in the year ahead is the subject of this month’s panel. Next up is Stefano Petrullo from Renaissance PR. Enjoy!

It’s fair to say that 2022 wasn’t the greatest year for quality releases or launches… or was it?

I think we probably saw a lesser number of traditional AAA releases and some important games from big publishers were hit by delays. Nevertheless, I still think we saw a good number of decent games launch across the course of the year. I checked earlier and I spent 161 hours completely Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, as well as playing Immortality, Pentiment, and Somerville to name a few. My general feeling is we have a higher number of really good non-traditional AAA productions compared to previous years. I personally found 2022 a really refreshing experience.

E3 aside, it was a full house for live events last year. How do you see expos, conferences and other game events panning out this year?

Events are definitely back, but the legacy of COVID-19 is that we now have an abundance of both physical and digital splashes, and I think we will need a rebalance in 2023. Too many events for the industry to invest in will inevitably lead to a diminished return. I really hope we’ll see E3 back in full swing next year with rejuvenated enthusiasm and strength: I am conscious that changes have to happen with baby steps, but I wish the best of luck to all in the Reedpop team.

As for digital events, what is important to consider is the metric we see as a success. Within the realm of communication, our goal is to generate awareness and then measure it. Far too often we hear as the number of “Wishlists” as the sole parameter of success when it comes to evaluating showcasing at digital events. Whilst Wishlists are undoubtedly a really good metric for publishers, it’s important to realize getting your game into the minds of consumers goes away beyond such polarized measures.

No one event is going to lead to thousands of sales, but rather they’re part of a wider process that places the game in the minds of the consumers. Also, events are never “one size fits all”: We always suggest our clients adopt a curated approach and think about where their audience is rather than signing their titles up at the showcases with the big, big numbers. What I mean with this is, a convention like LudoNarraCon is a great fit for a title with a strong narrative and will likely lead to much more engagement than would be generated at a much bigger and more generic event. So we always suggest our clients to pitch at events that have not only reach but also engagement of the right audience.

How else did the PR landscape change during 2022?

I have always been optimistic about quality journalism but, between the pandemic and now the rise in inflation, I see the traditional media landscape getting smaller and smaller and more SEO oriented. This is not good for anyone and my sympathy goes to all the people that lost a job in 2022 despite being great journalists. On the content creator side, choosing the right people to work with is incredibly important and I am so grateful we have such a great team that balances the audience engagement with the user retention.

At Renaissance, we look at the whole Communications landscape and we find it more and more important to balance all the possible channels within a campaign; utilizing traditional gaming media to set the message and reaching out to content creators to amplify it, with the mainstream media validating it. Each game requires a slightly different mix of those three channels and it is important to use all of them in your communication mix to make sure you never put all of your eggs in one basket.

Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard dominated thinking in 2022. What’s your take? How well did Microsoft and Sony make their respective casse? Will the deal go through, and what will it mean for the industry in the years ahead?

I believe whatever argument you put on each side this is never a black and white situation. I see both points of views.

This is the absolute best time to be a gamer given you can get a lot of value on Game Pass and the general Xbox ecosystem Microsoft has created as well as a very different offer from the PlayStation universe, which thrives on curated exclusives. I believe ultimately it will go through and the market will respond accordingly: I do not see Microsoft crushing Sony if the deal goes through nor vice versa. We have Apple, Google, Amazon, and Nintendo within the whole mix so the scenery is complex and not as catastrophic as some people think it is. Looking at the history of our industry, we never truly had a single platform holder “owning” the market. It will never happen as, if it does, this will be the end of the industry as we know it: the meaning of this acquisition is massive because of the money involved, but I am not expecting an immediate massive power shift that will disadvantage the player.

Putting my hat as a player rather than the CEO of Renaissance, I found myself mesmerized by the discoverability journey I went through with Game Pass that allowed me to discover diamonds like the aforementioned Immortality, Somersville, and Pentiment to name a few. On the other side, just the other day I started Horizon Forbidden West – I know, I’m a bit late – and I love the harmonic differences between the Forza Horizon and Gran Turismo serieses.

There were some spectacular U-turns earlier in the year as gaming companies climbed aboard the NFT hype train, before jumping off again before the next stop. What went wrong for them?

I am not surprised at all. Our industry is always eager to jump on new monetisation opportunities, but I never saw any real value in this for the player – the ultimate judge of what works and what doesn’t. Without going into detail, we have been asked to jump on the bandwagon of promoting NFT, Web 3.0 and Metaverse stuff from the beginning and the money those companies offered to hire our services were significant: I spoke with my team, we looked at it, and we simply do not want to get involved as we do not see the light at the end of the tunnel at this stage.

‘NFT’ as a term just screams negativity at the moment – it will be meaningless for the games industry for a long time and, whilst I respect the possibilities it may offer in the future with a different global landscape, there is no space for it at the moment.

The Oxford word of the year for 2022 was Goblin Mode. What was yours and why?

Mine would be…curation. There are so many amazing tools to help communication professionals to reach people, distributing keys and monitoring coverage, but nothing will ever compete with the curation involved in manually evaluating who we speak with, how we do that, and how we speak like human beings. Too many emails and not enough human interaction can undermine the fact that, believe it or not, we too are people – we’re not PR androids.

Looking at social media, especially Twitter, and reading the subtle class war going on between who is a “PR”, who is a “journalist”, and who are “Influencers” like we are different factions of an RTS like Red Alert just makes me sad. We are not enemies – we are part of an amazing industry and, while we need to pursue our respective interests, we can still be nice humans.

Without blowing your own trumpet too loudly, what was your highlight of the last year (2022) in terms of the PR campaigns that were waged?

would blow the trumpet of our clients rather than ours. As communication professionals we are supposed to be the invisible force that makes things happen rather than pushing our ego forward – despite the fact that I most definitely have an ego and I am culpable of it!  Jokes aside, our big win this year was putting together the best European network I could have dreamt of to work with Level Infinite and help establish Tencent’s presence in European markets.

Also, being honored to win the Best Campaign Award for the global media and content creator launch of The Ascent with Curve at the latest MCV Awards – where I ended up crying in the bathroom – is probably our best win.

What are the PR challenges for the year ahead and how will you be preparing to overcome them?

Staying relevant. Every day since 1991 as a journalist and 1997 as a PR, this has always been the challenge for me both personally and professionally. The industry is always evolving and we see more and more formulaic stuff happening as well as companies doing stuff purely “because it worked with someone else”.

There’s nothing wrong with that in theory – at Renaissance, we certainly have a template that we use to make sure we hit certain milestones based on experiences we had in the team. However, being complacent and just sticking to what worked before is what will kill our businesses.

This is not about organising a PR stunt to make us look cool but, rather, finding the right consent creator to deliver something different than a lets play video that resonates with our client audience, or identifying a particular journalist who loves game about cats to run a feature about it, for example. Staying proactive and passionate about what you do is the BIGGEST challenge everyone will face in 2023.

AI is threatening to change the way content is created and received (ChatGPT does a pretty good press release). What are the issues for PR as AI content services become increasingly competent and compelling?

Like it or not, we are at the forefront of another revolution, so we can either accept, adapt, and evolve, or just shout from the side lines, condemning it. The right balance is finding an approach that allows the human aspect of our jobs to come to the fore whilst AI takes charge of the most “automated” and really boring parts of it. If used as a way to better our work/life balance, AI can help to evolve our jobs more towards relationship building and the more human parts of it.

If used in the wrong way, we will have an automated sausage machine spitting out too much content that will desensitise the audience it’s designed to target. Personally, I welcome AI to help to shift out priorities in terms of what individuals are unquestionably best placed to deliver; empathy, creativity, and relationship building. To do that, there needs to be a new set of rules and ethical procedures put in place. This will lead to an age of improvement for everyone.