Why video games PR needs to change

gamesindustry.biz:

James Batchelor

Editor-in-Chief

Thursday 14th July 2022

Cary Kwok has been handling public relations since 1999, focusing specifically on video games since 2006. A lot has changed in that time.

"Doing PR almost 20 years ago was still very focused on core gamers," she tells GamesIndustry.biz. "It was working games enthusiast media to make sure that the game was front and centre, making sure we had great Metacritic scores. Being able to speak to the core was very important. But fast forward to 2022, there are still a lot of people who wouldn't self identify as gamers but are playing video games. The audience has dramatically changed."

For the first 11 years of her time in this sector, Kwok worked for Golin representing Nintendo through the transformative Wii era, before joining Rogers & Carr to spend five years handling Activision Blizzard's lifestyle PR. In October, she left this team to join BerlinRosen to guide its first steps into the games industry.

Cary Kowk, BerlinRosen

"After the end of last year, with everything going on with Activision, I just felt like I needed a change and needed to do something different," she says. "I took this as a great opportunity as it's time to do games PR differently, not the same old same old.

"I think that this is a time where the games industry needs something different, and I feel we need to collectively just bring different elements to the table for the industry."

For a start, games PR teams face a wider array of challenges than in decades past. The series 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 that PR teams need to, rather than promoting video games, help these