ON PR AND NARRATIVE. Is Avowed a success? That depends on who you ask. I’m fascinated by how the launch of almost every major commercial entertainment release has become a battle to control the narrative.
We know the narrative that XBox *wants* to tell around Avowed - that it’s a solid launch and a well received game. That is one of the main thrusts of yesterday’s Bloomberg article. The studio’s hope is for a virtuous circle and self-fulfilling prophesy- the audience perceives the game to be successful, and thus jumps in. Classic traditional PR.
However, there are least four simultaneous competing narratives, and the official publisher narrative, shaped via PR and traditional journalists, is only the first. The second is the experience of actual players, which seems to be generally (but not unanimously) positive here.
Both of those are competing against a third narrative being promulgated by online creators, that can be summarized as: “why is the world of Avowed - which took six years to make - much less reactive and immersive in 2025 than those of Skyrim (2011) and even Oblivion (2006)?” A video titled “Avowed vs Oblivion: These Games Are 19 Years Apart” has 1.5m views. Several others have six figure views.
There is a fourth narrative, and it’s the only one that matters - the story of how many people buy and play the game, relative to its budget. This is where PR management means nothing, where appeal to actual consumers is vital, where commercial performance means everything, and where a consistent pattern is emerging. A game is released, and there is a distinct gulf between how it is received by professional journalists and paying consumers. Sometimes (as happened here, probably to significant impact), consumers and creators are alienated by divisive statements by developers. The studio seeks to position the launch positively via interviews with friendly outlets. Yet performance tells another story, both in terms of sales data and Steam concurrent user numbers. Finally, 3-6 months later, there is an admission of failure and often layoffs.
It’s hard to conclude anything from this other than (a) the influence of traditional journalists is greatly diminished; (b) traditional PR is now near irrelevant when it comes to driving sales; (c) online creators wield significant power; (d) there is a gulf between developers and what consumers want; and (e) in the end, you can’t spin performance. It’s not unique to games. We could name many shows and movies that secured high profile interviews that did nothing to aid viewership and, if anything, were destructive.
Avowed’s Steam launch has been extremely poor. Its budget is presumably higher than KCD2, but it has fewer than one-tenth of the players. CCUs are many multiples worse than the disastrous Dragon Age: Veilguard. However, it’s also on Game Pass, and will presumably be coming to PS5 and Switch 2, so hopefully it is discovered by people later who can enjoy it for what it is, free of narrative.
