SNK’s marketing department has some smart ideas, and some questionable ones. A game company with many titles wants to have player bases, vibrant communities for each, while it seems to me that SNK fans want to play all of them, and find themselves struggling to do so, and the communities get fractured and split. Imagine being a fan of Samsho, KOF and COTW, where will you find the time to play all of them? And you wonder why pro players tell you they need to focus on one game! It should be no surprise.

Division is a lack of focus, a loss of coherency, and this is mostly why I have to criticise SNK’s decision to make another website and social media channel just for the 30th. Their X account currently has 9K followers, while SNK’s main accounts have 133K (Japan) and 117K (global) respectedly. When it was launched, it didn’t even have a blue tick, which meant its reach was limited. It seems to me a waste of time and resources. Why wasn’t it part of the main channel, why isn’t it even part of the main SNK website?

Who knows, perhaps it was getting too messy, but the point is, after the anniversary, what’s going to happen? It’s going to fade away, perhaps deleted when the subscriptions are no longer paid for, whereas if it was part of the main website, it could just be put in an archive section.

Well, whatever, it’s nice, for whoever actually sees it, as it contains some really great stuff, oh wait, some of it is exclusively on X, so again, I’m not sure of the purpose of the website. Perhaps there was some sort of agreement to boost social media presence. For example there are some great artworks by artists featured on the channel. Again, this channel is comparitively small and will lose purpose in literally a few months. So if you were an artist, would you prefer to be on this little channel or the main one? It doesn’t make sense to me. With the ephemeral nature of social media, why aren’t these artworks posted on the website? Just to drive traffic to an already ephemeral social media account?

Speaking of social media, certain companies were very wary of joining Twitter, and right now, companies are leaving. I left X and joined many others, my current favourite is Bluesky, where Playstation, Capcom and ASW can officially be found. Where is SNK?

So, what is this campaign really about? Well, to make the fans happy, right? Oh and maybe sell some cool original merchandise? Why not! But what the heck is that health gadget? We all sit on our chairs for 20 hours a day, well, yes, it’s time to get moving. How about the Tshirts? A cool jacket? With one of those new awesome artworks? Ah. Asking too much, I guess. Let’s use the classic illustrations that we’ve seen a million times before.

Well, it’s a matter of taste of course, as I prefer more edgy dark designs (which is usually the case with hardcore cc), whereas the jacket is so bright and cheerful… Now while it seems clear SNK is trying to make some money, it needs to be said that website hosting and paying staff to administer these channels costs money. Again I have to wonder about the size of royalty SNK is expecting, or what kind of margin these collaborative brands are setting, because SNK merchandise is SO expensive. And you know what that means for overseas fans.

So while SNK is finally engaging with the fans with quizzes and popularity contests (not just in their fairly secret discord), I would like to see some affordable products and stickers that actually stick (or can be used, ahem). I am not a marketing graduate so perhaps there is something I don’t know, and SNK will be very happy with their campaign and data collection.

They are even collecting suggestions for names of a KOF character, a complete U-turn, considering the past horror stories from Harada, so I’m assuming their legal team is getting the papers ready to get complete ownership of this fan ideas to avoid problems in the future.

I really like this idea, and it’s so very very late for SNK, but better late than never. Now their social media team needs to work harder than ever and monitor all their channels and make sure everything is posted everywhere (ahem one account per channel would be easier to manage, wouldn’t it? Ok that’s the last time I’ll mention it, promise!).

It’s great to see SNK increase their interaction with the fans, however, the fans are divided amongst channels and websites, not to mention games, and it will be difficult to reach all of them. The 30th anniversary arrives as Vice and Mature bow KOFXV out, hopefully there will be enough eyes to see the celebrations as SNK pays respects to its greatest IP. But but but, you may interject, where are all these things? And that, is the issue.

Btw there’s no share button to enrage other fans after you voted, what a pity.

I'm kof98% telling the truth here

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— Gunsmith (@orochinagicom.bsky.social) December 12, 2024 at 9:21 AM