Half-Life is considered a huge success, but it turns out this wasn't always the case. Like many studios, Valve had to find a way to get attention without expensive marketing campaigns. The team met the challenge with a simple sticker, and now we Half-Life as a groundbreaking beginning to a great franchise.

The Half-Life series is held in such high regard that Half-Life 2 is being used to show off NVIDIA RTX Remix. It's interesting that the sequel would be used as a way to show the future of gaming, because the original started a marketing technique that would end up being used by almost every studio.

Valve Made A "Game of the Year" Sticker For Half-Life

It All Started With A Simple Sticker

Today, rumors pop-up about Half-Life 3 pretty frequently, but the initial release of Half-Life in 1998 presented Valve with a significant marketing challenge. The game, groundbreaking in its gameplay and narrative, arrived in an unconventional orange box that had messy, graffiti-style artwork and the iconic Lambda symbol. While the design is appealing to some, it looks a lot different from regular game packaging, especially for the time. The packaging likely didn't appeal to those unfamiliar with Valve, even if it stood out.

What's worse is that Half-Life didn't have aggressive marketing like many games do. This was a major problem for Valve as the game sales were pretty sluggish, according to an interview with a former exec (Monica Harrington at PC Gamer). Harrington was Valve's first chief marketing officer, and she was in charge while Valve relied mostly on its publisher, Sierra, to manage distribution and to navigate the retail landscape.

Luckily, Harrington recognized the problem. The game's quality was undeniable, and there were plenty of publications that loved Half-Life. That quality is what brings people back to the game today. However, this is during a time when there were huge numbers of people talking about the game and spreading it through word of mouth. Half-Life needed some kind of initial boost before it could take off, and that's what Harrington focused on.

Valve never reported the precise sales figures before vs after the sticker was added, but we know it helped push the game to become the massive success we know today. The game is great, but the sticker gave players a reason to buy it.

Harrington's solution was to leverage the critical acclaim directly on the box. The solution is ingeniously effective and can be produced immediately. All she did was have "Game of the Year" stickers printed and applied to existing and newly printed copies of Half-Life. This was a claim that just needed the backing of a single review stating it, and Half-Life had more than earned those. Harrington has changed the perception of the game from a strange stand-out to a must-have through a single sticker.

The sticker was a striking element that grabbed attention and argued the quality of a simple phrase. It basically served as a third-party endorsement that a customer could see immediately. It was a calculated risk, as it had not been done before. However, adding a game of the year sticker to the box was a risk that paid off.

Half-Life's Sales Increased Thanks To This Simple Trick

We Can Thank Valve For Accolades on Game Boxes

The sales of Half-Life were initially very slow, but things soon picked up thanks to Harrington's sticker idea. Valve never reported the precise sales figures before vs after the sticker was added, but Harrington was there when it happened, and says it helped push the game to become the massive success we know today. The game is great, but the sticker gave players a reason to buy it.

Word of mouth is so powerful, and a recommendation from a friend or trusted source works well. Having that recommendation directly on the box may seem like a no-brainer today, but that's because it's been done so often. According to Harrington, using a game of the year accolade had "never been used in that way." So this was another way in which Valve was a trailblazer in the gaming industry.

"I mean certainly it had never been used in that way... It was unusual for that much of a plan to happen so quickly around this same thing." - Monica Harrington

To be clear, if Half-Life hadn't been a great game, the game of the year sticker would likely not have boosted sales very far. This ingenious idea was built on the fact that Valve had made such a groundbreaking game. It is essentially a way to get the early adopters to play the game, and then have those players do word of mouth marketing that helps so many games succeed.​​

Harrington's idea was a success and Valve benefited heavily from it, and it likely has something to do with games today adding "game of the year" wording to their games. It doesn't take a win from the Game Awards to put "game of the year" on a game, it just takes one publication to say it and then a developer can put the quote in. At this point, it's common to see, and I've seen plenty of games I don't think deserved that wording on their marketing.

Games Like AC Shadows Could Use This Too

It's Good To See A Game That's Well Reviewed

Assassin's Creed Shadows was recently released, and has done well, already becoming the second-biggest launch in the franchise. The game does not need a sticker to sell more, but it couldn't hurt to have "game of the year" in Shadows' advertising. The game still has plenty of naysayers who don't see that this is a positive step forward for Ubisoft and the series hasn't tried to be historically accurate for a long time, so Half-Life's strategy could work here.

Shadows does have an eye-catching 100/100 from GamingTrend, which names the game "the best Assassin's Creed game of all time." I like Shadows, but I would never claim it's better than the games that came before. Still, this kind of positive messaging should be front and center, like the Half-Life sticker which allegedly started the trend of putting accolades on the box.

This strategy used to be a lot more prevalent a few decades ago. It seemed like every game was getting a "game of the year edition" which usually didn't add much, but sometimes added DLC. It's like the "Classics," "Greatest Hits," or "PlayStation Hits" labels that Sony used to add to PlayStation games after they did well; it's one of those things that makes the game stand out without being too over-the-top.

Half-Life seems to be the reason this marketing strategy exists, and it became an instant classic. This has become a default marketing move, and plenty of reviews have been added to Steam stores and box art. It hasn't hurt box art much to have accolades, and it's a smart way to use negative space to make the art seem fuller.

Source: PC Gamer, GamingTrends