An unholy alliance was forged, and games began to sell by the bucket-load. Hand in hand, the developers and marketing men raised the profile of gaming. Consoles faded for a while, to the advantage of the Amiga and Atari ST, but then the NES and Sega Master System appeared. Simple to use and cheap, they were a marketing man's dream. Here was arcade gaming in the home for the first time and boy did we know it. Marketing changed into second gear and although it was an uphill struggle, the advent of the SNES and Mega Drive, hand in hand with ever slicker and more in-touch advertising, saw sales increase dramatically. Gaming and marketing were now inextricably linked and the meteoric success of the PlayStation sealed the bond. Gaming was now fashionable.

Alas, this spelled the demise of the very people who spawned home gaming. The lone programmer, sat in his bedroom coding, publishing and distributing a game independently just couldn't cut it any more. There was once a game for the ZX Spectrum called Football Manager. It was simple; hell it was even written in Basic. However, it was as addictive as popping bubble-wrap and a genre spawning success. All the footy management sims of today are its progeny, yet were it to appear now without a tribe of publicists and licensing to back it up, it would sink like a Sunday League side from the Premiership.

Many games haven't done as well as they deserved through poor (or less slick than their rivals') marketing. Take Castlevania on the PlayStation. It was a wicked game, but I bet a lot of you didn't even know it was there. Thief - The Dark Project sold incredibly slowly and it was fab. Also, Gremlin's Hardwar, a super game I'm told, was doomed to an early bath because the fans didn't notice it. This was a game that tried, and darn well nearly succeeded, to be the new Elite, yet nobody was interested. It reviewed highly. You'd have thought such a game would be bound to succeed, but no. To survive in today's harsh arena you need to have the marketing men on your side. You must constantly launch and relaunch your game, courting magazine editors to preview it, advertising incessantly to raise your title above the countless others doing exactly the same thing. Unfortunately, this costs money, and you, my dear gamer, are paying the bill.