News release

From: Flinders University

Dr Naser Pourazad, Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Flinders University’s College of Business, Creative Arts, Law and Social Sciences, has examined how video game fans express their brand advocacy through online forums – and this reveals distinct consumer engagement patterns that challenge traditional marketing approaches.

“This isn't just about games,” says Dr Pourazad. “As brands try to build passionate fanbases, our study shows the traditional marketing playbook is broken.”

The study, performed with Dr Ehsan Abedin and Dr Jacqueline Burgess, identified comments from communities of gamers who play the enduringly popular Call of Duty and Battlefield video games, to understand how consumers support their preferred brands.

“We used advanced AI to settle a massive pop-culture debate: Why are the fanbases of popular video games Call of Duty and Battlefield so fiercely loyal, yet so different from each other?” explains Dr Pourazad.

“Instead of asking people questions in a lab, we used Large Language Models (LLMs, being advanced artificial intelligence systems designed to understand and process volumes of text) to analyse more than 23,000 raw, unfiltered and slang-heavy Reddit comments, to see how brand loyalty actually happens in the community.”

The analysis revealed two fundamentally different types of advocates: Call of Duty fans express loyalty through emotional storytelling and shared experiences, while Battlefield fans bond over technical mastery and mechanical precision. Yet despite speaking completely different languages, both communities generate equally fierce brand loyalty, proving there is no single formula for building a passionate fanbase.

As Dr Pourazad puts it: “Genuine advocacy emerges from consumer experiences, rather than promotional activities.”

He says these findings extend well beyond gaming, offering lessons for any brand that seeks to build genuine consumer communities. The findings showed six distinct dimensions of brand advocacy: Brand Positivity, Brand Defence, Virtual Positive Expression, Brand Zest, Brand Knowledge and Brand Appraisal.

“Complaining is actually a sign of deep brand loyalty. Traditional marketing says that customer complaints are bad, but our research has proved the opposite: in highly engaged communities, Brand Appraisal (harsh critique of product flaws) and Brand Defence (protecting the brand from outsiders) go hand-in-hand.

“Gamers don't critique because they hate the brand; they critique because they are highly invested and want the brand to succeed.

“If an outsider attacks the brand, these same critics instantly pivot to defend it.”

As a consequence of this research, Dr Pourazad offers this advice for brands: “Stop trying to silence constructive criticism. In the video game world, suppressing player critique in forums actually weakens their emotional bond with the brand.”

To improve their fortunes, he suggests that brands should “ditch the corporate speak”.

“Our AI investigation found a complete absence of commercial or promotional language being used among true brand advocates,” Dr Pourazad says. “If a company tries to inject polished, corporate marketing into these spaces, fans reject it. True advocacy is peer-to-peer and highly authentic.”

In an era where consumers are increasingly immune to traditional advertising, understanding what drives genuine, peer-to-peer brand advocacy has never been more valuable, for gaming companies and beyond.

The research – “Online brand advocacy and video game consumers”, by Naser Pourazad, Ehsan Abedin and Jacqueline Burgess – has been published in the Journal of Product & Brand Management. DOI: 10.1108/JPBM-03-2025-5866