If my game doesn’t catch the eye of one of the few powerful influencers in the media I think the next best thing to concentrate on (beyond making the best game I can) is increasing my game’s viral coefficient - sometimes called k-factor.
For example, if each player recruits 2 new players, k = 2.
If the k-factor is high enough, advertising even becomes a viable option.
Viral techniques are often spammy (Zynga), but I am hoping there are also some clever, non-spammy ways to increase sharing. What effective strategies have you seen to get players to share a game with others? What would make you share a game?
The first way is simply to have an awesome game in the first place. People will naturally talk about it.
Having a game that deals with hot topics works well. As well as relating your game to any hot topics that come up. This is often used by smaller companies to get their products in the local news. The local tomato grower might get in on some chili craze that pops up, or something.
Providing an actual benefit to the people being advertised to also works. This is bordering on spammy FB game tactics, though. And it’s really hard to provide them anything of value unless they already play the game.
Allowing, even encouraging, YouTube videos works. If you have an action game that lets you hit a button and output the previous 10 seconds to a YouTube clip, you’ll get a lot of people sharing their amazing feats.
Having an in-game level editor helps. People will natural share their creations. That’s getting back to just having a good game in the first place, though.
Go on game blogs, forums and other game related sites and act like a complete ass to everyone. Troll your heart out and and make dramatic claims and generally act like you are nuts. You will definitely get people to know about your game.
I would add that if you do go the route of virals, try to be clever or funny… something interesting and not intentionally marketing speak.
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Unfortunately, while I think most people who are passionate about making games share your sentiments about not being “spammy”, it is simply the reality fo the world. Advertising has been around as long as there has been commerce. Simple advertising like banners and such just get tuned out, but if you get a message or whatever that says your friend “Bob” loves this game or needs your help or sent you a gift, you will probably at least read the content. If the notif is clever or funny or interesting, they may check it out. And if your game is good, hopefully they will stay.
These things do often feel “dirty” for lack of a better word, but if your game is good and it makes people happy, that may offset the feeling of guilt. (at least that is what I tell myself.)
People always hate on Zynga for their tactics, but the simple fact is, it works and its not the players who are complaining. If the hundreds of millions of players were so offended by the way Zynga did things, they wouldn’t play the games.
McDonald’s has tv commercials playing all the time. I don’t care. Now, if my friend sent me 100 McDonald’s adverts in my email because McDonald’s promised them a cheeseburger to do it, I would likely pimp-slap my friend… then spam the hell out of my friends for that tasty burger. mmmm
That’s true, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Zynga’s market has - until very recently with the release of Horn and a slow move away from casual FB games - been predominantly very casual users who are not tech-savvy and are not hardcore gamers. If this is your target market, this may be a valid tactic. However, if your game isn’t going to appeal to those people (and let’s be honest, that’s true for 95% of the people on this or any other gaming forum) then your audience is tech-savvy, has gamer friends and actually knows how dirty Zynga play. I don’t believe Zynga would have got away with the stuff they’ve done over the years if they were appealing to that audience.
Also, you’re not Zynga. Even if your audience is prepared to put up with it from Zynga, is your game good enough, addictive enough and downright sleazy enough to actually get past the irritations? To me this seems like a scenario where you have a small chance of getting huge publicity and a moderate change of shooting yourself in the foot. A bit risky for my tastes, but YMMV.
Well, yes and no.
While it is true that most of the social gaming players aren’t super tech savvy, they are by nature social. They tend to spend a lot of time online and communicating with their friends and other players. I would say a fair chunk are very aware of zynga’s business practices and the nature of the how they operate. (this is generally true of most social game companies) Largely it doesn’t outweigh their desire to play the game and interact with their friends.
And there are two different things at play here, zynga’s business tactics are, at the least, questionable. But that is different than their marketing. Their marketing is amazingly successful, and nothing really out of the ordinary. They simply have a HUGE existing player base and leverage it. Through cross-promotion and other methods. Unfortunately, is pretty much is something that very few other companies can replicate because no one has that existing base.
It is easy to dismiss the social gaming player-base, but is ridiculously huge and has disposable income, and invest a lot of time in playing games. Revenue from social games will probably out pace consoles in the next year or so, (as will pc games, but often those numbers will include online/social gaming, and of course projections are just that, projections). Certainly it is different type of player and game that makes up social gaming, but that is evolving. And frustratingly, zynga is actually breaking new ground and innovating with FV2 and CV2. (These are games that any game developer should be paying close attention to.)
This is a great idea… I would really like to implement something like this. Unfortunately it would be a huge technical challenge for me. But it would make a great Asset Store product
ln my game’s case, a car racing game, I’m planning to create a feature which allows players to post images of their customized cars to Facebook. I actually had this functionality in a previous car racing game and it was mildly successful.
Also, getting players to “Like” your game on Facebook is a relatively non-spammy way to spread the word. The players can get some kind of reward for liking the game (I believe this is still acceptable in FB’s TOS).
In my previous game I also had a plea of sorts to get players to spread the word. On my Facebook app and in my distributed Flash game I had the following sentence,
I have no idea if it worked, but it felt kind of unprofessional so I probably won’t do it again.
From a business standpoint I am not against the more spammy viral tactics. But I am wary of alienating players, so it would probably be a last resort. You can’t put the stink back in the skunk with that one.
Any kind of tactic is generally fine, but as with everything else, you simply have to be sure your tactics are a good fit for your target market. If you’re aiming for the casual social players, Zynga tactics are best. If you’re aiming for hardcore, console gamers, hit up the major game reviewers, etc.
Also, I think your MooseMouse Media comment is fine. If you sound too professional, you’ll come off as being a AAA company with an indie quality game. At the core, you just have to be upfront about who you are. Don’t try to mislead people; it won’t work.
People will see through a smokescreen very quickly, and then it won’t matter how good your game is/was, you’ll have offended your players and they’ll want nothing more to do with you.
Actually, I don’t know if it does the ‘last 10 seconds’ thing. I know there was another one that I asked if his did it, and he said No. But he may have changed it since then. I didn’t search beyond this one, this time. There’s probably more.
I love the asset store. There’s so much great stuff on there.
@wccrawford: Thanks for that like to the Kamcord Unity Plugin. Very nice.
@MouseMouse: I’d make sure you build off the earlier success you had even through you said it wasn’t ‘big’. The first game I played as an adult was given to me on floopy disk by a college mate (Wolfenstein if it matters) and if there was a way that a player could ‘give’ a game to a friend that had that personal touch to it, it might be more effective. Most people after being on Facebook a while realize those ‘game requests’ being sent out by their friends are not being personally asked by their friends but spammed unknowingly by the game itself so that’s lost alot of it’s effectiveness.
There was an article about the bad shape Zynga’s in: people stop playing after they get fed up with Zynga’s tactics. It’s probably sensationalist journalism (arguably worse than Zynga’s tactics after all Zynga is just simple harmless games. Sensationlist journalism is known to adversely effect real people’s lives).
