Not everyone likes this aspect of making games, but marketing and getting the word out about your project is, as I’m sure you know, very important – at least, if you’re looking to gain some revenue from it at some point (you might not be, and that’s cool too!). We focus a lot on the actual makey bits here, but how do you create buzz for your project while you’re in development? How do you make sure your game gets in front of the audience that will care about it the most? Are you using gifs to great success over Twitter? If you have any marketing tips, social media tactics or tools that you’re using, please share!
(To see past discussions, go to this index thread)
I didn’t tell anyone yet. I suppose at some point I’ll have to create a Facebook account? a Ulule account? a Twitter account? other exotic social networks accounts? and advertise on all of them?
Anyone knows how to monetise a game when you do not own a tablet or a smartphone? Steam is out of the questoin for small games, so, where do we go when we create games that are the size of the Space Shooter we do here as a tutorial?
Been working on my first indie project with a programmer colleague.
Since this is my first (we are in charge) project - marketing and advertising is all new ground for me, so anything I say is from a complete rookie perspective.
In my opinion out reach efforts could potentially accomplish multiple goals.
We are preparing to reveal our game at a small local game festival - Pixelfest to gain hands on feedback from players. In addition to attending this festival we are also preparing to upload builds to several web portals, offer newsletter sign up, provide blog updates, create wip threads, feedback friday submissions, twitter tweets, and youtube teaser video to get a wide variety of feedback from multiple avenues.
The main goal has always been to present the game to receive feedback, to gauge if we are on the right track or to consider revising if we see consensus in the feedback leaning strongly in a particular direction.
To overcome bias or any type of group-think consensus in any one feedback avenue we have planned to get as much input as we can from as many different locations as possible, hands on in person, gamer and developer forum posts, blogs and direct to other gamers through the portals.
Even though the main intention is to receive feedback I believe these efforts could also have unintended advertising results if the game is received well.
And I think it is important to end every marketing/advertising topic with – But who knows!
Especially when your team size is small and everyone is wearing multiple (multiple-multiples!) hats as they say then it’s good to streamline efforts wherever possible. Building up an audience around your project from the early stages is great if you can do it – the people you manage to attract early on will feel that much more engaged and invested in the outcome of your project down the line, since they will have literally watched it evolve and grow over time It feels hard to justify putting in that extra effort in marketing/showing off your progress when all you want to do is be heads-down developing, but I do think it pays off in the long run! Showing your game off at local gaming festivals and events is a great tactic – you’ll gain experience at showing your game, and will be able to refine the “pitch” greatly over time, as well as have access to invaluable playtesting & feedback. Obviously there’s no 100% recipe for success (unless someone wants to share one here heheh), but it sounds like you’ve got a well-reasoned plan, and that’s great!
As a former member of games press, make sure you have a press kit readily available somewhere, and keep it up to date! (You don’t want to have someone FINALLY write about your game only to find they used some years-old screenshot that looks gross – feels bad, man!) Check this: http://dopresskit.com/ - made by indies for indies
Leave it to programmers to “help” by making things more complicated with a server program.
I would think using OpenOffice to put together some text and images, then save as PDF would be easier.
Then put the PDF on your web site on a Press page.
Hook up Google Analytics to the PDF file if you want.
Thanks for the reminder Alice. Although it’s on my reminder list - I had forgotten about getting that finished. Thanks for reminding me about ONE MORE thing I still have left to do!
Yeah - I wear the marketing hat(s).
One thing I think is a good idea, what I’m doing at least, is to not really start marketing until after you have a demo of some kind that is representative of the final product. I’ve already changed too many times stuff in the game, and I think it’s important to have a lot of leeway to try things out in those early stages and potentially take a different direction. Once you have the demo done though, and it’s gotten good feedback, it’s kind of a milestone and a small product in itself, as well as a clear marker of something that has been signed off as having the potential for success.
I’m kind of looking forward to getting past that point and starting a continuous twitter/website/facebook thing, and seeing my game on websites (I hope!).
I was kind of hoping that more people would join this conversation because this is a hat I seriously need to consider and right now I’m clueless and lost.
Look at the time difference between the top two posts.
10 hours. I had a feeling this thread would be not well attended.
I mostly made that post because I didn’t want Alice to feel sad about an empty thread.
I think it would be great if someone with proper experience laid out EVERYTHING you needed to know.
Along with an actual list of places to contact to spread the word. Not just vague generalities.
It doesn’t need to be comprehensive, just an example.
My mom is a major influencer in the 70-80 age range.
Well I have no experience, but it seems to me like getting in touch with actual websites with some good screenshots and a decent clip of representative gameplay is the thing to do. I couldn’t tell you how well it works, but that seems like the obvious step to take.
Honestly, the best sound advice I can give, is like the old saying goes “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”… Having friends in high places can make or break something as quick as you can code a single line for a variable.
Aside from that, sort of like the old saying, dealing with exclusivity toward a specific platform (E.G. - Xbox only, PS4 only), etc. If the game is well made and looks to the standards they’d want to show, if you deal with exclusive titles, you have more of a chance of getting your game shown at E3 from the actual console companies, etc. Exclusive titles based on statistics can either help you or hurt you in terms of sales. But this comes down to what kind of game you’re making, if it’s worth making it exclusive, because exclusive titles if they are the type of game the company wants to put their image on, can be used for their own marketing purposes - free marketing for you.
True that. It’s another reason why building and having a good social media presence is so useful. You might not have a great network to begin with but you can build up a following online – you never know who you’ll make friends with, or who’s eye you might catch through someone RTing your stuff.
I love seeing all the WIP gifs/screenshots/videos that are shared to the #madewithunity Twitter hashtag. There’s also #screenshotsaturday as a popular one, and others as well. Sharing something visually eye catching or evocative of the game experience regularly to these hashtags can help get your project in front of people. Gifs work really well for this! More than just sharing though, get involved in replying to what other people have shared, give some support, cheer on some of your favorites, follow something that catches your eye – they may follow you back, or give you some feedback in return! Over time you’ll hopefully realize you’ve turned all these little interactions into a nice supportive base. Something to remember is that even the most well connected people, at some point, had to start from zero.
Haha thanks! I do think empty threads are sad - no one likes a sad empty thread!
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to lay out EVERYTHING one needs to know about this subject, and tactics necessarily change to fit the game/situation/dev. A lot of it is getting familiar with “best practice” and what others have done before you, and then experimenting with things until you hit on something that works for you. (Obviously if you’ve got budget to hire a marketing/social person, that would be one way to access expertise but of course not everyone is able to do that.)
Are there games that are similar to what you’re working on that’s doing well in getting the word out? Take a look at what they’re doing and attempt to emulate what works. If that doesn’t get you the results you’re after, move your focus to another tactic, and keep trying different things. Honestly, a lot of time it may feel like spinning your wheels but after some consistent effort, you’ll hopefully be able to see the results build up It’s the type of thing where the more of a following you have, the easier it is to grow your following.
I’m not saying I have all the expert answers here but I do have some industry experience so if anyone has specific questions I can attempt to at least point ya’ll in the right direction.
@aliceingameland : Very true… I will be showing my game soon, just gotta get it at least - nice looking outside of basic models I made haha.
So many people wait until the game is nearly finished to show it off, that’s one of the worst things you can possibly ever do. Well unless you’re lucky, but we all know how well luck works for all of us haha. It takes a lot of work, a bunch of ups and downs, but if you stick with it, your chances are so much higher. But you can’t just want to do it or feel like you have to do it, you have to genuinely love doing it, because lets face it - you aren’t going to get anywhere with unresolved conflicts within your self or others.
It feels hard to justify putting in that extra effort in marketing/showing off your progress when all you want to do is be heads-down developing, but I do think it pays off in the long run! Showing your game off at local gaming festivals and events is a great tactic – you’ll gain experience at showing your game, and will be able to refine the “pitch” greatly over time, as well as have access to invaluable playtesting & feedback. Obviously there’s no 100% recipe for success (unless someone wants to share one here heheh), but it sounds like you’ve got a well-reasoned plan, and that’s great!