If you build a game and nobody plays it, does it still exist It’s not a philosophical question: Failure to effectively answer it can be the prelude to financial disaster.
Marketing your game is arguably just as important a step as building it. Even the best game in the world risks fizzling into obscurity if consumers haven’t been made aware of its existence and its features. If you spend money making a game but neglect to put any funding or effort into marketing, there’s an excellent chance your title will be lost in the crush of games that flows across the digital and retail scene at all hours, day and night. With hundreds of new titles released weekly via social networks, smartphones, free-to-play portals and other online outlets, realize: Anonymity is simply a colloquial way of saying “kiss of death.”
If you’re an indie developer, simply making your game has probably required you to pry your last penny out of your spare change jar. Or maybe you’re simply intimidated by larger companies that pay millions of dollars to advertising agencies to shine a light on their titles. But that doesn’t mean you should back down and let your hard work fade into obscurity. Getting your game into the public’s line of sight doesn’t have to be an expensive and intimidating ordeal. Bearing this in mind, in the following two-part series, we’ll demonstrate ten affordable tricks that will help you grab, hold and ultimately capitalize on consumers’ attention.
Integrate Marketing into the Game Itself – One simple trick to boost marketing for professionals more experienced in the art of design than promotions is simply to implement gameplay features that market the game organically. For example, Spore’s “Creature Creator,” which lets users build and import their own monsters into the actual game, went viral in no time as gamers rushed to out-do one another at playing God. (Over 160 million user-generated creations are currently available, all of which quietly populate other players’ games, always adding new things to see and discover, keeping the title feeling perpetually fresh and new.) Another successful example is the LittleBigPlanet series’ downloadable user-generated levels.
Threading your marketing strategy throughout a game can be as simple as taking advantage of features that allow for social media postings, like notices on Facebook and Twitter, or as complex as a series of fully moddable levels or mission designs that auto-populate titles when connected online. Either way, it’s an effective low-cost promotions strategy that also accrues significant benefit to players, and of course creators as well in the form of ongoing publicity and new content generation. Also, note that building features into your game that allow users to upload and exchange material helps keep your game topical, because there’s always new content (including items based around current pop culture memes) to discover and explore.
Give it Away – Needless to say, this bit of advice especially applies to games for digital download, those designed for play in Web browsers or titles available on social networks. The free-to-play model helps widen the marketing funnel drastically, and removes the friction typically involved with purchase, as several steps (credit card entry, payment, etc.) are removed from the process. Best of all, users aren’t just invited to go hands-on and discover key sales points for themselves – they’re also encouraged to pass news of such titles along.
In other words, the game advertises itself by getting the player directly into it instead of making him or her click on banners, links, and other traditional online advertisements that risk a high drop-off point in terms of usage. There’s also typically direct incentive to share, as the more players playing, the more enjoyable these games (often multiplayer experiences) can be. In the end, by going free-to-play, you attract a broad audience to your game from the outset and eliminate many of the barriers that keep people from potentially discovering your creations.
Empower Your User Community – Let your player base help shape the final product by giving them the tools to allow for the creation and exchange of user-generated content, as well as a channel to submit material for inclusion in your games. Also important: Opening direct lines of communication to the development team, who can benefit from their feedback and insight. Going back to Spore, the Creature Creator presents a helpful illustration of a good way to let users shape their own experience within the game, though you could just as easily let them submit sketches, mockups and graphic designs suitable for inclusion in final products.
You can also give your game a community and a voice by opening forums, creating crowdsourced initiatives, inviting users to take part in open betas and sharing links to fan sites and promoting high-quality works of fan fiction and fan art. The bottom line: Reach out to fans, and you’ll be surprised just how much they’ll give back.
Make Your Game Stand Out at a Glance – Your game doesn’t have to be everything to everyone, but it does need to wear its heart on its sleeve. In other words, people need to understand the title’s chosen subject matter and key benefits at a glance. Rather than be everything to everyone, remember, though: It’s more important for you to choose a single thing that makes your game unique and message and sell it around that feature. Ask yourself: What makes your game stand out from the hordes of similar-looking games at retail, in the digital marketplace, or on the App Store
People need to instantly comprehend the value of your game as soon as they lay eyes upon it, as you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Use that first impression to make as much sense to as many people as possible. If that means marketing to a niche, so be it: It’s preferable to impress tens of thousands of likely buyers with a keenly targeted sales pitch than to completely underwhelm hundreds of thousands by ineffectually attempting to speak to everyone.
Release Constant Updates and Expansions – If you can offer up a constant stream of content updates for your game, there will always be inviting and interesting new material available for your player base to talk about. You can also entice players to participate in tournaments and contests, which will not only get them talking, but will encourage them to bring friends into the community. The ongoing release of new material offers many new benefits to fans – additional topics to discuss, new surprises to discover, added reasons to buy your title or take it down off the shelf again. But it also offers your team the benefit of ongoing commentary and feedback that can help better shape and improve the overall offering, helping you iterate and refine titles to better meet buyers’ needs and interests.
Stay tuned for Part Two!
