Whenever you're creating a game, marketing it correctly is critically important to the game's success, and there are various ways of getting your game's concept out there to the public. Since if nobody knows about the game, what it is or why it even appeals to them, then they're not going to want to buy and play it! The advertising of a game should ideally begin as soon as possible, and whenever you have some sort of marketable material (like character concept sketches or draft level designs), giving you optimal time in bringing in new potential fans. This can assist you in building a following of people who will appreciate regular progress updates as the game developers, and those people in the know following the latest release information will then tell their friends about the game as it gets more impressive closer and closer to its official release date. To quote Forbes journalist (Olenski, 2014): "When it comes to launching a new product, having a solid marketing strategy will not only effectively engage your current customers, but also make an attractive appeal to potential customers.".
As talked about by (Kaye, 2013), there are plenty of ways to market your game, with some methods being more effective than others. A great and free way to give your game some publicity is using social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, etc. You can make a page on some or all of these websites to help advertise and promote your product for free, while also being able to directly contact and communicate with your fans to help forge a closer and more personal connection with them. Plus it's an easy-access platform to release a constant stream of updates and information to your fans.
Next is creating a trailer or posters for your game, which can also be conveniently shared on your social media pages! A trailer or poster are essentially a sneak preview of your product, and can be used to advertise some new features of your game like characters, gameplay mechanics and story elements and show what it's about. Trailers are normally in a video format and are designed to excite people as much as possible for your product, making your fans more likely to want to purchase your game. Whereas posters show very little about the game within a single image, but a good poster keeps a layer of mystery as it shows something promising to entice the player, but the user is required to play the game to find out more. Here's a trailer for the movie Inside Out, a good example of a trailer which exhibits the film's basic premise and what it's about to excite the user, but without spoiling much of the plot for what happens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seMwpP0yeu4
The last, and arguably most influential marketing technique for a game is to create a fully playable demo or teaser. This method could take the longest and cost the most amount of money, however people who are able to play a fragment of your game themselves are much more likely to want to purchase the full version if they enjoy it enough. Which is why a demo should (as researched by (Obscure, 2009)) showcase your game in a good light as much as possible (and not include things like filler content or padding to make it longer), since it's essentially a mini version of your game containing as many good things as possible to get people invested. It contains sample pieces of code, art, sound, etc from the main game, and it's also important to not keep all of the game's files in the demo code as somebody could pirate it and see all of the assets before the game even officially releases. And this could easily kill off any hype you tried to create with your advertising campaign as you slowly trickle out information to the public to 'feed the hype' and drip-feed them news to keep your audience invested.
No comments:
Post a Comment