DGMD E-70
Principles of Game Design
LESSON #13: Game Marketing #1:
Press Materials and Websites
TODAY:
1. Digital Prototype Testing!
2. Game Marketing Considerations:
Internet Tools, Social Media,
Conferences, and Press.
3. Marketing Materials Explained:
Trailers and Press Releases.
PART 1: DIGITAL PLAYTESTING
SET UP (<5 minutes):
1. Teams Choose Tables
2. Set up game digital prototype on 2-3 laptops.
3. Decide initial Observers (1-2) and Players.
4. Discuss: Do you want 1-3 points/
instructions to share with visiting players?
Write them down!
PART 1: DIGITAL PLAYTESTING
PLAYTEST ROUND (20 minutes):
1. Observers stay to manage playtest, Players
find other games to play.
2. If team chose 1-3 instructions, give them.
3. Players attempt to play prototype (5-10 min).
Observers take notes!
4. Players fill out questionnaire (5 minutes).
5. Time permitting, discuss answers.
PART 2: GAME MARKETING
Programmers, artists, and designers usually
“tolerate” or even “don’t like” dealing with
marketing. Part of the issue is that marketing
takes a very different set of skills than other
areas of game development: regular contact
with large numbers of people, rather than just
with the small team. Working with the greater
unknowns of audience reaction rather than
the more predictable development tasks of
following the development plan.
PART 2: GAME MARKETING
BUT: Marketing your game can be as fun as
making it. Marketing itself is a kind of game:
How many people can you reach?
How many news-sites or blogs or tweeters or
other outlets can you get to pay attention to
your work?
What new, fun, and exciting ways can you
CELEBRATE the achievement that is your
game?
Question: What is Marketing?
Question: What is Marketing?
• Identifying, reaching, and cultivating an AUDIENCE
for your product and organization.
• Creating MEDIA which communicates the intent
of your product (designed for your audience).
• Collaborating with other organizations
to reach your audience in new ways.
• Establishing a PRESENCE for
your audience to find your product.
• HAVING FUN with your product!
Question: How important is
Marketing your game?
Or, put another way:
what percentage of game
development should be spent
on marketing the game?
Question: How important is
Marketing your game?
50%
Question: What are the
Game Marketing roles?
Question: What are the
Game Marketing roles?
Marketing Lead: Designs strategy, directs marketing team, analyzes
analytics, manages budget and makes reallocation decisions.
Content Development: Writes press releases, blog posts, promotions
and other communications. Arranges for art and other materials from
the development team.
Community Manager: Attends to company forums and other social
networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc) to keep audience engaged
with prompt answers and frequent content.
Show Manager: Plans and attends gamer and industry events to
promote the game to audience and press. Works with conference
managers, designs and manages Booth, giveaways and other
promotions. In all but the biggest companies this is managed by other
team members and sometimes elements are outsourced.
…and others. Sometimes in a small studio this is all one person!
MARKETING YOUR GAME #1: MAKE A PLAN.
[a]. Research
[b]. Market Alongside Game Development
[c]. Marketing is a numbers game
[d]. Money vs Sweat
MARKETING YOUR GAME #1: MAKE A PLAN.
[a]. Research:
Who is your audience? How do they find the games
they play? What are ways you can reach them?
What are ways you can maintain contact with them
to promote loyalty to your company/product, so
they want updates, your next game, and to tell
others about your game?
MARKETING YOUR GAME #1: MAKE A PLAN.
[b]. Market Alongside Game Development:
While marketing will continue long past the time
the gam has released, a good marketing team cam
build attention to the game– a hungry audience– for
more than a year before it is released with early
trailers, beta programs, builds, contests,
crowdfunding, user generated content, and other
teasers.
MARKETING YOUR GAME #1: MAKE A PLAN.
[c]. Marketing is a numbers game.
Do you devote a lot of resources to getting a few
influential people to notice/promote your game or
do you spend time/money/effort reaching out to a
much larger number of lower-influence media
people? Or a mix?
MARKETING YOUR GAME #1: MAKE A PLAN.
[d]. Money vs Sweat:
Do you have a significant budget to promote your
game through online and real world ad buys and
purchased reviews, or do you need to work that
much harder, talk to so many more people, to get
the word out that your game exist and it is
awesome?
MARKETING YOUR GAME #2: ADJUST YOUR PLAN.
ANALYTICS: It used to be hard to know exactly how much the location of an
ad buy or the exact language used had how much of an affect on the
intended audience, but these days with online analytics tools for your
website and game we get amazingly granular information about exactly
what people do or do not do with our advertisements.
Do they click or not? How many pages on your site do they view before they
leave? Do they play your tutorial in your game? How far in the game before
they quit? What parts of the game do they see and what do they do? How
long is each play session? Any aspect of play or progress an be measured
with a “hook” set by the Marketing lead to analyze player activity and to
inform changes for a more enjoyable user experience.
Marketing leads will typically spread a budget across multiple online
campaigns, review the analytics data from each, and then devote more
resources to the campaigns that get the best results.
PRESS: Tell a Story
Who should you contact?: Don’t just spam everyone. Research destinations
and specific writers to find and cultivate relationships with those writers to
write about your game.
Why should they care about your project? You have identified writers/etc
who are interested in games like your s (style of play, platform, genre) and
YOU HAVE A STORY TO TELL
If you are a small/new company, your quest with getting members of the
press (established gamer sites, bloggers in your niche, and more general
media) is to tell an intriguing story. The American myth of now-great tech
giants starting in garages is an example of the “Small town kid makes good”
story.
There are heroic journeys and ridiculous situations and heartwarming
struggles and all sorts of stories you can map onto the tale of your team’s
creation and onto how the game itself was made. As a small game
developer, you are telling YOUR story as much as the game’s!
Crowdfunding: Kickstarter
If you are already famous, people you don’t know will fund you.
If you are not famous, Kickstarter is a decent way
to mobilize the people you do know to fund you.
In either case, it can be a GREAT way to get
press and long-term attention to your project, and TELL YOUR STORY.
Here are some particularly memorable (and successful) presentations:
Exploding Kittens
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elanlee/exploding-kittens/description
ABBY HOWARD:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1203079854/2013-the-lasthalloween/description
DOUBLEFINE:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doublefine/double-fine-adventure/description
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doublefine/double-fines-massivechalice/description
WEB PRESENCE
Website: Does anything exist if it isn’t online? Tumblr or wordpress or
wix for free CMS, or a custom site (annual URL cost + hosting fee).
Blog: Share news and updates to help make your company look lively!
Show parts of the game, teasers, explain tools with tutorials: engage
your audience and other developers! Don’t forget to make your posts
more discoverable with tags.
Forums: Get your community to meet each other and share excitement
about your game! Can start as a place where tips about gameplay are
available.
Giveaways: Desktop wallpapers are free! Also papercraft, short stories in
your game world, links to related content (making a zombie game? Put
up an “our favorite zombie movies” links list), even cool paper
versions/prototypes of your game for people to print out and play!
Mailing List: MailChimp or Constant Contact, requires a physical mailing
address be shared with subscribers. Tools for managing communication
with subscribers, helps to grow and hold onto an audience!
WEB PRESENCE: Connect to your
audience’s interests
WEB PRESENCE: Connect to your
audience’s interests
WEB PRESENCE: Connect to your
audience’s interests
WEB PRESENCE: Connect to your
audience’s interests
WEB PRESENCE: Connect to your
audience’s interests
WEB PRESENCE: Connect to your
audience’s interests
WEB PRESENCE: Connect to your
audience’s interests
SOCIAL MEDIA
You know what this is:
Create regular content and
engage in multiple audiences
Facebook: Update multiple times a week.
Twitter: Update multiple times a day.
Use hashtags, direct messages, retweeting.
Follow people in the industry and the PRESS:
organizations and individual writers!
Instagram, Pintrest, Google+, etc
MANAGE YOUR STORE
Participate in promotions like Humble Bundle, offer sales related to
holidays, adjust your store language and tags with new builds, upload
new builds with meaningful new content as often as your team can–
helps with store rankings, also offers new content for contacting all of
the press, all over again!
ADVERTISING
Facebook and Google Ads allow for targeted games, with decent success
rates when promoting a free (lite?) version of your game.
End the game with promotion to buy the full game,
or get on a mailing list for more great games.
Also consider even more targeted ads on specific
sites, publications, and public spaces,
GRASS ROOTS ORGANIZING
Making a kids game? Reach out to Momblogs, post flyers in
parent gathering places, submit to mom forums and mailing lists.
Owlchemy Labs sent an employee to a logging competition/festival in the
Midwest to advertise their Jack Lumber game.
Reach out to new communities to create new audiences for your game!
MEET YOUR PUBLIC: CONFERENCES
Meet and engage your audience and press at Gamer Conferences like
PAX, SXSW, E3, BFIG, Comicon, and many other regional events
including some more specific to particular genre, age range, etc.
Meet Press and potential collaborators at Professional Conferences
like GDC, Sandbox Summit, and local networking events.
Give talks to get more attention to your work and games! Participate
in panels, offer giveaways to your twitter followers. Attend parties to
meet more people!
Get a Booth: costs $$, so share with others.
Consider Kelly Wallick’s Indie Megabooth
ENTER CONTESTS AND FESTIVALS
Like crowdfunding, a successful entry in a contest or a festival (Indies
can get free booths if selected for Pax, BFIG, etc) can pay off huge
dividends for attracting the attention of press and your audience.
Research and submit to many contests, not just gaming ones!
PAID CONTESTS:
IGF – Independent Games Festival
Unity Game Developer Contest
Windows Game Developer Contest
IndieCade
Indie Game Challenge
indiePub Games
BIG Festival
Dare To Be Digital
XNA Dream.Build.Play
Imagine Cup
Kongregate
The Game Creators
Intel Contests
YoYo Games
…and more!
BRAGGING RIGHTS CONTESTS:
Ludum Dare
TIGSource
Experimental Gameplay Project
The Global Game Jam
Retro Remakes
The Daily Click
Game Prototype Challenge
SHMUP-DEV
Something Awful
GameCreation
Indie Kombat
PyWeek
GameDev
GameJolt
The Poppenkast
Klik Of The Month Klub
GameBuilder
COLLABORATIONS AND STUNTS
Small Indies need more than anything else to get noticed!
Sometimes we resort to stunts. Sometimes it works.
John Butler, Yin Yang BANG BANG:
http://imgur.com/gallery/rJK7J
http://imgur.com/gallery/p3KWi
COLLABORATIONS AND STUNTS
Small Indies need more than anything else to get noticed!
Sometimes we resort to stunts. Sometimes it works.
Ichiro Lambe, Dejobaan Games:
Valve/Steam
Promotion, advertised
on the largest PC
gaming portal!
COLLABORATIONS AND STUNTS
Small Indies need more than anything else to get noticed!
Sometimes we resort to stunts. Sometimes it works.
Ziba Scott, Popcannibal Games:
MARKETING CAN BE FUN!
Approach your marketing materials
playfully, with a sense of fun and
adventure, hope and joy.
CELEBRATE your game, and others will
want to join you in the party!
MARKETING CAN BE FUN!
DGMD E-70: Marketing Materials Due in the next two weeks:
WEBSITE: Use free option like Weebly or Wix.com.
Include: Press Kit, Team (bio/class/photos), Game
Download Link
PRESS KIT: High Res images (screenshots, characters,
logo), Press Release, and Trailer.
TRAILER: 30-60 seconds, featuring gameplay.
Consider audience to decide core message (explain
game vs awesome) and pacing. Capture with Frapps,
Quicktime, etc., edit in iMovie, After Effects etc.
PART 3: MARKETING MATERIALS
EXPLAINED
Trailers and
Press Releases
Question: Why Make a Trailer?
Or… Why do people watch
game trailers?
Question: Why Make a Trailer?
1. INFORMATION: Explain the game:
What are the key play
mechanics and story elements?
2. ENTERTAINMENT: Grow interest in the
game: What is fun, exciting, and unique
about this game?
3. AUDIENCE: Engage the population you
want to play your game: use
editing/pacing, font and audio style to
connect your game to a genre.
Question: Why Make a Trailer?
Robot Roller-Derby Disco Dodgeball: Audience/Genre?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUVUIAneLE4
DinoTrucks: Mechanics and Audience
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSWlfwNcCss
Slam Bolt Scrappers: Mechanics and Audience:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVOyEPyPZCU
Girls Like Robots: Mechanics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmVoTDjAWBk
Ridiculous Fishing (Pacing): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzKcJ8QFbMk
Kiwanuka (pacing, music): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH_RAP7_LvU#t=55
Organ Trail (Call back): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kPob1KAQYg
AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! (Force = Mass x Acceleration)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51SX-xUNzUs
Shoot Many Robots:
Teaser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpt8DQpvrhM
Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je-zFnjO28Q
Re-announcement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-imuGQTCIOs
PRESS RELEASE: Tell a Story
The press release is to largely do the job for the press:
give them all the info they need to share your news
with their audience. Engage them with a story: the
story of your game or how it was made.
TRADITIONAL PRESS RELEASE: 2-7 short paragraphs.
Part 1: Date/location and 1 sentence: the main point!
Part 2: Key features: what is unique/exciting? (1-2 par)
Part 3: Quotes: developers + reviewers (1-2 par)
Part 4: Details: Availability
Part 5: info on the company/developers
PRESS RELEASE: Tell a Story
… BUT: to get the attention of the press, you may want
to break with the traditional mold, and try mixing in
other approaches:
• Funny/snarky language.
• Fantasy story of others creating your work (tradition
of authors pretending to “find” the book).
• Wild/ridiculous exaggeration of user responses:
reports of spontaneous death, rapture, etc.
• Use your imagination!
PRESS RELEASE: We announce two games coming to Steam March 14th! 2/14/13
Includes BBQ Defense simulator Go Home Dinosaurs as well as the PC port of Slam Bolt Scrappers
Cambridge, MA— 2/14/13 — Today Fire Hose Games (that’s us) proudly announces the upcoming release of two games on Steam for
March 14th, 2013. The first game is the long-awaited BBQ Defense Simulator Go Home Dinosaurs. The second is an updated PC version
of the fast and frantic puzzle-brawler Slam Bolt Scrappers, with porting help from Twitchy Thumbs Entertainment. Both titles will be
available together in a Fire Hose Games Bundle for $14.99 (25% off buying the titles separately).
“Releasing one game at a time? That’s for chumps. Two games! That’s what the kids want nowadays. Two games, and their wub-wubs
music or whatever,” shouted the bathrobed Fire Hose founder and Fire Chief, Eitan Glinert, at passing cars.
The Games:
Go Home Dinosaurs is the most important, mind-blowing, and historically accurate BBQ Defense Simulator ever released. Play as an
adorable burrowing gopher that is determined to save the grub from rampaging, adorable Dinos. Collect tower cards (from gophers
tossing snowballs to oversized lasers to giant magnets that pull meteors from the sky) and place them on the field to keep Dinos at bay.
Rotate the uniquely shaped towers to fit them into the board like weaponized puzzle pieces. Purchase power ups and costumes at the ingame store (no IAP) to make your gopher more powerful and stylish. Defend your BBQ in 60 levels spread across three prehistoric
worlds. Go Home Dinosaurs is super easy for anyone to pick up and learn but also challenges hardened strategy fans. Oh and did we
mention there’s a magnet that pulls meteors out of the sky?
Slam Bolt Scrappers is the PC version of 2011’s Puzzle-Brawler mix-up. Choose your character, tussle with monsters for building blocks, fit
those blocks together to make tower weaponry then destroy your opponent’s tower to win. It mashes the best aspects of puzzle games
and brawlers for something like you’ve never played before. Up to 4 friends can play at the same time either cooperatively in the
Campaign mode or competitively in Battle mode. It will fully support Steam’s Big Picture mode so prepare for large screen living room
action for the whole family.
3/14/13 Availability: The games will be available separately for $9.99 each (10% off preorders, $8.99) or together in the Fire Hose Bundle
for $14.99. The games are available for preorder now on our website - http://www.firehosegames.com/preorder.
###
For more information contact: Sean Baptiste press@firehosegames.com
For more information on Fire Hose Games, Go Home Dinosaurs, or Slam Bolt Scrappers
visit: www.GoHomeDinosaurs.com www.FireHoseGames.com
PRESS RELEASE:
What makes this a great PRESS RELEASE?:
Evaluation by marketing pro Emmy Johnson
Gets to the Point in First Sentence: Most of your press release’s readers will only read your
first sentence, which means you need to get to the point.
Captivates ENTIRELY: This press release is E-N-G-A-G-I-N-G! I can’t stop reading. The game’s
description is so vivid and unique that I feel compelled to not only read to the end, but
learn/see more.
Directs Where to Learn More: Just as I finish reading the game’s description, Dejobaan gives
me what I want: where to learn more. Instead of searching the Web on my own (which most
will NEVER do), I can easily click or copy and paste the link.
Omits the Egotism: A big buzzkills for a writer is reading about a killer game and then
drudging through multiple paragraphs about the creators. Unless your studio’s story is your
pitch, don’t talk about yourself so much. Dejobaan gives a brief three-sentence summary
with a “learn more” link.
Provides Contact Info: It amazes me how many studios forget to put their contact info at the
bottom of their releases. If you produce a sweet press release, make sure to let writers
know how to reach you.
WEBSITE: Game Title, Pitch, Gameplay
Trailer, Download link, and Presskit.
WEBSITE: Presskit: high res images that the
press can use, press release, quotes.
PART 4: TEAM MEETING
(if not in class, then outside as soon as you can)
Convene at your team table to discuss
observations and questionnaire answers.
• Read responses and review test-runner notes.
• Choose a facilitator
• Discuss responses—what feel like the biggest
ideas, the most pointed critiques?
• Plan to type up and post your notes.
Discuss Production goals for the next class
(Marketing plan and next top priority Backlog items,
potentially influenced by tester experience/
observations) and divide work equitably.
Due Next Week:
HOMEWORK #13: Game: More levels/art/audio, and
initial Website and Press Release (story!) materials
TEAMS:
1. Divide Unity/Art/Audio production equitably.
2. Meet with your team at least twice to discuss
progress, solve problems, consolidate build, and
plan Marketing Materials.
3. Test game clarity with at least two new players.
4. Submit sixth digital build to class next week.
Individually: Progress Report #6: Submit typed page in
class: What you agreed to produce, what you
accomplished, self-evaluation/related screenshots.
Have a decisive week!
And don’t forget to email us with questions:
Instructor: JASON WISER
Jason.Wiser@Tufts.edu
Available an hour after class and daily email.
Unity TF: Julia Knight
jaeteekae@gmail.com
Lab hours: Thursdays 7-7:40, daily by email