Building your brand as an
independent developer
About Chris Charla
 Portfolio Director for Connected Experiences at
Microsoft Studios
 Worked as independent developer for 10 years
 Launch editor of IGN.com; game magazine editor for
six years
 chris.charla@microsoft.com
 @iocat on twitter
 www.incrediblystrangegames.com
Being independent is great
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Smaller
Faster
Cheaper
More agile
Freedom to make games you want to make
The problem: Standing out is hard!
 There are tons of great games out there…
 How can you make sure people see your
game, and understand how awesome it is?
 It takes a lot of work, but there are some
sound, proven strategies you can implement
that guarantee you have the best shot
possible.
Why just being great isn’t enough
 There is arguably more great content out
there than there is time/money/consumers to
experience it
 Videogames are not a rational marketplace.
 Discovery is hard; people are lazy 
Building a brand is the solution
 We know on XBLA games with “known IP” sell 23% better
on average
 This doesn’t mean established IP, such as sequels or licenses.
 Building a brand around your game, your studio, and
yourself can help that happen – turning an unknown project
into a hotly anticipated game
 Braid
 Fez
 Castle Crashers
Strategies: Focus
Should you focus on a game, a studio, or yourself?
Yes.
Strategy: Step One
 First, have an awesome game. This is really
important!
 Be honest about whether or not your game is
awesome
 Be honest about whether or not it has a chance for
the level of success you are hoping for
 Listen for the feedback you don’t receive
Strategy: Be Active on Social Media (duh)
 Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, etc.
 Be active without being a shill for your project
 Consider two accounts, one for your game, and on
personally
 Be real  this is important
 Evaluating social media ROI
 Twitter is probably best for building personal brand
 Twitter + Blogs is best for your game
 Facebook is harder right now for independent games. Tough
to update, tough to stand out in a crowd, tough to manage
Announce your game early and often
 Games used to be announced late. That’s a terrible
strategy
 Old paradigm:
 Similar to launching a film
 Spend a ton of dough to saturate the market with awareness
and generate tons of interest among target audience
 Very expensive, needed to be timed closely to “peak” with
product release
 Realistically, no one can afford this type of saturation
marketing for an independent game
Announce your game early and often
 New paradigm:
 Low intensity, long-lead time marketing
 Target your interested consumers where they hang out
 One tweet may not have the “reach” of a magazine ad,
but if the right 1,000 people see it, it’s more than worth it
 Goal: Create the purchase intent months or
years before release, so the purchase
becomes a foregone conclusion
Analysis: Does this work?
 We’ve seen zero negative effects on XBLA
for early announces
 Braid, Castle Crashers, etc
 We have seen correlation of late or surprise
announces with low sales
Building Awareness Early
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Social media
Big media, websites and magazines
Amplification by thought leaders
Shows and events (speaking and showing)
 Build awareness
 Get actionable product feedback
 Network like crazy
 PR, Marketing and outreach by the developer can be
more impactful than outreach from a publisher.
Analysis of your brand building
 Be disciplined: Use comps not instinct to
evaluate your strategy’s performance
 Compare stories / followers / etc with similar
games.
 If your game got 11 stories after PAX, and every
other game got 25, you need to pause
What if this seems awfully hard?
 Tough luck. Marketing and outreach is an
intrinsic part of selling what you do
 If you can’t do this, you must partner with
someone who can. There is no alternative if
you want to succeed.
Q&A
 chris.charla@microsoft.com
 @iocat on twitter
 www.incrediblystrangegames.com