自我介绍
大家好，我的名字叫Jeff Hangartner！近期我创办了个小型独立游戏工作室，名字叫Bulletproof Outlaws。我是个在家工作的美工，程序员和音乐等内容外包人员。我刚刚完成了自己的首个iPhone游戏《Elusive Ninja: The Shadowy Thief》。游戏的正式发布时间为2011年6月6日。随即我进入了丰富多彩的营销世界，从各个不同的角度融入其中，尝试各种不同的营销策略。
我足够幸运，有些许可用在营销中的金钱（游戏邦注：作者开展行动之前也充分制定了战略计划）。而且，我想将自己已经学到的东西与他人分享。这些营销文章可能可以为其他无法承担起资金浪费的小型独立开发者提供帮助。
独立游戏《Elusive Ninja》市场营销策略系列文章已发布四篇，主要内容如下：
文章1——社交营销篇
通过Twitter、博客、论坛等方式进行口头营销，以构建起用户对游戏的关注。分析价格下降的利弊以及对微工作服务的使用。
深入分析行业中不为人所重视的部分，比如下载购买、付费评论等等。而且还涵盖了传统高级营销途径，比如条幅广告和诸如AdMob之类的营销代理和广告服务。
应该在Press Kit放置哪些内容，如何使用媒体宣传，创造截图和测试版等等。而且，如何有效地维护我们谈论过的所有东西。
作为独立开发者如何在复杂的营销环境中生存下来，如何处理花钱、销售量数据上扬和跌落、做出重大决定、处理批评带来的压力，直面iPhone应用中的盗版现象。
以下是第一部分内容：社交营销篇
我的游戏项目状况
直白地说，《Elusive Ninja》现在每天的销售量只有2份左右。游戏本身很不错，只是曝光度不够而已。陌生人的评论（游戏邦注：App Store中大部分应用的前期评论多数来自开发者的朋友）都是积极的，而且我知道游戏看起来和玩起来都很棒（游戏邦注：作者花了大量时间根据测试者的意见调整平衡性），总体来说游戏有众多闪光点。所以我知道，我所针对的并不是个低质量的产品。坦诚地说，当我听到有些人说“条幅广告不起作用！”而且看到他们所用的条幅广告设计粗糙，所广告的游戏美工做得很差而且有着不平衡的游戏可玩性，我脑中冒出的首个想法就是“并非条幅广告不起作用，只是你自己的游戏太差了。”此前我读过其他有关营销经验的文章，也与其他开发者探讨过整个话题，这些经验我也融合到这篇文章中。
可以理解的是，有人可能会想“等等，如果你的游戏并不卖座，那么我为何还要浪费时间去阅读你编写的有关营销的文章呢？”在这些文章中，我列举了许多自己犯过的错误以及为何它们无法发挥作用的原因，所以看过之后你可以避免犯这些错误。我还阐述了某些有效的方法，其中所使用的营销手段你可以考虑尝试下，因为这是我从自己的试验和错误中总结出来的。如果你是个独立开发者，光是游戏开发就会耗费你大量的时间和精力。维持社交媒体页面、参与竞争、价格下降、编写媒体宣传，如果未制定恰当的计划，这些都可能耗费大量时间并让你感到不知所措。
理论
总的来说，我是个乐观主义者，也是个现实主义者。身为独立开发者，我相信合适的战略能够帮助游戏在App Store中取得很高的排名，但是从逻辑上来说，我知道希望自己的首款作品能够击败《愤怒的小鸟》、《Cut the Rope》或《Tiny Wings》是个很不切实际的想法。我觉得开发者的首款游戏有可能轰动市场，但是你不应该打这个赌。你应该期盼的是能够利用长期的“积累”战略来取得成功，这样更加缓慢但所取得的地位也更加牢固。
积累包括构建公司的品牌，构建为用户所熟悉的IP（游戏邦注：如游戏的外观、角色和故事等），交叉推广之前发布的游戏和新游戏，发布游戏更新并像首次发布那样重新营销主更新，与媒体、玩家、其他开发者、用户构建起联系，培养粉丝团体，为忠诚用户提供奖励，鼓励口头广告等等。
所以，尽管首款游戏可能一开始表现并不出众，但是当你发布第二或第三款游戏时，你可以以此为机会让你的首款游戏获得更多的曝光度并使销售量再次上扬等等。互联网影响了营销发挥作用的方式，尤其是整个社交网络概念。现在，我不认为成为阴暗地下室中的神秘反社交独立开发者是个最优化的战略。这就如同变成了完全冷漠并且不与“普通大众”互动的大公司。上述两种方式都可能带来成功，但它们并没有真正投入社交媒体的怀抱。这就像当年互联网开始普及时，营销顾问会告诉企业“你们必须拥有一个网站，因为现在每家公司都拥有网站！你的网站甚至不需要与众不同，你只需要有这个东西展示就可以了！”所以，加入到社交网络中是很重要的。这需要付出些许精力，而且比起“我想在大型游戏网站上花5000美元购买广告栏位，希望由此能够给我带来大量盈利”此类想法来说，这是个成效较为缓慢的战略。但是构建社交媒体就像你把雪球滚下山，你会看到随着时间推移可以构建起更为可靠的营销途径。
资金风险
我想重点在于，独立游戏开发者应该期待的是不止制作一款游戏，应该合理安排你的资金，这样方能经得起几款游戏的失败。如果你的资金足够让你从三次失败后存活下来，那么就做的很不错了。如果你的这三款游戏中任意一款获得成功，就是件令人惊叹的事情。如果你的前两款游戏并没有获得成功，但是第三款的成功让用户关注到前两款游戏，这也是很棒的事情。如果你的首款游戏失败了，但是第二款的成功为你的首款游戏获得了些许关注度，那么你在开发第三款游戏时就没必要担心风险问题。但是如果你的想法是“我要把拥有的全部资源投入这款游戏中，它将成为我的代表作震惊整个市场”，你就是在玩一场风险极大的游戏。
现在我知道存在某些例外的情况，理想情况下，你不应该对任何东西进行控制，你应该在尽量短的时间内制作出最高质量的游戏。因为单纯从哲学观点来看，你应该总是投入最大的精力来制作游戏。而且从逻辑上来说，高质量游戏更可能引起用户关注并让你成为亿万富翁。但是从业务稳定性这个立场上来看，这样你就在做一次非常大得赌博，尤其在App Store这种与众不同的环境之下。你在App Store上发布的游戏只能定价为0.99美元或1.99美元，你不能像Konami或Capcom发布主机游戏那样将其定价为19.99美元或49.99美元。所以，为何不多花些时间来发布些许较小的高质量游戏呢？直到你的经济能够像游戏工作室那般稳定，再考虑制作代表作的事情，这样作品的失败就不会让你陷入困境中。
让我们看看以下销售图表
状况不是很好，是吗？我不想撒谎，这种销售状况确实很不乐观。我原本希望在撰写这篇文章的时候能让情况有所好转，这样我就能吹嘘“我如何将销售量从每天1个提升到每天1万个”之类的话语了，但是还没有这么好的运气！
截止本文撰稿时，我的游戏已售出256份，而且大部分是在游戏发布之初，毫无疑问购买者几乎都是我的朋友、家人、Twitter粉丝、Facebook好友等。在这个图表中，R代表我的游戏获得了评论，B代表我购买了条幅广告，P代表某些与媒体相关的事情（游戏邦注：在这款游戏中，指发送大量评论请求）。
256X1.99=509.44美元。再扣去50%（游戏邦注：30%为苹果抽成，20%分给游戏的程序员Derek），迄今为止我得到的盈利数为254.72美元。开发成本和广告费用总计在3000美元左右，所以游戏仍然还需要进一步获得盈利。
你可以从图表中看出，当我采取某些行动时，销售量就会上扬，当我无所动作时，销售量就会下滑。这是很显然的事情，但是问题在于“采取行动”需要金钱而且“行动”的时机也很重要。我将在评论、条幅广告和超级组合版块中具体分析这方面的内容。
浪费金钱
我也必须承认，某些营销途径完全是在浪费金钱，我可能需要尝试更多次再加以实施。我的想法是，因为我有个高质量产品而且现在遇到了困难，我现在应该探索如果绕开这堵墙。否则，我开发玩下个游戏之后，依然会碰到同样的问题。如果我可以找到这堵墙的薄弱点，然后学习如何有效地将它炸得粉碎，那么我在营销下款游戏时就会制定更具战略性的计划。我将此视为一场枪战，所以我必须将狙击枪瞄准到最佳地点。
为何不添加更多“内容”？
有些人建议给游戏增添更多内容以及改变价格等等做法，但是凭我对App Store市场和一般市场过程的了解，坦诚地说我不认为这些做法能起到多大作用。我已经设计出50种供玩家躲避的物体或5种可供选择的不同忍者，但是我不认为添加这些内容能够给我带来更高的关注度。假设现在我添加100个不同的物体、10个不同的忍者、RPG玩法元素、长达5个小时的情节等等内容，我确信我可以获得更高的关注，但是从明智开发这个方面考虑，这需要耗费大量的时间、金钱和人力，而且我仍然在赌博希望游戏能够获得用户的关注。如果要这样做的话，或许最简单的方法是添加一个丰满的女忍者和一段裸体代码。
现在这些还都只是理论而已。让我们回到真实的结果和数据上来，看看我尝试过的各种不同的营销方式以及我个人的体验和感觉：
社交营销
口头传播
近些年来，口头传播或许是最为强大的营销形式。这种方式通常不像投放条幅广告那样直接耗费金钱，它需要耗费的是时间。口头传播需要大量的宣传、与媒体相配合、与粉丝群体互动（游戏邦注：即便只有些许Twitter粉丝）、参加论坛、回复电子邮件等。我相信，仅仅这个途径就可以转变成全职的工作。如果我能够负担得起的话，我更愿意雇佣一个人来处理这些事情，因为这需要耗费大量的时间。
然而，尽管构建口头传播需要耗费大量的时间，但却并不显得很枯燥无味。你在这个过程中结交新朋友，你可以奖励那些帮助你脱离困境的粉丝，你可以加入不同的社群等等。事实上，这件事情很有趣。如果你是在运营一个小型工作室的话，你可能会在每天结束时思考“我在这方面花了多少时间？在这段时间内我还可以多做些什么事情？”你必须将工作与粉丝互动相平衡，以达到令你感到舒适的状态。
为何如此重要？
我想当你开始进行项目开发时，专注可能是最重要的事情。将其当成游戏《魔兽争霸》中的采矿和伐木来看待。当然，建造兵营训练骑士来围攻敌人的基地确实很棒，但是要实现这个目标你必须首先花时间筹集资源。除非你非常幸运，首款游戏就取得了像《愤怒的小鸟》那样的成功，或者其他项目已经帮你吸引了大量的粉丝群体，否则你刚开始的时候可能并不为人所知晓。结交朋友和构建粉丝群体，你就像是在招募可以帮助你传播游戏的军队。
《愤怒的小鸟》的员工发布的任何信息都会被发布到每个游戏新闻网站的首页上。他们有品牌认知、工作室声望和大量的粉丝群体。这些公司还有可能花大量资金来做促销。我并不否认这些做法能够起到非凡的作用，但是我要提出的问题是，作为有着资金和名气有限的独立游戏开发者，我们要在这样的系统中采取何种做法？
作为独立开发者，我们通常没有足够的资金在所有顶级游戏新闻网站上投放整个页面的广告，或者以赠送许多iPad 2来做促销。但是社交营销并不需要耗费资金。假设你有100个粉丝关注你的游戏开发，而这些人各自都有100个粉丝。当你发布或更新游戏时，就会有100个人在Twitter和Facebook上发布有关你的游戏的新闻，这样你就相当于同1万人接触。现在，假设你与某些游戏新闻编辑和评论员的关系较好，如果有些人想要报道你的游戏，那么在你发布游戏之时，你就可以让更多的用户看到你的游戏。
同时，那些制作只坐在地下室中制作精美游戏的人会在游戏发布时才将其公之于众。少数人或许恰好在游戏发布页面看到游戏，从而使得游戏得到传播。确实在有些成功的故事中，开发者什么都没做，因为游戏的质量而自行引发口头传播，但是这需要有极好的运气。我们想要预先采取行动，让事情朝我们喜欢的方向发展，否则我们可能也只是像买彩票那样期盼游戏的成功。
所以，避免反社交化是非常重要的，但是你要从何处开始呢？
在你还在开发游戏时就创建Twitter账户。大部分的销售量可能来自于发布首日，所以要先期进行宣传和联系，这样在发布日就可以获得尽可能多的曝光度。Twitter是个很即时化的营销形式，你可以亲眼看到你发表的新闻在互联网中传播，这确实很棒。
其实，当时我还是个Twitter新手，我只是在开发《Bulletproof Outlaws》之前一个月开始使用，所有的“RT”和“FF”术语对我来说都很陌生。现在我掌握了些许技巧，陈述如下：
只拥有一个账户
最初我有个个人账户，后来我又创建了一个运营账户（游戏邦注：即@BPOutlaws）。问题在于，我在创建运营账户之时，所有人关注的都是我的个人账户。所以，让他们关注我的运营账户变得较为麻烦，尤其是我在个人和运营账户上发表的是相同的内容，因为运营账户也是由我自己管理。理想的做法是，首先创办运营Twitter账户，然后在获得些许粉丝后将其分流到个人账户中。你的运营账户是要用来为你获得盈利的，所以如果要选择其中某个账户有较少粉丝的话，我想你应该让个人账户有较少粉丝。
如果只创建一个账户的话，工作量会少得多。或许其他人在管理此类事情上做得比我更好，但是我很讨厌在各种不同的地方进行回复。而且有些人并没有关注你的某个账户，所以他们可能看不到你的回应，你就要把消息重新发布到另一个账户上，这让我感到很混乱。使用一个Twitter账户，一个Facebook和一个电子邮箱，所有的内容都与你的运营相关，这样可能可以节省更多的时间。
勇敢前进，让运营充满乐趣
使用单一Twitter账户也可以帮助你从个人层面上与粉丝进行联系和互动。事实上，没有人会关心你的运营账户。大众玩家关注你并不是因为想看到游戏发布的相关信息。他们关注你的原因在于希望能够看到令他们发笑或产生好奇心的个性化内容。使用单一的Twitter账户，你可以将运营发布内容融合到个人内容中，而且不会让人们感到反感，因为你所发表的沉闷内容相对较少。就像孩子们讨厌吃维生素，但是如果其形状是Flintstone的样子，他们就会更有兴趣。
发布内容的时间
通常，你的粉丝所住的地方与你的时区相同或相近。如果你是在日本发布消息，你可能拥有的是日本粉丝。如果你在英国发布消息，那么你的粉丝很可能大部分来自北美。你应当考虑到粉丝受众的时区。如果你有个很重要的新闻需要公布，但是当时已经是凌晨3点了，我想可能90%的粉丝都在睡觉，所以我会等到早上8点再发布内容。我住在加拿大西部，所以与我同在西部的粉丝估计会在每天的工作开始时看到我发布的内容，因为他们每天都会优先看下Twitter上的情况。但是对于居住在加拿大东部的人来说，他们的时间比我早2到3个小时，所以他们会在每天早上烦闷的工作期间收到我发布的内容，或者刚好在中午休息时看到。
通过如此确定发布的时间，我将内容被粉丝看到的可能性最大化。如果我在凌晨3点发表信息，可能只有少数人会看到，而当他们登录时这条消息就会出现在“New Tweets”的底部。我仍然有可能在凌晨3点发布内容，但是发布的确实不那么重要的内容。
另一个需要考虑的是在每周的哪一天发布内容。在周一下午发布内容可能比在周五晚上或周六下午发布获得更多的关注，因为在后者两个时间段内，人们正处在周末外出休闲时间而不是坐在办公室中找事情打发8个小时的时间。
使用#标签
我看到很多人在Twitter中随意使用#，而且有许多人完全不使用这个标签。如果你是个开发者的话，在内容中加上“#gamedev”或“#indie”等与你所发表内容有所关联的普通词汇和短语。
我在某些更新中添加了“#ninjas”和“#art”。有些人使用标签来关注内容。个人来说，我会关注“#gamedev”，所以当有人以这个标签发表内容时，我就可以看到。凭借这个方法，我找到了许多很棒的新游戏，而且也让我自己获得了许多新粉丝的关注。如果我发现某些我认为有价值的东西，我就会转发帮助那个人做宣传。
如果你不使用这个方法，你就只能接触到直接关注你的粉丝群体，尽管这很不错，但是并未发挥出这种宣传方式的最大作用。你发布了有关音乐所耗费成本的消息，然后在上面加上“#music”标签，可能就会有作曲家看到这个标签，然后向你提供较为廉价的服务。或者你在发布自行设计的类似《愤怒的小鸟》游戏，加上“#birdwatchers”标签，或许你会接触到许多帮助你传播游戏的社群，取得如此成效只是因为你以某种与他们的兴趣相关的方式获得了他们的关注。当然，这完全是乱枪打鸟，但是添加这些标签并不耗费任何资金。
这种方法还可以帮助你接触到你甚至从未意识到已经存在的社群（游戏邦注：就像作者发现了“#gamedev”一样），或者你偶然间便创造了一个社群（游戏邦注：就像“#ims211”的无意间大爆发一样）。
我在某些新闻中加上“#ElusiveNinja”的标签，然后将我的账户设置成在发现“elusive ninja”的消息后通知我。采取这种做法后，我发现了某些我还未知道的评论以及别人对游戏的讨论。而且游戏中还有“Tweet你的得分”这个选项，而且发布的分数会在末端加上“#ElusiveNinja”标签，这样如果有玩家发布的话我就会看到，并个人对其表示祝贺。
加入#IDRTG
它始于Touch Arcade开发者部分的一个帖子，是个有着大量iOS游戏开发者的大组织。从本质上来说，这个组织是大量独立开发者都在相互转发各自的内容。许多人并没有大量的粉丝，但是即便是小账户也能够日积月累粉丝数量，而且根本不会耗费你的金钱。组织中的每个人都有相互帮助对方脱离困境的意图，因为我们都知道游戏最初获得曝光是很困难的。
消息的长度
所发布的内容越短越好。最好比最多的160字少10-20个字。之所以这么做的原因在于，如果人们想要转发你的消息但这条消息有160个字的话，他们就没办法加上自己的名字，或者他们必须重写或改变你的内容以使有足够的空间输入自己的名字。理想状况下，如果你有空间让他们加上自己的名字，他们就更有可能转发你的消息，因为如果他们转发或者你的消息被别人转发，他们也能够获得一定的曝光度。
尽量使用短的URL。但是必须注意的是，你可能想要用公司的URL，以使公司引起他人的关注。就像如果我在消息中包含某个博客的链接，那么我就会使用bit.ly，因为博客的地址太长了。但是有时如果我知道这条消息有可能被潜在用户看到，那么就要把“http://bulletproofoutlaws.com/”加入到消息中，这样人们就可以看到游戏的名称。
勇于提出要求
在消息开始前加上“请转发”之类的字眼完全不是什么错误之举。理想状况下，你的Twitter粉丝都非常喜欢你并且关注你，因为他们希望你能够获得成功，所以这只是个提醒他们转发游戏相关重要消息的小要求而已。而且，如果你的消息为人们所转发，可能会有其他好心人看到“请转发”这样的字眼而再次转发。尽管这种做法能够起到作用，但是千万不可将这些提醒写得过长。
表达你对他人的感激
当你的消息别人们转发之后，你可能会在提醒栏里面看到别人转发你的消息。我看到这类消息时，通常会对转发的人表示感谢。这有两个原因：我确实很感激他们能够转发我的消息，而且在感谢中@他们的名字可以让我的粉丝了解他们，这样就可以形成互帮互助的循环；其他人看到我对转发我的消息的人表示感谢，也会让他们更倾向于转发我的消息，即便只是为了让我在感谢中提及他们的名字。
Twitter对所有参与者来说都是个双赢的营销途径。
回报他人的关心
我有时会看看那些转发或关注我的人的简介，只是为了看看他们的情况，如果我看到有人也在发布所做项目的信息，那么我也会帮助他们转发。这也是使用#的另一个原因，我或许还没有关注你，但是如果你发布某些很棒的东西而且出现在我#gamedev的栏位中，我可能就会去关注你并转发你的消息，只是因为我想为你提供支持。转发他人发布的我所喜欢的内容，这种方法也为我赢得了几个粉丝。通常，我还会添加些自己的评论，比如“喜欢你的艺术制作！”或“很棒的文章！”，表示我真正对他们发布的东西很欣赏，我不是在随便转发内容。如果我发掘到的某个其他人的项目获得了一个很棒的评论，我也会转发这类的消息，希望能够助他们获得成功。
想要别人怎么对待你，就怎么对待别人，这条黄金准则也适用于此。
要有一点“挑剔”
这是个很复杂的问题。你需要平衡转发那些帮助他人获得成功的内容（游戏邦注：可能是没有价值的内容）以及转发那些有质量的内容。如果你的Twitter消息中转发的全是垃圾和新游戏的发布，那么谁会想要去关注你呢？转发哪些内容完全出于你自己的偏好。我喜欢转发的是那些我认为很棒或者有发展潜力的内容（游戏邦注：比如某些人发布的有关他们自己的游戏的信息，虽然美工做得不好，但是游戏概念却非常出众）。
Twitter就是个人间的联系。如果我们发现关注的某个名人只是付钱来请他人替他们发消息，我们会感到十分愤怒，因为我们希望看到的是他们自己真正的想法（游戏邦注：无论这些想法很深刻还是很肤浅）。尽管帮助别人获得成功是好事，但是你也必须记住，你应该努力去构建能够为你带来价值的粉丝群。
@name很重要！
就像使用#一样，在适当的时候使用@name也很有用。如果你将他们的名字放到你的消息中，许多人也都会跟你采取同样的做法。而且某些大型Twitter账户（游戏邦注：比如某些游戏评论网站）似乎有自动的服务，他们会跟踪那些@他们名字的消息，然后自动发送消息对此表示感谢，这意味着你自己的@name将会展现在他们站点的众多粉丝面前。
某天出于好奇，我在消息中添加了@YoYoGamemaker。数个小时之后，Game Maker将我的消息转发展示给旗下700多个粉丝。如果我没有这么做的花，那些人可能根本不会看到我的账户和内容。
Follow Fridays
很显然，每个Friday的人都会在Twitter上使用“FF”，列出许多@name。我从未发送过我自己的FF，因为我不想让人们因这种事情而感到厌烦。但是，不要盲目采取我的做法！我所采用的FF方法是发表“感谢@bob的FF”。或者如果我看到质量较高的FF（游戏邦注：比如其他人发表“FF这些令人称赞的游戏开发者：”之类的消息），我会转发那个FF列表。
和Twitter一样，你应当尽早启用Facebook页面。但是，我推荐将运营账户与私人账户分开。因为Twitter只是用来发表文本消息，但是你应该不希望陌生人可以随意看你的家庭相片之类的内容吧。我个人很少使用Facebook，只是有人推荐我建立个《Elusive Ninja》的粉丝页面，我才创建了运营账户。
我只使用Facebook来发布评论和游戏的重大更新。我个人觉得Twitter和Bulletproof Outlaws博客就够用了，但也有可能我未发掘Facebook的全部潜能。
Google+
这是最近刚刚兴起的社交网络，因而我还无法判断其是否适宜用来做营销。Google+似乎结合了Twitter和Facebook功能，但只有过了这段新鲜期之后，我们才会看到Google+的真正实力，是打败Facebook还是被Facebook打败。
Microjob服务
这个东西我最近才注意到，上面基本上都是像“支付5美元我会帮你做某些事情”之类的服务。对我们独立开发者来说，像“我会向自己4.5万Twitter和Facebook粉丝传播你的消息，每天三次，持续一个星期”这类服务我觉得可以利用。
我尝试了几次，毕竟5美元不贵，以下是我的体验：
多数账户是虚假的
从根本上来说，向4.5万个粉丝发布信息并不等同于向4.5万个iPhone使用者发布信息。有些Twitter账户每个小时会发布数十条消息。而且，多数粉丝的账户都是虚假账户，他们根本不可能购买你的游戏。
仍有可用价值
这仍然有可用的地方，比如Facebook需要粉丝页面上有20个粉丝才能够获得新URL。所以，我们可以花5美元来获得20多个虚假粉丝，而你由此获得的吸引人的URL将为你带来真正的粉丝。
查看评论
其他使用者可以对他们使用的服务进行评论，所以要稍微看下这些评论，确保其提供的服务是合法的。
其他服务
Fiverr.com和UpHype.com主页上有许多可以使用的廉价服务，比如：
“我可以制作这个引人注目的iPad视频介绍，只要5美元。”
“我可以为你设计一个图标，只要8美元。”
有些事情你自己无法完成，使用这个服务花数美元就可以解决问题。其他专业人员的设计会让你的作品看起来更加专业。你可以先保留这项服务，必要的时候可以考虑使用。
道德问题
这里存在某个道德的问题。从理论上来说，你可以花钱买些虚假的Twitter粉丝或虚假的5星级评论，只要其他人没有发现是虚假内容就可以。比起只有5个粉丝和许多3星级评论来说，这会让你的游戏或工作室看起来比较受人欢迎。
我不能帮你决定是否应该使用这些服务，这取决于你自己的想法。就我个人而言，我花钱购买Facebook粉丝，只是为了获得/elusiveninja/这个URL，但是所有的Twitter粉丝、Facebook好友、博客评论都是真实的。之所以这么做，是因为我希望能够准确地判断出自己所取得的成功。如果某周我的Twitter粉丝增加了50个，这意味着账户得到了推广，我就会去Google看看是否在哪里获得新的评论或者被某个站点提及，然后对做出贡献的人表示感谢。但是如果我拥有的是5万个虚假Twitter粉丝，我就没办法知道自己是否有所进步，因为我根本不知道哪些人真正对我的游戏感兴趣。
这个问题会在这篇文章的“评论”章节中具体阐述，因为现在这种现象非常普遍。
论坛帖子
我在几个论坛上发过游戏的帖子，主要都是些与iPhone游戏相关的论坛。我发现了两个极端的现象：要么论坛人数过少，没有足够的流量，因而看帖和回帖的人数不多；要么论坛过于火爆，帖子在10分钟的时间里就从首页上消失。
死气沉沉的论坛并非毫无用处，因为如果有人逛到就会马上看到你的帖子。但是如果某个帖子能够在Touch Arcade这样的论坛的主页上待上几天时间，那么就会获得很高的曝光度。你可以尝试各种论坛，尤其是那些社区类型的论坛。但是不要老是发游戏的广告，因为有些社区对此很反感，可能会将你禁言。
顶帖子
有些帖子会在首页上待一到两天时间，但是发帖人对此似乎并没有合理的掌控。如果你回复了帖子中所有的回帖，那么就没有其他办法再把你的帖子顶到首页中了。我的做法是，当帖子消失在首页中时再对回帖进行回复，以此来保持帖子出现在首页中。当然，如果你的游戏更新了的话，你也可以发布到帖子中，靠新闻来让其出现在首页中。我认为发布评论信息也是个不错的做法，比如“看看，IGN给我的游戏评了满分，链接如下！”等等。
简介中的个人推广
提前制作个人简介，准备好简介、签名中要使用的说明和描述。不同的论坛有着不同的格式（游戏邦注：有些使用方括号，有些使用HTML，有些只允许使用文本，有些限制简介在100个字以内），我将完成的简介编辑成文本文件，根据各论坛不同的格式剪切粘贴即可，这让简介的编写时间缩短。
确保在签名中添加游戏和网站的链接。在互联网上，你发布的信息将会永远存在，上述做法可以让有些在你发帖数月后才看到的人迅速点击看到你的游戏。
博客
我很喜欢使用博客，尤其是在游戏开发方面。以下是博客的好处：
1、等我老的时候，我可以看看自己的游戏开发记录。
2、它让我坚持自己的游戏开发。如果我在某段时间内没有工作，我会因为没有更新博客以及博客读者不断地催促而感到愧疚，这样我就会重返工作状态。
3、博客帮助我建立起粉丝群，这些人都很关注游戏的成功与否。这些人关注游戏开发的一举一动，他们会在情感上有所投入。这些粉丝可能会利用他们的Twitter账户帮助你营销游戏，如果评论员诋毁游戏的话也会予以反击，如果你在开发过程中感到消沉，他们还会鼓励你。Behemoth这个公司有着庞大的粉丝群，尽管他们只有三款游戏，但是他们对粉丝的态度很好，无论接下来他们发布的是什么游戏，发布首日都会有数万人购买他们的游戏，只是为了给他们提供支持。这比那些有着大量游戏却只有50个Twitter粉丝的公司要好得多。
4、作为游戏开发者，我也想帮助其他游戏开发者获得成功。这也是为何我花这么多时间编写这篇文章的原因。我在阅读其他人的博文时也会学到很多东西。如果我能够将自己的发现通过博客展现给其他开发者的话，这是多么棒的事情！
5、偶尔你编写的博文会受到普通大众的关注，他们在Twitter或诸如Digg之类的站点上传播博文的链接，这样你就有可能获得更多的关注度和某些新粉丝。
博文篇幅
你不必像我这样发表这么多博文，我只是特别喜欢写博文而已。开发博客的更新博文只需要数个段落，阐述正在进行的开发、接下来数天的计划等等，这不用花多少时间。实际上，我在博文更新上浪费了很多时间。开发下款游戏时，我可能会缩短花在这上面的时间。
更新频率
我每天更新博客，这只是个人偏好而已，其实每周更新一次就足够了。关键在于你必须有规律地定期更新，这样人们才会知道何时去查看博客，而且这也会强迫你为自己的开发制定合理的计划。我推荐在周天晚上或周一早上编写博文，在工作日发布新内容。从我博客的访问情况来看，工作日的访问人数比周末更多。可能周末人们都会外出，而工作日时当他们完成自己的工作，就会在闲暇时间去看看博客。
做法
在Wordpress等网站上注册免费的博客。这上面有大量可供使用的模板，用起来很简单。个人介绍、游戏内容、概念艺术以及目前的开发状态，这便足以构成你的首篇博文。将你的博客地址链接到Twitter、Facebook和论坛签名上。你要让博客成为人们想要了解你以及你的作品的相关信息的默认地点。
竞赛
我还未采取过这种方式，以下所述主要是我从其他人的做法中观察所得，也可以算是自己未来的计划。竞赛可以是高分竞赛，奖励转发游戏消息的人，粉丝艺术比赛和“设计BOSS”竞赛等。
奖品可以是游戏的推广码、iTunes礼品卡或者像iPad、海报和其他商品等实物奖励（游戏邦注：必须确保合法性）。
你可以定期举办竞赛，比如每周评选最高得分，也可以不定期及举办随机推广码赠送。如果你的竞赛和奖励很有趣，那么就有可能给你带来额外的曝光度，让你的游戏受到众人的关注。游戏《The Heist》在举办竞赛期间荣膺App Store榜首之位（游戏邦注：作者不觉得这是游戏成功的唯一原因，但肯定大有帮助）。宣传那些在竞赛中获胜的人，即便只在Twitter消息中提到亦可！
降价
这对iPhone开发者来说是件大事。如果你的游戏从9.99美元降到免费，那么肯定可以获得大量的关注和下载量。但是，让我们更深入地分析这种做法。
降价的好处
无论你在合适降价，你的游戏都会被展示在“今日降价游戏！”的类别中，并显示出游戏的原价和现价。这肯定可以带来额外的曝光度。
促销发布
就个人而言，我觉得“发布促销”是个很棒的想法。在游戏发布头几天进行促销，能够帮助你的游戏在App Store中立足。
暂时VS永久
我不觉得永久性的降价可以带来很多好处，但是如果采用的是暂时降价的方式，你必须要让所有人知道降价只是暂时的。假设你刚刚花9.99美元买下游戏，第二天它就降到了0.99美元，而且好似此后会维持这个价格。这会让你感到很郁闷，或许就会在给游戏的评论中发泄不满。假如你还没有没游戏，然后看到游戏降价到0.99美元，你觉得这个价格很划算，但是当时手头有些事情就忘了。几天之后想起了这个游戏，发现价格变成9.99美元。这也会让你感到异常郁闷，你可能就不愿意花9.99美元买下了，因为你会觉得这个价格并不合理。
如果销售时写上“只售3天！”或者“只在元旦出售！”，用户就会知道在为期多长的时间内能够以优惠价买到游戏。这在发布促销中很重要，因为在发布销售中你想要的是在尽量短的时间内获得尽量多的销售量，这样才能够获得更好的排名并希望能够得到苹果的推荐。如果你在发布时说两天后游戏会从0.99美元升至9.99美元，那么人们肯定在这两天时间里争相购买游戏。
节日促销
我向来对节日不是很关注，而且我现在是独立开发者，没有5天9小时的工作计划，对这方面的关注更少了。但是当我还在为节日到来时没人工作感到奇怪时，其他开发者的感恩节销售、新年销售、返校销售、黑色星期五销售等活动正如火如荼地进行着并获得了大量的曝光度和新用户，而我却什么都没有得到，只是因为我不关注节日。
不要跟巨头起冲突
节日销售的要点在于，那些节日是人所共知的。所以当你在节日降价并期待下载量能够突飞猛进时，育碧和EA之类的巨擘也都把他们的游戏从9.99美元降到0.99美元。每个游戏新闻站点都会报道这些大公司的消息，玩家也更偏爱花很少的钱来购买这些大公司的产品，所以可能都没有人注意到你的游戏。你不仅没有获得额外的下载量，而且每次下载获得的盈利也大大减少。
这种状况很棘手，你只能避开，尽量不与这些大公司起冲突。而且，如果你的发布时间与大公司的游戏发布时间相同的话，也会面临同样的问题。你能够做的就是随便选个发布和促销时间，避开像新年周末这样的高峰期。
我觉得《Elusive Ninja》的发布之所以情况不佳，应该归咎于其发布之日是在今年E3展举办的首日。我处在两难的境地中，要么将发布日推迟3或4周直到E3展热度退去，或者选择在E3展首日发布游戏。我已经计划在E3展期间开展某些推广措施，所以我按照原定计划行事。但是不幸的是，我的推广并没有及时发挥作用，所以最后以悲剧收场。如果我以后再面对这种情况的话，在准备好促销方法的前提下我会按照原定计划行事，如果没有准备好的话，我会将游戏发布时间推迟到下个月。要知道在任天堂发布新主机时，当然没有人会去关注独立iPhone游戏。
为促销做推广
如果你正在计划进行促销的话，就需要让公众知道这件事。可以使用Twitter、免费媒体报道服务和你能够利用的所有媒体。覆盖范围越广，效果越好。
当日免费游戏
现在有很多此类的服务，你付费换取他们报道你的免费游戏。我还未使用过这种方法，但是我知道某些提供这种服务的地方。个人觉得付费来赠送自己的游戏有些愚蠢，尤其是在营销资金有限的情况下。而且，采用这种做法还会有如下风险：
免费带来的风险
你最先将游戏定价为2.99美元，获得了某些4星和5星的评论。从总体上来说，游戏很不错，看到游戏的新用户都很乐意购买。当你在数天时间里将价格变为免费时，自然可以获得大量的下载量，但是你也收到了大量1星的评论。
当你将游戏转变为免费时，你得到的是大量可能根本没有玩过你的游戏的玩家。因为他们没有在游戏中投入任何资金，所以也不会关心是否给予了像样的反馈，或者觉得根本不需要花较长的时间来体验你的游戏。我想起当年视频游戏租赁的年代，孩子们用零用钱租赁某些NES游戏来打发周末的时间。许多此类游戏都很差，但是你已经花钱租赁了，整个周末它都是属于你的，你就会想要找出些证明你花这份钱有一定价值的东西！通常情况下，你最终会喜欢上那个游戏，而如果游戏是免费的而且你只玩数分钟的话，你可能很快就会将其抛弃。
有人说如果你要将游戏转变成免费的话，就要做好评级至少下降1星的思想准备，这是值得考虑的经验法则。
免费和排名
我不知道下述说法是否是真实的，就我目前所看到的情况，尽管游戏免费后可以获得大量的下载量，但是你的游戏现在是被归类为免费游戏排名列表中，获得的这些新用户不会影响你在付费游戏中的排名。比如说，你在App Store的付费游戏中排名第180位，将游戏转变成免费后，获得了5000万的下载量并荣登免费游戏排行榜首位，但是当你转回原本的价格时，在付费游戏中的排行还是180名。
但是这是否意味着免费总是不好的做法呢？这完全取决与你的目标：
明白自己的目标
从本质上来说，这是个你在营销游戏时时常需要做出的选择：想获得大量用户的关注还是想盈利？
这个问题的答案没有对与错之分。根据你目前所处的状况以及所取得成功的程度，你的目标可能会有所改变。如果你的游戏刚刚发布，你可能需要的是大量的曝光度，所以发布促销正是适合的手段。随着销售量和排名开始逐渐下滑，你也想要收回开发成本，那么就应当使用正常的价格和竞争促销。某一天你醒来时发现，苹果正在推荐你的游戏，知道这可以带来大量用户的关注，所以你就要在赚钱和冲击排行榜前20名之间做决定。如果你想要赚钱的话，就保持价格不变。如果你想要提升游戏的排名的话，就要降低价格尝试吸引更多用户，并且希望此举能够补偿你降低售价损失的盈利并且产生更多的盈利。
如果你的游戏开发成本很低，你或许可以将游戏转变为免费，这样可以给工作是带来更多的曝光度。如果你的游戏已经构建起大量的粉丝群，你知道有许多人等着购买游戏，你可以选择将游戏定价在3.99美元以使盈利最大化。如果你的游戏耗费2年的时间才开发完成，你可能不能把它定价在3.99美元以下，否则便无法收回开发成本。
每次当你面对营销抉择时，你就必须在那个阶段重新评估你的目标。
免费增值和IAP（应用内置付费功能）
坦诚地说，我对这些东西的了解并不多。这些方法有这巨大的盈利潜能，但是作为与程序员通过互联网合作的个人游戏开发者，我没有去尝试这么麻烦的做法。尽管IAP有着巨大的盈利潜力，但是不要让玩家感到生气，不要让玩家觉得游戏不公平或者只是个赚钱的工具，这是最重要的。
社交媒体分享
我对火狐浏览器的AddThis Add-On颇有好感，因为这个功能在我的浏览器上添加了个小图标，点击图标后便可以在下拉菜单中看到社交媒体站点（游戏邦注：如Digg、Twitter、Reddit和Facebook等）。当我获得新评论或发布新闻稿时会用上这个功能。我觉得这是个让所发布内容在Digg之类的网站上变得热门的绝妙方法，但是这些服务中的某些我还不是很熟悉。
Skype
如果你没有Skype账号的话，就去注册一个。你会发现有许多人想通过电话与你交谈，推广他们的服务或者采访你，所以有个Skype账号是很方便的。
结论
Indie Game Marketing: ARTICLE I – Social Marketing
Jeff Hangartner
INTRO
Hi, my name is Jeff Hangartner! Recently I started a small Indie game studio called Bulletproof Outlaws. I’m an artist working from home and outsourcing the programming, music, etc. I’ve just finished my first iPhone game – Elusive Ninja: The Shadowy Thief. It was officially released on June 6th, 2011. I’ve jumped into the wonderful world of marketing and I’m approaching it from a bunch of different angles and trying various marketing avenues out. I’m fortunate enough (and planned ahead strategically enough) to have some money to spend experimenting with marketing and I figure by sharing what I’ve learned, these marketing articles can help other small Indie Developers who can’t afford to waste money heading down dead-ends and trying experiments that might not pay off.
There are 5 marketing articles:
ARTICLE I – Social Marketing
Using word-of-mouth marketing via Twitter, blogging, forum threads, etc. to build awareness for your game, and a realistic look at the pros and cons of price drops and using microjob services.
ARTICLE II – Traditional Advertising
An in-depth look into the sketchy side of the industry that people don’t seem to talk about like buying downloads, paying for reviews, etc. Also covering traditional expensive marketing like banner ads and marketing agencies and ad services like AdMob.
ARTICLE III – Game Related & Maintenance
What to put in a Press Kit, using Press Releases, creating screenshots and trailers, etc. Plus how to efficiently maintain everything we’ve talked about so far.
ARTICLE IV – Psychology
How to survive the internal side of marketing as an Indie Developer and dealing with the stress of spending your money, watching sales figures rise and fall, making big decisions, handling critics and pushy marketers, and a big blunt look at how rampant iPhone App piracy is.
ARTICLE V – Optimal Marketing Plan
A summary of everything, condensed down into 36 steps from Pre-Launch to Launch Day to Post-Launch, that I feel make up an Optimal Marketing Plan for an Indie Dev with little to no money who needs to make sure every dollar spent counts.
ARTICLE I – Social Marketing
Where My Game Is At
No beating around the bush: Elusive Ninja is down to basically around 2 sales a day right now. The game itself is a good game, it just doesn’t have any exposure. The reviews from people I don’t know (obviously the first few reviews of any App on an App Store are the Developer’s friends haha) are all positive and I know the game looks great and plays good (I spent lots of time with testers tweaking the balance) and overall it has lots of polish. So I know I’m not working with a bad, low-quality product. Honestly, when I see someone saying “Banner ads don’t work!” and their banner ads were made in Paintbrush and they’re advertising a game with terrible art and unbalanced gameplay, my first thought is “okay, well it’s not that banner ads don’t work, it’s that your game sucks.” I’m also throwing in some knowledge based on other people’s experiences from other articles I’ve read along the way, and Developers I’ve talked to about the whole subject.
Understandably, you might be thinking “Wait, if your game isn’t selling, why would I bother reading your articles on marketing?” haha In these articles, I outline a lot of the mistakes I’ve made and why they didn’t work, so you don’t have to make those same mistakes yourself. I also break down efficient ways to use some of the marketing avenues you may be thinking of trying out, which I learned through trial and error over time. When you’re an Indie Developer, you’re already wearing a dozen hats at once as it is just developing your games. Throwing on maintaining a Social Media presence and running contests and price drops, writing Press Releases…it can all be pretty overwhelming and time-consuming if you don’t have a plan.
Theory
The summary: I’m an optimist, but also a realist. My Indie Dev side wants to believe that the right strategy can lift a game decently high in the App Store, but my logical side knows that expecting to pull off an Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, or Tiny Wings on your first go is a little overambitious. I think it’s possible for a Developer’s first game to hit big, but that you shouldn’t bank on that and that you should expect to approach things from a long-term “piling up” strategy that’s slower, but more solid.
Piling-up would involve stuff like building a brand name for your company, building an IP (your game’s look, characters, story, etc.) that people can become familiar with, cross-promoting your previous releases with your new ones, releasing updates for your game and re-marketing the major updates as if they were new releases, building relationships with the Press, with Gamers in general, other Developers, your customers, fostering a fan-base, rewarding loyal customers, encouraging word-of-mouth advertising, etc.
So while the first game might not do well at first, when the second or third game you release comes out, you can use that as an opportunity to get your first game more exposure or a new boost in sales, etc. The Internet has affected the way marketing works, especially the whole Social Networking concept…I don’t think that being a mysterious unknown anti-social Indie Developer in your shadowy basement is the optimal strategy these days. It’s the equivalent of being the totally impersonal huge mega-corporation that doesn’t interact with the “common folk”. Both of those CAN work, but they’re not really embracing Social Media. It’s kind of like when the Internet first became widespread and marketing consultants would tell companies “you have to have a website, everyone has a website these days! You don’t even need to have a fancy one, you just need SOMETHINGout there!” Some basic participation in Social Networking is important. It takes some work, and it’s a slower strategy than just going “I’m going to buy a $5000 ad on the biggest game site on the net and cross my fingers and hope that I make jillions” but by building a Social Media presence you’re rolling a snowball down a hill and watching it build up into a much more reliable marketing avenue over time.
Financial Security
On that note, I think it’s important to approach Indie gameDev expecting to make more than one game and to get your finances in order ahead of time to support yourself through flopping a few games. If you’re financially secure enough to survive 3 flops, you’re in a great position…if any of your first 3 games hits, awesome. If your first 2 games don’t hit but the 3rd gets you attention for the first 2, awesome. If your first game flops, your 2nd hits and gets some attention for your 1st, you don’t have to worry while you develop your 3rd game. But if you approach things going “I’m going to put everything I have into this one game, it’s going to be my
Magnum Opus right off the bat” you’re playing a MUCH riskier game.
Now I know that there are exceptions to that, and that ideally you shouldn’t hold anything back and you should put out the highest quality game you can as soon as you can because just from a philosophy/respect point of view you should be doing your best work at all times…plus logically a quality game is more likely to catch on and make you jillions, etc. But from a business stability standpoint, you’re taking a much bigger gamble that way, especially with the way the App Store has changed things. Releasing a game on the App Store, you’re looking at having to release it for $0.99 or $1.99…you can’t release a game for $19.99 or $49.99 on the App Store like you could if you were Konami or Capcom releasing a game on a console. So instead of releasing one huge epic quality game, why not take some time and release a few smaller quality games, until you’re financially stable as a studio, and THEN work on that Magnum Opus when it won’t cripple you if it flops.
Ya, Ya, Let’s See a Sales Chart Already!
Not pretty, eh? I’m not gonna lie, it’s a little embarrassing haha I was hoping I could turn things around by the time I wrote this article so I could be like “How I went from 1 sale a day to 10,000 sales a day” but no such luck…yet!
I’ve sold a whopping 256 copies (haha programmer number!) as of writing this, and the vast majority were at the start when I Launched and that was no doubt mostly my friends and family, Twitter Followers, Facebook friends, etc. buying it. Along the top of the chart, R represents when I got a Review, B represents buying a Banner ad and P represents something Press related (in this case, sending out a bunch of review requests).
256 copies x 1.99 = 509.44 minus 50% (30% for Apple, 20% for my programmer, Derek) = 254.72 actual theoretical money in my pocket so far. Dev costs plus advertising has been around $3,000 so that’s nowhere near enough to break even yet.
You can definitely see that when I “do stuff”, my sales go up, when I “don’t do stuff”, my sales go down. Obvious, but the problem is that “doing stuff” tends to cost money and the timing of “stuff” is important…I’ll get into that in the Reviews, Banners, and Super Combo sections.
Wasting Money
I’ve also admittedly (and at times knowingly) dumped money into certain marketing avenues that were dead-ends and a total waste of money, and I’ll probably do so a few more times before I’m done experimenting. My thinking is that because I have a quality product and I’ve hit a wall, I should explore getting around that wall now while I have some money to do it with and while I don’t have to make much to recover the development costs…otherwise all that’ll happen is I’ll develop another game and hit the same “how do I get it noticed?” wall. If I can at least figure out the weak points in that wall and learn how to chip away at them efficiently now, I can focus a little more strategically when I’m marketing my next game. I consider this a shotgun blast, so that I can figure out the best places to aim the sniper rifle.
Why Not Just Add More “Stuff”?
Some people have suggested adding more to the game, changing the price, etc. but going by the vibe I’m getting from how the App Store market and general marketing process appears to work I honestly don’t think that would do much. I could have 50 different objects to dodge or 5 different ninjas to choose from and I don’t see a way that that would get me any more attention than I’ve gotten…it’s just another stat for the marketing blurb which isn’t getting read to begin with. Now if I added like 100 different objects, 10 different ninjas, 20 levels, RPG gameplay elements, a 5 hour fully animated plot, etc. I’m sure that’d get noticed more, but development-wise that would be a ton of time, money, and man-power, and I’d still be gambling and hoping to get noticed. The easy route would be to just make the ninja a big-tittied ninja chick and put in a Nude Code and I’d get all sorts of attention haha
Anyway, this is getting into theory now. So let’s get back to actual results and data and take a look at the different types of marketing I’ve tried and my experiences with them:
SOCIAL MARKETING
Word-Of-Mouth
These days word-of-mouth is probably the most powerful form of marketing at your disposal. It generally doesn’t cost money directly, like putting up a banner ad does, but it DOES cost time. Word-of-mouth tends to require a lot of building hype, networking with the Press, interacting with your fan-base (even if it’s just a handful of Twitter Followers), participating in forum threads, responding to E-Mails…I truly think this alone can be a full-time job and down the road when I can afford to, I’d like to actually hire someone to handle some of this stuff just because it’s such a massive time-sink and you end up having to check threads, E-Mails, Twitter, etc. 24/7 to keep on top of it all.
On the plus side, while it’s time-consuming to build up word-of-mouth, it’s not torture or anything. You make new friends, you reward fans for helping you out, you get to participate in different communities, etc. It’s pretty fun actually, it’s just that at the end of the day if you’re a small studio you have to consider “How much of my time am I spending doing this, and how much more work would I be able to get done in that time?” You’ll have to balance this stuff in a way that’s comfortable to you.
Why’s It So Important?
I think when you’re starting out, it’s probably the most important category to focus on. Think of it like the gold and wood collecting stage in an old top-down Warcraft game. Sure, making Barracks and Knights and laying siege on your enemy’s base is awesome, but to get there you have to spend some time building up your resources. Unless you fluke out and create Angry Birds on your first go, or already have a fan-base of some sort from other projects you’ve done, you’re probably going to be starting out as a total unknown. Collecting all the gold and wood all by yourself as just one unit would take forever and wouldn’t leave anyone left to build the barracks. By making friends and building a fan-base of Followers, you’re recruiting an army who will help you spread word about your game.
The Angry Birds guys can announce ANYTHING and it’ll be posted on the front page of every game news site that day. They have the brand recognition, studio reputation, and fan-base that demands attention when one of their Press Releases pops up on Editors’ screens and that “ROVIO ANNOUNCES…” headline catches their eye. Plus it’s probably safe to assume that they’ve made a lot of great contacts in the media since Angry Birds first exploded onto the scene. Whether the way this works is good for the game industry in general or not (hope you like Halo, ’cause I hear 4, 5, and 6 are coming) is a discussion in and of itself, but for the sake of keeping on topic I’m not touching that haha I’m not bitter about this at all…I’m just saying: This is how it looks like things work from what I’ve seen, so our question to solve is how can we work within this system as Indies with limited funds and reputation?
As Indies, we generally can’t afford to post a full-page ad on all the top gaming news sites and run promotions where we give away a dozen iPad 2′s. But socializing doesn’t cost us money. Imagine if you had even 100 fans following your game’s development, and each of those people has 100 fans. When you release or update your game, that’s 100 people Tweeting, Facebooking, etc. about your game’s news and now you’re reaching 10,000 people through them that you never would have had direct access to.
Now say you’re friendly, out-going, social and polite with various game news Editors and Reviewers that you meet on your development adventures…if a handful of them decide to cover your game because they dig you, well now when you Launch your game, you’re hitting that 10,000 people from before plus all the people who visit those news sites.
Meanwhile the guy who’s making a great game, but sitting in his basement keeping to himself is Launching his game to..well, the handful of people who happen to notice his icon on the New Releases page in the few hours it takes for it to be bumped off there. There are success stories where the Developer doesn’t do anything and word-of-mouth just happens to spread because the game catches on, but that’s rolling the dice and crossing your fingers. We want to be a little more pro-active and tilt things in our favor here, otherwise we might as well just be buying lottery tickets.
Okay, so it’s important to not be anti-social…but where do you begin?
Start your Twitter account ahead of time, while you’re still developing your game. Most of your sales are probably going to happen on Day 1, so ideally you want to build up some hype and connections so that on Launch you can get as much exposure as possible and get a nice big clump of buys on Day 1 that get you attention (hopefully from Apple, leading to a Feature, which will lead to more sales!). Twitter is such an instant form of marketing that you can basically watch your news Tweet spread across the Internet as it’s happening, which is pretty cool.
I’m actually super new to Twitter, I only started using it a few months before I started Bulletproof Outlaws, and all the “RT” and “FF” lingo was foreign to me.
I’ve got the hang of it now, and here’s what I’ve figured out:
Just Have One Account
Originally I had a personal account, and then created a business account (@BPOutlaws). The problem there was that everyone was Following my personal account by the time I finally made my business one, so to get them to Follow my business account was a chore, especially since for the first bit I was posting the same stuff to both my personal and business account since it was just me working on my business stuff by myself. Ideally the way to do it would be to start a business Twitter first, and then down the road when you have some employees, branch off into a personal Twitter account as well and announce it on your business one. Your business one is the one that’s going to be making you money so if you’re going to have less Followers on one of those two accounts, you want it to be your personal account that has less Followers.
It’s also a lot less work to start with just one account. Maybe other people are better at managing this stuff than I am, but man, I hate having to reply to stuff in 10 different places. And then the people who aren’t viewing your one account don’t see your response so you have to repost it to the other account or just accept that you’ve now got multiple streams of different amounts of information out there and blah blah blah, it’s just super confusing. Consolidate it all into one Twitter account, one Facebook account, and one E-Mail address, all related to your business, and you’ll spend way less time running around.
Go Ahead, Mix Business With Pleasure
Using just one Twitter account also helps you connect with fans on a personal level. Realistically, no one cares about your business account. The general Gamer public isn’t Following you because they’re dying to see “BULLETPROOF OUTLAWS RELEASES ELUSIVE NINJA FOR IOS” in their Twitter feed. They Follow you because they’re hoping to see stuff like “Wired on Redbulls, pulling another all-nighter, but I got the awesome rain effect in! Brain in zombie mode zzzz…” that makes them chuckle or makes them curious, and gives you some personality. By using just one Twitter account, you can mix your business announcements in with your personal stuff and it won’t turn people off because you’re presenting the boring stuff in smaller doses…kind of like how kids hate taking vitamins until you bust them out in Flintstone character form.
Time Your Announcements
Generally your Followers are going to live in or near your time zone. If you’re Tweeting in Japanese, you probably have Japanese Followers. If you’re Tweeting in English, you probably mostly have people from North America. Take into account the time zones of your Follower audience. If I have a big important announcement that’s ready to be Tweeted but I’ve stayed up late working on it so it’s 3am, I know probably 90% of my Followers are sleeping, so I’ll wait to Tweet it till around 8am. I’m in Western Canada, so the people on my side of the country are getting the Tweet at about the time work starts and they first check their Twitter feed for the day, and the people in Eastern Canada are around 2 or 3 hours ahead of me, so they’re getting the Tweet sometime during their boring work morning or just before noon when they can slack off and catch up on Tweeting.
By timing thing this way, I’m maximizing the chance of one of my Tweets catching on and making the rounds throughout the boring workday. If I Tweet at 3am, only a few people will see it, and it’ll be at the bottom of people’s “New Tweets” feed when they DO log in. I’ll still Tweet at 3am, but I’ll Tweet less important stuff.
Another thing to consider is the day of the week. Tweets on a Monday afternoon are probably going to get more attention than Tweets on a Friday evening or Saturday afternoon when people are off doing things for the weekend instead of sitting at their office trapped for 8 hours looking for distractions to kill time with.
Use The Hashtags
I see a lot of random #hashtagging on Twitter, and a lot of people not using them at all. If you’re a dev, throw on #gamedev or #iosdev or #iphone or #indie or any other really common words or phrases that in any way relate to what you’re Tweeting about. I was adding #ninjas and #art on some of my updates. There ARE people who Follow tags out there. Like personally I’m Following #gamedev so when someone Tweets with that tag, it pops up on my Twitter feed. I’ve found a handful of cool new games that way, and picked up a handful of new Followers myself. And if I see something I dig, I’ll Retweet it to help that person out.
If you’re not using any #hashtags, you’re just reaching your direct Following audience, which is good but just not as optimal as it could be. Who knows, you may make a Tweet about music costs, put a #music tag on it, and some composer sees it, digs your game, and offers up their services for cheap. Or you may announce your Angry Birds game with a #birdwatchers tag and tap into a community of people who spread word-of-mouth about your game just because it caught their attention being in some way related to their hobby. This is how Internet memes start…imagine your Tweet catches on as a meme the way All Your Base, Lolcats, or The Starwars Kid did. Sure, it’s a total shot in the dark and not at all likely, but it doesn’t cost anything to throw in a few hashtags just in-case.
It can also help you stumble into communities you didn’t realize existed (like my finding #gamedev), or you may accidentally create a community (as in the case of the totally unexpected but awesome #ims211 explosion).
I tend to tag some of my news with #ElusiveNinja and I have my Twitter set up to notify me whenever it encounters “elusive ninja” in a Tweet. I’ve actually discovered some reviews I didn’t know were out there, eavesdropped and jumped into discussions about my game, etc. this way. Plus Elusive Ninja has a “Tweet your score!” option that Tweets scores out with #ElusiveNinja at the end so if any of those go out, I’ll see them and can congratulate some of them personally, etc.
Join The #IDRTG
It started as a thread in the dev section of Touch Arcade, it’s a big group of a ton of iOS devs. Check out the #IDRTG here! It’s essentially a ton of Indie Devs who all Retweet eachother’s stuff. A lot of them don’t have a ton of Followers, but even the small accounts all add up over time, and it doesn’t cost you any money.
Everyone in the group has the intention of helping eachother out because we all know getting initial exposure can be difficult.
Quit Blabbin’ Will Ya?!
Keep your Tweets as short as possible. Shoot for under the 160 char limit by a solid 10 – 20 characters if you can. The reason for this is because if people want to Retweet your Tweet and it’s at 160 characters, they don’t get to stamp their name on it, or they have to post it as a Long Tweet which might not be possible from whatever Twitter service they use, or they have to rewrite or chop out bits of your Tweet to make room. Ideally if you can have a chunk of space for them to attach their own @names to the Tweet, they’re more likely to Retweet it because they’ll get some exposure too if their Retweet or your Tweet is Retweeted (confused yet?).
I actually tend to add #hashtags if I Retweet a Tweet that doesn’t have any on it, because I figure the person doesn’t realize they could throw on #gamedev or #iphone or #freelance or #dinosaurs and get a ton more views of their Tweet.
Use the shortest URLs you can, like those bit.ly ones. But keep in mind you might want to use your company URL just for the name to be noticed. Like if I’m Tweeting a link to a blog entry, I’ll use a bit.ly because it’s a long URL. But sometimes if I know a Tweet will probably catch on or reach a new audience, I want “http://bulletproofoutlaws.com/” stamped in my Tweet so that people see the Bulletproof Outlaws name.
Don’t Be Afraid To Ask
There’s nothing at all wrong with throwing a “PLS RT” at the start of your Tweet. Ideally your Twitter Followers all like you and are Following you because they WANT you to succeed, so this is just an extra little “Hey, I know you guys dig my stuff, but this particular Tweet is important so could you make sure to Retweet it for me to help me out?” request. Plus if your Tweet is Retweeted, you’re bound to run into a handful of kind souls who Retweet it just because they see the “PLS RT”. Save this for the important Tweets though, people probably won’t put up with “PLS RT – Made the best sandwich EVER for lunch, mmmm tomatoes!” for long.
Show Your Appreciation
When you get Retweeted, you’ll see people’s Retweets in your Mentions column. I like to shoot a quick “Thanks to @bob @joe and @sarah for the RT!” after I get a few RTs. This is for two reasons: 1) I really do appreciate the RT, and by thanking them by their @names, they get their Twitter accounts mentioned to my Followers so it helps perpetuate a big cycle of everybody helping everybody get noticed. And 2) Other people see that I thank people who RT my Tweets, which makes them more inclined to RT my Tweets even if it’s just to get their Twitter feed mentioned.
Twitter is really a win/win situation for everyone involved on it.
Return The Favor
I’ll sometimes check out the profiles of people who RT or Follow me, just to see what people are up to and if I see someone Tweeting about their project and I think it’s neat, I’ll RT them out of the blue. This is another reason to be using #hashtags…I might not be Following you, but if you post something cool up and it pops up in my #gamedev column, I might end up Following you or simply RT your Tweet because I want to support you. I’ve picked up a handful of Followers just by RT’ing people’s stuff that I like. Often I’ll add a little comment to the start too, like “Love your art!” or “Great article!” just to show that I actually do like what they put out there, I’m not just spamming random stuff. If someone who’s project I dig gets a good review, I’ll RT that too, in hopes of helping them out.
The Golden Rule pretty much applies here: Treat others the way you’d like them to treat you!
Be A Little Picky
This one’s a toughy. You want to find a balance between RT’ing (sometimes crappy) stuff to help other people out or to be nice, and RT’ing quality stuff. If your Twitter feed is crammed full of RT’ing garbage and news announcements, who’s going to want to Follow you? They’re just getting spammed all day. This will come down to your own personal preference though. I like to just RT stuff that I legitimately think is cool, or even has the potential to be cool (like someone’s Tweet about their game that looks like it has an awesome concept even though the art is terrible).
Twitter is all about the personal connection. We get miffed when we find out a celebrity we’re Following is just paying someone else to Tweet for them because we want to feel like we’re really hearing that person’s thoughts (whether those thoughts are deep or silly). While it’s great to help everyone else out, you also have to remember that you’re trying to build your own following of people who trust you to provide value.
@names Are Important!
Like using #hashtags, it can be helpful to include some @names when appropriate. A lot of people will shoot you a Tweet back with your @name in it when you have their name in yours. And some large Twitter accounts (like for game review sites) seem to have automated services that keep track of who’s Tweeting their @names and they send out auto thank-you’s which means your @name gets Tweeted to their jillion Followers.
I was messing around with Game Maker for fun one day to see what it can do (I dig it by the way, it looks super-powerful and I believe it can export games to the iPhone) and I Tweeted “Re-created part of #ElusiveNinja in @YoYoGamemaker today haha pretty awesome program, looks like it’ll port to iOS soon! #gamedev” Lo and behold, a few hours later @YoYoGamemaker RT’ed my Tweet to their 700+ Followers. They would probably never have seen my Tweet if I hadn’t thrown in their @name.
Follow Fridays
Apparently every Friday people on Twitter go “FF:” and list a bunch of @names of people who’s stuff they dig. I’ve actually never sent out my own FF because I don’t want people to be mad if they get left out of the FF haha But don’t follow my example on this one! What I DO do with FFs though, is shoot out a “Thanks to @bob for the FF!” or if I see a collection of good FFs (like someone else Tweets “FF these awesome gameDevs:”) I’ll just Retweet that FF list.
Like Twitter, start your Facebook early. For Facebook I’d recommend having one just for your business stuff and keep your personal one private. Twitter isn’t a big deal to combine because you’re just shooting out text messages, but you don’t want random people checking out your family photos and all that jazz. I very rarely use Facebook, but someone recommended throwing up a Fan-Page for Elusive Ninja so I ended up making a Bulletproof Outlaws account.
The only thing I can really think of to mention about Facebook is that you need 20 Fans to get a nice short facebook.com/elusiveninja/ URL (as opposed to a really long goofy URL). All I really do with the Facebook site is post reviews or big news updates about Elusive Ninja to it. Personally I feel like Twitter and the Bulletproof Outlaws blog is enough, but admittedly I might not be utilizing Facebook to it’s full potential!
Google+
This just popped up recently, and I don’t have enough info on this to make any judgements yet! It looks like it combines Twitter and Facebook concepts, but we’ll have to see how it all pans out once the “ooo a new toy!!” phase wears off and it either dies off or kills Facebook haha
Microjob Services
This is something I had no idea existed until recently. The jist is that there’s a bunch of “for $5 I’ll do Such and Such” sites out there. A lot of the stuff is weird like “I’ll send you a pic of your name written on my boobs!” and “I’ll draw a picture of your dog fighting a robot!” but for OUR purposes as Indie Devs, there are services like “I’ll Tweet any message or link you want to my 45,000 Twitter and Facebook Followers 3x a day for a week.” that I figured we could utilize abit.
I gave a few a go because hey, for $5 I’ll try it out. Here’s what I learned:
Most Accounts Are Spammy
Basically that guy offering to Tweet to his 45,000 Followers isn’t Tweeting to 45,000 iPhone users looking to buy games. It’s more like the guy’s Twitter account will be something spammy like @GreatOffers and they spam a dozen Tweets an hour to it. Odds are most of the Followers are bots or fake accounts or just people who really aren’t going to be buying your game. The ones that offer to add Fans to your Facebook page add accounts that are riffs off celebrity names and stuff, like, it’s pretty blatant that they’re fake haha
But That Doesn’t Mean We Can’t Use ‘Em
The most obvious way to use this is that Facebook requires 20 Fans on your Fan-Page before you can get a sleeker URL for it…so hey, throw down $5 and you’ve got 20+ Fans and now you can get that better URL right away which’ll be more useful for getting ACTUAL Fans.
Check The Reviews
Other users can review the services they use, so give those reviews a glance to make sure the person offering the service is legit.
Other Services
Just glancing through the main pages of Fiverr.com and UpHype.com here are some examples of cheap services that might be useable:
- “I will design a killer amazing ANIMATED banner for $5”
- “I will draw a cute chibi style portrait of you for $5”
- “I will create this amazing iPad video opening/intro for $5”
- “I will create a voice over up to 10 minutes for $8”
- “I will design a logo for you for $8”
These aren’t things you couldn’t do on your own, but they’re super cheap quick little services. Take a trailer for your game and add a sweet voiceover, stylish little
intro, etc. and now you’ve got something that looks a little more pro than if you were just doing it on your own. This is all just stuff that you should keep in mind is out there and available.
The Slippery Ethical Slope
There’s definitely a question of ethics that pops up here. In theory, you could just buy a bunch of fake Fans, a bunch of fake Twitter Followers, a bunch of fake 5-star reviews, etc. which as long as people didn’t realize they were fake, it’d make your game or studio look more popular and important than when you have 0 Fans, 5 Twitter Followers, a couple 3-star reviews, etc.
I’m not here to judge how you decide to use these services, that’s your own decision. For me, I bought a handful of Facebook Fans to get the slick /elusiveninja/ URL, but all my Twitter Followers and Facebook friends and blog commenters and reviews and such are real. This isn’t a moral high-horse thing, it’s more because I want to be able to judge my success accurately…if I gain 50 legit Twitter Followers one week, that tells me that something happened to promote my Twitter account so I can Google and find out if I have a new review up or got a mention somewhere and thank whoever was responsible. But if I had 50,000 fake Twitter Followers I wouldn’t be able to really tell down the road “I’m doing better than I was before!” because I’d have no idea how many of those actually gave a crap about what I’m doing.
This topic is going to come up more in the Reviews section of this article because it was pretty mindblowing to find out how prevalent this kind of thing actually IS these days and not many people talk about it.
Forum Threads
I put up threads in a handful of forums around the net, mainly iPhone game related. Touch Arcade, The Game Forum, Cocos2D, MacRumors, iPhone Dev SDK, and 4 Color Rebellion. I’ve found that either the forum is dead and the thread sits there pretty much on page 1 with no responses because there isn’t enough traffic to the forum for it to really get pushed down or responded to, or if the board is popular, the thread flies off the first page in 10 minutes because there’s so many threads.
Dead forums aren’t the worst thing, if anyone happens to stumble across them, there’s my thread right near the top…but a thread that can stay on, say, Touch Arcade’s main thread page for a few days, is going to get way more exposure. If you sign up, try participating in other threads too, especially on the community type forums, instead of just spamming your own game and vanishing. Some communities frown upon that drive-by-advertising and might ban you.
Bumping
Some threads will gain a solid foothold and stick around for a day or two but that doesn’t seem to be in the thread-starter’s control…once you’ve replied to all the
responses in your thread, there’s not much you can do to bump your thread up without it looking like a blatant “BUMP!” post that just gets people annoyed at you. I tend to let the thread fall off the front page of threads, THEN respond to the posts in it, instead of responding as soon as they appear, to maximize how long it’s on the front page. And of course if you update the game, you want to post in your thread and bump it up with the news. I think posting when you get a review is fine too, like “Hey, check it out, IGN just gave my game 10/10, here’s the link!”
Self-Promote In Your Profiles
Make a profile ahead of time. Throw together a couple sentences for a bio, a signature, etc. Because different forums use different formatting (some allow square-bracket tags, some allow full out HTML, some only allow text, some allow only 100 characters for a profile, etc.), I just wrote a complete one in a text file, then cut and paste it tweaking it’s formatting to match the different types I was running into. This sped things up a bit and now if I found a new forum, I could start an account and just cut & paste from this text file with little hassle.
Also make sure your signatures have a link to your game and to your website. Your posts will sit around forever since this is the Internet, so you want links in your sigs so that when someone stumbles on your post a few months from now they’ll be able to click right to your game.
Blogging
I’m a big fan of blogging, especially about game development. There are a few benefits to this:
1) I have a record of my game’s development to look back on someday when I’m an old man.
2) It keeps me accountable for my game’s development…if I slack off and don’t work, I feel guilty that I haven’t updated in a while and my blog readers hassle me wanting updates so I’m forced to get back on track.
3) It helps create a fan-base of followers, who are invested in my game’s success. As people follow along with the game’s development, they start to feel emotionally invested in it, especially if you ask for feedback and run polls on design decisions, etc. These are the fans who will probably help you market your game on their Twitter accounts, defend your game if Reviewers give it crap, rally you up with pep talks if you get depressed during development, etc. The Behemoth is my favorite example of a company that has an epic fan-base…they really only have like 3 games out, but they’re so good to their fans (with shout-outs, contests, merchandise, etc.) that whatever game they put out next will have tens of thousands of people lined up to buy it on Day 1 just to support them. How much better a position are they in than the company with a dozen games out and just 50 Twitter Followers?
4) As a game Developer, I just like to help other game Developers out. That’s why I spend a crapload of time writing stuff like this article. I read other people’s development blogs and often I’ll learn things that I would have had to discover the hard way on my own, and in the end save some time. If I can return the favor for some other Developer through my blogging, that’s awesome to me!
5) Occasionally you’ll write posts that happen to tap into the general public psyche and get linked around the net by people on Twitter, sites like Digg, etc. which will get you a bunch of extra attention and often a few new Followers.
But You Write a LOT, Dude…
Yeah, don’t worry, you don’t have to write as much as I do to build a following haha I just like to write. Realistically all a development blog needs for an update is a couple paragraphs of what’s going on, what’s planned for the next few days, whatever behind the scenes screenshots, artwork, music, videos, etc. are on hand…nothing too epic. In fact, I actually wasted a lot of development time writing the amount of stuff that I did for my blog. I did daily updates that were often multiple screens worth of writing. For my next game I’ll probably strip it down a bit.
So How Often Do I Have To Blog?
I did daily updates because I was feeling ambitious (or foolish, you decide haha), but an update a week is fine. The key thing is that you update things regularly so people know when to check the site, and so that you’re forced to stick to a schedule to stay on track. I’d recommend something like writing your blog entry on a Sunday night or Monday morning and posting it on a weekday. Going by my blog’s stats, for the entire development period I consistently had way less visitors on weekends than on weekdays. I figure on the weekend people are out doing stuff, but weekdays when they drag their butts into the office and procrastinate through the day, that’s the time they check stuff like devBlogs.
How Do I Start?
Set up a blog for free through a service like WordPress. There are tons of templates to get you set up quickly. From there, you’re basically good to go. See how easy that was? Throw up a post announcing who you are, what your game’s about, some concept art and a summary of where you’re at with it and you’ve got your first post already. Link your blog on to your Twitter, Facebook, forum signatures, etc. You want this to be the default place people head to when they’re looking for information on who you are and what you’re up to.
Contests
I haven’t experimented with this too much yet, so I’m going mostly with observations of what other people do here, and just things I plan to do in the future. Contests can be anything from high score competitions, to rewarding people who Retweet your announcements, to fan-art competitions, to “design a boss” contests. Rewards can be anything from shout-outs, to Promo Codes for your game, to iTunes gift cards, to physical prizes like iPads (though you should check the legalities on this) or posters and other merchandise.
You can hold them regularly and repeatedly, like a weekly competition for the highest score that week, or you can hold them infrequently like a random Promo Code giveaway. If your contest and/or reward is interesting, it can pick up some extra publicity and get your game’s name out there. That game The Heist gave away like 10 iPad 2s and it rocketed up to the number 1 spot on the App Store while it was doing that (though I don’t know if that’s the only reason it was successful, I think it’s reasonable to assume it had a lot to do with it). When people win your contests, make sure you give them shout-outs, even if it’s just a Twitter mention!
Price Drops
This is a biggie for iPhone Developers. It’s one of the few ways we can guarantee changing our sales dramatically. If your game is $9.99 and it drops to Free, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get a ton of attention, downloads, publicity, etc. But let’s take a look at this category a little closer.
Benefits of a Price Drop
Whenever your price drops, you automatically show up on a ton of “Games on Sale Today!” Apps, websites, blogs, etc. and often it’ll say how much your game normally was and what it now costs. This is a bunch of extra publicity.
Launch Sales
Personally I think a Launch Sale is a good idea. It helps get you some attention and piles your purchases all into the first day or two of your Launch, which can help you get a good foot-hold in the App Store right off the bat.
Temporary VS Permanent
I don’t see a lot of benefit to a permanent price drop, but with a temporary one you have to make sure everyone KNOWS it’s temporary. Imagine you just bought a game for $9.99, and then the next day it drops to $0.99 and it looks like that’s its new price forever. What a kick in the nuts, and if you haven’t left a review yet, odds are the review you DO leave is going to be tainted with the anger of feeling like you got ripped off. Say you don’t own the game yet, and you see it’s dropped to $0.99 and you know that’s a great deal but you’re on the bus or at dinner or someone’s knocking on the bathroom stall door and you don’t have a chance to grab it. You forget
about it for a couple days and then when you have downtime you remember the game and go to grab it and bam, it’s $9.99 again. Another kick in the nuts situation, and
you’re probably not going to buy it for $9.99 because you feel like the offer was unfairly swept out from under your feet.
If the sales says something like “3 DAYS ONLY!!”, or “THIS WEEKEND ONLY!”, or “NEW YEARS DAY SALE!”, now you know exactly how long you have to get this game at this price. This is especially important in a Launch Sale because at Launch you want as many sales in as short a time as possible to secure a good App Store rank and
hopefully get Apple’s attention for a Feature…if your Launch says your game is $0.99 now but it’ll go up to $9.99 in 2 days, people are more likely to grab it within those 2 days.
Learn The Holidays
I’ve never been great with holidays and now that I work for myself and don’t really have a standard 9-5 Monday to Friday schedule, I’m even worse with them.
Thanksgiving could probably sneak up and completely blindside me. This was fine when I was just messing around, but while I’m sitting there going “What? No one works today? Why?”, other Developers are having Thanksgiving sales, New Years sales, Back to School sales, Black Friday sales, etc. and getting a bunch of publicity and new users that I missed out on because I didn’t pay attention.
Don’t Get Stomped By The Giants
The catch with holiday sales is that EVERYONE knows about those holidays. So you put your game on sale and sit back to watch your downloads skyrocket, except oops, Gameloft, Capcom, Ubisoft, EA, etc. all drop their $9.99 games down to $0.99. Every game news site covers that news, Gamers jizz their pants over their chance to grab big-name games for super cheap, and nobody notices your game sitting there not just not getting many extra downloads but also making less money for each of the downloads it DOES get.
This is rough, there’s not really much you can do about it except hope not to get crushed under the giants as they stomp around on us little guys. Another time this can crush you is if your game is Launched at the same time one of the giants does a massive sale stomp. All you can really do for that scenario is try to pick weird random off days to Launch your game or run your sales, instead of New Year’s weekend and such.
I actually attribute Elusive Ninja’s terrible Launch to it coming out on Day 1 of this year’s E3 convention. I was in a situation where I could either delay the Launch for 3 or 4 weeks while the E3 news on every gaming news site finally slowly started to die down, or Launch it literally on Day 1 of E3. I had plans for some promotional stuff at E3 so I figured I’d go that route, but my promo stuff wasn’t available in time and it was just a comedy of errors all-around. If I were in that scenario again, I’d either go the same route but make sure my promo stuff was done and ready to go ahead of time, or I’d just hold off entirely till the next month to release my game. No one cares about a tiny Indie iPhone game when Nintendo is announcing their new console haha
Promote Your Sales
If you’re planning a solid sale, make sure to send out notice about it. Twitter, free Press Release services, any Press contacts you have, etc. The more coverage you get about it, the better.
Free Game Of The Day
There are a handful of services for this, where you hook up with them and they publicize your Free Game event. I haven’t experimented with this yet, but I do know that some places charge money for this service. Paying to give your game away seems kind of silly to me, especially with limited marketing funds. Plus you have to consider the dangers involved:
Dangers of “Free”
So you’ve just put out a $2.99 game. It’s got a bunch of 4-star reviews and a few 5-star reviews. Overall it looks pretty solid, and new users who check your game out tend to buy it. But then you drop the price to Free for a few days. All of a sudden you’ve got thousands more downloads, awesome! Except you’ve also picked up a ton of 1-star reviews. “There should be a rockt loncher!!!!! 1-STAR. will 5-star when u add it.” What the hell? Where’d this come from??
Well, when you switched to Free you attracted a TON of people who would never have played your game, and who, since they didn’t invest any money in the game, don’t really care about giving decent feedback or feel any need to spend more than a minute or two playing your game. I liken it to back in the videogame rental days, when kids would spend their allowance to rent some random NES game for the weekend. A lot of those games were objectively TERRIBLE, but you spent your money to rent it, you have it for the whole weekend and damnit, you’re going to FIND something to like about it to justify spending that money! …and often you DID end up liking the game, when you would have ditched it if you had only played it for a couple minutes for free.
Someone advised that if you drop your game’s price down to Free, expect to go down at least 1-Star in your rating and I think that’s a good rule of thumb to consider.
Free VS Rank
I don’t know if this is still true, but from what I read it sounds like if your game is Free, any downloads you get are awesome but your game is now in a Free ranking list, so your game’s normal Pay rank isn’t affected by all these new users…ie – you could be ranked at 180 on the App Store’s Paid games chart, make your game Free, get 50 million downloads and be number 1 on the Free games chart, but still be ranked at 180 on the Paid games chart when you go back to the normal price.
But does all this mean that Free is ALWAYS terrible? Well that all depends on your goal:
Know Your Goal
Essentially it comes down to a choice you’ll have to make over and over as you market your game: Do you want to get a ton of publicity, exposure, and attention…or do you want to make money?
There’s no right or wrong answer here. Depending on where you are as a studio, or where your game is at in terms of success, or what you’re hoping to accomplish, your goal may change. If your game has just Launched, you probably want a lot of exposure, so a Launch Sale makes sense. After that as sales die off and your rank starts to drop, you want to re-coup your development costs so going back to a normal price and running contests and such instead makes sense. Then one day you wake up and find out you’re getting Featured by Apple and know you’re about to get a ton of attention…so here you decide “Do I want to make a bunch of money?” or “Do I want to shoot for getting in the Top 20?” If you want to make money, you leave your price where it is for the Feature. If you want to raise your rank, you can drop your price and try to lure in a ton of extra users on top of the Feature and hope that propels you up in the ranks to where you can go back to your original price and be making way more money.
If your game was cheap to develop, you might want to give it away for Free just to get your studio some exposure. If your game has a ton of publicity built up and you know you have a jillion people lined up to buy it, you might want to price it at $3.99 to maximize your profits. If your game took 2 years to develop, you might not be able to price it under $3.99 and still recoup the development costs.
Every time you come to a marketing fork-in-the-road, you’ll have to re-evaluate your goal at that stage.
Freemium And In-App Purchases
I honestly don’t know much about these things yet. The potential for profit is huge through these methods, but as a solo Developer who contracts out programmers over the Internet, I don’t really want to mess with this kind of stuff when I don’t have an in-house programmer on demand in-case things are broken and Gamers are banging on my door complaining about money issues haha Down the road I’d like to get into this area just because there’s a lot of potential money in it, though the world of designing In-App purchases that make sense, don’t piss off Gamers, don’t seem unfair or like a money-grab, etc. is a whole ‘nother can of worms to study.
Social Media Sharing
I grabbed the AddThis Add-On for Firefox which puts a little icon at the top of my browser that I can click and get a dropdown list of Social Media sites (Digg, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc.) and instantly post sites to those places. I use this for when I get new reviews or put out Press Releases, etc. Haven’t seen anything epic out of this, but someone recommended doing it and it’s quick so I give it a go. I’m sure there’s an optimal way to get a post bumped up on a site like Digg but I’ve never used many of these services till now so I’m not familiar enough with them to say too much.
Skype
If you don’t have a Skype account, grab one. You’ll find a lot of business-types want to talk to you over the phone to make their sales pitch for their services or to interview you, etc. so a Skype account is handy.
CONCLUSION
That brings us to a close on this look at some of the most popular methods of marketing using Social Media. It’s all pretty inexpensive or free, so as an Indie Developer you’re probably going to be using a lot of these. Stay tuned for Article II – Traditional Advertising, where I’ll be covering more traditional methods of marketing that tend to cost money, like paying for banner ad space and using marketing agencies. I’ll also go in-depth into the “seedy underbelly” of the industry, like buying downloads, paying for reviews, etc. which was all pretty mind-blowing to me when I started running into it and saw just how widespread it is! (Source: Gamasutra)
