Game Publishing/Business

Re: share marketing that has worked

CVO — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:28:12 GMT

I knew it would be hard. But yes, it's harder than I thought too. And as discussed in this thread, you really start to wonder about the payoff when you realize the average amount of traffic with MS points burning a hole in their pocket and thinking XBLIG is the best place to spend them.

That won't stop me from trying, of course.

Reaching our potential buyers is like a job in itself.

Re: share marketing that has worked

Matthew Doucette — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:35:15 GMT

George Clingerman:
The more I read this thread, the more I realize that marketing is a VERY hard thing to get right. The only time I ever hear about your game Matthew is when you post in here and when you guys twitter about it. I buy a lot of XBox Live Arcade games and I'm really active in this community but I'm not stumbling across any ads for any of our XBox LIVE Indie Games out there (and I have google search feeds setup for most XNA related keywords). So I can't even imagine how hard it is to reach gamers who are even less involved in our world than I am (and I always thought I was VERY involved! Lol, I guess not because I still haven't listened to a single episode of XNA Roundup).

I stumble across new XBLA games by word of mouth and the occasional post or ad on Kotaku (or some similar game sight I might be casually browsing). XLIGs I typically find by word of mouth (friend recommends it, I know the developer or I'm seeing it talked about by people I follow on twitter). I do use the top 10 lists a lot for browsing, but I just as often randomly browse through games in both XBLA and XBLIG.

I'm not sure how to reach me better and I'm really not sure how to reach someone who doesn't even know what XBLIG's are but plays a lot of XBLA games.

Couldn't have said it better myself. And you should see some of the responses we get "on the outside"... the accusations cover spamming, overkill, should only market the game once it is available, etc. They have no idea how hard it is to get the word out. They know about our game and have no clue as to the scores of people that do not and may never not.

Re: share marketing that has worked

BogTurtleCarl — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:59:53 GMT

Harald Maassen:
I'd love to have ads all over the place but my game made $175 so far :/

That's too bad - I loved your game!

Re: share marketing that has worked

Harald Maassen — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 08:15:18 GMT

Matthew Doucette:
Maybe I shouldn't* share my competitive advantages! But seriously I think it would help to have a variety of ads on the show. We knew it existed from our extended involvment in this stuff, but I was 30 minutes away from missing it, too.

*typo, i meant shouldn't (as a joke)

I'd love to have ads all over the place but my game made $175 so far :/ Even if I'd won that ebay auction I'd probably end up with a net loss. I got a good review on XNARoundup and while it seemed to increase sales they didn't exactly go through the roof.

Re: share marketing that has worked

Xzeleous — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:59:14 GMT

My reply wont be nearely as well thought out as the others, but it is rather important. You need to ensure that visitors coming to your site have a community, so a forum or IRC channel is essential. Also, videos/trailers are always a plus. Little promo games done in online or downloadable creators also attract people (such as a jigsaw puzzle of your logo, or using another free program to make an arcade style Java game). Try to add a social aspect to your site, so also attempt to give them some personalization like a profile or avatar (preferably both).

Good luck! Please note that these havent neccesarily worked for me, but for one of my freinds it has remarkably well.

Re: share marketing that has worked

George Clingerman — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:06:43 GMT

The more I read this thread, the more I realize that marketing is a VERY hard thing to get right. The only time I ever hear about your game Matthew is when you post in here and when you guys twitter about it. I buy a lot of XBox Live Arcade games and I'm really active in this community but I'm not stumbling across any ads for any of our XBox LIVE Indie Games out there (and I have google search feeds setup for most XNA related keywords). So I can't even imagine how hard it is to reach gamers who are even less involved in our world than I am (and I always thought I was VERY involved! Lol, I guess not because I still haven't listened to a single episode of XNA Roundup).

I stumble across new XBLA games by word of mouth and the occasional post or ad on Kotaku (or some similar game sight I might be casually browsing). XLIGs I typically find by word of mouth (friend recommends it, I know the developer or I'm seeing it talked about by people I follow on twitter). I do use the top 10 lists a lot for browsing, but I just as often randomly browse through games in both XBLA and XBLIG.

I'm not sure how to reach me better and I'm really not sure how to reach someone who doesn't even know what XBLIG's are but plays a lot of XBLA games.

Re: share marketing that has worked

Matthew Doucette — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:45:13 GMT

Maybe I shouldn't* share my competitive advantages! But seriously I think it would help to have a variety of ads on the show. We knew it existed from our extended involvment in this stuff, but I was 30 minutes away from missing it, too.

*typo, i meant shouldn't (as a joke)

Re: share marketing that has worked

Harald Maassen — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:03:10 GMT

Hahaha you're kidding! I was wondering where you got the money for all those ads ;)

I would have totally bid on that auction if I knew it existed.

Re: share marketing that has worked

Matthew Doucette — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:03:42 GMT

As many of you may know, we put up a 4th ad on XNA Roundup:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIo8a9EeoFs

Turns out Nick had an ebay auction for it, that was ~$30 with 30 minutes left (when I first found out about it). I won at ~$60, with no one coming close to my top bid. It feels like nobody is trying. Most of us are not willing to risk advertising the games we make that we expect others to buy. We might be doing overkill, and it can feel that way being the only advertiser on the XNA Roundup show, but I take some pride in making the mistake of doing "too much" than the mistake of doing "too little". Too often in my previous projects, upon hindsight, I did not try as hard as I should have. I still have a feeling I will learn the same lesson from Duality ZF in a year's time.

(Also, I would just like to put in a disclaimer that had we known about the ad spot earlier, we would have prepared better material. So far we've done four ads, and it would have been better to showcase different game elements in each.)

Re: share marketing that has worked

arcarocket — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:06:42 GMT

From my experience with iPhone development, yes you do need to advertise your iPhone apps to get downloads.

BUT, you do it differently. You have to do Mobile Ads and maybe target apps similar to yours. You need to do some FREEBIE games and then advertise your paid products within those free apps.

Basically, your advertising is via the mobile device they are using.

It could be the same with Xbox, but there is no way to advertise on the xbox (currently). There is no way to offer free games to use as advertising.

You got to remember though, there are MILLIONS of people who checkout the iTunes App Store daily. There might be 10,000 that checkout CG's daily. That being said iPhone has 30K apps in 1 year. CG's has 350 apps in 1/2-3/4 year... so it is easier to get noticed on CG's then on iPhone... but if you get noticed on iPhone some of the top $0.99 games make $10K A DAY!

They are totally different markets and should be treated as such when it comes to business development (advertising).

Re: share marketing that has worked

VoodooChief — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:50:21 GMT

Hey Arcarocket, thanks for your information on this subject. Even if it is not everyones tastes. I like the fact that you have told us what happened in your experience.

So far mine is exactly the same. No better with m oney spent than without. No idea why, and does it even matter... i am not sure.

I do have one question that comes to mind however. You have written two titles i am familiar with from the iPhone, are you the writer for those versions as well ? And if so, did advertising your product for the iPhone work ? I am just curious if they both work the same etc.

thanks

Re: share marketing that has worked

arcarocket — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:13:01 GMT

I think you might be mistaken a bit. xFart was #1 most popular for a week back in Feb. It remained in the Top 20 Most Popular for 2 months. This "app" has done VERY well (in my opinion). Of course it didn't have the iPhone success, as no game on XNA will for a few years. There just isn't enough "users" that visit CG's. Where on iPhone a #1 game will make you $10,000K per day at only getting $0.70 per copy sold. That is a HUGE difference in actual users compared to Xbox CG's which probably only gets about 10,000 visits a day.

The point is, Marketing did not improve the performance at all. And from viewing everyone elses threads/posts, marketing for a CG is pointless (unless of course you can do it on the Dashboard somehow in future).

My two past programs published is Illusions 360 and A Morons Challenge. I have spend $0 advertising and spend 0 Hours promoting. Illusions 360 went #2 Most Popular and has stayed in top 10 for entire 1st month. A Morons Challenge has recieved reviews from gaming sites, picked as IGN.COM #1 Pick, and was as high as #3 Most Popular.

That being said, you don't have to market at all to have a successful application. You just need to create a good application that people want and the reviews and marketing will occure on their own naturally.

Again, this is just experience. But do what you wish as I am sure different games and different marketing will have difference results.

Re: share marketing that has worked

Murudai — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:20:44 GMT

madninjaskillz:

i think the phrase 'you cant shine a turd' is rather appropriate here. if your game is good - market it so people can see its good. if its not, marketing wont help u.

That's simply not true. If your game is so bad that only 1% of people who hear about it buy it, you're going to do okay if a million people are aware of it! But if you've made an awesome game, so much that everyone who hears about it buys it, it does no good if only a thousand people know about it!

Re: share marketing that has worked

Pfhoenix — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:10:15 GMT

madninjaskillz:
'you cant shine a turd'

Clearly you don't watch enough Mythbusters.

Re: share marketing that has worked

madninjaskillz — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:04:15 GMT

arcarocket:
For xFart I did some marketing but saw no change or effect from my marketing efforts.

surely, its xFart...no matter the marketing, youve already called it. This isnt the XNA version of Civ, or a homebrew World of warcraft. its a fart machine. yeh, they worked on the iphone - but thats a portable platform, more suited to random crap and it would have been half the price.

i think the phrase 'you cant shine a turd' is rather appropriate here. if your game is good - market it so people can see its good. if its not, marketing wont help u.