Ideas and best practices for advertising.

SandmanZA

Okay so I’m talking advertising a game, not advertising that goes in a game.

I’d like to hear from both sides, dev’s and players as to what you guys think the best ways are to advertise a new game and get people to play it without being ‘spammy’ or boring

I have made boards on pinterest, a facebook group page, twitter acc and shared on google+, stumbleupon etc. not to mention posting in forums such as this one.

Devs: How do you go about your marketing? any tips for other devs?

Gamers: What do you think is annoying/spammy and what do not mind about how a game is advertised?

dammit

I think this pretty much covers it:

http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/an-indie-game-developers-marketing-checklist-including-portable-formats--gamedev-7560

http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/marketing-your-indie-game-the-single-most-important-thing-that-no-one-knows-how-to-do--gamedev-7157

dislekcia

This is a surprisingly huge topic. Generally players have zero understanding of marketing (asking what works on them and what doesn't is a meaningless question, people don't know what marketing actually affects them, that's proven) and often developers try to market things that they either simply shouldn't or they spend ages marketing in ways that they assume are effective without actually having any data to back that up.

1. An overall guide from Pixel Prospector, useful site, read everything there: http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-marketing-guide-for-game-developers

2. An article from @Nandrew a long time ago about general indie zero budget marketing tactics, it sort of still holds true in general these days: http://devmag.org.za/2009/06/16/zero-budget-indie-marketing-guide

3. How to explain your game to an asshole, something everyone making games should read: http://makegamessa.com/discussion/805/how-to-explain-your-game-to-an-asshole-read-this-if-you-re-trying-to-make-people-look-at-your-games

The bottom line is that marketing, ANY marketing, is a multiplier on what your game is already achieving. You can't elevate a game that nobody enjoys to household name status with marketing, even if you have millions of dollars, millions multiplied by zero is still zero. Only market something once people pass it around without any marketing whatsoever.

SandmanZA

Thanks for the useful posts! I basically just want gamers to tell me what they find most annoying about game and in-game advertising and at which point they feel like is no longer run of the mill advertising but spam.

dislekcia

SandmanZA said:

Thanks for the useful posts! I basically just want gamers to tell me what they find most annoying about game and in-game advertising and at which point they feel like is no longer run of the mill advertising but spam.

This is not a gamer-focused forum. It's a game developer-focused forum. So you're not really going to get general "gamer" perceptions here.

Plus, like I pointed out, people don't know how advertising affects them, so you're not going to get much that's useful to you out of the question you're asking from "gamers" - what it'll basically tell you is that gamers say they're comfortable with advertising practices that literally do not earn you enough money to make anything at all. And yet gamers keep playing games with all sorts of advertising literally spewing out of them, that still barely earn their developers enough money to do anything at all ;)

What do you hope to achieve with advertising? Are you trying to advertise something you've made or are you trying to earn income off advertising inside your work?

SandmanZA

Okay good points man noted! :P In this context I'm just trying to figure out ways to get people to play my game and get some 'seasoning' so that with every new game I put out there I am better at doing all the tasks needed to self publish games. In game advertising to make money is another beast..... If you are a coder you will understand the word 'iterations' xD