Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Marketing
Now that you're programming your own games, you may have started to think about how to get
them out in the real world. Maybe you don't want to create a game just for the achievement, but
to make some money with it. Fortunately, nowadays getting games published is easy. For mobile
devices, there are app stores to which you can submit your games after you've exported them to a
specific mobile platform. If you sell your games through a portal, then the portal will (partly) take care
of the marketing for you. Of course, you can also make your games available on your own web site.
Peter: “If you look at the fifty-one games we published before Angry Birds, all of
them were actually really good games. The main challenge was that the market was
really tough. The App Store didn't exist—you had to have good connections in order
to get your game out there. What enabled success for us was the App Store. All of
a sudden, digital distribution was available to anybody, so you could create a game
like Angry Birds and immediately distribute it to fans.
But now that distribution of games has become so easy, this leads to another
challenge. Anybody can publish a game through the App Store. As a result, there is
an abundance of games and applications. Of course, you need to make great games.
But there are already a lot of great games out there. The thing is that for every Angry
Birds, there are many “not-so Angry Birds.” Many of those games are actually great
games, but nobody knows about them. So how do you make your games stand out?
In the case of Angry Birds, it is all about the characters. And on the other hand, it is
also a brand that asks an interesting question: why are the birds angry? If you are
serious about making games, you have to be serious about marketing and branding.
It's not enough to just make great games.”
Clearly, the challenge lies in making your game visible. On iOS and Android, more than 300 new
games appear every day. Most of them are played by just a few people. And if you create your own
web site for the game, how are you going to get any visitors?
First of all, you need to produce a quality game. If the game isn't good, people won't play it. Find
other people with other skill sets to help you. Don't be overambitious: you aren't going to create
the next Halo ! Set reasonable goals. Start with small but excellent games. Don't trust your own
judgment: talk to others about your game, and let them play prototypes to make sure players
actually like it. When your game is nearing completion, make a marketing plan. Post about the
game wherever you can, make a press kit, create a video, send information to blogs and other web
sites, and so on. People will only play your game when they hear about it. Don't expect that this will
happen automatically after you've published your game on an app store; you need to make a plan.
Before your game is out, build a network of potential players—people who are interested in what
you do. Create a Facebook group for your company and/or the game you're creating. Be sure to
communicate with followers on social networks such as Twitter. Encourage others to play your game
and write about it.
 
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