5 Reasons Indie Game Developers should know Marketing
Tags: Marketing, Video Games Industry, Business, Indie Game Development, Game Development

1. Understanding Your Audiences

Whenever we set out to make a dream game of ours, we always forget the most important element in game making, our players.

If you ever played a game and wonder, who’s this game actually made for? Or sometimes even say, this game is not made for me. Well, that is both, marketing not at work, and marketing at work, respectively. (Ironic right?)

Let’s put it in a scenario.

Dark Souls: Remastered on Switch (Credits: Bandai Namco)

If you want to make a game similar to Dark Souls, and you develop the game with softcore players in mind (Casual Gamer), your Dark Souls clone will definitely not appeal to your intended audiences.

If you have ever played Dark Souls, you will know that the game is not for the impatient that wants instant & quick rewards that other games, like Candy Crush Saga offer.

Candy Crush Saga (Credits: 8-bit central)

Through marketing, you could better understand your target audiences for your own games. One of the conceptual ways you could better understand your audiences is through the use of Marketing Segmentation.

Marketing Segmentation is the process of dividing a target market into smaller, and more defined categories. This segments your players into groups that have similar characteristics, such as demographics, genre interest, lifestyle, personality, and gaming behaviors.

By segmenting your players, you could better know and understand your target audiences (players) for the game you’re developing.

Illustration of Market Segmentation (Credits: Technology Advice)

2. Building your Game’s Awareness

When I say, think of a cute and sweet match-3 game that is on mobile …

Did Candy Crush Saga come to mind? If so, that is the marketing effect that built Candy Crush’s awareness. Why did we always think of Candy Crush when there is obviously a long list of other mobile match-3 mobile games? It all points to the magic of marketing.

To build strong awareness for your games, we can look into brand awareness under the umbrella of marketing. Brand awareness is defined as the degree of how well your consumers (players) recognize & familiarize with brands, in this case, our games.

When your game achieves enough awareness, gamers will generally think of your games when the right association is mentioned. This can help players to remember to play your games or consider for a purchase.

Brand awareness is defined as the degree of how well your consumers (players) recognize & familiarize with brands, in this case, our games.

For instance, if your game is about a robot ninja fighting demons. Whenever someone mentioned ninjas, demons, or robots, audiences that had seen your game should immediately associate with your game. The more this happens, the more your game could slowly build a stronger awareness for years to come.

Better Awareness = Better Retention

3. Communicating your Game

Some of the factors of indie game failures is known to be the weak communicator of the game’s ideas or visions.

Even highly ambitious indie games with good potential suffer a bad fate due to its communications efforts.

Ever seen a highly anticipated AAA game that was so hype up, and often so fail to meet their promised expectations? That is a result of good marketing communications but bad product delivery. If it ever makes it any easier to understand, yes. Marketing can create good hype for your indie game.

Within the scope of marketing, to create good hype is to look at the marketing communications mix. Marketing communications mix refers to the specific methods used to promote the product (game) to the customers (players).

Marketing can create good hype for your indie game.

Some indie game developers that are highly successful today is because they understand marketing communications and executed it well. To better describe the methods, the examples of it are given below.

Sales promotion — Giving early bird discounts, free goodies, giveaways, special in-game items, etc.

— Giving early bird discounts, free goodies, giveaways, special in-game items, etc. Advertising — Drawing attention to promote your game through video or image.

— Drawing attention to promote your game through video or image. Events & Exhibitions — Going to physical social events, festivals, exhibitions to sell it personally.

— Going to physical social events, festivals, exhibitions to sell it personally. Public Relations & Publicity — Maintaining a positive reputation for your game with the public. To some, it’s called “Free” marketing.

— Maintaining a positive reputation for your game with the public. To some, it’s called “Free” marketing. Direct Marketing — Communicating with your audiences through direct methods, such as mail, email, social media, websites, magazines, flyers, etc.

For one simple example, a video game trailer is a form of method used in this communication mix, which is advertising. It helps deliver the game’s idea and message to your intended audiences.

Dead Cells Launch Trailer (Source: Youtube)

By using some of these methods interchangeably, it could help communicate your game better to your target audiences in the long run.

4. Selling your Game Better

In case you haven’t known yet. Yes, marketing sells (Duh, genius).

Many indie game developers acknowledge this. But they are silent when you ask them how it actually really sells.

To be honest with you, there isn’t one true answer to it as it always varies. But I could give one explanation on how marketing could sell your game well.

Marketing can sell your game better through — prices.

Before you get confused and wonder, yes. Setting your game prices is a marketing job, not your accountant job, the designer’s job, nor your investor’s.

In the realm of marketing, it is known as pricing strategy. It is the price decision of your product based on many factors such as cost, competitors’ prices, geographic market prices, product quality, and so on.

Setting your game prices is a marketing job, not your accountant’s job, the designer’s job, nor your investor’s.

There is a long list of pricing strategies you can use, but I will only describe a few of them that are mostly relevant to selling video games.

Competitor Pricing — Comparing to other similar game genre prices and setting it accordingly. If your competitor price is at $15, you will price it at $10, $15 or $17, depending on your game’s quality.

— Comparing to other similar game genre prices and setting it accordingly. If your competitor price is at $15, you will price it at $10, $15 or $17, depending on your game’s quality. Psychological Pricing — The practice of setting your prices slightly lower than a whole number to create a cheaper perceived price or a sense of a good deal. Instead of setting it at your intended price of $30, you set it at $28. Felt the visual differences?

— The practice of setting your prices slightly lower than a whole number to create a cheaper perceived price or a sense of a good deal. Instead of setting it at your intended price of $30, you set it at $28. Felt the visual differences? Target Return Pricing — A method to set your price based on the desired profit you seek to attain. If your revenue target is $100,000 and you think you can sell 10,000 copies of your game, your desired price will be $10.

These are some of the strategies you may use to strategically price your games. The price tag on your games is very important, as it can attract more purchases and maximizes your returns, if only it is priced correctly.

5. Growing your Player Base

As a game developer, don’t you want your game to have an increasing player base and a cult following? Again, marketing can help with that.

I believe it is every developer’s dream to have an ever increasing player base or copies sold. Because this will ultimately mean, the game will be eventually be followed with a huge success.

More often than so, many solo indie dev or even game studios thought that it is the end after they release their game to the world and people will buy it like zombies. In reality, player base will not and does not increase on its own. You still need to give love and nurture to it.

Since we are on the same page of wanting to grow our player base together, let’s look at how marketing could help us with that.

Player base will not and does not increase on its own. You still need to give love and nurture to it.

Some of the ways marketing could do to increase our player base is retargeting.

Retargeting is a strategy to re-engage with your audiences who had previously once interacted with your game. If someone saw your game ad but did not do anything, they are reminded again to give your game another try, often through another form of advertisement or creatives.

In another sense, retargeting is just asking your audience to:

Give your game another try Be reminded to buy and play your game Be convinced how cool and fun it is to play your game again

There are numerous reasons why you as a developer would want to do a retargeting campaign to boost your game’s player base. Some of it could be:

A price discount to attract the “fence sitter” (Clearing your game from Steam Wishlist)

Introducing DLC (new add-on content for your game)

Building your game’s awareness

Getting new players interested in your franchise before your next game title

Of course, retargeting may not be the only method to continue growing your player base, as having an active and strong community could help too.