游戏邦注：本文作者为Ryan Creighton，文章主要讲述如何开展免费营销活动。

多伦多是独立游戏开发的聚集地，原因如下：该城市充满小团队和独立游戏开发工作室（游戏邦注：有些成绩显著）。除创造实力外，我担心我们很多工作室将落得失败下场，因为我们这个群体缺乏提高产品曝光度和销量的商业意识。在这座城市，我们设有许多游戏社区，除TOJam外，我们还有Clam Jam、资料社区以及Jason P. Kaplan每月开展的“游戏模型挑战”活动。所以我们制作很多小型游戏和模型，但它们销量如何呢？这些作品是否有公开发售？有人知道这些产品或其开发者吗？多伦多之外的大众，对当地开发者了解多少呢？

kaplan from gamasutra.com

营销策略是核心

我不记得这是谁提出的观点，但最近有人表示，除制作大量游戏外，多伦多应该设立营销社区。当Jason宣布将其首款独立游戏《Flew the Coop》投放iOS平台，我就清楚意识到我们应该加强业务方面的技能。我问他，“你的营销策略是什么？”，他只是害羞地耸耸肩。

我知道他来自哪里。我听过的经验法则是，游戏营销需要同游戏制作一样的成本投入。首先，鲜少开发商会计算时间价值。“游戏预算多少？”“没有，全凭血汗劳动！”好把，但聪明的先生/女士，吃住也是要花钱的。从中，你就能计算出自己的年生活成本。通过每周工作时间，你就能算出每小时的平均工资。将结果乘以工作时间，就能算出你的游戏预算。

假设你的游戏成本是5000美元。那么就是5000美元的血汗劳动（游戏邦注：“免去”现金成本），因为你不需要真的筹集5000美元现金。但若从营销角度来看，你就得真的攒出5000美元，专门用于营销活动。Facebook和iAds不接受服务交换。营销预算通常是在小型独立开发商的能力范围之外。结果是公司发行游戏，希望游戏能够凭借高质量优势获得广泛口碑传播，成为大众谈资。若你有了解过iOS开发商的成功机率，你就会知道如今尚有成千上万开发公司在等待其发展机会。

零成本营销活动

无成本营销方案挑战很大。我凭借全球最微薄的预算（游戏邦注：100美元预算和大量血汗劳动）推广我的游戏网站。当好友Matt Rix（iPhone版《Trainyard》的开发者）要求Reddit 社区帮助其将《愤怒的小鸟》从App Store冠军宝座轰下时，上演了一场轰轰烈烈的David vs Goliath（这是圣经故事中大卫与腓力斯的对抗，圣经里的腓力斯巨人勇士被大卫用石头打死 ）战斗。凭借零成本营销方案和优质故事情节，他迅速窜升至榜单之首。

matt Rix from gamasutra.com

我研究了Jason的《Flew the Coop》，忍不住思考：“如果这是我的游戏，我要如何进行零成本营销呢？”游戏是翻版《Canabalt》，玩家在游戏中化身逃离农场的小鸡，小鸡跳跃于其他动物的背上，需时刻警惕农场主的“魔爪”。我首先想到的是PETA曾参照《Super Meat Boy》打造了一款不尽如人意的游戏《Super Tofu Boy》。所以我就向PETA发了篇有关《Flew the Coop》的微博：

tweet from gamasutra.com

免费获得游戏渠道

也许我并非自以为的免费游戏专家。或者也许我还不够用心，因为这不是我的作品。但若读者能够提出好的免费营销方案（游戏邦注：截止至2011年6月22日），将获得免费换取《FLEW THE COOP》的优惠券。你知道如何免费营销吗？那些成功免费营销者只是凭借运气吗？（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Flew the Coop: Playing Chicken with Indie Game Marketing

by Ryan Creighton

[this article is cross-posted from the Untold Entertainment blog, which is awesome]

Toronto is developing quite the reputation for being a hub of indie game development, and for good reason: the city is packed with small teams and individual devs making games, some to great acclaim. But for all our creative strength, i worry that a number of our devs are doomed to failure because we, as a community, lack the business sense required to get our games noticed … and sold. We’re running a lot of game jams in the city. In addition to TOJam, we’ve had Clam Jam, library jam, and the ongoing Game Prototype Challenge led by Jason P. Kaplan, which runs almost monthly. So a lot of small games and prototypes are getting made, but how are they selling? Are they even being sold? Who knows about them, or their creators? If you’re living outside of Toronto, how many Toronto game devs can you name?

Stop Building, Start Selling

i can’t remember who to credit this idea to, but recently someone suggested that instead of running game jams, Toronto should have a marketing jam. The need for us to get better at business was never more clear to me than when Jason announced the release of his first indie game, Flew the Coop, on iOS. i asked him “what’s your marketing plan?”, and he just kind of shrugged sheepishly.

i know where he’s coming from. The rule of thumb i’ve heard is that for every dollar you spend on game development, you need to spend a dollar on marketing. To begin with, very few indie devs actually bother putting a dollar value to their time. “What was your budget on that game?” “Nothing! It was all sweat equity!” Well, fine … but it costs you a certain amount of money to LIVE and EAT, Mr. Clever. From there, you can find out your annual cost of living. Factor in the number of hours you work in a week, on average, and you can determine your hourly rate. Multiply that by the number of hours you sunk into your game, and that’s the game’s budget.

Let’s say your game took $5000 to make. That’s $5k in sweat equity – “free” money – because you didn’t actually have to produce cold hard cash for development. But if the marketing rule of thumb is to be believed, you now have to cook up five thousand real, actual dollars to market the game … Facebook and iAds don’t accept a service barter. Cooking up that marketing cash is often beyond the ability or appetite of small indie devs. The result is that they release their games, hoping they will somehow magically catch like wildfire through word of mouth because they’re so good, and they’ll be the talk of the town. If you’ve spent even an hour reading articles on the success rates of iOS developers, you’ll know that there are thousands of devs out there still waiting for their ships to come in.

The Holy Grail of 3-Figure Sales

The challenge, then, is to come up with marketing plans that don’t cost any money. You’ve already seen what i’ve done to promote my game portals with The World’s Most Meager Marketing Budget – a miniscule $100 pot and a LOT of sweat equity. My pal Matt Rix, the successful developer of Trainyard for the iPhone, set up a great David vs. Goliath battle when he asked the Reddit community to help him dethrone Angry Birds in the App Store. Zero marketing money paired with a good story (and a GREAT game) rocketed him to the top of the charts.

i took a look at Jason’s Flew the Coop and thought “if this was my game, how would i market it with zero dollars?” The game is a Canabalt clone that pits you as a baby chicken running away from a farm, bouncing on the backs of animals and avoiding the inappropriate grasping of farmers. The first thing that came to mind is the involvement PETA had with Super Meat Boy, where they created a parody game called Super Tofu Boy. So i tweeted PETA about Flew the Coop:

Make a Suggestion, Win a Free Game!

So! Maybe i’m not the free marketing master i thought i was. Or maybe i’m just not trying hard enough because it’s not my game. But have a promo code for a FREE COPY OF FLEW THE COOP for the reader who can cook up the best free marketing idea for the game by next Wednesday June 22 2011. Can you really market a game with no money? Or are those who have done it just incredibly, incredibly lucky? Post your best idea in the comments section below, and let’s see what Jason can do for Flew the Coop on a … ahem … wing and a prayer.（Source：gamasutra）