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游戏开发者成立工作室不可忽略营销环节

发布时间:2011-07-12 18:30:44 Tags:,,,

作者:Tomas Rawlings

在成立游戏工作室的三大要素中,营销(游戏邦注:另两个要素是创意性业务层面)是我最不拿手的方面。我已经在游戏行业中工作了很长一段时间,但多数情况下我们游戏开发者不负责游戏的公关层面事务。我们所要做的就是开发游戏,营销由发行商来完成。随着互联网触及面越来越广,与用户交流几乎已不需要任何成本,形势开始发生改变。作为游戏开发者,我们可以逐渐将发行商抛弃,直接与用户联系。随着iPhone和Facebook等新发行平台的面世,这种趋势已是愈演愈烈。

你的营销方法取决于你是何种类型的游戏开发者(游戏邦注:为其他工作室工作还是自行发行游戏),但无论属于哪种情况,你都需要直接与游戏玩家交流。

Savage Moon(from ps3.gamezone.com)

Savage Moon(from ps3.gamezone.com)

我们在《Savage Moon》中的此类交流动态颇有借鉴意义,这是款我为索尼开发的PS3游戏。我们(游戏邦注:指代开发者)会收到玩家的邮件,里面写有他们的问题和想法。索尼给出的官方建议是,将这些问题提交给客户服务部门。现在我能理解为何公司会采取这种做法,他们与我们合作共同制作游戏,却把握不准我们在与顾客交流时会有何种态度。我不否认或许我们会批评或抱怨某些差劲的粉丝。但以我的观点来看,把这些有关我所设计的游戏的问题递交给其他人是种很奇怪的做法。我当然对游戏的了解要比他们多得多,也就更可能解决问题。

营销与优秀游戏的设计一样,无固定的成功之路可行。营销的创意性与游戏本身的创意性同等重要。网络上有成千上万的游戏供潜在玩家选择,因而你需要时常自问,为何玩家要选择你的游戏呢?态度、平台和背景之类所有你与玩家交流的内容都对潜在粉丝的获取至关重要。

本篇文章将提出些许营销关键点,我认为或许能够有所帮助。而且,由于我也是刚刚开始接触这个领域,因而欢迎所有读者分享他们自己的观点、想法和经验。这些营销建议的前提是你并不像《使命召唤:黑色行动》那样能花上1亿美元来做营销(游戏邦注:该游戏的营销成本是开发成本的4倍)。

首先,我认为目前你还无法自行发布商业化游戏并期待能够让游戏自行推广。你需要营销预算,也就是说你应该准备在营销上花些钱。那么,为何要仅仅为忽略向人们介绍游戏的过程而耗费时间和精力呢?回到上述《使命召唤:黑色行动》这个例子,4:1的比例或许对你的工作室来说是个理想比例,但拥有如此庞大预算的工作室并不多。你需要募集些许金钱,精确定位广告能帮上你的忙。参与关键的大会或广告赞助等项目,这种机会也不容错过。只要你有营销游戏的想法,就肯定有人付费为你买单,这样你应该就能募集营销所需资金了。

其次,你需要考虑的是营销计划。你需要制定许多计划。比如,对于游戏如何从只有你一个人知晓发展成拥有足够的粉丝知道并愿意购买游戏,直至你可以用盈利来维持生计,你都需要制定出整体计划。广义上来说,这项计划应该包含两部分内容:你的直接交流计划和间接交流计划。直接交流指那些你可以控制的渠道,如工作室的网站和博客、Facebook页面和Twitter等。如果可以的话,你还应该关注发行商的网站和博客等。

间接交流指那些可能有兴趣报道你的工作室和游戏的渠道,但他们与你并无瓜葛,也没有义务这么做。这些渠道包括游戏网站(游戏邦注:如Gamezebo)、博客、杂志、游戏粉丝网站等。你的计划中应该包含找到渠道负责人讨论游戏报道相关事宜的方法。

joe-danger(from vikingfunk.com)

joe-danger(from vikingfunk.com)

应该更关注直接交流,你可以在游戏还未完成时便开始操作。Hello Games的做法是个绝佳的例证,人们在工作室首次发布《Joe Danger》时发博文并讨论来构建起粉丝群体,这样当他们在PSN上发布游戏时,首日便足以收回开发成本。这方面有个技巧,你正在开展的与更新相关的讨论话题,应该是你们团队的开发目标。这是种保持粉丝了解游戏开发进程的有效方法。

相比之下,如果采用间接交流,人们不会对你所做的每件事情感兴趣。因而,在游戏开发之初便要开始计划营销,在整个开发过程中用交流吸引玩家关注。引起公众关注可以采用多种方法,包括依靠发行商、游戏预告、发布截图或视频、发布测试版和发布游戏的最终版本。

在所有交流过程中,你需要时刻明白自己的身份和你所说的事情。我想说的是,让这种交流简单一些,不要让其承载过多的内容。然而,事实上你需要通过在线的交流来分享自身的感受。对我而言,也就是像公众分享你的激情,这对游戏开发者来说很简单。以博主Robert Scoble为例,他在担任微软雇员的时候便开始撰写博客,而且不像其他的企业博主,他写的是自身的想法。当然,谈论微软产品是他的工作之一,但他也会批判团队的错误做法和褒赏竞争者的产品。结果他成了最受欢迎的博主,为微软赢得了许多用户的青睐。

那么社交媒体又如何呢?当然,我认为这也是个很有效的途径,但因为现在所有人都这么做,那么我们又回到了上面提过的问题,那就是如何突出重围呢?在书籍《What Would Google Do?》中,Jeff Jarvis表示终极营销行为便是你无需采取任何行动。为什么呢?因为产品或服务确实非常棒,顾客会自行为你喝彩。事实上,良好的顾客便是你的营销团队。核心问题在于现在我们正处在交流科技异常发达的世界中,“好事不出门,坏事传千里”的效果已经被放大了。当我们在Facebook或Twitter上发表动态时,其他人可以转播或赞,这样他们的朋友也可能这么做,如此循环下去。社交媒体可同时放大积极层面和消极层面。别把社交媒体当成是单向传播,这是个双向过程,你也应该倾听他人想法并做出回应。而且必须记住的是,你不应该仅仅在不断营销自己的游戏,而应该成为网络中活跃的分子。

在本文结尾之际,我想再说说间接交流渠道,即游戏网站之类的渠道。你需要细心平衡对待游戏媒体的方式。他们也有着自己的想法,知道如何帮你找到平衡点。他们固然是通过广告来盈利,但他们也需要保持内容的独立性,不被广告过分侵蚀,否则如何吸引玩家访问网站呢?或许你觉得自己的游戏很完美,但获得的评论却很差,那么你就需要处理这个问题。不可强迫他们将评论更改成你想看到的结果,在游戏行业历史上,发行商或开发商攻击评论人员是最愚蠢的做法。差评是正常的,不是每个评论员都会喜欢你所制作的每款游戏。你应该着眼于与这些间接交流渠道的长期合作,比如像他们提供带有截图的新游戏介绍等来让他们报道。

自行发行游戏是项很艰巨的工作,游戏市场非常拥挤,但也是这种竞争性驱动我们不断做出更好的游戏。作为一句玩家,我真为这种现象感到高兴!(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

How to Start a Games Development Studio – Part 3: Telling the World About Your Studio (aka Marketing)

Tomas Rawlings

Of the three arenas of starting your own games studio (see my past articles for the creative and business sides), marketing is the area where I’m most out of my comfort zone. I’ve been working in the games industry for a fairly long time, and for most of that time us developers had very little to do with the public facing side of games. We made the games and the publisher handled the marketing side of things. As the reach of the Internet grew and the cost of communication dropped to almost zero, that situation began to change. As a developer we started to get players by-passing the publisher to contact us directly. This trend accelerated as new publishing platforms such as iPhone and Facebook opened up gaming even further.

In many ways, your approach to marketing is going to depend on what sort of a games developer you are (such as work-for-hire or a self-publishing one) but either way, to some extent you’ll need to be prepared to talk directly to the players of your games.
An instructive experience with this communications dynamic came with Savage Moon, a PS3 title I designed, developed for Sony. We (the developer) would get emails from people with questions and ideas. The official advice from Sony was to pass that query on to their customer services department. Now I understand why they’d do it that way, they worked with us to make games and had no idea what we were like at communicating with their customers. We might go a bit crazy at a hint of criticism and rant at some poor fan. However from my point of view, it felt a bit odd to have to pass a question about a game I’d designed on to somebody else as I knew more about the subject than they did of course. It’s an issue that big companies need to engage with – how to empower individuals to have a real honest voice while managing the risk they might say something that reflects badly on all involved or accidentally reveal something they should not have. (Shh, don’t tell anyone but I replied to all of the emails we got directly!)

Much like the design of a great game, there is no one clear route to success. Being creative about marketing is as important as being creative with the game itself. There is always much more going online for potential fans than they can ever look at, so you have to always ask yourself, why would anyone bother listening to what you’ve got to say? As such, all the content of your communications; the manner, platform and context, are all vital to getting potential fans to tune in.

This article has a few key pointers on marketing that I think may help. Equally, as this is an area new to me also, anyone reading who wishes to share their own views, ideas and experiences, is greatly welcomed. I’m also assuming that you don’t have $100 million, which is the sort of marketing spend that a game like Call of Duty: Black Ops would have (interestingly about 4 times the development cost).

Firstly, I don’t think you can currently self-release a commercial game and hope that word of mouth alone will make it happen for you. You’ll need a marketing budget, and I feel you should expect to spend some money on marketing. After all, why spend time and effort making a game only to ignore the process of telling people about it? Back to the example of Call of Duty: Black Ops; that 4:1 ratio would ideally be the case with your studio, but not many have that kind of budget. You will need to find some money – well targeted adverts can work really well. Opportunities to attend a key event or sponsor something can really pay off. As you develop ideas for marketing, some will inevitably cost and you should have some sort of reserve of cash you can use.

Next consider planning, planning and planning. Did I mention planning? Good. You’ll need a number of plans. For example, you need to have an overall plan for how to get from the starting point of just you knowing about the game to the end point of having enough fans who both know about it and who are willing to buy your game so you can make a living. Broadly this plan should have two parts; your direct communications plan and your indirect communications plan. Direct communications are those channels where you have a strong degree of access and control, such as your studio’s website and blog, your Facebook pages, Twitter feeds etc. You might include your publishers sites, blogs and feeds here too if they are able to give you access (e.g. A post promoting a game on Sony’s blog looks like this).

The indirect communications channels are defined as outlets that may be interested in covering your studio and its games but who are independent of you so are under no obligation to do so. This is a wide range of channels from games sites (like Gamezebo!), blogs, magazines, fan sites and the like. Your plan needs to have an approach to each of these outlets to find the right person there to be talking to about getting coverage.

Looking more at the direct communication, it is important that you don’t wait until the game is completed before you start. A great example of how this can be done properly is the Hello Games people who blogged, chatted, attended events etc to build up a fan-base for their first release ‘Joe Danger’ so when it released on PSN, they sold more than enough to make back the development costs in day one. A rule of thumb here is that this ongoing communication is about regular updates that should talk about what you and the team are up to. It’s a way of keeping fans informed on ongoing progress.

By contrast, with indirect communications they are not going to be interested in every single thing you do, so plan your marketing to start early and engage people throughout the period of development. You’ll have some key points where you might be able to generate spikes in publicity; signing to a publisher, announcing a game, release of screenshots or videos, releasing a demo and finally releasing the game. Add into your plan when these bigger mail-outs are going to happen and to whom you’ll send press releases.

In all of your communications you need to be clear in both who you are and what you are saying. I’d say to keep it simple and don’t try to load too much into each burst of communications. However in effect your online ‘voice’ needs to reflect, well, you. To me it is about sharing your enthusiasm, which is easy when you are people who’ve created what you are now selling to the world! Take for example the blogger Robert Scoble, he started blogging whilst being an employee at Microsoft and took an unusual line for a corporate blogger of being himself. Of course he would talk about Microsoft’s products as was part of his job, but he’d also criticise them when he felt they’d gone wrong and he’d praise competitors’ products too. As a result he became hugely popular and generated a surge of goodwill towards Microsoft.

What about social media? Of course, as a minimum I’d expect a strong presence here, but given everyone is doing that too, we are back to the same problem of how do you stand out from the crowd? In the book ‘What Would Google Do?’, Jeff Jarvis says that the ultimate marketing campaign would be one you don’t need to do at all. Why? Because the product or service is so good and so well made that your customers would be creating the buzz for you. In effect good customers become your marketing team. The core thing about the mesh of communications’ technologies we have around us, and the old adage of a happy customer tells 1 friend but an unhappy customer tells 10, is amplified. When we post on Facebook or Twitter, others can see it and Retweet or Like it, opening up the post to their friends and followers and so on. Social media amplifies and it can happen to both the positive and negative. Don’t treat social media as if it is something one-way where you just talk; it is a two-way process where you should be listening and responding too. Also remember that it’s a series of interlocked communities, so you should be about more than just selling your game and become an active member.

I want to end this article by coming back to the indirect communication channels; games sites and the like. You need to balance how you deal with games media carefully. They have their own pressures and understanding that will help you to find that balance. They make money from adverts, yes, but they also need to keep editorial independence, or else why would gamers read them? You may think your game is a 10/10 mega-hit and get annoyed at a bad review, but you need to deal with it. Don’t try to pressure them into saying what you think they should say – some of the worst PR blunders in gaming history involve publishers or developers attacking reviewers. Bad reviews are part of the territory; there is no way that every reviewer will love every game you make. You should be aiming to develop long term relationships with these indirect sources based on a mutual respect; you can offer them good access to new titles with screenshots etc and they offer you coverage.

And with that, I’m off back to work on our new studio’s game…. Self-publishing games is hard work; it’s a very crowded space, but that competition drives us to make better and better games. Which as a gamer – I’m always in favour of! Good luck! (Source: Gamezebo)


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