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Hogrocket创始人分享游戏独立发行经验

发布时间:2011-09-01 16:18:51 Tags:,,

游戏邦注:本文作者为BenWard,他是电子游戏开发者,同时是独立工作室Hogrocket的创始人。

之前我有谈到零售和数字模式在营销方面的差异性。总的来说,在发行前开展漫长营销活动,增加曝光度不是关键。我们可以轻松发售内容,因此能够基于游戏实际销量,而非预测数据开展促销活动。

什么是独立发行?

有些小型开发商把“独立发布”和“独立发行”混为一谈。如今人人都可以发布游戏,只要点击系列对话框,一眨眼间游戏就会出现在App Store。但其实,支持和宣传作品,发展业务,取得更卓越成就所需要的不仅是点击几下鼠标。

在Hogrocket中,我们非常慎重看待工作室的发行工作。我们和平台所有者、全球媒体、大会组织者、传统发行商、QA服务机构以及各领域的兼职人员都建立良好关系(游戏邦注:还包括其他能够协助实现发行目标的人士)。我们有条不紊地策划游戏宣传活动,投入相应预算支持项目。我们有明确的定价策略,握有充足分析数据,能够准确获悉市场动态。我们是小团队,因此若分析与预期存在出入,能够快速调整方向,放弃原有计划方案。

下面就来谈谈具体内容。Hogrocket的策略是什么?

tumblr from gamesbrief.com

tumblr from gamesbrief.com

冲动消费市场

首先,需要承认的是我们是在冲动市场出售产品。我们一直在争取曝光度,所以我们希望能够将玩家购买过程的阻碍因素最小化。若玩家听过游戏,喜欢其构思,我们应尽可能方便用户掏钱购买内容。不应让玩家等待好几个月才盼到游戏发行;也不要让玩家亲自驾车到商店购买。他们应能够就此立即,以合理价格买到内容。牢记自己无法改变玩家购买行为非常重要。你无法改变趋势,只能顺应趋势。

冲动行为是我们策略的核心内容。我们尚未公布任何有关游戏的信息,连名字也没有,我们会继续保持沉默,直到游戏最终发行。我们希望大家首先通过Twitter讨论了解相关信息,或者看到TouchArcade推荐,然后立即购买游戏。我们设定的价格很低,因此能够相对轻松地吸引众多用户,取得杰出销售成绩。当然若免费提供,销量会更好,但这有些困难。

还要补充一点:我对游戏内容保持沉默,但可以分享公司相关信息。我们还需创建粉丝基础,还需建立关系网,还需获得主流媒体的关注。我们可以跨越其中界限,例如私下推出测试版游戏,让业内和媒体领域核心人物都参与其中,但我希望这也能够帮助我们扩宽市场,增加曝光。

利用参数

就像我之前提到的,参数也非常重要。在首款作品中,我们通过销量/下载量数据和游戏统计数据呈现游戏玩家群体及其体验方式。在进入实质内容前,我们首先来看看这些匿名数据。坦白讲,我们并不在乎你的名字或通讯名单,我们不关心这些信息。我们感兴趣的是:

* 你使用什么类型的手机?

* 你何时下载游戏?

* 你以3颗星成绩完成的关卡有多少?

* 你使用什么语言?

* 你完成这款游戏的速度有多快?

* 你是否会关掉背景音乐?

若我们能够积累大量此类信息,将给游戏设计和营销带来很大帮助。例如,假设游戏在巴西的下载量突然蹿升。也许是由于巴西杂志推荐游戏,或类似情况。我们或许不了解推荐内容,但我们能够看到销量变化。我们可以把握契机,推出葡萄牙版本,进一步扩大游戏在巴西的用户基础。我们不用1周就能完成此更新内容。我们或许可以聘请一位当地PR,协助游戏在当地媒体的宣传。我们也可以将Google Ads内容瞄准巴西网民。我们会逐步加大举措,衡量成就与投入时间、资金的对比情况。

推出葡萄牙语版本也许也会推动游戏在其他地方的下载量,这能够创造更多机会。这并非凭空想象,而是迭代营销策略。

调整过程

Hogrocket掌握的另一优势(游戏邦注:相比传统开发商/发行商而言)是我们的整个进展过程采用结合模式。我们没有所谓的“营销部门”,我们的主要营销人员是程序员。这意味着我们可以结合技术,争取最大成就。我们不拘泥于在网站投放广告,我们会调整游戏内容,配合宣传活动。一个典型例子就是在我们的游戏中交叉推广新游戏,奖励下载整个游戏列表的玩家。这是个双赢策略。

我们还开展综合活动,例如把限时促销活动(如Free App A Day内容)同需通过In App Purchase购买的新元素结合起来。这在传统模式中并不是没有可行性,只是需要投入更多组织工作。

诚信商业策略

最后,我们策略中最重要也是最简单的一点是保持诚信。

游戏行业常常举办盛会,很多时候大家都避免谈论幕后工作。他们害怕犯错或者表现糟糕。这依然是困扰众多工作室的话题。这是个误区——行业每天都有杰出人士成功战胜复杂挑战。大家希望知道他们的动向。这些内容通常都隐藏在商标和品牌后面,但行业人文元素体现在大家觉得有趣的内容。

这正是我撰写此文的原因。我的有些观点也许并不正确。但最重要的是不要胡说八道,读者能够察觉。作为团队,我们需对成败保持谦虚态度,但坚持思考工作内容。Ken Levine深知这点,他呼吁开发商参加The Daily Show节目,展示自己的个性。我们需要的是角色和故事,而非品牌和商标。

Hogrocket在很多人看来是个有趣故事,因为我们遵循如下趋势:来自AAA领域的经验丰富人士转投手机领域。我们经常谈到这点,因为这是个巨大转变。几个月前,我任职于某200人的大型工作室,现在我们在我家客厅沙发开会。唯一不变的是作品质量,不论是就核心团队,还是兼职人员而言。其实目前我们正和若干前Bizarre Creations职员合作,他们也处在相同过渡期。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Indie Marketing: tell the world!

By BenWard

This is a guest post by Ben Ward, video game developer and founder of indie studio Hogrocket. If you haven’t read Part 1 of this article, feel free to take a look at it here.

In the last part of this article I was discussing the how and why marketing is different when moving from selling at retail to selling digitally. In summary, it’s not as important to have a long campaign ahead of launch to achieve awareness. It’s so cheap and easy to keep your game available for sale that you can build your promotions based on the actual sales of your game, rather than projections.

What is self-publishing?

Some small developers confuse the act of “self-releasing” with the discipline of “self-publishing”. Anybody can release a game now… just click through a few dialog boxes and BOOM – your title is on the App Store. However, actually supporting and promoting your product, growing the business, and achieving greater overall success is something that requires way more than a few clicks of a mouse.

At Hogrocket we like to think that we’re taking the publishing side of our studio seriously. We have connections with platform holders, worldwide press, conference organisers, traditional publishers, QA services, freelancers of various disciplines, and most of the other kind of people we need to in order to achieve our publishing aims. We’ve planned the promotion of our games over time, and we have a budget put aside to support this. We have pricing strategies defined, and all of the analytics we need to get a clear idea of what’s actually happening in our market. Of course we’re small enough to turn on a dime and throw all of this planning out the window if the analytics differ from our predictions.

So let’s talk tangibles. What is Hogrocket’s strategy?

Impulsive Market

Firstly, it’s admitting that we’re selling our games in an impulsive market. We’re competing for attention all the time, so we want to minimise the friction of people buying our game. If they hear about it and like the idea then we need those people to spend their money on it as easily as possible. They shouldn’t have to wait several months for the game to be released. They shouldn’t have to drive to the shop. They should be able to buy it right there, right then, for a decent price. Accepting the fact that you can’t change people’s purchase habits is key. You can’t change the tide, you have to go with the flow.

Recognising that impulsive behaviour is a key part of our strategy. We haven’t announced anything about our game publicly, not even it’s name, and we will continue to be cagey until release. We want people to hear that initial buzz on Twitter, perhaps read a feature on TouchArcade, and then immediately go out and buy the game. The price we’re selling at is so low that it should be relatively easy to convert a lot of those people into customers, and ultimately get better sales out of it. Of course it would be even better to release for free, but that’s a different discussion…

Oh and it’s important to add: we’re being quiet about the game, but not the company. We still need to build a fan base, we still need to establish relationships, and we still need to build buzz in the key press. We straddle the line, for instance we ran a private beta test of the game and involved several key industry and press figures. Their feedback was incredibly important, but I hope it’s helped to open doors and raise awareness too.

Using metrics

As I mentioned before, metrics is also really important. In our first game we use a combination of sales/download data and in-game statistics recording to paint a picture of who is playing the game, and how they are playing it. Before we get into the nitty gritty it’s important to stress that ALL of this data is anonymised. To be honest we don’t care what your name is or what telephone numbers you have stored on your phone, and we certainly don’t collect this data. What we’re interested in is things like:

* Which model of phone do you have?

* When did you download the game?

* How many levels did you achieve three stars on?

* Which language do you speak?

* How fast did you complete the game?

* Did you turn the music off?

If we multiply up all of this anonymous data, it becomes pretty useful for both game design and marketing. For example, let’s say the game suddenly spikes in downloads in Brazil. Perhaps a Brazilian magazine ran a feature on the game or something like that. Well we might not know about the feature itself, but we could certainly detect the spike in downloads. We could decide to jump on this, and localise the game into Portuguese to further maximise the audience in Brazil. We can roll out this update in less than a week. We might decide to hire a Portuguese-speaking PR in Brazil who can push the game to other local publications. We might take out some Google Ads which specifically target Brazilian Internet users. And we’ll do all this in increments, measuring our success and investing our time and money in campaigns that work.

Of course, localising into Portuguese will help downloads in other territories, which opens more doors. It’s not guesswork, it’s iterative marketing.

Adaptive process

Another advantage that Hogrocket has over traditional developers/publishers is that our processes are combined. There’s no such thing as “the Marketing department”… our main marketing guy is also a programmer. This means that we can combine techniques to achieve maximum success. We’re not just limited to running advertisements on websites – we can change the game itself to leverage promotions. One obvious example would be to cross-promote future games from within our own titles, possibly providing incentives for users to download our whole catalogue. This is good for gamers, and good for us too.

We can also run integrated campaigns, such as combining a temporary offer like Free App A Day with the release of a new piece of content available via In App Purchase. This isn’t impossible in the traditional model, but it requires a lot more organisation.

Honesty and business strategy

Finally, the most important part of our strategy is probably the simplest. Just be honest.

The games industry is full of agendas, and a lot of the time people don’t talk about much of the stuff that happens behind the scenes. There’s a lot of fear about making a mistake or looking bad, and while that is a concern I think it’s crippling to many studios. That’s a mistake – the industry is full of really interesting people solving fantastically complex challenges every day. The world should know about what they do. There’s a tendency to hide behind logos and branding, but the human element of the industry is what is the most interesting to many people.

That’s why I write posts like this one. Some of the things I’m saying might be wrong, and I might acknowledge that in a few months time when that becomes apparent. But the most important thing is not to bullshit, as people can see it a mile off. As a group we should be humble about our successes and failures, but never stop giving insight into what we do. Ken Levine sees it when he calls for developers to go on The Daily Show to get their personalities across. We need characters and story, not just brands and logos.

Hogrocket is an interesting story for many people because we are following a trend: experienced developers moving from AAA to mobile. We’re talking about it a lot because it’s a huge transition… a few months ago I sat at a desk inside a 200 person studio, and now we have our meetings on a sofa in my living room. What hasn’t changed is the quality of our output, both in terms of the core team and also our freelancers. In fact, we have been working with some ex-Bizarre Creations staffers who are going through the same transition. It’s an interesting story, and one which we’d like to do a better job of telling.

There will be one more part of this article, this time focusing on some of the tools and techniques you can use to get the word out. If this article was “what do you say”, the next will be “how you say it”. Speak to you soon!(Source:gamesbrief


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