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Straandlooper分享《Hector》成功推广经验

发布时间:2011-09-22 17:53:51 Tags:,,,

作者:Kevin Beimers

首先要向各位说明一下,我所在的Straandlooper不是个游戏开发公司(游戏邦注:至少在《Hector》面世之前还不是),我们主要是个动画制作公司。我们总是想要涉足游戏领域,所以看到在App Store中传播游戏和微交易的潜力后,我们决定予以尝试。

Dean Burke是《Hector》的开发者,他已经将角色、风格和场景设计完成,唯一悬而未决的是发布的媒介。Dean和我自小就喜欢经典的LucasArts风格的指向点击冒险游戏,随着近期移植的《断剑》等游戏获得成功,该题材游戏有复苏的趋势,我们认为游戏世界已经准备好迎接新指向点击巅峰之作的到来。

我们相当快地构思并确定了包含有三个章节的故事(游戏邦注:作为动画公司,故事是其最为擅长的事情,而指向点击仍然是故事讲述游戏的最佳媒介),开始进行第1章的开发(游戏邦注:此时还不知道能否获得第2章或第3章的赞助,时间会证明一切)。

开发时间持续了6到8个月(公司当时也在开发其他项目),共有2至8个人投入到这个项目中,但是所有人都对游戏的预算或时间计划表示怀疑。从根本上来说,我们知道自己想要成就的是什么,而且会不断进取直到实现。我们知道,如果我们能够在项目中投入精力,就能够实现我们的目标。

当然,现在最大的问题就是:我们如何让其他人关注这款游戏?

Hector-Badge-of-Carnage-Logo(from gamesareevil.com)

Hector-Badge-of-Carnage-Logo(from gamesareevil.com)

我想跟大家说的是,《Hector: Badge of Carnage》的成功凭借的是睿智而简单地在分布于世界各地的媒体上进行协作性推广,这些方法可以为你们这样的独立开发者所用。但是,这种成功绝大部分归功于大量的调查、某些勇敢的博弈和些许运气。

1、欲擒故纵的营销怪招

如果你玩过这款游戏的话,你就会知道Hector这个角色粗鲁、暴力、懒散而且非同寻常。那么,为何不在推广时采用同样的做法呢?

游戏的“消极营销”策略令人耳目一新,也就是在其他人贬低产品之前自己先这么做。不要告诉人们游戏很棒、很有创意并且能够改变生活。如果游戏问你游戏的质量如何时,只需要耸耸肩说道:“我觉得还可以。”

从某种意义上来说,这其实是一种欲擒故纵的营销手段。假如你正在参加某场展览会,看到10个独立开发者的展台正在展示他们的产品。其中9个竭力展示自己的东西,他们的传单上印得满是“令人惊叹!”和“必须拥有!”之类的词语。但是在队列末端你看到有人正在阅读一本杂志,手上拿的传单写的是“无所谓”,那么这家伙就是在推广《Hector》。

但有趣的是,我们着实认为我们的游戏极为令人惊叹而且值得拥有。游戏中有着高质量的动画、优秀的故事叙述、精巧的著作和费解的谜题。事实在于,正是我们对游戏的信心让我们愿意在推广材料中采用消极营销。结果,许多评论员和玩家的意见是:事实上,你们的评价不妥,游戏确实很棒。

所有人都在宣传他们产品的优势,这使得用户产生排斥感。但是,我们宣传的是产品的平庸性,这也促使用户发表不同意见,告诉其他用户游戏事实上比我们宣传的要好。

附:这种方法并不适用于所有人。事实上,正是因为并非多数产品可以使用此类营销想法,所以上述做法才显得很有趣。所以,如果你在发布应用时使用了我们的方法却没有产生相应的效果,千万不要怨我们。

2、《Hector》吸引潜在用户

指向点击冒险游戏的精妙之处就在于,那些喜欢这种题材游戏的人对此很忠诚,尽管用户群体较小。假设你与另外3个人坐在一起讨论游戏,你询问“还记得《Monkey Island》吗?”,你可能会得到以下3种回答:

(1)“我喜欢《Monkey Island》这款游戏!”这便是你的知音。

(2)“我没玩过,好玩吗?”你的第1类人可以将其转化喜欢这类游戏的人。

(3)“我对《Monkey Island》不感兴趣。”下次聚会的时候无需邀请这类人。

目前有许多受到所有人欢迎的游戏,但是指向点击游戏拥有的是热情和专注的用户群。如果你能够加以利用,他们可以帮你做许多事情。

在《Hector》第1章发布前数周,我们将预告片上传到YouTube上,并在某些论坛上发布通知。TouchArcade上的某些人引用了预告片在论坛上开了个帖子,吸引了许多指向点击游戏爱好者的关注。

但是帖子的主题(游戏邦注:再次显出产品的独特之处)是:“毒品、嗜酒、暴力、污秽语言,这款游戏似乎已经超出了苹果能够忍受的范围。就我个人而言,我会在发布后苹果将其和谐前就把它买下来!”帖子中回复的每个人都表示他们会在游戏被改变之前买下来,能够接受2.39英镑的价格等等。

现在,我不能向你说明此类论坛上的对话能够对发布当日的销售上扬有何直接联系。毕竟,这个帖子可能讨论的人只有20个左右,但是其他论坛和帖子中可能有数千个人正在关注。但是无论是何种情况,人们的谈论并不会伤害到游戏。

事实上,正是这些预告片、评论员以及上述《Hector》潜在的支持者使得游戏在App Store中发布之日销售量上扬。

3、人们确实喜欢这些东西

我们在发布首日共售出483份的《Hector》第1章,获得了大量的5星评论。事实证明,1年前这足以让我们的游戏进驻App Store中冒险和角色扮演版块前十名之列。

我们荣登十大榜单之后,便获得了更多玩家的关注。顷刻之间,前所未知的游戏在冒险类别游戏中获得如此高的位置,而且有这么多的优秀评论。所以,第2天我们的销售量增加了一倍多,销售量破千,而且在20个国家中的冒险和角色扮演榜单中位居榜首(从记录上来看,看到作品能够代表App Store中的冒险类别游戏的感觉确实很棒,所有开发者都应当努力尝试实现)。

接下来,《Hector》引起了苹果的关注,游戏被放置在美英等国App stores的New and Noteworthy版块上。不久之后,苹果再次帮了我们,将游戏添加到“Best Games You’ve Never Played”的游戏集中。曾有一刻,《Hector》不仅出现在Top Games版块中,还出现在Top Apps中(游戏邦注:最佳成绩在前50名左右)。

First Month Stats(from gamesbrief)

First Month Stats(from gamesbrief)

在这里我需要补充说明的是,我们没有利用社交媒体(事实上是游戏没有将社交媒体整合到应用中,游戏拥有twitter账户@diHector,开发者偶尔会在上面发表评论)。我们没有发布精简版,没有加入免费应用推广大军,我们也没有对应用降价。这样是否会影响到销售量,抑或游戏会保持前进的势头?我也不能给出准确的答案。正如我一开始就说的那样,《Hector》并非适合所有玩家。

有价值的建议

我认为有个可以拉近我们同粉丝关系的可操作技巧是:尽量与草根级别的用户和评论员联系和交流。可以通过支持性邮件、评论回复和论坛发帖等形式。

对任何有意接触营销材料、支持线甚至游戏流程攻略的人,我们尝试创造同样的DVD附加设备,当游戏关闭时,《Hector》中的世界并未停止运转。如果你的游戏是在完成后装入小盒子中,然后像所有人那样营销,那么这很简单。如果产品不是采用这种方法的话,那么情况便完全不同了。

以支持线为例,对用户的回应往往来自于《Hector》本身,或者类似《Hector》的独立开发团队。有可能出现像“你的关注对我们来说非常重要”这样的官僚主义废话。要知道在支持邮件中,尝试诋毁游戏的人会非常多。

另一个例子是苹果的50个免费推广代码。不要只是通过传统渠道传播。在观看20或30个评论站点之后,我们有许多需要处理的问题。要怎么做呢?寻找更多的评论者?这么做简直就是疯子。我的建议是,让公众自己发表看法。评论员总是能够免费获得游戏。但是当公众喜欢游戏时,他们会告诉所有人。以下便是我们的做法:

我们保持对socialmention.com的关注(游戏邦注:这完全具有可操作性),看是否有人正在讨论《Hector Badge of Carnage》,并且保持对所有的新链接或评论进行回应。

如果是个优秀的评论或论坛帖子的话,用公司的twitter账户尽快发布消息,有时也用《Hector》的账户。

·《Hector》也会以自身的名义反驳那些贬低游戏的评论员的观点。

·《Hector》的评论总是以向大众发送免费推广码作为结束,首个输入的读者将会免费获得游戏。

·《Hector》总是会转发评论网站和其他关注的读者的观点,至少会表示感谢和褒奖。而且,这种做法为我们赢取了大量的声望,所以人们都很关注我们的评论,希望能够获得免费的推广。

采用这种做法有一定的技巧。我们不会因站点的消极评论或失去一颗星而严厉斥责他人。

1年之后的情况

《Hector》发布于2010年6月,表现比我们的期望更好。随后,游戏引起了Telltale Games的关注,这是指向点击冒险游戏行业的领军公司,拥有《Monkey Island》、《Day of the Tentacle》和《Sam and Max》等作品的游戏文案、程序员和开发者。

坦诚地说,现在如果我收到写着“我们玩过你的游戏,我们很喜欢这款游戏”的邮件,我会感到很高兴。但他们的做法是将游戏进一步扩展,重新在PC和Mac上发布第1章,并且采用他们的游戏引擎来制作第2章和第3章。

我很荣幸地告诉你们,《Episode 2: Senseless Acts of Justice》已经发布,你可以通过Telltale Games、Steam和App Store来获取,9月29日你便可以获得《Episode 3: Beyond Reasonable Doom》。

那么也就是说,以下这些简单的小准则可以帮助你的游戏获得成功:

游戏以腐化堕落为基础

告诉所有人游戏并没有那么棒,给他们反驳的机会

营造狂热的粉丝群体

以各种“粗鲁”方式对待用户

获得主要的国际游戏公司的关注

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

FOLLOWING HUNCHES, BADGERING WITNESSES AND GRASPING AT STRAWS: HOW A FILTHY COP MADE A NAME FOR HIMSELF

Kevin Beimers

I met Nicholas at Edinburgh Interactive – he and I were both speaking in the Public Sessions, shaping the minds of budding young developers. I soaked up Nicholas’s presentation first; his advice was structured, methodical, well-researched and backed with plenty of hard facts and figures. Then came my presentation on Straandlooper’s shift into the production and marketing of HECTOR: Badge of Carnage (an point ‘n click detective adventure game for iPhone), which had a basic strategy of “I wonder what would happen if we did… this?”

From the point of view of anyone who attended both sessions, I can only assume it was like night and day. But, regardless, Nicholas and I hit it off, and he asked me to share some of our experiences as a first-time app developer on Gamesbrief. If you can pull any good life lessons from this, I tip my hat to you, but otherwise, just enjoy the journey…

First off, Straandlooper isn’t a game development company (at least, before Hector we weren’t). We’re an animation company, first and foremost, who came down off a project funded in the lengthy traditional method, and didn’t really want to go through all that rigmarole again. We’d always wanted to get into gaming, and when we saw the potential for distribution and the micropayment turnaround of the App Store, we thought, what the hell… let’s give it a crack.

Dean Burke, Hector’s creator, had already come to the table with a great character, style and setting, and the only thing undecided was the medium for release. Dean and I grew up loving the classic LucasArts-style point and click adventures, and with the then-recent porting and successes of Monkey Island Special Edition, Broken Sword and Beneath a Steel Sky making a resurgence, we thought the world was ready for a new point ‘n click hero.

We nailed down a three-episode story arc fairly quickly (as an animation company, story is something we do best, and point ‘n click is still the best medium for a storytelling game), and set to work on Episode 1 (without ever knowing if there would ever be funding for an Episode 2 or 3… time would tell).

How long did it take? Somewhere between 6 and 8 months, in and amongst other studio shorts and projects that were coming through the office. There was anywhere between two and eight people working on it at any given time, but anybody’s guess on the actual budget or schedule. Basically, we knew what we wanted to achieve and kept chipping away at it until we achieved it. We knew we’d achieved it when we loved it.

Of course, the big question now was: How the hell do we get other people to find out about it?

I would love to be able to tell you that the success of Hector: Badge of Carnage is down to a brilliant yet simple coordinated promotional attack on all branches of worldwide media, resulting in a quantifiable and reproducible 12-step package available to indie developers like yourselves. However, like police work, it can be mostly attributed to a lot of legwork, some gutsy gambles, and a bit of blind luck.

Lucky Break Number 1: Wacky marketing gamble pays off

If you’ve played Hector (and in my opinion you really should), you’ll know by now that the character of Hector is rude, violent, slovenly, drunken, cynical, sarcastic, irreverent, and indifferent. So, heh heh, why not do the same with his promotional materials?

Demotional materials, actually. Hector pioneered the refreshing art of Negative Marketing: Slam our own product before anyone else does. Don’t tell people it’s incredible and wonderful and trendsetting and life changing. Instead, if anyone asks you if it’s good, just shrug and say “Meh. S’alright I guess.”

In a way, it’s the marketing equivalent of playing hard-to-get. Picture yourself at an expo, and you’ve got a line of ten indies showing off their goods. Nine of them would catapult themselves through a plate glass window to waggle their iPad in your face, and all their leaflets say “AWESOME!” and “MUST-HAVE!” with exclamation points up the wazoo. Then there’s the dude down the end reading a magazine with a stack of leaflets that say “Whatever.” on them. That’s the guy promoting Hector.

The funny thing about it was, we DID consider our game to be awesome and must-have. It was high quality animation, good story telling, clever writing, and sneaky puzzles. I don’t think we would have been nearly so forthcoming with the negative marketing had we not been as confident in the product. You don’t say “Meh, it’s okay” to a product that is meh, okay. The very fact that we had the confidence in the game gave us the confidence to shoot it down in the promo materials… and subsequently, caused many reviewers and players to be the ones who shout “Actually, you’re wrong, it IS awesome.”

…Which is really what you want. Anyone will tell you that their product is great, allowing the users plenty of opportunity to disagree. Instead, we spouted about how bleedin’ average it was, which allowed users to disagree with us and tell other users it’s way better than we made it out to be.

Caveat: THIS ISN’T FOR EVERYBODY. In fact, what makes it so interesting to talk about is that there aren’t a lot of products with the self-loathing and irreverence to tie a marketing idea like this onto. So if you go launching your Fashion Consultant Sim App next week with the tagline, “Don’t bother, it’s rubbish,” don’t go suing me or Nicholas here.

Lucky break Number 2: Hector attracts an underground following

The great thing about point ‘n click adventures: the people who love them REALLY REALLY love them. It is a small yet passionate audience, almost elite or exclusive. If you’re sitting around the table with three other people talking about games (and given that you’re on this site, you’re likely the sort that does), and you say “Remember Monkey Island?” you’ll get these responses:

Person #1: “Dude I LOVED Monkey Island!” and you’ve found a kindred.

Person #2: “No, never played that. Is it good?” and you and Person #1 convert them.

Person #3: “Enh, Monkey Island never did much for me…” and Person #3 is not invited to the next gathering.

There are loads of games out there that everybody ‘likes’ (and congratulations to them, because they’re the ones making squillions). But a point ‘n click DONE WELL – and the ‘done well’ bit is key – will have a passionate pocket of people who ‘love’ it. And if you can score with that gang, they’ll do a lot of the legwork for you.

A couple of weeks before the launch of Hector Ep1, we put out a trailer on YouTube and popped a notice off to some of the forum sites. A couple of the forum sites stuck us on the big list of Coming Soons. Somebody on TouchArcade spotted the trailer, and started a thread about it, gaining the attention of other point ‘n clickers in the region. Fair enough.

But the gist of the thread (once again, unique to the product) was this: “Drugs, drinking, filth, violence, naughty language… This game looks waaaay outside Apple’s comfort zone. I, for one, am going to snap it up the moment it’s released before Apple pulls it on grounds of common decency! Who’s with me?” Everyone on the thread was crossing their fingers that they could nab one before it got yanked, £2.39 price tag and all.

Now, I couldn’t tell you how much forum chit-chat directly related to the rise in sales on launch day – after all, this particular thread may have had 20-odd people chatting, but anywhere from zero to thousands poking their heads in. But either way, it certainly didn’t hurt to be talked about.

Other than that – trailers, codes to reviewers, and the above collection of back alley Hector hooligans – Hector launched on the App Store with virtually no fanfare.

Lucky Break number 3: People actually liked the thing

We sold 483 copies of Hector Ep1 on the first day, and a decent collection of 5 star reviews. Turns out, this is (well, was a year ago) enough to get our app into the top 10 of the Adventure and Role Playing sections of the App Store.

Once we were up in a sweet placement like that, we got noticed by more gamers. Suddenly here was a game nobody knew about riding high in the Adventure section with scads of good reviews. Second day sales doubled to over a thousand, and we hit number 1 in Adventure and Role Playing in about 20 countries. (For the record, it’s really, really cool to see your icon representing the Adventure category on the App Store. You should try it!)

Next, Hector got noticed by Apple, and was dropped into the New and Noteworthy section of at least the US and UK App stores. A little later on, Apple gave us another boost and put us into the “Best Games You’ve Never Played” collection. At one point Hector could be found not only in the Top Games section, but the Top Apps as well (fluttering around the top 50 at best).

I should add here that we had virtually no social media presence (well, not integrated into the app, but @diHector has a twitter account, which we on occasion post belittling comments from). We had no Lite version, we didn’t fall in with a Free App promotion squad, nor did we ever do a price drop. Would it have affected sales, or kept the momentum up? Looking back, who can tell? Like I’ve said from the beginning, Hector’s not for everybody, and I’d say we got pretty far on charm alone.

An actual bit of useful advice…

About time. Congratulations on holding out this long, I tend to go on a bit.

One handy trick I can pass on that I think made a big difference in reaching our fan base: connect with users and reviewers as much as you can on a grass roots level. I’m talking about support emails, review requests, and forum postings.

To anyone who came in contact with the marketing materials, the support line, or even the game walkthrough (which insults you before you’re allowed to use it), we were trying to create the equivalent of DVD extras – the world of Hector doesn’t stop when the game is switched off. It’s easy once your game is complete to then package it into a little box and market it like everyone else does. It’s something else entirely when the essence of the product creeps out of the box and leaves a little stain on the counter around it.

For example: the support line. Responses usually came from Hector himself, or a Hector-like dev team member. None of this “Your concerns are important to us” bureaucratic PC garbage, more like “Ballbags! Really? I’ll go slap the tech monkeys in the basement so this sort of thing doesn’t happen to anyone else.” You would not believe the number of times people tried to out-Hector the Hector in the support email.

Another example: Apple’s 50 free promo codes. Don’t just distribute them through the conventional channels. After giving out about 20 or 30 to review sites we had a stack of extras to play with. What to do? Look for more reviewers? Nuts to that. Let the public scramble for ‘em like a raisin in a henhouse, that’s what I say. Reviewers get free games all the time. But when a member of the public just gets handed one, he tells people about it. Here’s what we did:

We kept tabs on socialmention.com (very handy) to see if anyone was talking about Hector Badge of Carnage, and instantly responded to any new links or reviews. If it was a good review or forum posting…

Tweet about it from the company twitter account as soon as possible, and sometimes Hector’s account as well (basic)

Hector (as himself) would post a rebuttal, usually berating the reviewer for liking such a god-awful game so much

Hector’s comment would invariably end with Hector tossing out a free promo code to the masses, and the first reader to type it in would get a free copy of the game.

Hector’s attentiveness would invariably be retweeted by the review site and by other readers who stumbled onto it, or at the very least be followed up with a thanks and a user testimonial. As well, we got a bit of a reputation for doing so, so people looked for our reviews in the hopes of a free promo.

There was an art to this, mind you. We wouldn’t berate a site for a bad review or a lost star; that sort of thing comes across as bad form and sour grapes. (However, that didn’t stop the fan forums coming to Hector’s defense at times… whether Hector was the instigator of said riots is still unproven.)

One year later…

Hector launched in June of 2010, and did wildly better than we dared to hope. Then we got our last lucky break: Hector slumped across the desk of someone at Telltale Games, the industry leaders in next-generation point ‘n click adventures, and home of quite a few of the genre-defining writers, programmers and creators of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max and the like.

Now, to be honest, I would have been quite chuffed enough to have received an email that said, “we played your game and we loved it.” But they took it several steps further, offered to re-release Episode 1 on PC and Mac, and then co-produce Episodes 2 and 3 on their game engine to round off the series.

I’m happy to announce here that Episode 2: Senseless Acts of Justice is now out and available on Telltale Games, Steam and the App Store, and you’ll be able to get your filth-loving little hands on Episode 3: Beyond Reasonable Doom on September 29th.

So there it is. A nice simple formula to make your game a success:

Base your game around human filth and depravity

Tell everyone it’s not that great so they can disagree with you

Develop a cult following

Be rude to your customers from every angle

Get signed on by a major international games company.

It really is that easy. And just to show you that I’m true to my word, here’s a promo code to the first lucky chap who made it to the bottom of my ridiculously long guest post: 39FM4J3PMMT3. Go on, you’ve earned it. (Actually, it’s got nothing to do with you earning it. I just like to see if anyone could be arsed to read every word of my tenuous ‘advice’) (Source: Games Brief)


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