作者：Tadhg Kelly

Nicholas Lovell日前发帖谈及如何营销独立游戏时突出3个可能方案：（1）瞄准发行的宣传；（2）依靠参数的广告；（3）特许营销。第3个方案让我想起Seth Godin说过的话：

不要为产品寻找用户。而是为你的用户寻找产品。

为用户寻找产品

特许营销的理念是通过找到早期用户感兴趣的项目创造广泛用户基础。然后建立平台分享项目构思，这样我们就能够同用户谈论更多内容。接着汇集用户创建社区，开发满足社区要求且超越其预期的作品。这样社区就会变成你通向外面世界的营销渠道。

这是大体构思。是否适合你的游戏？

他们是否关心内容？

基于早期用户探索游戏模式假定这些用户的存在，其还假设这些用户希望汇集一堂，他们会给予关注，属于能够获得的用户。

若这些情况都成立，那么你就拥有关心项目的用户。若没有，你的用户就不关心内容，不想聚集起来，不想给予关注或属于无法获得的用户。出乎意料的是，多数玩家都无法满足其中某条或多条标准。

下面是些例子：

毫不关心：在《梭哈》文化中，玩家不在乎场所不同（游戏邦注：如赌场或网站），场所和最大赢家几乎没有什么关系。玩家投入大量时间测试系统，旨在发现最佳赚钱方案或报价，他们不会因为占便宜而感到愧疚。原因是扑克游戏几乎都和金钱有关，这超越其他更崇高的关注点。

这些用户想要的唯一产品是《梭哈》，他们希望的唯一完善内容是赚钱途径。这不是个充满早期用户的市场，唯一可行的特许营销是博客和旨在促进《梭哈》玩家改善策略的课程。

不想聚集起来：iPhone玩家大多都没有进行交流，他们似乎习惯自己发现App Store内容，然后进行购买和体验（游戏邦注：这就是为什么iPhone游戏评论带给销量的影响不大）。

玩家因此非常着迷于《水果忍者》、《割绳子》、《Tiny Wings》及其他基于简单、天然机制，内容能够立即传达的游戏。但更复杂或独立的游戏则通常举步维艰。

未给予关注：虽然Facebook玩家规模庞大，但他们很少关注游戏内容。若游戏不是直接呈现在他们面前，或通知消息中，他们会逐渐离开。玩家甚至常常忘记自己所玩游戏的名称。

Facebook是个容易分心的环境，这也是为什么Zynga在广告中投入大笔资金，用于获得用户及留住他们。他们通常需要不断向《黑手党战争》玩家宣传《黑手党战争》，提醒他们游戏的存在。

玩家无法获得：在掌机领域中，开发商和用户之间存障碍。这些障碍来自发行商以及平台所有者，体现在各种合同和实际绑定关系，他们的目标是获得用户所有权。微软不希望Xbox用户变成EA用户。双方向第三方转移这种关系的意义不大，若他们这样做，其自身的营销方案就存在许多风险。

新闻工作者曾试图消除这种隔阂，这样开发商就能够从中树立自身名声，但他们从中获得的产品销量无法与音乐等传媒领域相提并论。杂志和博客之类的营销渠道主要依靠广告资金和PR信誉，所以就出现包含预览和评论的复杂机制。

虽然玩家对游戏非常感兴趣，但他们通常会误解行业所发生的状况。因此很多开发者都置身特许营销行不通的市场位置。

早期玩家部落

媒体觉得玩家间存在他们&我们，休闲&硬核界限，但其实并非如此。相反，这里只存在muggle（游戏邦注：未给予关注及毫不关心的未分化休闲或社交玩家）和可分成各种不同部落的non-muggle群体。

不同部落以复杂方式混合起来。有些互相熟悉，有些则并不知道对方的存在。例如：

探险者：他们天真地保留古老探险游戏的记忆，他们想要的是点击式游戏。

复古PC玩家：他们瞄准《MineCraft》，在《Notch》中倾其所有。

文明玩家：这些玩家喜欢通过优雅方式创建内容和进行格斗，文明部落非常安静，但非常专注于所选类型。

角色扮演玩家：暴雪、Jagex及其他公司从那些喜欢扮演数字半兽人，进入地下城的玩家身上获得大笔收益。

太空贸易商：同样，这个部落过去喜欢《Elite》，现在偏好《EVE Online》，其兴趣在于采矿、贸易和创建星际公司。

产业部落：有时更复杂的游戏有其市场，因为他们已成为行业宠儿。例如《Game Dev Story》。

早期用户部落有很多，他们着迷的游戏从棋盘游戏到疯狂日本2D射击游戏。有些规模很小，有些则很庞大。有些锁定某个公司，有些则是开放式。

应重视玩家感受

RockPaperShotgun的Jim Rossignol谈到一个有关《EVE Online》玩家游戏权限的有趣故事。游戏某些玩家不满CCP（游戏邦注：小型的独立游戏开发运营公司）前几个扩充内容的质量。他们还不满CCP弃这些问题不顾而投身其他项目。

就如Jim所说，玩家讨厌自己的订阅费用被用于其他他们毫不关心的项目。CCP的部落觉得公司并未给予许可充分重视。为用户寻找游戏并不意味着任何游戏都可以。这是指同部落建立关系，其形成有其理由。这个部落的出现有其原因，若你将其视作能够替代的群体，无疑将走下滑路。

即便是实力雄厚的任天堂公司也是最近才悟出这点，当时公司正努力说服用户掏钱购买3D设备。任天堂部落不是瞄准技术的群体，而是个偏好玩法创新群体，他们对3DS的最大不满是该平台的游戏非常普通。

过去5年来，任天堂似乎对其部落的3D内容需求及关注理由存在误解。幸运的是，该公司目前已顺利扭转局面，不会在Wii U犯同样的错误。

独立游戏营销策略概述

许多开发商都试图成为无需借助特许营销的独立开发者，且发现这非常困难（游戏邦注：尤其是在那些没有用户沟通渠道的平台）。但若你有耐心，还有一个解决方案。

虽然iPhone主要瞄准muggle群体，但富有激情的粉丝也会在其他平台体验那些同其有关系的游戏。例如，《屋顶狂奔》最初是以Flash形式呈现，后来才出现iPhone版本。《外星原人》和《超级食肉男》在入驻Xbox前也走相同路线。《粘粘世界》最初是个独立项目，后来才入驻Steam和其他平台。《Minecraft》很快就会出现掌机版本。

这些例子都存在什么共性？他们都寻找自己的早期用户，这些用户汇集一地，给予关注，能够获得。这些早期用户在哪里？开放网络。

开发网络是Subreddits生存，Newgrounds驻足，Twitter发微博和谷歌搜索的空间。这里特别适合创建社区，通常是初期构思的施展舞台，这些内容随后才慢慢延伸至其他平台。若你计划通过特许进行营销，那么开放网络是你目前的最佳选择。

下面是个简单任务列表：

1. 进军细分市场

2. 找到主要项目

3. 创建同细分市场沟通的平台

4. 时常同他们沟通。努力争取项目，预期阻力的存在。

5. 创建社区。这能够协助部落的创建。

6. 创建瞄准部落的游戏

7. 向部落提供宣传游戏的渠道

另外，你可以选择找个PR，试着开展发行营销活动。我想你会发现这更加困难，但若这更属于你的风格，不妨走这条路线。

但要避免下述行为：

1. 产生独立游戏的想法

2. 瞄准极小户用范围

3. 投放iPhone或Facebook平台，试图从中寻找部落

4. 通过微博进行宣传，旨在促使游戏成为“话题”

我常看到开发商，有些人还是我的好朋友，采用这种模式，但我觉得这完全属于徒劳，这个路线通常寄希望于先炒热一个话题，这不是开发商可采纳的策略。

这种情况有时会出现，但前提是项目已经打好根基。许多游戏都不是基础项目，他们瞄准的都是已有自身预期的部落，所以不要着眼这点创建营销策略。

开发者应瞄准既有用户开发游戏，为用户找到游戏，而非为游戏找用户。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Find Games for your Players

By Tadhg Kelly

A post from Nicholas Lovell yesterday on how to market your indie game highlighted three possible approaches: (1) Launch-focused publicity, (2) metric-driven advertising and (3) permission marketing. The third reminded me of a quote by Seth Godin:

Don’t find customers for your products

Find products for your customers

The idea of permission marketing is to build a following by finding a cause that early adopters care about. Then build a platform to share your ideas about that cause, the gift of which gains their permission to talk to them some more. Then gather customers together to form a community and build products that speak to the community’s needs but which also push the envelope of their expectations. So the community will act as your marketing channel to the outside world.

That’s the general idea. Does it work for games?

Do They Care?

Finding games for early adopters supposes that they exist in the first place. It also supposes that they want to congregate, that they are paying attention, and that they are reachable in some form.

If all these things are true then you have customers who care. If not, then you have customers who don’t care, don’t congregate, don’t pay attention or are not reachable. (Perhaps un)surprisingly, the majority of players fail on one or more of these criteria.

Here are some examples:

Don’t Care: In the culture of Poker, players are not passionate about different venues (like casinos or sites) and venues have a begrudging relationship with their best players. Players spend a lot of time testing systems to find the best moneymaking schemes or offers, and they have no real compunction about taking advantage. The reason is that Poker is all about the money and that overrides more refined concerns.

The only product that these players want is Poker, nothing else, and the only improvements that they want are ways to make more money. It’s not a market filled with early adopters, and the only permission marketing that works is blogs and courses designed to help Poker players improve their strategy.

Don’t Congregate: iPhone players don’t talk to each other at significant scale and seem happy to simply buy and play apps as they find them on the App Store. This is why iPhone game reviews have very little impact on sales.

The players are therefore highly amenable to Fruit Ninja, Cut The Rope, Tiny Wings and other games whose core idea is governed by one simple and natural dynamic and instantly communicable. However more complicated or indie culture games tend to have a tougher time.

Don’t Pay Attention: While Facebook gamers congregate in vast numbers, they pay very little attention to their games. If a game is not actually in front of their face or in their Notification feed then they drift away. Players even often forget the name of the game that they were playing.

Facebook is a highly distracting environment, which is why Zynga spends a fortune on advertising to retain customers as well as acquire them. They literally have to keep advertising Mafia Wars to Mafia Wars players to remind them that it exists.

Not Reachable: In the console industry there are barriers between the developer and the player. Those barriers come from publishers as well as platform holders through a variety of contractual and physical bindings, and their objective is to achieve customer ownership. Microsoft don’t want Xbox customers to be EA customers. There’s also no value for either of them to hand over that relationship to a third party developer, and lots of risk to their own marketing story if they do.

Journalists try and bridge the gap, so some developers achieve a fame of sorts, though nothing in comparison to the number of units they sell were they working in another medium such as music. Media outlets like magazines and blogs rely on advertising dollars and PR goodwill, so a complicated system of previews and commentary has emerged.

While players are very interested in games, they tend to have a warped view of what actually goes on in the industry. As a result, a huge number of developers work in a segment of the industry to which permission marketing just can’t reach.

Gaming Adopter Tribes

Publications like to make out that there is a them-and-us casual-and-hardcore division between players but that’s not really the case. Rather, there are muggles (the undifferentiated casual or social gamer who’s not really paying attention and doesn’t care) and non-muggles who split into dozens of tribes.

Different tribes intermingle in complicated ways. Some are very familiar with each other, while others really know nothing of each others’ existence. For example:

Adventurers: Who fondly retain memories of adventure games of old, and who want nothing but point-and-click games featuring fish-in-lock puzzles.

The Retro PC Gamer: The sorts of folks who have found Minecraft and given Notch all of their money.

Civ Gamers: The kind of player that enjoys nothing more that building and warring at a genteel pace, the Civ tribe is quiet but surprisingly dedicated to its chosen genre.

Roleplayers: Blizzard, Jagex and a number of other companies make a tonne of money from players who love nothing more than to dress up as a digital half-orc and go off a-dungeoneering.

Space Traders: Likewise, the tribe that loved Elite and now loves EVE Online is a very specific group of people whose interests are all about mining, trading and forming interstellar corporations.

The Industry Tribe: Sometimes more sophisticated games find a home because they become an industry darling. Game Dev Story, for example.

And so on.

There are lots of tribes, obsessed by everything from board games to crazy 2D Japanese shooters. Some are tiny, others are huge. Some are locked to one company, others are open.

Tribes Aren’t Blank Slates

Jim Rossignol of RockPaperShotgun recounts an interesting story of player rights in EVE Online. Some groups of players in the game are unhappy with CCP (the developers) over the quality of the last few game expansions. They are also annoyed that CCP is working on other games while these problems go unresolved.

As Jim tells it, the players dislike that their subscription money is being used for games that they don’t care about. CCP’s tribe feels that the company is taking its permission for granted. Finding games for your players doesn’t mean that any game will do. It’s a relationship with a tribe that has formed for a reason. It exists for its cause, and treating it as a totally fungible group is a sure way to a slow decline.

Even mighty Nintendo found this out recently when it tried to convince customers that 3D was a big deal worth a premium price. The Nintendo tribe is not a technology-focused tribe, but rather a gameplay innovation tribe, and their biggest gripe about the 3DS was (and still is) that the games for the platform are merely average.

Nintendo, unusually given the streak that it has been on for the last five years, seems to have misread what its tribe would want from 3D and why they would care. Hopefully it has realised this and won’t make the same mistake with the Wii U.

A General Indie Game Marketing Strategy

Many developers have attempted to be indies without permission marketing and have found it hard going, particularly on platforms that interrupt the ability to have a dialogue with customers. However there is a way in, if you have the patience.

While the iPhone is very muggle-friendly, groups of passionate fans will show up to participate in the platform for games that they already have a relationship with. Canabalt, for example, is a game that started life in Flash and then became an iPhone version. Alien Hominid and Super Meat Boy are games that did something similar before landing on the Xbox. World of Goo came from an indie project and later graduated to Steam and other platforms. Minecraft will be coming to console soon enough.

What do all of these examples have in common? They found adopters (often by chance) who congregated, paid attention and were reachable. Where did these adopters live? The open web.

The open web is where Subreddits exist, Newgrounds lives, Twitter tweets and Google searches. It is uniquely suited to community formation and regularly acts as a staging ground for early ideas that then launch into other platforms. If you plan to market using permission, then the open web is by far your best bet.

Here’s a simple list of to-do’s:

1. Be or become an insider in a niche

2. Find out what its chief cause is

3. Build a platform (as in a website or blog) to talk to that niche.

4. Talk to them a lot. Push for the cause. Expect resistance.

5. Build a community. This aids formation of a tribe.

6. Build a game that speaks to the tribe

7. Give the tribe the means to evangelise about the game

Alternatively find yourself a PR and try and get into glitzy launch marketing instead. I suspect you’ll find that even tougher but if it’s more your style then go for it.

Don’t, however, do this:

1. Have an idea for an indie game

2. Make it to as small a scope you can imagine

3. Launch it on the iPhone or Facebook and hope to find a tribe with it

4. Tweet about it a lot in the hope to ‘build buzz’

I often see developers, some of them good friends, try this approach but increasingly I think it’s futile. It relies on creating a cause, which is not something that a developer can do very often.

It happens sometimes, but only because of the creation of a founderwork. Most games are not founderworks and are speaking to a tribe that already has its own ideas about what it wants. Chances are that your game is not a founderwork, so don’t try and create your marketing strategy on the hope that it is.

Find games for your players, not the other way around.（Source：gamesbrief）