作者：BenWard

本文主要分享独立推广游戏的系列渠道。

Pic.01 from gamesbrief.com

博客宣传

首个最显而易见的渠道当然是博客。我经常写博客，涉及广泛话题，包括游戏设计、商业策略和营销。我们试图在博文中保持开诚布公态度，覆盖其他博主有时避而不谈的话题。我们谈论资金及如何融资，分享曾犯过的错误，以及如何逐步调整商业策略。有些团队觉得改变想法会落下前后不一的污名，但在Hogrocket工作室，我们接受这样的事实：我们不可能永远不犯错。我们愿意谈论自己的失误。

我们还设立Hogrocket官方博客，其中不仅包含原创内容，还转载我们的个人博文。我们也会将文章同步发布于其他平台，尽可能覆盖更多用户（游戏邦注：这些网站包括AltDevBlogADay、GamesIndustry.biz和Gamasutra）。

我们通过Tumblr和WordPress管理博客。和Hogrocket其他事务一样，我们采用托管方式，而不是亲力亲为。Tumblr提供完善管理工具组合和安全服务器，保证操作正常运行，让我们能够完全放心。我们只需考虑如何提供优质内容，我们可以将内容推广工作委托他人。

视频博客宣传

有时我们主要借助视频博客。我们已在Youtube制作几个短片视频，但原本计划制作更多内容。强调这点的是因为视频有助于强化内容的真实性和透明度。这有些难为情，适合低预算情况，但若你通过视频口头表明态度，融入肢体语言，用户更易吸收和理解相关内容。文本可能会受到曲解，但视频内容却很少出现这种情况。

我们的视频是通过松下徕美G10 DSLR拍摄的。这款相机相对便宜，性价比较高，画面效果很不错。我们在Mac的iMovie中编辑视频，然后上传至YouTube。我们选择YouTube而非Vimeo是因为前者用户规模更大，虽然二者都是可行平台。其实可以考虑同时使用两个平台。

营销邮件目录

我们通过邮件目录软件记录我们的联系人和合作伙伴（游戏邦注：就像厚厚的通讯簿），然后群发邮件。在Hogrocket，我们会向某些联系人发送独家内容；在我们看来，若对方接收我们的邮件，我们至少应向他们提供些许特别内容！奖励忠实粉丝是个好举措，发送私人有价值邮件刚好符合这个要求。

我们可以自己建立邮件目录（或于电子表格，或于定制软件），但很难向众多用户群发邮件。许多ISP都会限制用户每天的邮件数量，而Gmail等软件在发送垃圾邮件方面的高效性则毋庸置疑。所以若凡事都手动操作，那么你就得手动移除退回邮件，手动搜索副本。这在你发出原始邮件几周后零零碎碎收到200封此类邮件时将变成严峻挑战。

所以我建议使用专业软件处理这些内容。我们所使用的网站是YourMailingListProvider，这个网站设置完善，功能齐全，费用合理。你可以在列表中添加大量联系人，根据自己定义的群组进行分类。例如，我们将游戏媒体人和游戏业内人士分成不同小组，所以我们可以单独联系某小组。YMLP还提供网站论坛服务，所以我们可以在自己的网站创建注册框，直接链接至邮件目录。网站还会自动移除退回邮件，处理副本。你根据新闻邮件发出的用户数量付费，所有旧新闻邮件将储存于YMLP服务器供公众参考。总之，这是很棒的服务，在我看来其物有所值。

Twitter & Facebook

显然你不应忽略Twitter和Facebook渠道。有关如何高效运用这两个平台，网上有许多指南，这里我就不重复。

活动/会议

参加各种专门活动和行业会议也是认识新朋友，建立新业务关系的绝佳机会，短暂脱离办公室也是不错选择。但参加这些活动成本颇高；不论是就耗费资金，还是浪费的时间而言。在Hogrocket，我们不常参加会议，主要是因为我们过去几个月过度专注于《Tiny Invaders》项目。但我们希望公司未来在此方面能够有所改善。

值得指出的一点是：参加游戏行业以外的会议也有其意义。当然我们应该努力参加GDC、Gamescom和Develop之类的会议，但在我看来，富有眼见的开发商应该放眼更大蓝图。我们所处的行业过去几年来得到大幅扩展，游戏开发领域开始获得广泛关注，包括好莱坞人士。参加音乐、发行等行业的会议能够促使我们的作品遍布全球各个角落。

Pic.02 from gamesbrief.com

下面几个是独立开发商不容忽视的自我推广工具。

* Google Mail/Calendar——在我看来，这是个绝佳在线生产工具。若你没有用过，不妨试试。Gmail在过滤/分类/搜索邮件方面表现突出；自我推广需要发送大量邮件，因此这一工具必不可少。此外，不要删除任何邮件！利用Gmail的归档功能将内容移除收件箱，但不要删除！也许某天你需要回头查阅某些对话内容（游戏邦注：甚至是查看某个无足轻重人士的邮件内容）。

* Skype——Skype非常适合开展团队会议，但这同时也能够协助你进行一对一的产品宣传。通过Skype会见重要客户和社区主要人物，试着在必要时候进行视频交谈。面对面沟通始终是最佳选择。

* Google Docs——显然这有助于团队成员的合作（能够同时远程编辑相同文件实在太棒了，且还能看到他人做出的调整）。但我们还要通过Google Docs公开分享某些文件。例如，我们通过这个服务发行我们公司的新闻公告。

* Dropbox——Dropbox非常适合内部交流。它同时也非常适合分享信息/文件/具有内在“公开”属性的文件夹。虽然Google Docs非常适合文件制作，但Dropbox更适合大型静态文件，如预告片和演示内容。

* Google URL Shortener——这有助于将大型URL缩短成小片段，特别是在Twitter领域。有很多公司提供这类服务；我最喜欢的是goo.gl。goo.gl能够帮助我们轻松缩短URL（只需2秒钟左右），之后你便可以通过重新导入收获有用数据。我们将此运用于App Store、邮件目录和Twitter重要信息链接。goo.gl的唯一缺陷是生成数据能被公开访问，所以若你无法接受这点，不妨使用其他产品。

* Flurry——这是旨在获悉用户体验方式的开发工具。但Flurry囊括开发商和发行商职责，令我们能够从一开始就进行正确营销分析。

Pic.03 from gamesbrief.com

下列书籍能够帮助你深入理解文章所述话题。

* 《长尾理论》（克里斯•安德森）

* 《免费》（克里斯•安德森）

* 《Tribes》（赛斯·高汀）

* 《Know me, Like me, Follow me》（Penny Power）

Pic.04 from gamesbrief.com

下面是独立营销的3个要点。

首先，决定信息。你希望用户在听到公司名字时想到什么？就Hogrocket来说，我们选择“建立独立游戏工作室会是什么样子？”你的工作室情况不同，但确保发挥独立开发的优势。你能够完成大型工作室所无法完成的工作，例如直接同用户群交流，立即改变策略。选择所要传递的信息，发挥优势。

其次，设置时间表。你打算同谁沟通，何时同他们沟通？若瞄准媒体，哪些要发送私人邮件？哪些能够获得促销码？哪些应该添加到邮件目录？若同公众沟通，要如何进行？若你借助Twitter，需注意你只能与有限社交领域内的当前时区对象沟通。你能否找到随时同各时区群体沟通的渠道？通常我们安排消息发送的原则是“确保谈论工作室，但只谈论已发售的游戏作品”。

最后，考虑如何覆盖这些用户。你会运用哪些工具？我们每天都以各种方式使用互联网，旨在覆盖广泛用户。目前有众多工具可供选择，有些我上面已经谈到，能够帮你节省时间、资金和精力。如果你是程序员，记住不必凡事都亲力亲为。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Indie Marketing: Tell the World! (part 3)

By BenWard

This article is a guest post by Ben Ward of Hogrocket, recapping a presentation given at the 2011 Develop Conference in Brighton. If you haven’t read the first or second parts of this article, please do check them out first!

In this final part of the indie marketing series I’ll be analysing some hands-on ways to get the word out about your game. The first two parts have been about analysing the existing marketplace and building your message, but this one concerns actually talking directly to the public.

Promotional Blogging

The first tactic, and the one which will seem the most obvious, is blogging. BothPete and myself blog regularly, about a wide variety of topics including game design, business strategy, marketing, and more. We try to be as honest as possible with our blog posts, writing things that other authors sometimes tend to shy away from. We talk about money and how we are financed, the mistakes that we make, and also changes in our strategy as they evolve. Some teams think that changing their minds will brand them as inconsistent, but at Hogrocket we embrace the fact that we’re not always going to be right. We might as well talk about it!

We also have a Hogrocket company blog which not only has original content, but also “reblogs” some of Pete and my personal posts. We also try to get our content syndicated in a few different places to maximise the audience, such as AltDevBlogADay, GamesIndustry.biz, Gamasutra, etc.

We use a combination of Tumblr and WordPress to operate our blogs. Like most things at Hogrocket we opt for a managed approach rather than doing everything ourselves. When Tumblr writes the software THEY are the ones who provide a decent admin suite, keep their servers secure, guarantee uptime, and all of the other things that we shouldn’t need to care about. Pete and I just need to worry about providing good content, and we can let somebody else deal with the details of provisioning this to the masses. In fact if it were up to me I’d get Pete onto Tumblr as well, but he’s stubborn.

Promotional Video Blogging

Something we are trying to do more of is video blogging. We’ve filmed a couple of short videos on Youtube, but the original plan was to have much more video content by now. The reason for this emphasis is because video goes a long way to reinforce the aim of being honest and transparent. It’s a bit embarrassing and low-budget, but people are more likely to absorb the content and understand your message if you tell them verbally, using video to get across your attitude and body language. Text can be (and frequently is) misinterpreted, but this doesn’t happen nearly as often with video.

Our videos were filmed using a Panasonic Lumix G10 DSLR camera on a tripod. This camera was relatively cheap to buy, and provides a decent picture quality for the low cost. The videos were edited in iMovie on a Mac, and then uploaded to YouTube. We selected YouTube rather than Vimeo because it has a greater footfall, although either service would work. In fact, it might be worth using both.

Marketing Mailing List

We use mailing list software to keep a list of our contacts and associates (like a massive address book), and also to send out e-mails in bulk. At Hogrocket we try to post exclusive content to the mailing list that we don’t mirror anywhere else; we figure that if somebody has signed up to receive our spam then they at least deserve something a little special! Rewarding your most dedicated fans is good practice, and sending personal and interesting e-mails fits the bill.

While it’s possible to maintain a mailing list yourself (either in a spreadsheet or using bespoke software), it’s harder to send out e-mail in bulk to thousands of people. Many ISPs have limits for the number of mails you can send in a day, not to mention how efficient services like Gmail have become in filtering spam. Also if you do everything manually (like I’ve done in the past) you also get the headache of manually removing mails that have bounced, and manually searching for duplicates. This doesn’t sound too bad until you get about 200 of them all come through in dribs and drabs many weeks after you sent the initial e-mail!

So I’m an advocate of using specialist software to handle all of this for us. We use a site called YourMailingListProvider, which is a decent, feature-rich website which won’t break the bank. You can add a whole bunch of people to lists, and split them up according to groups which you define. For example, we have separate groups for games press and games industry, so that we can target each subset individually if we want to. YMLP also provides a service for website forms, so we are able to provide a sign-up box on our website which hooks up directly to our mailing list. The site also automatically removes bounced e-mails from your lists, and automatically deals with duplicates. You pay per user per newsletter sent out, and all of your old newsletters are hosted on the YMLP servers for public reference. All in all a great service, and one that’s worth the cost in my opinion.

Twitter & Facebook

Obviously you should be using Twitter and Facebook. There are millions of tutorials all over the Internet on how to do this effectively, so I won’t repeat it here.

Events/conferences

Going to various specialist events and industry conferences can be a fantastic way to meet new people and forge new business relationships, and it’s also nice to get out of the office for a few days. However, they can be expensive to attend; both in terms of money and lost time. At Hogrocket we’re not great at attending conferences, mainly due to the fact that we’ve been so heads down on Tiny Invaders over the past few months. We’re hoping to improve in this area in the future though.

One thing that’s worth pointing out is this: it also makes sense to attend conferences outside of the games industry. Of course we should all try and get to GDC, Gamescom, Develop, etc., but in my mind a smart developer also has his eye on the bigger picture. Our universe has expanded massively over the past few years, and games developers are seeing interest from not only the likes of Hollywood, but from all sides. Attending conferences for the music industry, the publishing world, or even further afield can only help us as our work becomes more accepted worldwide.

There are other tools which no self-publishing game developer should be without.

* Google Mail/Calendar – in my opinion this is the best online productivity suite. If you’re not using it already then you should be. Gmail’s features for filtering/sorting/searching e-mail are excellent; this is essential when you consider the amount of mail you’ll be sending when self-promoting. By the way – don’t delete any e-mails, ever! Use Gmails archive function to move it out of your inbox, but don’t delete! You never know when you’ll need to refer back to conversations, even if it’s just to dig up the mail from some guy who didn’t seem important at the time.

* Skype – needless to say Skype is great for meetings between your team, but it’s also a good tool to help you spread the word on a 1-to-1 basis. Use Skype to meet with important clients and leading community figures, and try to use video chat when possible. Face-to-face communication is always best. See my blog post on remote working, titled “The First Mistake”, for more information.

* Google Docs – obviously this is useful for collaboration between team members – being able to remotely edit the same document at the same time (and see each other’s changes!) is pretty cool. However, we also use Google Docs to share some documents publicly with the word. For example, we published our company announcement press release using the service.

* Dropbox – Again, Dropbox is great for inter-team collaboration. It’s also great for sharing assets/documents/whatever publicly using the built-in “Public” folder. Whereas Google Docs is great for documentation, Dropbox is better suited for larger static files like trailers or demos.

* Google URL Shortener – It’s often useful to shorten your large URLs into snippets, especially in the Twitter universe. There are many companies which provide this service; my favourite is goo.gl. It’s really easy to shorten a URL (it takes about 2 seconds), and after that you can track some pretty decent statistics about the usage of your redirect. We use this for App Store links, mailing list links, and important things on Twitter. The only beef you might have with goo.gl is that the generated stats are publicly accessible, so if you don’t like the idea of that then feel free to use one of the hundreds of competitors instead.

* Flurry – This is mainly a development tool used to gain insight into how people play your game. However, with the combination of developer and publisher duties it makes sense to build marketing-related analytics in right from the start.

Here are some great books which provide a much greater insight into some of these topics than I could hope to cover in a single blog post. Check ‘em out.

* The Long Tail, Chris Anderson

* Free, Chris Anderson

* Tribes, Seth Godin

* Know me, Like me, Follow me, Penny Power

Summarising an entire presentation (which you’ve read in the three quite varied blog posts) was a difficult slide to write! I chose to pick three things that you should remember if you decide to embark on the self-publishing quest yourself.

Firstly, think about your message. What do you want people to think about when they hear your company name? For Hogrocket we’ve chosen “what’s it like to start an indie games studio?”. Yours will be different, but just make sure you play to your strengths as an indie. You can do things that the big studios can’t, i.e. talk honestly with your customer base, change strategy at the drop of a hat, etc. Choose your message and play to your strengths.

Think about your schedule. Who are you going to talk to, and when are you going to talk to them? If targeting press, which ones should get a personal e-mail? Which ones should get a promo code? Which should be added to the mailing list? If talking to the public, how (and when) do you accomplish this? If you’re using Twitter be mindful that you’ll only be talking to people in your limited social sphere, and in your current timezone. Can you find a way of talking to everybody in all timezones, all the time? Generally our approach to scheduling our messaging is to “always make time to talk about the studio, but only talk about the games when people can buy them”.

Finally, think about how you’re going to reach these people. Which tools will you use? We use the Internet every single day in a variety of ways in order to reach a wide span of audiences. There are hundreds of fantastic tools available, some of which I’ve listed above, which can save you time, money, and energy. If you’re a programmer remember that you don’t have to write absolutely everything yourself.（Source：gamesbrief）