作者：Ernest Woo

经过几个月（甚至是几年）的努力，你的游戏终于能够问世，并且来自世界各地的上百万名玩家也将一睹你的游戏风采了。但是我们也都知道，如果想让游戏真的取得瞩目的成绩，革命尚未成功！我们还需要想办法向全世界推广我们的作品！

我已经在两款Android游戏——《疯狂射击》和《ErnCon》中实践了这一过程，所以我将从市场营销角度分享我的相关经验。

我在2009年使用Pascal语言编写了桌面单机游戏《疯狂射击》。那时候刚好碰上第二届Android开发者挑战赛。因为我本身的职业就是一名Java开发者，所以将之前的游戏移植到Android平台对我来说并不难。《疯狂射击》入围Android开发者挑战赛，我对此感到非常骄傲；此外我还获得了两部来自谷歌的Motorola Droids移动设备奖励——一者是因为我的作品入围，另一者则是因为我的游戏在早前的Android Market（也就是现在的Google Play）中取得了不俗的成绩。

erncon_concept(from gamasutra)

《疯狂射击》

当我在2009年发行《疯狂射击》时并没有进行过多的宣传；而只是将这一消息发布在与Android话题有关的论坛中，如androidforums.com和java-gaming.org。尽管《疯狂射击》在Android开发者挑战赛中表现良好，但是这却并未提升该款游戏下载量。与大多独立游戏开发者的经历一样，《疯狂射击》也只有较低的预算，所以根本没有多余的资金用于市场营销。尽管那时候已经出现了许多Android游戏评论网站，但是这些网站大多都很小，并且还需要向开发者收取额外的评论费。我曾经花了25美元请求一个网站帮我的游戏做评论，但是后来却也未出现下载量猛升的情况。评论者虽然也购买了《疯狂射击豪华版》，但做完评论时就退货了。

疯狂射击(from gamasutra)

《疯狂射击》是如何获得曝光度？在之前缺乏曝光机会的黑暗时代里，Android Market的“最近更新”列表对于没有足够资本的开发者来说是一种非常有帮助的工具。因为《疯狂射击》还存在很多漏洞以及有待改善的内容，所以我能在一年多时间以来保持每隔一两周跟新一次游戏。而每次更新都能够为游戏增加700多次的下载量（每周），并且有将近一半的玩家不会删除游戏。不幸的是，随着游戏的不断完善，《疯狂射击》的更新速度越来越缓慢，而游戏的用户留存也开始出现下滑。

随后又出现了许多值得我们注意的情况：

游戏出现在T-Mobile的“最佳选择”列表中长达2周的时间，每天带来400至500次下载量。

大约在2010年8月，《疯狂射击豪华版》成为亚马逊Appstore的“当日免费应用”。从而使该款游戏获得了超过8万8千次的下载量，甚至在隔天也为我带来了400美元的收益。需要指出的是，Android Market的下载量却并没有因此受到影响。

erncon(from gamasutra)

在2012年1月，我的新游戏《ErnCon》离预期发行日期还有2个月。那时候我做了个决定，也就是雇佣一名PR专业人士并在那时遇到了Novy PR（游戏邦注：针对手机和独立游戏的公关公司）。

之所以选择求助外部帮助是因为：

1.时间。尽管我雇佣了外包人员制作原画和音乐，但是我是这个过程中唯一能够投入所有时间去创造这个独立项目的人。同时我也很乐于将所有时间都投入游戏创作中；即使是回到家，我的每个工作日夜晚也都奉献给了《ErnCon》，整个周末也都属于这款游戏。以至于我在游戏开发过程中甚至没有多余的时间去撰写或发送新闻稿以及联系游戏评论网站。

2.金钱。为了开发《ErnCon》我存了好久的钱，而当图像和音乐按照预算完成后，我发现自己还有多余的经费可以雇佣一些专业人士帮我进行游戏的PR工作。

3.Google Play取消了“最近更新”列表。谷歌在2011年关闭了“最近更新”列表。这是一个很容易被滥用的功能。如今每天都会出现大量新应用和游戏，这种功能对于用户来说已经不再那么有效了。

4.缺乏专业知识和技术。我知道我现在应该寻求专业PR的帮助。自己执行整个发行过程只会影响最终效果，除非我真的能够摸到门道——在之前的《疯狂射击》中我并未学习到任何有关PR的经验，因为那时候我将“最近更新”功能作为主要的用户获取策略。所以这时候我迫切需要一名专家的帮忙。

预发布版和公测版

直到我与Novy PR的Luis通完电话后，我才真正意识到自己之前所信奉的理念（即在游戏开发者大会或PAX East期间发行游戏）有多愚蠢。遵循以下步骤我们开始规划游戏的一般预发布版本：

1.为游戏的内部测试寻找测试者，以收集重要信息并了解外部人员对于游戏的感受。新闻网站Reddit便是一个很好的选择，你能够在此征集内部测试志愿者。我共接收到来自美国，加拿大以及其它欧洲国家的60多人的报名。并通过与这些参与者的交流我进一步明确了加拿大和欧洲市场的可行性。

2.制作游戏预告片，让媒体和你的潜在玩家在玩游戏之前能够预先了解游戏。尽管《ErnCon》是一款免费下载游戏，但是预告片仍能帮助我有效地呈现这款游戏。一开始我并不打算为《ErnCon》制作预告片，也就是嫌太麻烦；不过Luis坚称这是游戏发行中非常重要的一个环节，并且也为我的预告片制作提供了许多建设性的意见。

3.完善Woo Games的网站，从而让访问者能够对Woo Games和《ErnCon》留下好印象。如今回想起之前自己使用默认的Nucleus CMS（一个支持多博客/多作者的博客软件）创造Woo Games网站真的觉得有够草率的。后来我便切换到博客平台WordPress，创造了一个雅致的logo，并听取了Luis的专业意见。

4.在游戏正式发行前一个月发布公开测试版。Luis说服Android网站报道《ErnCon》的公开测试版本。像《ErnCon》这类多人网络游戏的公开测试版本上线具有绝对的新闻价值，并且也能够让我在官方版本发布前进一步明确并解决游戏中存在的问题。

《ErnCon》的公开测试版本发布于2月28日。并且在发布后的几天内持续对其进行新闻报道，最终收获了超过1000的活跃用户安装量。并且因为我们将预告片植入各种网站或者提供了相关连接，我们的玩家能够更方便地观看这些预告内容。我们的测试版本的影响力甚至扩展到法国，意大利等国际市场，甚至是中国的Android网站上都出现了关于该测试版本的报道。而这也进一步帮助我明确了测试《ErnCon》的多人玩家架构需要多少用户参与。除此之外，在这个过程中我们也发现并修改了相关漏洞，并根据用户反馈对游戏做出了适当的调整——所以我便开始迫不及待地期盼发布官方版本。

在公开测试版本发行3周后，《ErnCon》正式发布了。我们向Business Wire发送了新闻稿，Luis也再次瞄准了Android网站使后者对官方版本进行报道。正常情况下，官方测试版本的新闻报道与公开测试版本类似，但是活跃用户安装率却能够在公开测试版本的基础上增加1000以上，然而不幸的是，我和Luis却发现对游戏官方版本的新闻报道量甚至不及公开测试版。不过不管怎样，droidgamers.com，androidpolice.com和frandroid.com的新闻报道都有效地推动了游戏下载量的提升。而来自法国的FrAndroid则为《ErnCon》创造了最多的活跃用户安装量。

比起《ErnCon》在公开测试版本期间所获得的新闻报道，我对它在正式发布时的成绩却感到很失望。回首过去，我们不难发现一些能够影响公开测试和正式发布的新闻报道的有趣情况：

1.二月份适合发布游戏——《Shogun》，《Neoteria》以及《ErnCon》均在2月末登陆Android平台。各大媒体网站在月末的新闻报道中同时提到了这三者，而玩家也可从中了解到更多游戏选择。

2.面向Android平台的公开测试-—–Android游戏进行公开测试的情况其实非常罕见，所以很容易引起媒体注意。

3.三月份是宣布重磅消息的时期——我们选择在3月21日正式发布《ErnCon》，主要是想利用游戏开发者大会后游戏新闻趋于平静的状况。根据三月份爆出的一些备受瞩目的手机游戏新闻我们便不难发现，很多开发者与我们具有相同的想法。以下公告可以让众多新闻记者忙上一阵子了：

1）《愤怒的小鸟太空版》——尽管这款游戏在《ErnCon》之后的一天发布，但是我却不认为它会对《ErnCon》构成巨大的威胁。尽管很多网站都报道了《愤怒的小鸟太空版》的发行，但是这种报道却并非时时刻刻都有的。与这款游戏一样，我们的《ErnCon》也经常出现在一些周末游戏排行榜单中。

2）《Draw Something》——Zynga在3月份收购这款游戏开发商后，它开始成为众媒体的关注焦点。

3）Humble Bundle for Android 2——Humble Bundle游戏包中的任何一款游戏都具有非常高的价值。这次的游戏包含有备受瞩目的iOS移植游戏，如《Canabalt》。

4.Android的新闻网站很少出现游戏内容——我们很难找到专门针对于Android游戏的新闻网站。Droid Gamers可能是一个最大的且只针对于Android游戏的网站，并且他们表示很乐意报道《ErnCon》的测试和发布。似乎没有一个Android网站能够像Touch Arcade那样给予Android游戏最具权威性的评论。大多数Android网站都只是关注最新的Android硬件，定制ROM，非游戏应用以及备受瞩目的iOS移植游戏等内容。

droid-gamers-coverage(from gamasutra)

经验教训

发布《ErnCon》让我能够学习到更多与游戏PR和市场营销相关内容。从中我吸取了各种有益的经验：

1.《ErnCon》拥有优秀的预告片——我真的从制作《ErnCon》的预告片中受益匪浅。当我们将该预告片放到YouTube上或者在《ErnCon》的Google Play页面以及各大评论网站上添加链接时，它就是一种最有效的商业促销手段。当一个网站嵌入你的预告片时，你也能够通过分析各种观点而判断该网站是否真的对你的游戏感兴趣。

2.网站对游戏的报道能够激励用户——在游戏发布后我便加入了Tapjoy的“按安装奖励”的广告模式，因此创造了大约一天400至500次的下载量，但是只有100至200次属于活跃用户安装。公开测试和发布公告推动了4500多次的下载量以及2500次的活跃用户安装量。根据Google Analytics追踪数据，我们发现Tapjoy玩家的粘性弱于那些在=发布期间安装游戏的玩家；这可能是因为Tapjoy玩家只是为了赢得奖励才选择下载这款游戏。

3.搜索《ErnCon》的结果——在谷歌上输入“ErnCon”并点击搜索便能够看到一些有关《ErnCon》的评论以及《ErnCon》的Google Play页面等内容。但是在这款游戏进行公开测试之前，当你输入相同的字眼时，谷歌可能认为你要找的其实是“enercon”。

我认为这些经验都是非常有价值的。在一些专业人士的帮助下，我便能够了解到如何才能为一款多人游戏创造一个坚实且庞大的用户基础。

真心希望本文有助于你更好地理解Android游戏的市场营销所面临的各种挑战。

（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）

Android Marketing for Indies

by Ernest Woo

Seeing a game through the finish line is one of the most important milestones in game development.  Finally, after months (or years!) of effort, the game is out the door and ready to be played by millions of gamers all over the world… or so it seems.

As many of you know – or will painfully learn – your job isn’t finished with the game going gold. You still need to tell the world that your masterpiece actually exists!

I’ve gone through this process with two Android games, FRG and ErnCon, and would like to share my experiences (from a marketing point of view) with Gamasutra readers.

But first … Why I chose Android instead of iOS
In 2009, I was developing FRG as a standalone desktop game written in Pascal.  The Android Developer Challenge 2 was announced and I saw a unique opportunity to do something cool with my brand new G1.  Since I am a Java developer by trade, porting what little I had written to Android was easy.  Furthermore: FRG became an ADC2 finalist, making me proud of my “baby” and I received two free Motorola Droids from Google, one for being a finalist and another phone for having a semi-popular game in the early days of the Android Market (now Google Play).

ErnCon Concept Art

FRG

When FRG was launched in 2009, there wasn’t much to announce.  All I did was post on the android-discuss newsgroup, forums like androidforums.com and java-gaming.org, and that was it.  Proud as I was of FRG’s ADC2 performance, ADC2 did not cause a noticeable increase in downloads.  Like most indie game-dev efforts, FRG was developed with a small budget so significant marketing spend was impossible.  Android game-review websites were popping up but most were small and attempted to collect review fees from developers.  I ended up paying $25 for one review which did not seem to drive any downloads, for example.  The reviewer also purchased FRG Deluxe, did the review, and then refunded her purchase!

FRG

How did FRG gain any sort of traction?  Back in the dark ages, the “Recently Updated” list in Android Market was a useful tool to gain exposure for the cash-strapped developer.  There were enough bugs and enhancements to make that I was able to release an update for FRG every 1 or 2 weeks for over a year.  Each update yielded about 700 downloads each week with about half of those keeping FRG on their phones.  Unfortunately as I ran out of things to fix, updates to FRG slowed down and user retention started to slip.

There were a couple noteworthy events afterwards:

Being listed in T-Mobile’s Top Picks list for 2 weeks brought about 400-500 downloads per day.

FRG Deluxe was Free App of The Day in the Amazon App Store around August 2010.  It was downloaded about 88,000 times and even earned me about $400 in purchases the day after.  Note that Android Market downloads were NOT affected at all by being Free App of The Day.

ErnCon

Fast forward to January 2012 when my newest game, ErnCon is under development and 2 months away from expected release.  I made the decision to hire a PR professional and found Novy PR.

The decision to seek outside help was driven by the following:

1.Time – Although I hired contractors to complete artwork and music, I was the only person putting his own time into ErnCon making it mostly a solo project.  I am also happily employed full time; after getting home from work, I typically spent the rest of my weeknight working on ErnCon.  Weekends were almost completely devoted to ErnCon.  With the game still under development, I did not have time to draft and send out press releases or contact game-review websites.

2.Money – I had been putting money aside for a while to develop ErnCon and when graphics and sound came in under budget, I realized I had enough to hire an actual professional to work on PR.

3.Removal of “Recently Updated” list in Google Play – Google removed the “Recently Updated” list in 2011 with good reason.  It was too easy to abuse. Given the number of new apps and games coming out these days, this sort of feature is just not useful for consumers.

4.Expertise and specialization – I knew I was already behind on the PR front.  Doing the entire launch by myself would only cause ErnCon to launch poorly as I learned the ropes – I didn’t really learn anything about PR with FRG since I relied so heavily on “Recently Updated” as my primary user acquisition strategy.  An expert was needed to jump-start the process.

ErnCon

Pre-release and Public Beta

By the time I had gotten off my first phone call with Luis from Novy PR, I had already been steered away from stupid mistakes like launching during GDC or PAX East.  The general pre-release plan we came up with went as follows:

1.Find beta-testers for a private beta to collect input and get the game in people’s hands.  Reddit (/r/Android) proved to be a useful place to ask for volunteers for the private beta.  I ended up with over 60 signups from USA, Canada, and various European countries.  Interacting with Redditors also convinced me to support Canada and all of Europe.

2.Create a trailer for the media and potential players to see before trying the game.  Even though ErnCon is a free download, a trailer still helps to show your game at its best.  I had not even considered creating a trailer for ErnCon thinking it was too much trouble.  Luis insisted that it is an essential part of any game’s launch and provided important feedback as I put the trailer together.

3.Improve the Woo Games website to give visitors a good impression of Woo Games and ErnCon.  It’s amazing how sloppy I was with the original Woo Games website using an old default Nucleus CMS theme.  Switching to WordPress, creating a tasteful logo, and listening to feedback from Luis went a long way towards presenting a professional face to the world.

4.Release a public beta 1 month before launch.  Luis would pitch Android websites to cover the public beta of ErnCon.  A public beta of a multiplayer internet game such as ErnCon is newsworthy and allows me a relatively low-risk way to iron out any final problems in the game before official release.

ErnCon’s public beta was announced on February 28th.  Coverage of the public beta occurred over the next few days and brought in over a thousand active installs.  The trailer itself became a point of contact with players as it was embedded and linked to from various websites.  Coverage also reached an international level with French, Italian, and even Chinese Android websites covering the beta.  This was great for the beta as it gave me the volume of users needed to test ErnCon’s multiplayer architecture.  Bugs were found and fixed, the game was adjusted based on user feedback – I was pumped for the actual launch.

Droid Gamers Coverage

Ready, Set, Go!

ErnCon was launched 3 weeks after the public beta was announced.  A press release was sent over Business Wire while Luis began pitching Android websites again.  Coverage was about the same as the public beta netting another 1000+ active installs in a few days.  Unfortunately Luis and I noticed an odd phenomenon where the public beta generated more coverage than the official launch!  Regardless, coverage from sites like droidgamers.com, androidpolice.com, and frandroid.com were instrumental in driving downloads for the launch.  Interestingly, FrAndroid – based in France – brought the most active installs to ErnCon.

FrAndroid Coverage

As happy as I was with the coverage ErnCon received since the public beta, I was disappointed with the overall numbers of the launch itself.  When looking back, there were some interesting circumstances that may have affected coverage both the public beta and the launch:

1.February was a great month for shmups – by the end of February Shogun, Neoteria, and ErnCon were announced for Android.  Media websites lumped the three together in their end-of-month coverage and players had a great range classic-style shoot’em ups to play.

2.Public betas for Android – public betas of games on Android are uncommon enough that announcing one might be interesting to a journalist.

3.March was a great month for big announcements – March 21st was chosen as the official release date of ErnCon to take advantage of the post-GDC lull in game news.  Other developers were thinking the same as March saw news from many high-profile mobile games.  Taken together, these announcements would keep any journalist busy:

1.Angry Birds Space – although Angry Birds was released a day after ErnCon, I don’t think this hurt ErnCon as much as you may think.  Although most websites covered Angry Birds, coverage wasn’t 100 percent Angry Birds all day every day.  ErnCon was also lumped in some end-of-week game lists with Angry Birds Space.

2.Draw Something – Draw Something became a “thing” with the media during March with subsequent acquisition by Zynga.

3.Humble Bundle for Android 2 – any Humble Bundle is worth checking out for quality indie games.  The announcement of the second Android bundle included some highly anticipated ports of iOS games like Canabalt.

4.Android news websites don’t cover games – there are very few Android-centric gaming websites.  Droid Gamers is probably the biggest Android-only gaming website and they were quite happy to cover both ErnCon’s beta and release.  There doesn’t seem to be an Android equivalent to Touch Arcade that is the definitive Android game review site.  Most Android news websites seem concerned with the latest Android hardware, custom ROMs, non-game applications, and ports of notable iOS games.

Android Police Coverage

Lessons Learned

Launching ErnCon forced me to learn a lot about games PR and marketing.  Many good things also happened as a result:

1.ErnCon has a great trailer – an entire blog post could be written describing the things I learned putting together the ErnCon trailer.  When posted on YouTube and linked from ErnCon’s Google Play page and various review sites, the trailer acts as an ever-playing commercial to attract players.  When a website embeds your trailer, you can also use it to gauge how much interest that website is driving by looking at the breakdown of views by source.

2.Websites reporting on your game result in motivated users – After the launch, I started a Tapjoy Rewarded Installs campaign that drives about 400-500 downloads but only 100-200 active installs per day.  The public beta and launch announcements drove about 4500 downloads with about 2500 active installs.  According to my Google Analytics tracking, Tapjoy players engage less than the players who installed ErnCon during launch.  This is probably because most are just looking to collect their Tapjoy rewards.

3.Quality results when searching for ErnCon – searching for “ErnCon” on Google returns relevant results pointing to ErnCon reviews and ErnCon’s Google Play page.  Prior to public beta, searching for “ErnCon” would cause Google to think you were searching for “enercon”.

Ultimately the experience was worth it.  With some professional help, I was able to jumpstart a user-base for ErnCon that I can cultivate into something great especially given how important a thriving user-base is for a multiplayer game.

Hopefully this post will help you understand some of the (many) challenges in marketing your Android game. Feel free to leave a comment here on Gamasutra or via email at contact@woogames.com.(source:GAMASUTRA)