作者：Armin Ibrisagic

在过去几年，独立工作室在游戏制作上已经取得了举世瞩目的成绩。然而，独立开发者往往缺少PR和营销方面的安排。对于小团队，当做完游戏已经面临很大的财政压力时，筹到宣传游戏的预算就更困难了。此外，游戏开发者通常没有PR或营销背景，不知道如何着手的独立工作室索性完全忽略这方面的工作。以下基本技巧和方针可以帮你你的独立游戏迅速提知名度，而且完全不花钱。

了解你的游戏

看看你正在开发的游戏类型，然后根据类型制定PR计划。如果你做的是故事导向型游戏如《To The Moon》或《Gone Home》，那么你应该不会希望完全公开开发过程，因为那样的话，玩家还没玩到游戏，你可能就已经把结局剧透给他们了。保持神秘感还有另一个优点——你可以计划什么时候和如何发布关于游戏的信息，这让你对游戏公司和媒体之间的信息流通有更多的控制权。

然而，如果你开发的是强调重玩性的游戏，那么你最好向外界公开开发过程，以鼓励口口相传。以Chucklefish工作室为例，他们对开发过程就非常开放，每天都向外界透露他们对《Starbound》的更新情况。等到这款游戏在Steam平台发布，他们就已经积累了一大票希望抢先玩它的粉丝。《Nuclear Throne》的开发工作室Vlambeer也保持几天公布一次游戏开发进展。

无论你选择保持神秘感还是公开，你都应该总是尽最大努力与玩家保持沟通。例如，设置一个粉丝见面交流的论坛就是一个好的开始。如果你使用数字推广渠道如Steam或Desura，那么粉丝之间的口口相传就是你的最好工具，所以请好好使用它。

PR Plan(from technews24h.com)

制定PR计划

说到与媒体打交道，你必须非常明确你想通过媒体得到什么。你还应该知道你希望消息以什么样的顺序放出。独立开发者常犯的大错就是，放出关于游戏的消息，然后就坐着游戏走红。你可能想首先放出关于核心玩法和游戏的特殊性的基本信息，并配上几幅概念图和早期截图。然后随着游戏接近完工，再放出更重要的信息比如玩法视频之类的。

记住，必须总是有影响力，特别是对于大网站。给他们提供一些令人兴奋的独家消息！这可以包括之前未公布的游戏镜头、新的预告片或开发者解释核心玩法的日志。如果你有什么独家的特别内容，那么把文章发表在更大的网站上总是更容易的。不是简单地把你的新预告片丢到Youtube上，而是把它发送给大型游戏网站，并保持独家48小时，然后一旦独家时间完毕，就在你自己的渠道上更新视频。

也就是说，作为一家独立游戏公司，永远不要低估小游戏媒体网站。大网站的100万DAU中可能只有1%是你的目标受众，而专注于独立游戏的小众网站的1万DAU可能有一半是你的目标受众。与独立记者做朋友，毕竟你们之间有很多共同点！

新闻稿

写好新闻稿！记住，你们只是一家独立公司，你要以此为优势。不要害怕新闻稿写得不正式，那些在新闻媒体机构工作的人早就大类了冗长官腔的新闻稿了——你的新闻稿应该带来一股清新之风。如果你的小公司刚发布第一款游戏，那就不要以“来自知名游戏工作室的震撼神作”为开头。相反地，迅速说出要点，不要浪费读者的时间。真正著名的公司如暴雪，爱把新闻稿写多长就多长，因为他们可以保证媒体会一字不落地读完——但你不能。你的新闻稿的第一句就要把你想表达的信息精僻地概括出来，然后在后面的段落中进一步说明那个信息。避免不必要的词，保持短小精悍。突出你对你的游戏的热情激动比听起来很学术更重要。

你得到一款新游戏作为圣诞礼物，假期结束的第一天你就会兴奋地向你的小伙伴们描述你的礼物，你知道那是什么样的感觉吧？如果你向游戏记者描述你的游戏时也能让对方感染那种兴奋之情，那你就赢了。

优化应用商店描述

当发布你的游戏时（无论是在Steam还是其他平台），请确保你的应用商店描述写得非常非常好。那是玩家第一眼看到的内容，是最能说服玩家购买你的游戏的方法。可悲的是，许多公司（不只是独立工作室）往往忽略了应用商店描述。许多公司花了几年时间开发游戏，却只肯在编写应用商店描述上花15分钟的时间。而游戏的描述对销量的影响可能远超过游戏中的任何一个特征。写新闻稿的原则也适用于写应用商店描述—-保持简洁、信息量足，没有不必要的语句和错误。不要用你的应用商店描述来陈述你的游戏内容！许多游戏开发者会罗列关卡产、武器、敌人类型、增益道具等等。这些东西对作为开发者的你来说是非常令人热血沸腾的，但对于那些对你的游戏一无所知的新玩家，他们可不会为你的游戏有多少关卡感到激动，因为他们完全不知道你的游戏关卡是怎么样的，或者完成一个关卡需要多少时间。

相反地，你的游戏描述应该重点陈述玩家在游戏中做什么。“开着太空飞船射击敌人的飞船，收集金币然后升级你的飞船和武器！”描述玩家在游戏中做什么比“10张战役地图、8种武器、12种飞船升级、1个大BOSS和14小时的玩法”好得多。对玩家而言，如果他们不理解你的玩法是什么，那么你的玩法有多少小时就一点也不重要。

说到截图，花几天时间计划一下，保证你的截图都是品质上乘的。让那些审美水平比较高的美工帮助你，保证每张截图都准确地体现玩法。Steam上有许多游戏居然把五张截图全都浪费在场景或特效等跟玩法没什么关系的东西上。保证你的游戏描述用几个词陈述玩法，保证你的截图反映玩法。例如，《Sanctum 2》是一款FPS/塔防游戏，有两张图表现游戏的塔防玩法，有一张图表现游戏的FPS玩法，有一张图表现玩家可以自定义武器和塔等，还有一张是游戏场景的特写。用几张能捕捉你的游戏精华的截图，可以大大拉动销量。

发布后

如果你已经有玩家社区（发布以前或以后），保证给你的那些最忠实的玩家最多的爱。在PR、图表和销售数字快速变化的世界，我们往往倾向于先联系大量潜在的新玩家，而不是与较少的已经购买和付费的粉丝交流。但是你一定不要忘记已经存在的粉丝——与他们联系可能不能直接拉动销量，但培养出非常非常忠实的布道者，他们会帮你到你自己可能接触不到的游戏社区中去宣传你的游戏，比如在线论坛、游戏大会等。那些在你的游戏论坛里表现活跃的玩家，往往是非常好社交的人，去哪里都喜欢讨论游戏。这些玩家非常有价值，请务必重视他们。（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）

PR for indies – basic tips and guidelines

by Armin Ibrisagic

As has become apparent during the last few years, indie companies are amazing at making games. However, we often lack on the PR & marketing side. Teams are small and it’s hard to find a budget for spreading awareness about your game when you’re already struggling financially to finish it. Furthermore, game developers often have no PR or marketing background, and not knowing where to start usually ends up with indie companies completely overlooking it. Here are some basic guidelines and tips on time-efficient ways of spreading awareness about your indie game, without spending any money at all.

Know your game:

Look at the type of game you’re making, and adapt your PR plan to it. If you’re making a story-based game such as To The Moon or Gone Home you might not want to have a completely open development process as that could spoil the ending to the players before they’ve even tried the game out. Keeping things secret has other advantages as well – you get to plan when and how to release information about your game and generally gives you more control over the information flow between your game company and the public.

However, if you’re developing something with emphasis on replayability, you might want to make the development process open as to encourage word of mouth-spread from your fans while the game is still in development. Chucklefish for instance, has had a very open development process where they’ve updated their work on their game Starbound every single day. Once the game launches on Steam, they’ll already have an army of fans that will be playing it on day one. Vlambeer, the awesome peeps behind Nuclear Throne, livestream development of the game a couple of days a week.

Regardless if you choose to keep your development process open or secret, you should always do your best to facilitate communication between your fans. For example, setting up a forum for your fans to meet and talk is a good place to start. If you’re using digital distribution like Steam or Desura, word of mouth between your fans will be your biggest asset, so be sure to do everything you can to empower this as much as possible.

Have a PR-plan:

When it comes to communicating with the press it’s really important to be clear and concise in what you want to get out there. You should also know in what order you want the information to go out in. A big mistake is to just push out information about your game and hope it’ll go viral. You might want to start off by releasing basic information about your core gameplay features and what makes your game unique, coupled with some concept art and early screenshots. Then as the game draws closer to completion, send out bigger and bigger information such as gameplay videos and livestreams.

Remember that it’s important to always have leverage, especially for the big sites. Have something exciting and exclusive to show them! This can include things such as previously unseen game footage, a new trailer, or a developer diary explaining one of your core gameplay features. It’s always easier to land an article with a bigger site if you have something unique that no other site has posted about yet. Instead of just throwing up your new trailer on Youtube, send it to a bigger gaming press site and give them exclusivity for 48 hours, then upload the video on your own channel once the exclusivity has ran out.

That being said, never underestimate small gaming media sites as an indie company. A big site with 1m DAU might only have 1% that are your target audience, while a small site niched towards indie games with 10k DAU might have 50% that are your target audience. Make friends with indie journalists, you’ll have a lot in common with them!

Press Releases

Write good press releases! Keep in mind that you’re an indie company, and use that to your advantage. Don’t be afraid to be informal, people who work in the press are drowned in long, corporate-sounding press releases – make your press release stand out. If you’re a small company that’s releasing your first game, don’t start your press release with “A stunning masterpiece is being released from a renown game studio” Instead, get to the point fast and don’t waste your reader’s time. Well-known companies such as Blizzard can write as long and cool press releases as they want and they can always be sure that the media will read every single word of their text – you can’t. Have the first sentence of your press release provide a concise summary of what you want to get across (a TL;DR version, if you may), and provide further info later in later paragraphs. Stay away from unnecessary buzzwords and keep it short and relevant. It’s more important to let your enthusiasm about your game shine through than to sound as cool and as academic as possible.

You know that excitement when you had just got a new video game for Christmas and you were describing it to your friends in elementary school the first day after the holiday break? Channel that feeling and enthusiasm when describing your game to video game journalists, and you’ll be golden.

Store page optimization

When it comes to releasing your game (whether it is Steam or any other platform), make sure to write a very, very good store page description. It’s the first thing players will see and your best way of convincing players to buy your game. Sadly, a lot of companies (not only indie ones!) tend to overlook this. Many companies spend years developing their games and only 15 minutes writing the store page description, when the game’s description may affect the sales of the game more than any feature in it. Similar rules to store page descriptions apply as when writing a press release – keep it concise, informative and without unnecessary fluff. Do NOT use your store page description to describe your game content! Many game developers line up the amount of levels, weapons, enemy types, power-ups, etc. This might sound cool to you as a developer, but a new player who knows nothing about your game won’t be impressed with how many levels there are in your game, as they have absolutely no idea what a level in your game contains, or how long it takes to complete it.

Instead, base your game description on what you DO in the game. “Start off as a small spaceship, gain cash from shooting down enemy ships and use it to upgrade and customize your ship’s hull & weapons! describes what you DO in a game much better than “10 campaign maps, 8 weapons, 12 ship upgrades, 1 boss and 14 hours of gameplay!”. It doesn’t matter to a player how many hours of gameplay your game has if they don’t understand what the gameplay consists of.

When it comes to screenshots, plan in a couple of days in one of your sprints and make sure the screenshots are top-notch. Ask your artist co-workers with a good eye for aesthetics to help you, and make sure the screenshots accurately describe gameplay. There are so many games on Steam these days that have five screenshots showing only environment shots, or special effects, which says nothing about what you actually do in your game. Make sure your game description describes you gameplay in a couple of words, and make sure your screenshots describe your gameplay in a couple of pictures. For example, Sanctum 2 is an FPS/Tower Defense hybrid game, we have 2 pictures showing the TD aspect of the game, 1 picture showing the FPS aspect of the game, one picture showing the fact that you can customize your own loadout of weapons, towers and perks, and one environment shot. Capturing the essence of your game in a couple of screenshots can help drive up sales immensely.

After release

If you have an existing community, (be it before or after release), make sure to give your most dedicated players a lot of love. In the fast-moving world of PR, cool graphs and big sales numbers, it is easy to prioritize reaching out to thousands of potential new players instead of talking to dozens of fans of your game that have already bought and paid for it. However, it’s very important not to forget already existing fans – talking to them might not make you sell units directly, but having a good dialogue with them can earn you a dozen very, very dedicated evangelists that will help spread your game across other game communities you might not reach very easily yourself, such as other online forums, gaming conventions, and general word of mouth. People who post a lot on your game’s forums, whether it’s the Steam forums or your own company’s forums also tend to be very sociable players that like to discuss games wherever they go. These players are very valuable, do not overlook them.(source:gamasutra)