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在发行前以零成本推广PC游戏的方法

发布时间:2014-07-08 11:57:37 Tags:,,,,

作者:Marc McCann

我叫Marc McCann,是FarSpace Studios的共有人兼开发者。我们刚刚完成并发行自己在PC上的第一款游戏《Hyphen》。在《Hyphen》的开发期间(主要是从先行版本发行以来),我一直活跃于各种网站以及YouTube渠道对《Hyphen》进行宣传。在本文中我将尝试着描述如何在游戏发行前不花钱地推广它。现在的我们仍处于《Hyphen》发行后的市场营销过程,所以现在的我并不是在提供一些建议,因为这一切只有在我看到结果后才能做到。

Hyphen(from moddb)

Hyphen(from moddb)

记不得我们有多少次听到别人说你“需要”市场营销预算或者你“需要”某些人完全致力于PR从而确保人们能够注意到你的游戏?我听过很多次这样的话,尽管这是有益的,但说实话我并不同意这一观点。直到发行时(确切地说是本周初)—-我们未在《Hyphen》的市场营销中花费任何钱。以下是我们的做法:

创造一个先行演示版本

尽快推出你的游戏让玩家可以尝试游戏。这非常适合我们,像http://www.alphabetagamer.com/这样的网站将有效帮助你让更多人知道游戏的存在。同样的你需要确保拥有http://www.indiedb.com的账号并在此上传内容,这也是刊登新消息的有效平台,并且能够让下载了游戏的玩家在此发表看法。

Twitter

这将成为你的主要资源。尽量经常刊登有关你的游戏和链接的内容。勇敢地给YouTube频道所有者和游戏名人发tweet,如果收到他们的回信的话便能够为你带来巨大的不同。之前我在Gamasutra上写过一篇关于获得更多Twitter粉丝的文章。你还需要确保能够使用#gamedev, #gaming和#indiedev等标签,它们将帮你获得来自bot和其他开发者的回复,这对于传播新信息真的很有用。还有#IndieDevHour是一个让你能够与同行谈论游戏和开发的好平台。

YouTube

当我们发行先行演示版本时,我们直接联系了这一列表上几乎所有的YouTuber。并不是每个人都给予了回应,但我们仍然拥有许多关于先行演示版本的视频。只要在YouTube搜索“Hyphen”便能够获得一些结果。YouTube是一个被低估且未充分利用的市场营销资源。我想说的是大约90%的《Hyphen》市场营销是通过YouTube完成的。

访问网站

这是必要的一点。比起描述一些有关访问网站的好处,我选择提供这一链接:http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-indie-game-sites/。打开你的电子邮件编辑器并开始谈论你的游戏!在电子邮件中提供你的演示版本的链接是个好主意,你可以尝试着使用https://goo.gl/,如此你便能在链接被点击时追踪到它。在面向这一列表上的主要网站发送电子邮件后,我们想办法获得Indiegames.com和RockPaperShotgun.com等网站的推荐。这都是一些大型网站,能够为我们的游戏带来更多用户。

Facebook

为你的游戏和公司创造一个页面。一旦你有能够刊登的内容,你便需要及时更新页面。确保邀请所有的好友去赞你的页面。你将会惊讶地发现,即使你并未主动要求别人,他们也会愿意去推广你的游戏。同样你需要确保加入这些群组并在加入的时候告诉我一声!

Indie Game Developers

Indie Game Promo

PC Game Developers

Indie Game Players & Developers

确保你能在将游戏或公司页面刊登在相关群组时提供它们的链接,如此你的页面将能获得更多赞。同时确保你能够添加自己的游戏或公司链接到任何群组所具有的列表中。

最后是一些小贴士

1.在每次发送电子邮件时都要求阅读条款,这将帮助你了解谁确认了你的电子邮件。有时候你的电子邮件会直接被丢进垃圾箱或被忽视,所以你应该在过了一段时间(游戏邦注:一周最合适)后果断地给发送对象发送带有注释的初始内容。

2.不要在Facebook群组/Twitter发送垃圾邮件。当你想要传达一些有趣的内容时,将相关链接作为刊登内容的一部分,而不是只刊登你的链接或一些无趣的新闻。当在twitter上刊登内容时尝试着添加一些好看的游戏图像,这将让你的tweet凸显于其它纯文本tweet中。

3.假设你已经拥有你们公司/游戏的网站(如果没有的话就建一个!),所以你最好能够在你们的网站上提供你的Facebook和Twitter账号。

4.论坛,我在这里所列出的许多网站都拥有它们自己的论坛。所以何不把你的游戏呈现在那些论坛上呢?大多数论坛都有能够展示新游戏或寻求反馈的地方。以下是一些较有名的论坛:

http://forums.tigsource.com/

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/forums/forum.php

http://forums.yogscast.com/

5.最后,做你自己。如果你们不是一家大公司的话也不要假装自己是。如果你是只有1人团队的话请用“我”进行称呼而不是“我们”。个人的电子邮件和交流比硬生生地装成是公司代表好多了。我们是游戏开发者,并非跨国公司。如果能在电子邮件/互动中表现出幽默与热情的话将更有帮助。

之后如果有人跟你说不花个***美元就不能有效地推广你的游戏的话,你便能够向他们证实这是错误的想法。我希望本文所提到的所有技巧能够真正帮到你们。

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

A small guide to getting your PC game known before launch – for $0

by Marc McCann

My name is Marc McCann and I’m co-owner and developer at FarSpace Studios. We’ve just finished and released our first title on the PC – Hyphen. During Hyphen’s development (mainly since the release of the pre-release demo) I was very active in approaching websites and YouTube channels to try and get some publicity for Hyphen. In this article I’m going to focus on how to get your game known before launch without spending money on doing so. We’re still in the process of marketing Hyphen post launch (and have in fact got someone on board to help to supplement our own marketing efforts as I’m focusing heavily on getting YouTube coverage currently) so I am not really in a position to offer advice on that until I can see the results.

How many times have we all. been told that you *NEED* a marketing budget or that you *NEED* someone on full time PR to make people take notice of your product? I have heard it a lot, and although yes it’s beneficial – quite frankly I disagree. Up to the point of release (and the beginning of this week to be precise) – we spent 0 on marketing Hyphen. Here’s how we did it:-

Make a pre-release demo

Get your game out there and being played ASAP. This worked absolute wonders for us and websites such as http://www.alphabetagamer.com/ will be your best friend in making people aware of it’s existence. Also be sure to get an account at http://www.indiedb.com and upload there too, it’s a good place to post news and a good site to link people to for the download as they can also post their views on it.

Twitter

This will be one of your main resources. Post about your game and link people to the demo download as often as possible. Don’t be afraid to tweet directly at YouTube channel owners and gaming personalities – a single retweet/reply from them can make a huge difference to your luck. I wrote an article a while ago on Gamasutra about getting more twitter followers if you need:- Article here. Be sure to use the #gamedev, #gaming, and #indiedev hashtags too, they result in retweets/replies from bots and other developers and can be really useful for propagating news. There’s also #IndieDevHour which is a great place to talk about your game and development in general with your peers. The indie dev hour is at 8pm UTC On Wednesdays but the hashtag can be used outside of that too.

YouTube

When we released the pre-release demo, we got straight in touch with nearly every single one of the YouTubers on this list. Not everyone responded but we have still had a fairly large amount of videos made about the pre-release demo, Just typing ‘Hyphen’ into YouTube will yield quite a few results (Note: you may mainly find videos of the full version of Hyphen if you look as they will be the most recent but if you look further back you’ll see plenty of the demo). YouTube is a seriously underrated and underused marketing resource. I’d say that probably 90% of the marketing for Hyphen has been done through YouTube and this video right here (NSFW at all) made a huge difference to our visibility.

I’d also like to do a shoutout to my friends the AverageGiants. hit those guys up, they love reviewing/talking about indie games and are open to submissions of games to play.

Review Sites

This one should go without saying. Rather than ramble on about the benefits of review sites I’ll post this link:- http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-indie-game-sites/. Get your email editor open and get talking about your game! Linking to your demo in your email is a great idea, try and use something like https://goo.gl/ so that you can track when the link has been clicked. After emailing the majority of sites on this list we managed to get features from Indiegames.com and RockPaperShotgun.com as well as a couple of others. These are big sites and make a huge difference to your overall popularity.

Facebook

Create a page for your game and for your company. You can then keep both pages up to date whenever you have anything to post. Be sure to invite *all* your friends to like your page(s). You’ll be surprised who is willing to give you shoutouts etc even if you don’t speak to them much! Also be sure to join these groups and give me a shout if you join!:-

Indie Game Developers

Indie Game Promo

PC Game Developers

Indie Game Players & Developers

Make sure to link to your game or company page whenever posting about them in groups, you’ll soon be getting more likes on your pages. Also make sure to add your game or company links to any lists that the groups may have.

Finally, some tips

1.) Request read receipts whenever emailing, this gives you some sort of idea of who is acknowledging your emails. There’s a good chance you’ve ended up in the junk folder or gone totally unnoticed if you don’t get a read receipt, don’t be afraid to nudge the people that you’ve emailed by forwarding them the original message with a note after some time (a week is good) has passed.

2.) Don’t spam facebook groups/twitter. Post when you have something interesting to say, make your link part of that post but don’t just post your link or some uninteresting news on a regular basis. When posting on twitter try to include an awesome image of your game in the tweet, it makes it stand out amongst all the other plain black text tweets.

3.) I’m assuming you already have a website for your company/game (If not, WHY?? Get one!) so it would also be wise to link to your Facebook and Twitter accounts from your site.

4.) Forums, plenty of the review sites on the list I posted above have their own forums. Why not post about your game on there? Most forums have a place for announcing new games and/or asking for feedback. A couple of good ones are:-

http://forums.tigsource.com/

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/forums/forum.php

http://forums.yogscast.com/

5.) Finally, be yourself. Don’t pretend to be some huge corporation when you’re not. If you’re a 1 man band then refer to yourself as ‘I’ not ‘we’. Personal emails and interaction goes down a lot better with everyone than cold attempts at acting like a corporate professional. We are game developers, not multi national corporations. A touch of humour or passion in your emails/interactions with others can go a long way!

Anyway, that’s about everything I have to say on the matter at the moment. You’re master of your own destiny and the key to getting heard is perseverance. Next time someone tells you that you can’t get your game known without spending $$$’s – you’ll hopefully be in a position to prove them wrong! I hope the tips in this article are of use to some of you.(source:gamasutra)

 


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