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今天的游戏开发者该如何进行自我推广

发布时间:2014-08-12 10:26:35 Tags:,,,,

作者:Leigh Alexander

不久前,你们关于游戏开发者的定义是根据一个关键的特征:执念。招聘公告致力于寻找那些想要与游戏“同吃,同呼吸,同睡觉”的人—-也就是愿意长时间工作并且无怨无悔加班的人。

产业生态系统不断发生着改变。游戏开发者不再期待着他们会变成大规模组装线上匿名的节点。实际上,如今在开发领域中工作可能就代表着某种吓人的独立程度,即一些小团队不得不做曾经有更大规模的组织所完成的任务。

独立和新成立的工作室必须快速适应这个世界,即接受他们需要在此营销自己的游戏,进行媒体推广以及创造自己的材料等等。在创造挑战的同时社交媒体会提供基础设施:突然间所有人都为了让更多人注意到自己的品牌和服务而需要变成市场营销者。在我陈述的过程中,要求已经不只是关于营销你的产品那么简单了。通过吸引人的技术,艺术和娱乐间的连接进行操作,许多游戏开发者不得不重新思考如何营销并推广自己。

自我推广在参与度较高,但成功机遇却较低的领域中通常都扮演着一个重要的角色、在你的领域中“你认识谁”以及他们是如何看待你(也就是拥有良好的交流技巧)仍然很重要。现在,许多开发者更频繁地与玩家保持沟通,并且通常情况下这些互动的分量也变得更重了。

“Kickstarter泡沫”主要是在产业后视镜中,但众筹和赞助仍然是先驱们去募集资金的有效方式,这也是传统渠道未能支持的。需要粉丝反馈的在线和公共开发都将诞生客制化游戏和固定用户,这对于吸引资源来说是个很棒的策略。这两种情况都要求与粉丝,支持者和潜在投资者间建立直接的关系,并且创造这一关系与工作本身同样重要。

在今年年初,Raph Koster为游戏领域中的人们提供了一些自我推广的建议。他的建议突出了营销游戏或公司与营销自己的区别。对于某些人来说,这是交换独立所需要学习的另一个新技能。而对于其他人来说,这是一个让人不安的指责。而现在你不得不以一种全新的方式去推广自己。

为什么要进行自我推广?

Robin Arnott(游戏邦注:获得2014IGF提名的《SoundSelf》的创造者)说道:“人们期待与艺术间具有更高层次的带宽关系,并且与艺术家直接的关系是与工作间更深入且更立基的个人关系的延伸。我不认为人们想要购买我们的东西,我认为他们是想分享对于我们的游戏所呈现的任何人类体验微小部分的喜爱之情。”

Arnott也谈论了《SoundSelf》,即游戏体验和他自己的创造过程都是非常切身的。他表示游戏是很难进行描述(“介于电子游戏盒宗教体验之间”),这让用户能够知道他们的个人任务将帮助游戏的传达:“一开始你可能不能理解《SoundSelf》是关于什么,但是如果你理解了我,然后你便能够理解我所呈现的艺术是为了你。”

Antichamber(from ign)

Antichamber(from ign)

《环绕走廊》的创造者Alexander Bruce在其游戏漫长且基于情感的开发过程中一直推动着自己前行。当《环绕走廊》还处于早前名为《Hazard: The Journey of Life》的版本是,Brunce便毅然地将它带到自己出席的每个活动中,大家都知道他是一个精力充沛且非常友好的年轻人。身着草莓牛奶色的套装的他,总是非常吸引人。

Bruce说道:“我认为品牌始终都重要,不管你是代表自己还是一家公司。当我最初选择独立起家时,我听过许多开发者的名字,但却不知道他们所运行的公司。像Jonathan Blow,Petri Purho,Ian Dallas或Ron Carmel和Kale Gabler等等。当我选择尝试着推广一个公司名字或作为独立体的我自己时,我知道比起一家公司,我将花费更多时间去推广自己。没有人能够保证你可以独立获取成功,所以我总是希望人们能够知道我是谁,以防我最终不得不主动去找工作。”

Bruce表示告诉别人自己作为一位开发者的故事总比只是谈论游戏更能长久地赢得公众的注意。关于《环绕走廊》的任何个体故事都是介于中间,即不同于过去细致且缓慢的开发过程叙述。

用户期待的是什么?

来自BlueLine Game Studios(将棋盘游戏带向数字平台)的Sean Colombo注意到用户期待值发生了转变。他说道:“他们可能不在在乎我的家经过修整或者我的猫正在做什么等,但是我想他们希望我能变得引人注目。”

在他看来,不只是“声誉管理”帮助玩家筛选多个平台上的越来越多选择。他假设:“我认为独立游戏社区是由大量渴望在某种程度上成为游戏产业的一部分的玩家所组成。我可以指出的一个相关例子便是,当微软宣称不再支持XNA时,Xbox Live Indie Games的销量立即下跌。”

Colombo继续说道:“在考虑玩家的这种欲望时,我认为游戏开发者所创造的产品的部分内容便是我们以博文,公开出售数据以及任何呈现游戏开发事实的形式所呈现出来的信息。当我们创造一篇关于某些特别内容的博文时,如‘Representing a Hex Board in a 2D Array’,这便不只能够吸引其他游戏开发者的注意,同时还能调动许多对游戏开发充满好奇的玩家的注意。”

Johannes Kristmann与一名同事致力于名为《Curious Expedition》的游戏。他说道:“Tim Schafer曾经说过,‘你必须先成为一个有趣的人才能够创造出有趣的游戏。他指的是在游戏创造的环境中,但如今,这同样也适用于游戏的市场营销。你还可以将自己的个性加入许多游戏中去帮助人们更好地了解你在做些什么。”

Kristmann同样也喜欢提到Werner Herzog,即在一部独特的纪录片中解释他不只是在分享自己的梦想,他同样也清楚地传达了自己以及观众的梦想的共同点。这与游戏开发者形成了共鸣,Kristmann说道:“我想要看到并知道怎样的人愿意与我分享他自己的梦想。在游戏的时候,我会将创造者的信念与价值当成自己的,这就说明我对此给予了很大的信任。”

他表示其实玩家想要拉近与开发者间的关系的想法也反应出了AAA级产业的疲乏。他表示效力于AAA级产业的开发者希望能够与其他人谈论并分享自己的工作,但是通过参与一些额外项目去实现这一愿望却非常冒险。

很明显作为“独立”开发者可能会影响他们真正的工作。许多致力于传统领域的开发者可能会因为参与额外项目或尝试着离开阻碍直接或独立行为的环境而遭遇挑战。

证书和名声

Luke Dicken是游戏AI专业的一名毕业生,他表示比起获得传统的“证书”,他进行了多次较有名气的演讲和社区工作。他说道:“在过去几年里,因为在GDC和IGDA等大会上的演讲,我从一名没人认识的毕业生变成了游戏AI社区中一个较有名气的人。尽管到今天我还未发行任何真正有效的内容,除了一些技术演示版本。”

Dicken说道:“对于我来说在过去5年多里最重要的是,我获得了能够看清彼此的能力,并为我们独立开发者的言论找到归属平台。这与直接针对于游戏的大多数用户粘性具有很大的区别,不管是通过回答粉丝的邮件还是在针对于游戏的论坛上发表文章。”

Dicken继续说道:“我认为这使我们成为了‘名人’,虽然我们与那些出现在报纸上的人还差了好大一截—-这与电影和电视中的文化类似,但推动它而不是任其摆布的能力意味着我们都可以参与其中,并且我们的粉丝(虽然他们没有像布拉德皮特那么大的号召力)也有兴趣在幕后起到推动作用。新媒体让我们能够实一愿望。”

就像Koster在他的博文中提到的,开发者应该写些博客(Dicken表示来自AltDevBlog和Gamasutra等网站的AI导向型博文帮助自己快速创建了一批用户)。他们同样也应该推动着自己在一些活动发表演讲。

Dicken说道:“俗话说,你认识的是谁比你知道的是什么更加重要,但我认为在某种程度上这两点都是错的。我告诉人们的是,真正重要的是让别人知道你知道了什么—-你也许是最博学的人,但如果你只是在家里将自己所知道的一切些在笔记本上,你便不可能发挥任何作用。”

第二职业

从实际角度看来,开发者还有许多额外的工作。举个例子来说吧,BlueLine的Colombo便会不时发张自己在做一些与产业相关的工作的图片(如第一次玩一款全新的棋盘游戏,或在瑞典的一个奇怪且古老的钓鱼岛上遇到一个巨大的《Fia Med Knuff》版本)。

独立开发商Giant Spacekat的联合创始人Brianna Wu总是会通过编写或发表一些有关重要事宜等方法去分享自己的想法。她说到:“我尝试着成为一个真实且专业的人。最重要的是,我尝试着与比我更厉害的人进行交谈。始终对他们的工作表示尊敬,保持礼貌的态度,并且不表现出任何奉承或虚假的姿态。编辑总是不愿意看到奉承者,更不会去关注奉承者的作品。他们一整天都在接收带着糟糕宣传的非专业人员的炮轰。对此我的方法是尽可能专业地呈现自己,如此你便能够与对方展开真正有效的联系。”

额外的任务对于Wu来说便是需要更多时间,以及更少的停工时间:“我知道许多独立开发者将晚上和周末时间花费在酒吧里。但是对于我来说却不是如此,我的白天,晚上和周末都是致力于自己的游戏中。当你面对着一个巨大的障碍时,你也不能低估与周边的人相比较的难度。”

Broken Rules的Martin Pichlmair拥有额外的挑战:他的团队并未拥有英语优势,即这并非他们的母语。他说道:“除了语言难度外,我还有与我们最大的市场,即USA的大多数人拥有不同的伦理价值。缺少流行文化参考以及政治正确性等都在过去给我造成了不少阻碍。另一方面,我的个性较为开朗,并且因为想要改变世界,所以我才选择开始制作游戏。”

作为Pixelles和Kitfox Games的联合创始人的Tanya Short在自我推广方面遭遇了更加困难的情况,这主要出于一些更加复杂的个人原因:“我的联合创始人更希望我能够走出舒适区并通过写,说,发表博文和发tweet等方式去传达各种内容以使我们获得更多关注,但我真的不想通过别人的付出而获得功劳,甚至是在面对一个组织的时候。”

她表示自己所面对的一些挑战是源自女性经常受邀进行演讲并出席被称为“专家”的领域,即使她认为这里并不是自己优势的归属:“这就像是我有责任去推广自己,但是我经常觉得自己是依赖于女权主义,市场营销,故事叙述,艺术设计,工具设计等等我不是很喜欢的主题。”

她喜欢在MIGS 2011年代表Funcom去讨论关于合作游戏玩法的设计问题和解决方法,但当被问到有关“游戏中的女性”时,她便会觉得不舒服。她说道:“我仍然觉得有点假,我在Gamasutra上的‘专家博文’也遵循了一种让人不舒服的模式,而不管它们是否受欢迎。”

同样的,推广她自己的‘非商业项目’比推广她与团队一起合作的项目要简单得多—-“当我是一支拥有4名成员的团队一员时,我并不希望人们将后者称为‘Tanya的游戏,’尽管我会使用Twitter进行网络推广。”

结果便是,她仍然面对着“真实的”自己与作为游戏制作者的自己间的对立:“Tanya本身是短篇小说写作俱乐部的一员,喜爱烹饪和滑雪,有时候也会画些画,比起电子吉他更喜欢大提请,在这几年内可能会有自己的孩子,在过去10年里曾居住在4个不同的国家。而作为游戏设计师的Tanya的关键词只有吃饭,喝水,呼吸和游戏。她只在乎自己的婚姻,因为她的丈夫也是一名游戏设计师。”

并发症,挑战和情感

尽管Arnott承认“写博客很费时间和精力,我更愿意将其投入于开发中,”但他也表示自我推广的额外工作是基于情感的。如果是完全诚实且坦然地面对一个项目,那么它的缺点和挑战“将在某种程度上伤害到你。”

他最近允许另外一个新闻记者“去窥探我的不安全感:让我的朋友感到失望,并将我背包里的钱都花光了。但说实话这是值得的,因为它帮助人们在我的故事中认清自己,并能够与我的作品联系在一起。这也推动着我更诚实地面对与作品本身之间的关系,这点真的很重要。”

但结果可能比工作负担更巨大。Alexander Brunce表示当《环绕走廊》发行时,他完全“情感崩溃”了。他说道:“我觉得自己需要对游戏的每一次成功和每一次失败负责。我很难将自己与自己所创造的内容分离开来,所以当人们谈论到游戏时,我便觉得他们也是在谈论我自己,尽管事实并非如此。”

Arnott表示认同:“有时候这条道路会非常残忍,特别是当你是Phil Fish或一名女性时。如果我不得不忍受Zoe Quinn所遭遇的事,我便不敢保证这会对我的工作有所帮助。我觉得这只会让我感到害怕并退缩。我真的很感谢那些勇敢的女性,因为有了他们我们在未来才有可能拥有一个更安全的创造性空间,并无需忍受被别人讨厌的自己。”

Katharine Neil是澳大利亚Freeplay活动的创始人,也是前AAA级游戏开发者,在自己的职业生涯早期她遭遇了市场营销者的不信任,以及别人对她自己和其她女性同僚的排挤。她回想道:“当他们走进工作室时,会上上下下将我们打量一遍,然后挑出最美的一个让她说说‘成为团队中唯一一名女性的看法’,与此同时其她女性不得不站在一旁看着。”

“而现在我不需要再多加担心并且学会去热爱游戏产业的市场营销,同时成为其中的一员。我知道如今的环境发生了改变,我也知道为什么这是必要的。从情感层面来看,至少如果没有这种改变我便不可能被接受。”

Neil阅读并喜欢Koster的自我推广建议,但对于她来说,这突出了在游戏开发中某些规则在女性和男性之间存在区别,特别是在提到他关于穿着的建议上(就像对于他自己来说可以是“凌乱的”,或许Warren Spector那样“专业的”,只要你们是一致的)。

Neil说道:“当他在写这一建议时是否想到了30多岁相貌平平的女性开发者们?我想他应该是没有的。你们说我愤世嫉俗也好,但在这个产业中只有一种着装方法能让女性受到注意,而这绝不是‘凌乱的’。”

Giant Spacekat的Wu说道:“我发现它极具挑战性。我根本不想成为一名公众人物。在我的邮箱不会每隔30秒便发出提醒时我真的很幸福。然而,政治和市场营销方面在这一过程中真的很重要。所以我们不得不接受它。”

她补充道:“关于独立游戏开发的幻想便是它能够将你那独特的想法变成一个惊人的创造物。而现实则是你所做的一切事物都是人们已经做过的—-不管你是否愿意接受。”

Mode 7 Games的Paul Taylor对于对话领域本身就存在一定质疑:“Twitter和Reddit受到了争议和个性的推动。如今,一款游戏将通过这两个平台获得比其它主要网站更多的流量,所以如何交流就变得更加重要。”

“不知道人们是否期待着开发者变成那种面面俱到的人:我认为人们其实在寻找更多具有煽动性的个性。他们想要的是‘名人开发者’,而不是所有觉得扮演这个角色很舒服的人。”

如果我害羞该怎么办?

害羞是很常见的情况—-许多开发者很乐于分享他们在这方面的故事,但很少有人会直接联系我。很多人是通过Twitter进行传达,似乎对自己所传达的内容是否重要或有趣都表示焦虑。

Colombo说道:“我属于有点害羞的类型,所以大多时候我倾向于不去多想自己所做的事。”他注意到有些人,如Mojang的Notch的任何一条tweet至少都会获得150条赞,甚至是一些关于日常琐事的内容。“因为他的身份,所以Notch的所有行动从内在看来都是很有趣的,如果许多人认为他所说的下飞机很有趣,那么也许公众对于我们作为游戏开发者的生活更加感兴趣。”

《罪恶之地》和《废土之王》的音乐师Joonas Turner面对的是相反的问题:他很担心人们会认为他总是基于自我推广模式,因此觉得他很虚伪。他说道:“不管什么时候我在与别人进行交谈,我总是会幻想他们在判断我是否在向他们推广自己,这可能会影响我接近任何人或任何事物的方式,尽管事实并非如此。”

Dicken说道:“有好几年我并未提交任何内容,只是因为我觉得自己做得还不够好—-我让市场营销去谈论我的决定。博客也是如此。我还记得那时候的自己认为没人在乎我说了什么,并且我是通过一些文章才克服了这种情况。”

Mode 7的Taylor喜欢在适当的环境进行公众演讲,但他却忍受不了每一次争论所带来的压力。他说道:“我真的遇到过各自各样的挫折。我同样也不喜欢垮于一个论坛中或开始用一些侮辱性语言称呼别人,因为这是只有我在《星际争霸》中遭遇失败时才会有的行为;有时候我甚至会好奇这些日子对于我来说是否只是阻碍物。”

Christos Reid创造了一些关于个性化的独立游戏,时不时会因为感觉暴露而不适,并尝试着通过自我表达进行营利。他说道:“这有点奇怪,因为我所发行的许多内容从性质上来看都是自传,通过个人游戏赚钱就像是我将自己个人的不幸变成一件可销售的产品。这让我觉得是在往自己身上贴上价格标签。”

但他也发现越来越多人对个人游戏感兴趣—-US Gamer推荐了他的《Dear Mother》,即一款看着他的母亲变成狂热的宗教信徒的游戏,这便是游戏中自我表达的一个例子。他说道:“我觉得自己取得了一个突破。我并未向US Gamer进行任何宣传,我甚至未给他们发过tweet,但看着个人游戏能够吸引人们的注意真的很棒。”

更多建议

Arnott建议:“首先,我们必须从情感上准备好接受向用户敞开自己所需要的成本。你是否准备好真的接受你的立基用户的爱?这需要许多努力,并可能把你变得更加脆弱—-你是否准备好面对恶魔?但更重要的是,当你感到疲倦时,你是否拥有一个支持系统?如果你做好了准备,那么我的最佳建议便是尽可能地表现出诚实与脆弱—-倾向你的优势,你的社区将会喜欢它。”

Dicken补充道:“不要推迟。不管你在哪里,人们只是对你所说的内容感兴趣,如果他们在一个媒体上表示喜欢你,他们便有可能去寻找更多你的文章,想法或游戏。”他表示有些人会介意自我推广并尝试着谴责你—-Dicken便曾因为在20分钟的演讲中花了30秒的世界去推广自己的作品而遭到观众的斥责。

他说道:“要忽视你的讨厌者。你能做的只是去寻找那些选择不同方向的人,并利用他们在感觉上的挫折。”

Wu说道:“已经有许多关于独立开发者应该强调的‘新鲜的视觉’的文章。我在此想对你们说的是,对于它的重要性的描述太过夸张了。大多数你不知道的内容都具有巨大的可能性。你应该选择一些比你聪明的人—-比你拥有更多经验的人。比起你自己在那夸夸其谈,你更应该认真听听他们怎么说。”

Alexander Brucer说道:“要保持科学的态度。批判性地评估在过去什么是适用于人们的,并与其他开发者进行交流去明确什么是不适合他们的。不断进行试验,并去挑战你的所有假设。不要觉得自己有权享有推广或宣传。”

BlueLine的Colombo说道:“我尝试着宣传任何具有专业性或个性的主题。专业性意味着如果我学到一些我认为别人会觉得有用的内容,我便会通过写博文与别人进行分享。如果我为自己创造了一个也能给其他游戏开发者带去帮助的工具,我便会以一种能让我轻松将其带给别人的方式去创造它。”

Broken Rules 的Pichlmair补充道:“对于其他创造者我的建议便是保持诚实。如果你的个性是直言不讳,那就保持这一个性。如果你较为武断,那就果断地分享你的意见。一定要做自己!”

Taylor说道:“不管在哪里与新闻记者进行会面真的很有帮助:不管Twitter变得多强大,这种好处都不会改变,所以出席某些活动仍然很重要。我认为个人参与vs专业主义的常见问题便是关于播出时间:我们总是尝试着去思考该在哪里画下这条线。”

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

How today’s game developers come to grips with self-promotion

by Leigh Alexander

Not all that long ago, your average game developer was likely to be defined by one key trait: Obsessiveness. Job postings sought those willing to “eat, breathe and sleep” games — shorthand, basically, for the willingness to work long and unreasonable hours and to have an internal lexicon so broad that one’s almighty ‘cred’ would be beyond reproach.

The industry ecosystem has permanently changed, though. Game developers can no longer expect they’ll definitely become anonymous nodes on massive assembly lines. In fact, working in development these days is just as likely to mean an intimidating level of independence, with small teams having to do many tasks that were once handled by a bigger infrastructure.

Indies and newly-formed studios have quickly had to acclimate to a world where they have to market their own games, do their own press outreach and create their own materials. Social media provides the infrastructure even as it creates the challenge: suddenly everyone needs to be a marketer in order for their brand or service to be visible. Amid the din of “I” statements, the mandate has begun to go even further than simply marketing your product, as any business does. Operating from the fascinating junction of tech, art and entertainment, many game developers are having to start thinking about marketing and promoting themselves.

Self-promotion often plays a key role in success in any field where the desire to participate is high, but the opportunity for success (whether defined either by financial stability or visible critical celebration) is much rarer. “Who you know” in your field and what they think of you — good networking skills, in other words — is still relevant. Now, though, many developers currently face and engage with their players at least as often if not moreso than they do with their peers, and often those interactions hold far more weight.

The “Kickstarter bubble” is mainly in the industry’s rearview mirror, but crowdfunding and patronage are still viable avenues for pioneers trying to fund work that traditional channels don’t support. And developing online and in public in the hopes that fan feedback leads to a tailor-made game and a built-in audience at launch is a popular strategy for attracting resources. Both cases require building a direct relationship with fans, supporters and potential donors, and creating that relationship is just as important as the work itself.

At the beginning of this new year, Raph Koster (@RaphKoster) offered some self-promotion tips for people working in games. His suggestions highlight the difference between marketing one’s game or company and marketing oneself. For some people, this is yet another new skill set to learn in exchange for independence. For others, it’s an uneasy obligation — remember when all people had to do was underline your “passion” and mail a resume somewhere? Now, you have to “put yourself out there” in brand-new ways.

Why self-promote?

“People expect a much higher bandwidth relationship with art, and having a relationship with the artist is an extension of that deeper and more niche personal relationship with the work,” says Robin Arnott (@ragamesound), creator of the IGF 2014-nominated SoundSelf. “I don’t think people want to buy our stuff, I think they want to share an appreciation and love for whatever micro-part of the human experience our games reflect on.”

Arnott has talked about SoundSelf, both the experience of playing and his journey in creating, as deeply personal. He says the game is hard to describe (“in the netherspace between video game and religious experience”), and that letting audiences get to know his personal mission helps communicate the game: “You may not at first understand what SoundSelf is, but if you understand me, then maybe you’ll also understand that my art is for you.”

Antichamber creator Alexander Bruce (@Demruth) long put himself forward alongside his game over its long, emotional development process. When Antichamber only existed in an earlier version called Hazard: The Journey of Life, which Bruce doggedly brought to every festival he could attend, he was known as the friendly young man in the pink suit. Clad in a strawberry-milk two-piece, he always stood out.

“I think branding vwas always important, regardless of whether you are an individual or a company,” says Bruce. “When I first started out independently, there were many developers I knew by name, moreso than the companies that they ran. People like Jonathan Blow, Petri Purho, Ian Dallas or Ron Carmel and Kyle Gabler all came to mind. When I had the choice of trying to promote a random company name or myself as an individual, I figured that I would be around a lot longer than any company I started would. Being an independent success was never guaranteed, so I always wanted to make sure people knew who I was in case I ended up having to apply for jobs around the place as well.”

Bruce says being able to tell one’s own stories as a creator is much more sustaining for public presence than simply talking about the game. Any personal tale related to Antichamber’s development could be made media-ready, as opposed to the meticulous and often slow process of developing something on one’s own over years.

What do audiences expect?

Sean Colombo (@seancolombo) of BlueLine Game Studios, which adapts board games for digital platforms, has noticed a shift in expectations from his audience. “They might not care about my home-improvement tinkering or how my cats are doing… but I definitely think they want me to stand out,” he says.

In his view, it’s not only that “reputation as curation” helps players sift through an increasing number of choices on multiple platforms. “I think the indie game community is composed of an extremely large percentage of gamers who have some level of desire to be in the game industry at some point,” he hypothesizes. “One strong correlation I could point to is that when Microsoft announced that they were discontinuing support for XNA, the sales on Xbox Live Indie Games immediately tanked.”

“Taking this desire into account, I believe that part of the product that game developers create is the infotainment that we spit off in the form of behind-the-scenes blog posts, public sales data, and any other sort of peek into the realities of game development,” Colombo continues. “When we create a blog post about something extremely specific, like ‘Representing a Hex Board in a 2D Array,’ that’s probably not just interesting to other game developers, but also to a huge percentage of our current players who are curious about what’s going on underneath the hood.”

Johannes Kristmann (@8bitbeard) is working on a game called Curious Expedition along with a colleague. “Tim Schafer once said that ‘you have to be an interesting person to make interesting games,’” he says. “He meant this in the context of creating the game itself, but nowadays, this also applies to marketing your game. There are so many games out there, and being able to add your personality to it helps so much to make people care about what you’re doing.”

Kristmann also likes a certain Werner Herzog quote, where the unique documentary filmmaker explains that he’s not just sharing his dreams, but articulating the things he and his viewers dream in common. This should resonate for game developers, Kristmann suggests: “I want to see and know what kind of person it is that shares their fantasies and dreams with me,” he says. “While playing, I accept the beliefs and values of the creator in the context of the game as my own, something that takes a lot of trust on my side.”

He says the fact players increasingly desire a personal relationship with developers is also a reflection of fatigue with the triple-A industry — in which Kristmann and his colleague are currently employed. He says developers working in triple-A often wish they could talk about and share their work with others (staged or fake “developer diaries” as put forth by marketing departments partcularly upset him), and even doing side-projects to scratch that itch is risky.

Being too visible as “indies” could harm their actual job. Many developers working in the traditional space may be uniquely challenged if they take on side projects or attempt to transition out of environments that have historically discouraged outspoken or individualistic behavior.

Credentials vs. celebrity

Luke Dicken (@LukeD) is a grad student with a specialty in game AI, and he says he’s done more reputable speaking and community work at this point in his career than he has traditional ‘credentials.’ “In just a couple of years, I’ve gone from random grad student nobody knows to being a well-known figure in the game AI community, speaking at GDC and on the board of the IGDA among much else,” he says. “To date, I haven’t released anything but a handful of tech demos.”

“The big thing to me is that in the last five-ish years, we’ve gained the ability to see each other so much more transparently, and received platforms for our individual voices,” Dicken says. “That’s a bit different from before where most engagement was directly about the games, either by answering fan mail or posting on forums centered on the game or games more generally.”

“I think it’s empowered us to be ‘celebrities’ even though we’re on the far fringes of what you might read in about in the tabloids – it’s that same kind of culture that’s always existed for movies and TV, but the ability to make it a push rather than a pull means we can all participate, and our fans, while they many not be numerous enough to sell magazines in the way Brad Pitt does, have that same interest in going behind the music,” Dicken says. “New media generally is letting us scratch an itch that has always been there.”

Self-promotion is inarguably important, and even people who are historically shy about networking can benefit from the increased focus on online interaction, says Dicken, who’s comfortable approaching people digitally first in order to break the ice for in-person meetings. “I think ‘being the product’ here has really helped,” he adds. “I just need to write now, or give a talk and people approach me — which is a very different situation for me, and one I’m pretty comfortable with.”

As Koster suggests in his advice post, developers should blog and write (Dicken says having his focused, AI-oriented posts syndicated from AltDevBlog to Gamasutra helped him build an audience very quickly). They should also put themselves forward to speak at events.

“There’s a saying that it’s not what you know but who you know that matters, and I think that to an extent both are wrong. The way I put it to people is that what is important is who knows what you know – you can be the most well-read, knowledgeable person on a subject, but if all you do is sit and write it in notebooks at home, you won’t ever get traction,” Dicken says.

(Yet another) second job

It’s a lot of extra work for devs just from a practical standpoint, and approaches vary. For example, BlueLine’s Colombo makes sure to Tweet a picture anytime he does something industry-related (“any time I give a talk, am on a panel, or even do something as simple as playing a new board game for the first time, or running into a huge version of Fia Med Knuff (it’s like ‘Sorry!’) on a strange ancient fishing island in Sweden”).

Brianna Wu (@Spacekatgal), co-founder of all-women indie developer Giant Spacekat, is constantly working to put herself out there, sharing her thoughts through writing and speaking up about important issues. “I try to be genuine and professional,” she suggests. “More than anything, I try to talk to people more powerful than me — not like a fangirl, but just as another person. Respect their work, be very polite, but be neither fawning nor presumptive,” she recommends. “Editors don’t want a suck-up, they don’t care about your product. They are bombarded all day long by amateurs with bad pitches… my approach is, just be myself, present myself professionally, see if a genuine connection happens.”

The extra tasks mean longer hours for Wu, and less downtime: “I know a lot of indie developers that spend their nights and weekends at the bar. Not me, I spend days, nights and weekend working my butt off on my game,” she says. “You are playing at a massive handicap, and don’t underestimate just much harder you’re going to have to work compared to the people next to you.”

Broken Rules’ Martin Pichlmair (@martinpi) has an additional challenge: His team doesn’t have the advantage of English as a first language. “Apart from language difficulties, I have a different set of ethical values to most people from our biggest market, which is the USA,” he says. “I don’t get half of the pop culture references, and my perceived lack of political correctness has caused more than one stir in the past. On the other hand, I have an outgoing personality and I am making games because I want to change the world.”

Pixelles and Kitfox Games co-founder Tanya Short (@tanyaxshort) has a harder time self-promoting for more complicated and personal reasons: “My co-founders prefer it when I step outside my comfort zone and write, talk, blog and Tweet about all sorts of things and get us more attention, but I really, really don’t like taking any credit for other people’s work, even implicitly through being ‘the face’ of an organization.”

She implies that some of her challenges come from the arenas that women are most commonly invited to talk about or most often expected to be ‘experts’ in, even though those aren’t where she feels her strengths lie: “It’s kind of my responsibility to promote myself and therefore them, but I often feel I have to rely on topics of feminism, marketing, storytelling, art design, tools design…which I’m not comfortable with.”

She enjoyed representing Funcom at MIGS 2011 to discuss design problems and solutions for cooperative gameplay, but when asked to talk about “women in games” she felt uncomfortable. “I still feel like a bit of a fake, and my ‘expert blog posts’ on Gamasutra follow a similar pattern of discomfort, regardless of their success,” she says.

Similarly, it’s easier to promote her own “silly non-commercial side projects” than the work she does with her team — “I don’t want people to call the latter ‘Tanya’s game,’ when I’m only one in a team of four, even though I know I’m using Twitter specifically for network advancement/promotion.”

As a result, she still sees a schism between her “real” self and herself as a game-maker: “Tanya the person is in a short fiction writing club, loves cooking and snowboarding, sometimes draws/paints for fun, prefers cello to electric guitar, might have a kid in a few years, lived in four countries over the last 10 years,” she says. “Tanya The Game Designer eats, drinks, breathes games and only games. She only cares that she’s married because her husband is also a game designer.”

Complications, challenges and emotions

Though Arnott admits “blogs take time and energy that I’d usually rather put towards development,” he says the real extra work of self-promotion is emotional. Being completely honest and transparent about a project, its shortcomings and its challenges “hurts in a way that ‘work’ isn’t supposed to,” he says.

He recently gave another journalist “permission to pry into my insecurities: ways I let my friends down, ways I spent my backers’ money recklessly. But that honesty was worth it because it helped people see themselves in my story and connect with my work. It’s also pushed me be more honest in my relationship with the work itself, which is extremely important.”

But the consequences can be as steep as the workload. Alexander Bruce says he was an “emotional trainwreck” by the time of Antichamber’s long-awaited release. “I felt personally accountable for every success and every failure of the game along the way,” he says. “It was extremely difficult to detach myself from what I’d created, so when people spoke about the game, I felt like everyone was talking about me personally, even when that clearly wasn’t the case.”

“This road is sometimes ruthless, especially if you’re Phil Fish or a woman,” Arnott agrees. “If I had to put up with the kind of shit [Depression Quest developer] Zoe Quinn does, I’m not sure it’d help me be more honest in my work… I think it’d make me want to curl up in a shell and quit. I am very grateful both for the women who bravely channel that toxicity so we may have a safer creative space in the future, and for the privilege of not having to bear that hatred myself.”

Katharine Neil is a founder of Australia’s Freeplay event, and a former triple-A developer who learned a distrust of marketers early on in her career, watching them buy scores (“I was at Atari during ‘Driver-gate’”) and diminish her and other female colleagues. “They would sail into the studio, look us all up and down, and single out the prettiest [woman] and have her talk about what it’s like to be ‘the only girl on the team,’ while the other women had to stand by and watch,” she recalls.

“And now [I'm] expected to stop worrying and learn to love the marketing side of the games industry, and be one of these people myself. I know the context is different, and I know why it’s important and necessary, etc. On an emotional level, at least, it’s hard for me to embrace without it making me feel a bit low.”

Neil read and enjoyed Koster’s self-promotion advice, but for her, it highlighted some of the ways the rules for women are different than those for men in game development, particularly when it came to his advice about dressing (you can be “rumpled,” like himself, or “professorial” like Warren Spector, so long as you’re consistent).

“Was he thinking of ordinary-looking 30-plus year old female developers when he wrote that? I suspect he wasn’t,” says Neil. “Call me cynical, but there’s only one way a woman can dress in this industry and get herself noticed, and it sure isn’t ‘rumpled.’”

“I find it immensely challenging. I have zero desire to be a public figure,” says Giant Spacekat’s Wu. “I”m happiest on days where my inbox isn’t chirping at me every 30 seconds. And yet, the political and marketing side is an extremely important part of the process. You cowgirl up, and make it happen.”

“The fantasy of indie gamedev is making some wonderful creation from your unique, special vision,” she adds. “The reality is doing anything and everything that has to be done – no matter if you like it or not.”

For Paul Taylor (@mode7games) of Mode 7 Games (Frozen Synapse, Frozen Endzone), there’s some skepticism about the conversation space itself: “Twitter and Reddit [are] fueled by controversy and personality,” he says. “These days, a game might get more traffic from those two sources than it does from a major site, so that’s going to put the focus on how you communicate.”

“I’d question that there’s an expectation placed on developers to be well-rounded: I think people are actually looking for more inflammatory personalities,” he adds. “They want ‘celebrity developers,’ and not everyone feels comfortable in that role.”

What if I’m shy?

It’s common to experience shyness — lots of developers were interested in sharing their stories for this feature, but few contacted me directly. Many put themselves forward in a sort of round-about way via Twitter, seeming anxious that they might not be important or interesting enough to be heard.

“I’m a little on the shy side, so most of the time I tend to err on the side of thinking nothing that I do is terribly notable,” Colombo says. He notices someone like Mojang’s Notch ends up getting at least 150 favorites for any given Tweet, even ones about ordinary daily activities. “While all of Notch’s actions are inherently more interesting because of who he is, if him saying he got off a plane is interesting to that many people, maybe the public is more interested in our lives as game developers than one might assume.”

BADLAND and Nuclear Throne musician Joonas Turner (@KissaKolme) has the opposite problem: He’s anxious about people assuming he’s constantly in self-promo mode, and therefore disingenuous. “It feels whenever I talk to people, I have this weird paranoia that they’re judging whether or not am I advertising myself to them and it might affect the way I might approach something or someone, even though it shouldn’t,” he says.

“For years I didn’t apply for things purely because I decided that I wasn’t good enough — I let the marketing hype talk me out of applying,” says Dicken. “It nearly happened with blogging. I can remember thinking ‘nobody cares what I have to say,’ and it took a run of really poor articles being published to get me over that.”

Mode 7′s Taylor enjoys public speaking in the right context, but is troubled by the pressure to weigh in on every debate, or the popular tendency to give the most attention to the person who’s being the most controversial. “There’s a lot of jerking, both of the ‘circle’ and ‘knee’ varieties, on Twitter, and my instinct is always to step back so I can consider the facts,” he says. “I’m also unlikely to have a meltdown on a forum or start calling people rude names, because I save that behavior for when I’m losing at StarCraft; I sometimes wonder if that’s a hindrance these days.”

Christos Reid (@failnaut) makes individual games of a personal nature, and is occasionally uncomfortable with feeling exposed, and with trying to monetize self-expression. “It’s been a little weird, because a chunk of my released stuff has been autobiographical in nature… making money from personal games [feels] almost like I’ve taken my own personal misfortunes, and turned them into a saleable product,” he reflects. “It makes me self-conscious about the mindset required to put a price tag on your own personal Shawshank.”

But he sees the press increasingly taking interest in personal games — US Gamer covered his Dear Mother, a game about watching his mother fall into zealous religious beliefs, as an example of self-expression in games. “I felt like I’d had a breakthrough,” he says. “I didn’t pitch anything to US Gamer, I didn’t even tweet at them, but it’s interesting to watch the way in which personal games seem to latch onto people.”

Some more tips

“I think firstly it’s important to emotionally prepare for the costs of opening yourself up to your audience,” Arnott suggests. “Are you prepared to really accept the love of your niche? That’s a lot of work, and will push you to be more and more vulnerable — are you ready to face your demons so out in the open? But more importantly, do you have a support system for if/when you get harassed? If you are ready for that, then my best advice is to be as honest and vulnerable as you can be — lean into your edge, and your community will appreciate it.”

“Don’t be put off,” Dicken adds. “People are interested in what you have to say wherever you have to say it, and if they like you in one medium, they might like the opportunity to find out more, see more articles, thoughts, or games.” He says some people will take offense at self-promotion and try to punish you — Dicken himself was called out by an audience member in a talk for, he says, spending 30 seconds of the 20 minutes to promote his own work.

“Ignore the haters,” he says. “You can’t help but encounter people who’ve chosen a different path, and are taking out their frustration at feeling that the grass is greener on your side.”

“So much has been written about the ‘fresh eye’ that indies supposedly bring to the table,” says Wu. “I’m here to tell you, it’s an exaggeration how important that is. Most of what you don’t know is a massive liability. Find people smarter than you – people with more experience. Listen more than you talk.”

“Be scientific about it,” says Alexander Bruce. “Critically assess what worked for people in the past, and talk to other developers directly to find out what didn’t work for them. Experiment a lot, and challenge all of your assumptions. Don’t feel entitled to press or sales.”

“I try to spread anything that’s on-topic professionally or personally,” says BlueLine’s Colombo. “Professionally, this means that if I learned something that others might find useful, I’ll write a blog post about it. If I create a tool for myself that I think would be beneficial to other game developers too, I try to build it in a way that will let me easily release it to others.”

“My tip for other creators is to be honest,” adds Broken Rules’ Pichlmair. “If you have an outspoken personality, be outspoken. If you are opinionated, share your opinions. Be yourself!”

“It really still helps to meet journalists in person wherever possible: that’s never going to change no matter how big Twitter gets, so going to events is still going to matter,” says Taylor. “I think the issue of personal involvement vs. professionalism in general is something that gets quite a bit of airtime: we’re all trying to work out where to draw that line.”(source:gamasutra)

 


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