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让你不再那么讨厌市场营销的一些方法

发布时间:2017-02-06 17:37:05 Tags:,,,,

作者:Kenneth Poirier

当市场营销是你唯一关心的内容与目标时,你便不会觉得这是在浪费自己的时间。但这也不是说如此你便能毫无压力地进行市场营销工作。就像在我之前的文章中所说的,我想要表达的是作为独立开发者,从开发中脱身去进行市场营销,特别是在维持着有效的项目进度的时候,这真的不是件容易的事。

团队分配

我的第一个建议是,你最好在团队中安排一份专门的市场营销工作,负责人需要去处理所有的社交媒体事宜。真的是所有事宜,不管那些对象多模糊。实际上,最不主流的平台往往是最能让你获得注意的。不要害怕去做社交媒体先去。

在这里你唯一需要避开的便是发送垃圾邮件或离题。就像不要在《星际迷航》论坛上讨论你的小矮人挖金矿游戏,除非其他人也在这么做。这是最起码的礼仪。尽管你可以找到许多不错的社交媒体发布工具,但是它们通常都很“死”,所以即使选择使用这些工具你也要进行一些个性化的修饰。

很快地你会发现社交媒体几乎占据了你的全部生活,你甚至不能致力于其它市场营销工作了。所以在你遇到这种情况前需要找个人去管理社交媒体。这是一个非常重要的角色,他必须与其他人进行有效的融合。在这种情况下你的美术师可能需要承担双份工作,即既要致力于游戏美术的创造也要致力于推广素材的制作。对于一支小型团队来说,这很快将变成一种高成本且耗时间的工作。

市场营销可能很吓人

这看起来好像真的很吓人,但别担心。如果你能够做好万全的准备就不会有事。这也是我为什么认为致力于自己前几款游戏的小型团队应将1/3成员分配到市场营销工作中的原因。需要清楚你将面对的是那些在和你们的游戏一样的游戏中购买广告空间的人。所以你需要一支真正可靠的团队去处理这些事。

或许对于那些只想创造一部真正优秀作品的人来说这会是个艰难的决定。但是拥有想法与才能去创造作品是不能保障游戏的曝光度的。如果你的作品没人认识,它便不可能赚取收益。你需要市场营销,当然也要是优秀的市场营销才能让别人注意到自己的作品。

之所以会恐惧应该是因为我们看过其它游戏在市场营销过程中所经历的A/B测试。

现实是,你的市场营销数据将改变游戏中的一些内容。你肯定不想投入大量时间去创造一个没人会关心的功能,所以你需要确保人们喜欢什么以及习惯什么。你需要了解你的用户并考虑他们的需求。总之,我认为大多数开发者和用户都同意市场营销的存在是去支持产品而不是去设计产品。

不是原创也没关系

我想说的第二个事实是,原创IP更难推广。现在的人们都达到了高娱乐饱和度并对全新授权内容感到厌倦,他们害怕自己会再次喜欢上游戏并在上面浪费时间。这是一个非常艰苦的市场!

我们最成功的产品之一是《Star Trek Mod II: The Wrath 》,大概获得了2万的下载了(游戏邦注:包括所有版本)。这是一款拥有粉丝基础的游戏,最初是基于Jon Shafer的《Final Frontier》模组进行创造,并最终由Deanej创造出了《Star Trek Mod》。《Star Trek Mod II》是《Star Trek Mod》使用了《Final Frontier Plus》模组所创造出的扩展版本。

所以最终我们拥有了《星际迷航》,《文明》以及所有包含于游戏创造中的模组社区。这就像是孵化器一样,拥有巨大的推动力能够创造出像《魔兽争霸》那样的“副产品”。

现在,如果你并不是在创造一款拥有粉丝基础的游戏并想要通过游戏赚钱,你便需要去获取你所使用的授权内容的权利。创造属于自己的受欢迎的授权内容是非常困难的,特别是现在手机上还有马里奥。如果你能够先在一个IP授权上进行投资,然后再花钱去推广自己的品牌将会更加合理。

我们的《Star Trek Mod》非常成功,但你可以想象如果拥有一个官方授权和适当的市场营销预算,它将更加成功。除此之外你还可以考虑在一个人们所熟悉的故事中创造游戏不仅能为开发者也可以为玩家进入游戏节省时间。虽然有很多独立开发者都凭借原创IP获得了成功,但你必须清楚,有效的市场营销在这些成功中贡献了巨大的力量。

直接营销

在Legendary Power我们还进行过另一种成功的市场营销活动,即基于《Democracy 3》所创造的《Black Operations Mod》。从技术上来看它拥有自己的故事与世界,这是《Democracy 3》世界的一部分,所以对玩家来说并不是完全的陌生。

Democracy 3(from pujia8)

Democracy 3(from pujia8)

我之所以要创造《Black Operations》是因为作为一名玩家,我希望可以不被刺杀或降低游戏难度而成为游戏中的自大狂。我只是想去满足自己作为玩家的需求。所以我便去寻找其他带有同样需求的玩家。

我使用的两个平台是Steam论坛和tumblr.com。我搜索了那些抱怨过《Democracy 3》中的刺杀功能的玩家。当我发现一个时我便会去回复他并告诉对方我也有相同的烦恼并因此创造了《Black Operations Mod》去解决这一问题。这便是所谓的直接营销。

关于直接营销的例子

我花了6个小时在做这件事并在前几天获得了大约1000个订阅者以及2000个浏览。而从那之后《Black Operations》便出现在每日每周最受欢迎模组排行榜的前列。游戏的转换率大约是150名用户/小时。这一成绩还不错。而真正的成就应该要数,现在当人们在谷歌上搜索那一问题时便能轻松看到我们的模组。

社交媒体并不能保证100%的成功。Positech和Steam Workshop在帮助人们更轻松下载与安装模组方面起到非常大的作用。这也能够有效减轻人们在尝试新事物时所面的的负担。

我尝试着将Steam上的《文明4》的用户带到《Star Trek Mod II》,但因为游戏中缺少Steam Workshop,所以玩家对它的接受度还不是很高。

你可以这么做

是的,虽然市场营销可能很吓人且非常花钱,但在你开始花钱购买广告空间前还可以做许多事。而我所提到的只是皮毛。但还是希望这些内容能够帮到你们,让你不再讨厌市场营销。

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

I Still Hate Marketing… But Not As Much

by Kenneth Poirier

When marketing is your only focus and your only goal, it’s not a bad way to spend your time. But that’s not to say it’s without stress. I think what I was really trying to express in my previous article was that as indie developers, it can be extremely difficult to have to break away from development, especially when you have a good pace going on your project, which often it does right before it’s time to market.

If you want an idea of the stress, listen to what Antichamber developer Alexander Bruce said about trying to develop and market at the same time. This video from the GDC really hit home for me.

Putting The Team Together

My first recommendation is that you have someone on the team whose only job is marketing, which should include handling all of the social media. I really do mean all of them, no matter how obscure. In fact, the less mainstream a platform is, the more likely you are to get noticed. Don’t be afraid to be a social media pioneer. There is more to the internet then facebook.

The only things you should really avoid is spamming or being off-topic. Don’t start talking about your dwarf gold mining game in a Star Trek forum unless everyone else already was. This is just basic etiquette. While there are some great social media mass posting tools out there, they have no etiquette and so even with their help, you have to do a lot of personalized writing and making friends.

Soon it seems like social media is taking up all your time and you can’t even work on your other marketing stuff. Before you know it, you need a person just to manage social media. If they’re real good at their job, they’ll wrangle in a good five to twenty volunteers to work with. That’s a valuable person who should be getting properly compensated along with everyone else. Your artists are probably on double duty now making art for the game and your promotional materials. It all quickly becomes expensive and time consuming for a small team with other tasks, be those as part of development or external commitments.

Marketing Can Be Scary

This might seem really daunting, but don’t worry. It can be done if you are prepared for it when it comes. That’s why I think for small teams working on their first dozen games should consider having at least one third of their team be dedicated to marketing and two thirds would be even better. Remember, you’re going up against people who buy ad space on games like yours. You need a solid team to go up against that.

This can be a tough idea for people with only a desire to create a great product. Having the desires and the talents to create a product is not enough to get exposure anymore. You can’t make any money when your product is unknown. You’ll need that marketing to be discovered and it has to be good marketing.

The cringing fear is idea of the marketing taking over the development of the game through A/B testing as we have seen in some games that have come out.

The reality is that your marketing data is going to change some of the things in the game. You wouldn’t want to invest a bunch of time into a feature no one really cares about and you’ll want to make sure the things people like and use often are in good working order. You’ll want to know your audience and consider their desires. But overall, I think most developers and fans agree that marketing is there to support the product, not to design it.

It’s Okay To Not Be Original

The next real reflection I can give you is that original IP are tough to promote. People right now are entertainment saturated and weary of new franchises in fear that they might really like it and spend all their time on it. It’s a tough market out there! If you can’t beat them, join them.

One of our most successful products was Star Trek Mod II: The Wrath of Mod for Civilization IV which I believe had around 20,000 downloads (including all versions of the game). It was a fan game, originally based on the Final Frontier mod by Jon Shafer, which lead to Star Trek Mod by Deanej. Star Trek Mod II was an expansion of Star Trek Mod using the Final Frontier Plus mod by a team of the same name.

So in the end, we had the Star Trek, Civilization, and modding communities all involved in the creation and aggregation of the game. It is the sort of incubator that, with a big enough boost, can create spin off games like DOTA.

Star Trek Mod II: The Wrath of Mod

Now if you’re not making a fan game and trying to make money, you’ll need the rights to the franchise you’re using. Building your own franchise popularity is tough when even Mario is on the phone these days. It may be a better balance of capital to invest in licensing an intellectual property then what you might spend trying to promote your own brand.

Our Star Trek Mod was sucessful, but image how much more sucessful it could have been with an official licence and proper marketing budget. Another thing to consider, working in a familiar story can save time in world building to get both the developer and the player right into the game. Obviously plenty of indie games have broken out with original IPs, but keep in mind, soild marketing had a big part to do with those successes.

Direct Marketing

Another successfully marketing campaign we had at Legendary Power was our Black Operations Mod for Democracy 3. While technically its own story and world, it is a subset of the Democracy 3 world, so not completely foreign to players.

I created Black Operations because as a player I wanted to be more of a megalomaniac in the game without being assassinated or lowering the game difficulty. I was fulfilling a need as a player. So I searched for other players with the same need.

The two platforms I used were the Steam forums and tumblr.com. I did a search for people complaining about assassins in Democracy 3. When I found one, I would reply or repost that I was having the same problem but solved it with the Black Operations Mod. This is called Direct Marketing,

An example of Direct Marketing

I spent six hours on it and got a boost of about 1000 subscribers and 2000 unique views in the first few days. Black Operations ranked in the top most popular daily and weekly mods for about a month from that one day of work. That’s about a 150 user per hour conversion rate. Not bad. The real achievement though is that now when people google that question it doesn’t take them long to find our Mod.

Social Media isn’t entirely responsible for the success. Positech and Steam Workshop played a big part by making the download and installation of the mod as simple as possible. This broke down many of those hesitation barriers people get when trying something new.

I tried getting Civ4 users on Steam into Star Trek Mod II, but because of a lack of a Steam Workshop for that game, adoption rates didn’t make it worth pursuing in that venue.

You Can Do This

Yes. It can be scary and it will be expensive. But there are many things you can do before you start buying ad space. These are just a few of them. Hopefully they will help you and you won’t hate marketing as much as you thought you would.(source:gamasutra

 


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