原文作者：Mike Rose 译者：Megan Shieh

某些人认为游戏开发完毕就算完工了，剩下的就只能看运气；每当听到这种言论时，我就感到非常恼火，因为建立受众和‘抽奖’不是一个性质！

现在每天都有不计其数的新游戏上架，而Steam上的普通游戏第一个月靠销量都只能收入1万美元左右，所以我们还有什么机会呢？然而可怕的事实是，99.9%的这些游戏都是被派去送死的，其中很大一部分是营销赤字。

情况一直都是这样，开发者们至今还在与多年前就出现的市场营销问题做搏斗；然而这也意味着市场上还存在很大的发展空间，只要推广做得好，不愁别人看不到。前提是你必须清楚地知道自己在做什么，不清楚的话就雇个懂的人帮你。

在数以万计的游戏中，人们往往会有自己偏爱的几款，我一直很好奇为什么/怎么会这样？经过多年的实践研究，我可以向你保证，这其中的运气成分绝对没有人们想象的那么多。

每当我把一款新游戏推向公众视线时，使用的手法都是具有目的性的、经过缜密计算的，承载着我的满腔热血。

如何让人们注意到你的游戏？对于这个问题，我想要给出一些跟得上时代的建议——用近期刚刚发布的Descenders作为例子，向大家展示一下我们No More Robots自己的做法。

Descender（from gamesindustry.biz）

在游戏发布后的前几周里，Descenders的数据如下：

宣传片在YouTube和Facebook上获得50多万点击率

上传到Imgur和9gag（图片网站）上的gif也有50多万的浏览率

Beta版的注册人数和Discord上的成员都有1万多

几乎所有的电子游戏新闻站点都发布了有关Descenders的文章

下面向大家详细介绍一下我们的做法，其中有许多要点都可以在2017年运用到其他电子游戏的发布上。

找到游戏的‘吸引点’和‘驱动点’

你自认为游戏中最酷的特性，可能不会成为人们关注的重点。准备向别人推销游戏时，我总是会把基本要素分为两个点：‘吸引点’和‘驱动点’。

制定市场营销计划的时候，大部分人注重的可能是‘驱动点’。‘驱动点’可以使你的游戏看起来很有趣，但事实上，你需要先用别的东西来勾住人心。

下面我以Descenders为例来解释这一点。

Descenders的特征是——程序生成的世界，这一直是很多人谈论的点，不过程序世界是一个‘驱动点’；现在市面上的很多游戏都包含程序性的内容，所以用它来引导受众的话，恐怕无法达到100%的效果。反之，我们先把Descenders的玩法说明为——极限下坡自由骑行，这是一个有趣的‘吸引点’，因为这个特性较为独特，然后我们借机告诉你‘oh，对了，你将会在一个程序生成的世界里比赛’。

我们首先说明这个游戏为什么会令人兴奋，然后再把‘程序生成的世界’这一点带出来:“Descenders是一个极限下坡自由骑行游戏（吸引点），骑行场地是一个由程序生成的世界（驱动点）。”

宣传片很重要

在短短两周的时间里，我们对Descenders的宣传片进行了几十次修改，然后才有了最后定下来的这个版本。

因为届时将会有成千上万的人点击观看这段宣传片，并且你会反复地用它来做宣传，所以不能草草了事。

宣传片里出现的每一个镜头都是具有目的性的，我们不只是简单地将一些随机镜头拼到了一起。背景音乐的选择;镜头与关键节拍的匹配;每个镜头所展现的内容都只在宣传片中出现过一次；多个元素的出现挑逗了观众的神经，但却没有完整地呈现；观众会想说这么厉害，竟然不会翻车？然后，嘣，多个翻车的镜头一起出现，宣传片结束了。

如果你的宣传片没有达到这种深度，那你估计得再掂量掂量。宣传片的作用极其强大——我们可以把它发给任何人看，无需只言片语，就能够让他们了解这个游戏。

同时它还使我们受到了新闻媒体以及社交媒体的广泛关注，并让我们有机会与一些公司进行谈话，达成交易；如果没有这段宣传片，这些公司估计根本不会考虑跟我们合作。

此外，宣传片需要根据你制定的‘吸引点’和‘驱动点’来制作。制作Descenders的宣传片时，为了展示‘程序生成的世界’（驱动点），我们想尽了办法，可做出来的效果都不咋地，要么感觉很业余，要么就感觉非常混乱。因此我们决定只在宣传片里展现‘吸引点’，然后如果有人想要深入了解这个游戏的话，他们就能在别的地方发现游戏的‘驱动点’。

找观众

在这段宣传片的所有点击率中，大约有50%来自于那些平常不玩电子游戏的人，你可能会对这点感到惊讶。

除了各大电子游戏新闻网站之外，我们还联系了山地自行车新闻媒体。这些人对游戏有着完全不同的看法，他们报道的标题大部分都是这样的：Descenders能否成为第一款好玩的山地越野自行车游戏？

我们一直以来都有打算要和自行车媒体谈谈，但是却从未意识到他们可以为游戏带来如此巨大的影响。这也为我们带来了许多有趣的谈话，谈话对象包括一些想要与我们合作的自行车品牌和公司。

其实包括玩电子游戏玩家在内的许多人都不会关注电子游戏新闻，而我们作为发行商/开发商时常忘记这一点。最重要的是，那些平时很少接触电子游戏的人可能会阅读新闻，这些人可能会对别的东西感兴趣（比如山地自行车），你就可以从这里入手。

除了电子游戏新闻的读者之外，还有谁会对你的游戏感兴趣？你手头上有没有一个能够撩动其他受众的‘吸引点’？ 这是一个值得思考的问题。

让感兴趣的人继续感兴趣

大多数看到游戏发布会的人，看完一转眼就忘了，一直到下次偶然再看到这款游戏时才会记起来。但是那些看到并且想了解更多的人呢？这些人更有可能去买你的游戏，那么你要怎么做才能保持他们的兴趣呢？

我们为此构建了一个完整的元游戏，让这些人参与到准备发行的过程中，然后将其与beta注册结合到一起。基本上，有兴趣参与到beta测试中的人都可以在Discord上的Descenders官方频道注册，然后他们需要选择一支游戏中的队伍。选好队伍以后，他们就会拿到队伍的旗帜，还有该队专用Discord频道的访问权。在游戏正式上架之前，让感兴趣的人成为某个项目的一部分，每个星期都可以参加活动，还可以获得特殊奖励。

Descenders现在拥有一个热闹、活跃的玩家社区，而且每天都在扩张，社区里充满了渴望看到更多内容的人。几周前，我们在Twitch上做了个直播测试，当时只是想看看我们预想的每周直播会是什么样子；可尽管是私下测试，却还是有500个人观看了这次直播，其中有100+位并发观众。

如果你无法把对游戏感兴趣的人聚集到一起，那么基本上就是在看运气了。这真的是好主意吗？

持续不断地进行推广

大概50%的关注度是在Descenders的发布周生成的。另外50%是在后面的几周里生成的，多亏了我们的努力——连续不断的市场推广，层出不穷的报道文章以及各种特性的发布。

很多开发商会早早就发布他们的游戏，然后消失一年去做游戏，等到游戏做好了、可以投放市场了，才再次出现在大众的视野中。这通常会使你最初的发布变得毫无意义，因为等你再次回到大众的视线中的时候，那些之前看到这个消息的人早就忘了这事儿了。

你需要制定一个计划，让人们在发布到发行之间的那段时间里保持对游戏的兴趣。我们的做法是——在发布Descenders的时候保留了大量的信息，然后计划在接下来的六个月里发布新的特性宣传片、公告和合作关系。总而言之，正式发行游戏的时候，人们的反应不该是‘哎呀，从哪儿冒出来的游戏’；我们应该想办法让他们在等待的过程中关注游戏的动态，并且期待发行的到来。

我知道，很多开发者都会说自己忙着开发游戏，根本没时间做这些事。每个开发商都是这样想的，包括Descenders的开发商RageSquid。这就是他们雇用我的原因：RageSquid可以继续认真做游戏，而我则全权代理他们来处理这些事情。

如果上述的事情对你来说太麻烦，或者说不是你的强项，那么我强烈建议你找别人来帮忙，这个帮忙的人可以是市场营销人员，也可以是发行商——只要对你有作用即可。

总而言之，不要让你的游戏落入那些被派去送死的99.9%。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Most games are sent out to die, says No More Robots’ Mike Rose, but building an audience isn’t “luck of the draw”

It always gets my goat when someone suggests that making people care about a video game is “luck of the draw,” or “a magic trick,” or just “completely random.”

It’s true that there are now more games being released every single day than ever before, and the average game on Steam is now making roughly $10,000 in its first month on sale, so what chance do we have? The horrible truth, though, is that 99.9% of those games are sent out to die, and a big part of that is a marketing deficit.

This has always been the case – developers are still facing the same marketing issues they faced years ago – but what it means is that, even now, there is still plenty of room for games that are marketed properly to be noticed. You just have to know what you’re doing, or hire someone who does.

I’ve always been fascinated with how and why people attach themselves to certain games over others, and after years of hands-on research with the topic I can assure you that luck really doesn’t have as much to do with it as some people think. Every time I’ve been a part of thrusting a game into the public eye the approach has always been purposeful, calculated, and sprinkled with bursts of spontaneity.

I want to offer some up-to-date advice on making people care about your game, using the recent announcement of Descenders from RageSquid and No More Robots to show our own methods. In the first few of weeks after the announcement, Descenders is sitting on the following numbers:

Over 500,000 views on the trailer across YouTube and Facebook

Over 500,000 gif views across Imgur and 9gag

Over 10,000 beta signups and Discord members

Dozens and dozens of articles from nearly every video game news site

Here’s how we did it, with plenty of points that are easily transferable to any video game announcement in 2017.

Understand why your game is hot shit

That thing you think is cool about your game? It’s probably not the main thing that will make people care. When I’m working out the narrative for selling a game to people, I always separate elements into two columns: “The Hook” and “The Kicker.”

What you’re probably focusing on with your game marketing is The Kicker. This is the element of your game that makes it really interesting, but actually needs something else to latch onto first. Let me explain with Descenders as an example.

Descenders features procedurally generated worlds, which has been a massive talking point about the game. But procedural worlds are The Kicker; loads of games have procedural content in them now, so leading with that doesn’t work so well. Instead, we first explain that Descenders is “extreme downhill free-riding,” which is an intriguing Hook since there are few other games like it, and then we reel you in with, ‘Oh, and you’re racing through procedural worlds.’

With this structure the procedural elements actually land, because we’ve first provided context for why that’s exciting: “Descenders is extreme downhill freeriding [The Hook] through procedurally generated worlds [The Kicker].”

Your trailer is so damn important

The Descenders trailer went through a dozen revisions over two weeks before we landed on the final version, courtesy of RageSquid’s Gary Lobine. This is the footage that thousands of people will be watching, and you’ll be using it over and over to sell your game. It requires an incredible amount of blood, sweat and tears.

Everything you see in the Descenders trailer has a purpose, and isn’t just random footage mashed together. The music choice; the way the footage is matched up with key beats in the music; each and every shot shows a glimpse of the game that isn’t shown anywhere else in the trailer; multiple elements are teased but not explained; you’re waiting for crashes and then, boom, you get a bunch of them to finish it off.

If this isn’t the depth you’re going into with your trailer, you need to be. Trailers are so powerful; we can now link this trailer to anyone, and immediately explain to them what the game is without needing to be there. This trailer has got us press, social media hype, and conversations and deals with companies who may not have talked to us otherwise.

Notably, your trailer may need to follow different rules to the Hook and Kicker you’ve put in place. For Descenders, we toyed with how to show the game’s procedural worlds in the trailer, but it always came across badly, or amateurish, or just confusing. We decided to make the trailer all Hook, and then when people go to find more information elsewhere they discover the Kicker separately. That’s worked pretty damn well so far.

Find new audiences, find all audiences

Here’s something that may surprise you: around half of thehe views on the Descenders trailer came from audiences outside of video games.

Apart from spreading the trailer as far and wide as we could with video game news sites, we also contacted the mountain bike press. Those outlets had a completely different take on the game, mainly reporting on it with headlines like, “Could this be the first good mountain bike game?” We always planned to talk to bike press, but we just hadn’t realised how massive it would be for the game. This also led to a number of interesting conversations for us, including chats with bike brands and companies who may want to be involved with the game.

It’s easy to forget that most people don’t actually read video game news, including people who play video games. On top of that, those outside of the video game bubble might read news and have interests elsewhere that you can still connect with.

Who might be interested in your game outside of hardcore video game news readers? Do you have a hook that could connect you with an entirely different audience? It’s worth thinking carefully about.

Funnel interested parties into cool things

The vast majority of people who see your announcement will then click away and forget about it until the next time they stumble across the game. But what about those people who see it and want more? These people are more likely to actually buy your game, so what are you doing to keep them interested?

With Descenders, we built an entire meta-game for people to take part in running up to the launch, and we coupled this with beta signups. Essentially, anyone who is interested in being part of the beta is encouraged to sign up to the official Descenders Discord channel, at which point they are required to pick a team from the game. The moment they pick a team – Enemy, Arboreal or Kinetic – they’re given that team’s colours and access to its private Discord channel. They become part of something, and each week they can take part in events that provide them with special prizes before the game is even available.

We now have a lively, active community around Descenders that continues to grow every day, filled with lovely people who are eager to see more. A couple of weeks ago we did a Twitch stream to test how we envision weekly streams looking, and despite barely publicising it more than 500 people watched in total, with more than 100 concurrent viewers.

If you don’t have a way to bring together the people who like what they see in your game, then you’re basically just hoping that they see it again in the future and decide to buy it on a whim. Does that really sound like a good idea?

Keep the train rolling

Around 50% of the eyeballs on Descenders came during announcement week. The other 50% came in the weeks that followed, thanks to continued marketing push, and those views continue to roll in with every new article, feature or whatever we make happen.

I see so many developers announce their game, then disappear off to make it for a year, before finally sprouting up again at launch. This usually renders your original announcement pointless, because everyone who saw the news at first probably forgot about it by the time you come back into their lives.

You need to have a plan for how to keep people interested in the game between announcement and launch. With Descenders, we’ve kept loads of information back, with the plan to put out new feature trailers, announcements and partnerships over the course of the next six months. The goal is that, by the time the game launches, people aren’t just thinking ‘Oh, that came out of the blue,’ they’ve actually been following along and are waiting for it.（Source：gamesindustry.biz  ）