作者：Jeff Hangartner

独立游戏《Elusive Ninja》市场营销策略系列文章已发布四篇，主要内容如下：

文章1——社交营销篇

通过Twitter、博客、论坛等方式进行口头营销，以构建起用户对游戏的关注。分析价格下降的利弊以及对微工作服务的使用。

文章2——传统营销篇

深入分析行业中不为人所重视的部分，比如下载购买、付费评论等等。而且还涵盖了传统高级营销途径，比如条幅广告和诸如AdMob之类的营销代理和广告服务。

文章3——资料及维护篇

应该在Press Kit放置哪些内容，如何使用媒体宣传，创造截图和测试版等等。而且，如何有效地维护我们谈论过的所有东西。

文章4——心理素质篇

作为独立开发者如何在复杂的营销环境中生存下来，如何处理花钱、销售量数据上扬和跌落、做出重大决定、处理批评带来的压力，直面iPhone应用中的盗版现象。

以下是第四部分：心理素质篇

在博客Bulletproof Outlaws中，我已经讲一些关于游戏开发和运作时应有的心态。现在我想谈谈在家营销游戏的心态，因为许多人都把关注重点放在游戏的玩家数目和数据资料上，却忽略了自己要经历的心理考验。这就好像打牌，盯紧自己的牌固然重要，但克服游戏过程中的输赢得失问题的心理和眼界也不容忽视。

游戏并不一定等同于自我价值

我把电影《Fight Club》中的一句话改述成：“游戏的销售额不代表你的水平。网站点击数不代表你的水平。游戏下载量不代表你的水平。对游戏的评论不代表对你的评论。应用商店排名不是你的名次。”

不要把你的游戏当成你的自我标签。当然，这确实不太容易，毕竟你花了数周、数月、甚至数年的时间来制作游戏，你的血、汗、泪浸染了游戏的点点滴滴方方面面，你彻夜不眠、假日不休，竭尽所能地制作游戏……你几乎把游戏当成自己的孩子来培育了，当你最后向全世界宣告它的诞生，希望证明梦想也能成为职业，怎么可能不把游戏当成半个自己？

心情起伏

第一天，游戏销售情况振奋人心，你得到了5星的评价等级。你一边想：“我太了不起了，我成功了！”一边着手计划下一款游戏，仿佛大把的“$”已经在你眼前纷至沓来、闪闪发光。第二天，你的销售额下跌了一点，1星的评价也冒出来了。某个大网站评论说你的游戏操作太难、内容不足，评级只有2星。你重装AppFigures，几乎分分秒秒都在看你的应用商店排名下降情况。一周以后，随着游戏滞销，你也陷入不可自拔的痛苦中……你没有心思再碰下一款游戏设计，但又不想重回全职工作、闲暇才能做游戏的生活中，这种矛盾纠结于心，挥之不去。

当你把游戏的一切当成自我时，你的自我价值就随着游戏数据起伏不定。每天的心情都像坐过山车，做什么事都集中不了精神。你开始怀疑自己的决定，你没动力做新游戏。长此以往，你不仅破坏了自己的精神状态，独立游戏制作人的前途也岌岌可危了。

游戏失利固然劳心伤神，但游戏大获成功也不见得高枕无忧。你的游戏大卖，你开始洋洋得意，你在工作室里跷脚、美滋滋地吃着水果，把制作下一款游戏以挣取发展资金的事忘到九霄云外。你开始觉得自己的决定都是对的，你不再做研究，不再制定计划。这时候，数据上的任何一点小下降对你来说都是致命打击，因为你的期望太高了，正所谓爬得越高，摔得越疼。这好比炒股，你的股值一直在起起起落落。销售额高时，你能保持淡定，销售额低时，你也能保持从容，那么无论遇到什么状况，你都能做出明智的决定。

你必须关心游戏的排名、评论等，但不要把这些东西当成作为游戏开发者的评价。如果你得到的评级有不少是1星，那么就好好研究这些评论，找出共同点，然后想想你哪里做得不好……是美术风格选错了？操作有问题？游戏整体设计或主题不好？游戏bug太多？要怎么修复这些问题？需不需多做几次测试？是否要在开发中投入更多资金或时间？

诚然，错误再所难免，但这并不意味着你是个不合格的游戏开发人。你要做的只是吸引教训，以免重蹈复辙。

我本人的经历

开通Bulletproof Outlaws博客时，我正在搞市场推广，给我的游戏《Elusive Ninja》争取曝光率、积攒玩家。我链接到Hackernews，发现1个小时内就得到5000点击量。我记得我当时非常激动，兴奋到把这当成人生的大突破。我甚至问我的网络供应商升级网站（以防网站流量太大会崩溃）要多少钱……一天过后，点击量又落回每天20到40次。

现在，如果那种事再发生，我只会像只无头鸡似地四处闲荡，我的第一个反应会是：“不错，点击量很高啊……看看我能兴奋到什么时候吧……。”总之，要稳住心态。

《Elusive Ninja》发布后，头几天的销售量非常可观，之后就走低了。我没太大反应，只是说：“不太乐观，但为什么卖不出去？呃，好好研究一下，曝光率不够。好吧，这基本上是营销的问题了：怎么给我的游戏争取曝光机会？”还是那句话，保持淡定。

虽然事情还没出现转机，但我已经计划开始下一款游戏了，当然，新游戏发布时，我还会借机推广《Elusive Ninja》。我还可以打广告，所以我不致于六神无主。我按部就班，坚信有办法扭转乾坤，或者（万一失败了）我会从这款游戏中吸取教训，为新游戏的成功打下基础。

有人会说我这只是过分自信和盲目乐观，但我认为作为独立开发人，无论是做游戏、玩音乐、拍电影还是写东西，这两种心态都要有一点吧。

日常报告

很多时候，我希望我总是能得知最新的应用商店销售情况，心想：“如果我那么有时间盯着这些东西，我就应该好好利用销售额尖峰！”虽然很现实主义，但老盯着销售情况的结果只是，我一天24小时，一周7天都在等着数字升上去，如果没升上去，我就捶胸顿足。我喜欢AppFigures服务，因为只有每天早上才能收到关于销售情况的电邮；有时刚过中午我就想知道，我便对自己说最好断了这个念头，因为在第二天的电邮发来前我什么法子也没有。我刚开通Bulletproof Outlaws博客那时，每隔几小时我就在iPhone上查看一下销售额。现在我一周最多查看一次了，所以我不再伤脑筋了。

重视人际关系

如果你太过关注销售额情况，把它当成自我来看待，往往也会影响你的人际关系。无论是在聚会上和朋友谈论你的游戏，还是在网上回复差评，你的心态都会有所流露。如果你的销售情况不佳，你就会怀疑自己，朋友一问起游戏的事，你就想发火；别人一给批评，你就想骂人。所以，只有把自我价值与销售情况的关系理清，才能更积极地处理这些事，甚至在逆境中看到一线生机。

这很难，每个人都会在这方面出差错，但处理好人际关系非常重要，特别是在当今的网络大背景下，人与人之间的联系都是通过网络来维系，你的所做所有都会在网络上留下抹不去的痕迹。对于小开发团队，人们通常把矛头对准项目之后的人，而不只是项目本身。

Notch、Jonathan Blow、Adam Atomic、Edmund McMillen……如果你是搞独立开发的，可能知道这些家伙都是出了名的独立游戏制作人。搞独立开发往往不是匿名的大企业，所以你得积极努力和其他开发人、新闻界、评论家、朋友和家人等处理好关系。这不是说你必须压制自己的想法或观点，而是你应该记住怎么表达，否则别人会认为你是个不通人情世故的呆子。

建立人际关系

谁都清楚和新闻界搞好关系是多么重要的事，但别忘了还有你的粉丝，甚至是批你批的最狠的人。建立人际关系的方法很多，比如在Twitter上和别人聊天、查看追随者的主页、回复玩家的提问（甚至是很尖锐的问题）、制作一个电邮名单来提醒自己保持联系等等。

我的个人经历

我开始开发《 Elusive Ninja》时，曾收到某人的电邮，告诉我他想在卡尔加里（加拿大某城市）谋一份游戏策划的差事。可是我实在没有钱雇他，但我没有那他的邮件放任不管，也没有对他说“抱歉，现在不招人！”我回复了他的邮件，里面附上一份卡尔加里市的游戏开发商的名单并祝他好运。我知道那里的风景宜人，之前也做过研究，所以我知道从哪去弄那份名单。我不过花了几分钟就换来了他的万分感谢。现在，如果我有需要，那个已经在卡尔加里的人一定会非常乐意地伸出援手。

当我收到游戏测试者的反馈时，我保证逐条回复他们的邮件并感谢他们的支持。当别人转发我的Twitter时，我保证回复他们“感谢转发！”如果有人在Twitter上找游戏开发的工作，我会四处转发他们的Twitter简历，因为我有许多游戏开发的同行。在即时回复邮件方面我做得还不好，但我会努力挤时间。

人际并不会直接影响游戏的销售额，但从长远的角度看，随着声望的积累，你开始有份量，你的游戏会得到更多关注，不论是积极的还是消极的。当你有了强大的粉丝基础，总是更容易度过难关。再加上大多数人都挺友善的，结交新朋友也很有趣，所以不要老想着“这人对我有什么好处？”，而应该多想想“我要怎么给别人留下好印像？”

保持联系

在商业交往中，最重要的不是分发自己的名片，而是收集别人的名片。因为大多数人忙着做自己的事，根本没空理睬你，除非已经当你是朋友或认为你有利可图。你在Twitter上的好友可能会时不时地喊你一下，因为你能给他们透露一些游戏开发的幕后消息。但大型游戏新闻网站上的评论员每天要接收上百条邮件，你觉得他们会主动联系你？如果你不自觉联系他们，你可能再也不会跟他们有交集。所以，当你的新项目运作时，给他们发邮件吧，告诉对方你是某某某，感谢他们对你上个游戏的评论，提醒他们是否想了解你的新游戏等等。

利益/价值

人际关系的建立基础是利益。能从交际中获得最多利益的人正是努力维持关系的人。一旦双方建立起友谊，就会互相给予对方价值从而保持联系；但建立起友谊之前，给予好处往往是单方面的行为，特别是对那些从无名小卒成长为企业家的人。

举个例子。鲍勃知道乔是某大型游戏新闻网站的评论员，那时的鲍勃还只是一文不名的小开发者，所以他努力吸引乔的注意力、和乔保持联系，因为乔的评论会给他的游戏带来大量关注和曝光率（鲍勃得到利益）。几年过去了，鲍勃经营了一家顶尖游戏开发公司，此时公司正在出售一款成千上万人排队抢购的游戏。乔联系鲍勃得知独家新闻，为自己的游戏网站增加大量关注和曝光率（乔得到利益）。

理想的关系是双方都能给予对方好处。就像上面的例子一样，鲍勃拉乔一把，乔借鲍勃力。所以一开始，你要这么想“我要怎么给这个人创造价值？”而不是盘算着“这个人能给我带来什么好处？”二者的差别说小也小，只不过是发封邮件的事，说大也大，相当于合作互相推销。

处理评论

你会得到1星的评级和苛刻的批评。这种事再所难免，无论你的游戏多么好，你的名气有大。无论如何，总有人不喜欢你的游戏。网络允许人们自由表达自己的想法，当然也包括直接抨击你。

当我把《Elusive Ninja》的预告片挂到视频网站上时，我心想“太好了！我的游戏预告片上了我最喜欢的网站！大快人心，我前半辈子的努力付出终于迎来了人生的高潮”。接着，下面出现了一堆这样的评论“没意思”、“差劲”、“老套”和“华而不实”。说实话，看到这些评论真的很令人沮丧。但我知道，在网络这种宽松的环境下，实话实说很容易，使用别名的评论往往比本人说话更尖锐，再加上确实有不少糟糕的游戏，人们已经习惯了游戏没有上乘的画面，所以就算真的闪出几个华美的镜头，人们的反应也只是“看看就好”。

所以我告诉我自己，不要给自己施压，因为即使是最新的《马里奥》或《合金装备》的预告片会有人叫衰。

我和一个朋友逛E3游戏展的一个摊位时，我说了句“哼，差劲。”然后意识到这个摊位是有人连夜搭建的，此时可能就站在前面欣赏着自己的杰作、陶醉于建立起自己的游戏公司的梦想之中，而我却冷不防地打破了他的美梦，留他在泪水中感伤无人赞赏他的艰辛工作。

我的教训是，不要把批评和自己本人联系起来；脸皮要厚一点，不要把别人的批评当成对自己的人身攻击。

友好待人

我在以前的文章中提过这一点了，但我想再次强调，因为这点太重要了。当许多批评炮轰你时，要保持冷静可能非常困难。那就别看电脑了，休息个把小时或清闲一整天，这样在处理消极评论以前，你就有机会冷静一下。最坏的举动莫过于以同样不堪的回复回应消极评论。一旦你这么做了，就等于向别人暴露你的弱点，一方面别人会认为你这人靠不住，另一方面你自己的心情也会变得很差。

另外请记住，你不必回应每个人。如果有人显然是在挑衅你，或者只是固执地认为你的游戏不好，那么就不必再回应了，跳过他们的评论或礼貌地表示求同存异。确实要回复的话，就这么回复吧——“我真不知道该怎么说了，如果您不喜欢我的游戏，没事，您别买就是了！”

不惧做决定

保证你所做的决定是出于商业原因。做出错误的决定没关系，毕竟所有人都会犯错。如果你所做的决定是出于确凿的、充分的理由，你就不会像草率出错时那样狠狠地责备自己了。

相信自己

一旦做出决定，那就随它去吧。过去的就让它过去吧。你做过研究，知道凡事都有正反两面，然后决定好要走的路。不要太有压力，没有必要彻夜不眠地怀疑自己、担忧结果，因为在出结果以前你什么也做不了。无论结果是好是坏，你要做的就是相信即使结果不理想，你也有办法弥补。几乎不存在什么困境是无法克服的。你做的每一个决定、你承受的每一次批评，都会增加将来做出正确决断的信心。

正确对待他人建议

你会遇到许多人跟你提建议，如你的游戏应该怎么设计、你的游戏应该是什么风格、你要怎么打理你的生意、你应该雇用什么人、你应该在什么上面投多少钱……会跟你提这些建议的通常是跟你亲密的朋友或家人，他们是出于好心帮你才不惜贡献出自己的人生智慧。

对待他人的建议的主要原则是，扪心自问：“这个人在我的行业里算成功吗？”如果答案是否定的，那么就对他们的建议持保留态度，再换个角度想“这条建议是否符合我的情况，是否与我的经历合拍？”虽然这么盘算别人的建议未免太过冷酷，但要成为独立开发者，学会淘汰无效信息是重要的课题。你老爸或许是个成功的商人，但那并不意味着他对游戏行业的营销方式了如指掌。你最好的朋友可能闲暇时也制作游戏，但那并不意味着他对游戏的发行和营销一清二楚。但从另一方面来说，如果是像小岛秀夫（游戏邦注：Hideo Kojima，《合金装备》的制作人）这样的游戏开发人给你出的点子，那就得听了。这并不是说其他人的建议都没用，只是要你学会从中挑出有效的信息。

即使你没打算采纳某人的建议，也要礼貌地感谢他们，然后继续按自己的意思去做。还是上面提到的那句，出于商业目的做决定。如果你事前做过功课、计算过数据了，那么要排除纯粹出于好心但无实际经验证明的建议就更加容易了。你确实知道你为什么选择了A方案而放弃你的朋友（非业内人士）所坚持的B方案。万一他的B方案是正确的，你免不了要听他说“看吧，我告诉过你了！”但你可以一笑置之，因为你明白自己当初是在未知后果的情况下做出最佳选择。

当然，写这部分内容对我来说还是蛮讽刺的，毕竟我的《Elusive Ninja》还算不上真正的成功，前面我也提到“这个人在我的行业里算成功吗？”，所以你可以跳过这整部分内容了。虽然我的游戏还不算成功，但从游戏的制作、发行到营销的这整个过程，我确实颇有经验了。在开创Bulletproof Outlaws博客以前，我已经在游戏开发公司干了5年了，所以虽然我可能没有太多成功的经历，但是！我确实有不少经验。

盯紧财政

没点钱什么事也做不成。你不需要太有钱，但至少要保证付得起每个月的房租和最低限度的伙食。人们非常容易就忘了自己的经济情况，因为当你知道大事不妙时，你只是抱着侥幸，认为不查看银行帐户就没事。这就像接受你免不了犯错的现实，你必须意识到你的财政也有入不敷出的时候。

如果你拖家带口（另一半、孩子等），那么盯紧财政就太重要了。你应该知道并且和他们商量“什么时候放弃？我愿意损失多少？（万一）我愿意负多少债？我靠什么偿还债务？”在此，我非常想推荐读者们去看一个非常棒的加拿大电视节目《Till Debt Do Us Part》，其中深入刻画了一个负债的人如何克服看似毫无希望的困境。当然，事先做好预算比最终被迫放弃更好！

即使确实到了不得已的时候，“放弃”也未必就是与梦想绝缘。只不过要把追求梦想的时间往后拖几年罢了。

就我个人来说，我刚30岁，用不着养家糊口，每个月的开销相当低（每月房租600，伙食200，娱乐如喝酒泡吧200）。我还没负债，所以我也不介意因为做游戏而欠点钱。如果我负债1万美元，那我就先不干了。如果我手头紧张，通过我那些搞美工的朋友和其他关系，我可以找到足够的零活来应付每月的生活开销。我以前在酒吧当过酒保，工钱可观，所以我可以回头再干一两年来还债。如果我还想从事电子游戏，现在有足够的启动时间，重做也很容易，而且我能保证找到工作来支付债务（即使工资不太多，或工作不如做自己的游戏来得有趣）。

说了这么多，我的重点其实就是我已经做好最坏的打算了，我可以安心地继续做游戏，不受财政问题的干扰。我可以很淡定地花钱买昂贵的设备，因为我对自己的财政情况一清二楚，我知道什么时候营销投机榨了我太多钱，我就得收手。你必须有这种意识，这样你才能放长眼光。我钱不多，但我知道把力使在刀刃上。

当然，如果你的第一款游戏就挣够了一百万，那以上内容你可以跳过了，请尽情地在钱堆里打滚吧。

怪事

你的游戏发布后，什么随机事件都来了。你会收到许多游戏公司的项目或服务邀请邮件，有些是合法的，有些则相当可疑。新游戏当然也引起了营销代理商和盗版商的注意。

盗版现象

你的游戏一上应用商店，盗版就会随之而来。你无法阻止盗版。你可以花些时间设置禁止盗版游戏运行的机制。但迟早有人会破解。所有游戏都有盗版，所以不要以为就你倒霉——在被盗版的船上，你不是一个人。

最让人沮丧的是，盗版居然比合法下载版抢先。《Elusive Ninja》内置移动数据分析服务Flurry可以追踪游戏数量。这款游戏刚在应用商店上架数周，Flurry上就有个成员联系我讨论促销奖

品的事。他在邮件中提到我的游戏好像破了30000销售量大关。我郁闷了“什么情况这是？”因为根据AppFigures，我的游戏销售量不过200份。我查了下Flurry 统计数据，将其与AppFigures的结果作比较。请看下面两张世界地图：

当我第一眼看到这张图时，我笑了，显然是盗版搞鬼。我早听说iPhone游戏盗版猖獗，但没想到这么猖獗。盗就盗吧，我才不管，反正这也不是我能解决的。我记得有人追踪盗版游戏者，却收到对方的回复邮件说“为了正义与荣誉，我们盗版了你的游戏”。看吧，追踪盗版简直是浪费精力。总会有人盗版你的游戏，这只是技术的本性。盗版游戏的人从来就不打算购买你的游戏，所以你也说不上损失金钱。如图可知，就算没有这些大搞盗版的人，我也不会从亚洲地区获得3万美元的销售额。

所以淡定地看待这一切吧。我决定把劣势转化为优势——把应用商店的游戏描述改成“游戏XXX用户已破20000大关！”哈哈，我没说假话啊。这样别人偶然瞄到我的游戏时，会以为我的游戏非常热门。我曾打算放出新闻稿“《Elusive Ninja》有2万名用户！”但我觉得那样可能太过火，考虑到我的道德底线，还是算了吧。

服务邀请

除了盗版者，营销代理、推广服务、评论服务等等也会盯上你。当然这些你都可以从谷歌上搜索到，不过用不着你找他们，他们就自己送上门来了。有些邮件是你自己早有耳闻的服务商发来的，有些邮件只能看看就算了。怎么区分呢？我首先做的是给邮件“纠错”——英文拼写那么烂，来路可疑；然后谷歌一下邮件的网址，考查其合法性；最后是谷歌对其服务的相关评价、用户感言、网站流量等等。

我曾收到一封邮件称“我和朋友会给你的游戏5星的应用商店游戏评级，价格从优，欲知详情请联系我”。曾经有人明确地给出假网站跟我谈服务项目，目的是骗我的游戏推广码以获取免费游戏，根本不是帮我推广或评论。

有许多合法的推广服务当然不错，因为他们的描述会极大地带动销售。我发现不少人喜欢用手机或网络电话联系我，但我个人不太好这口，因为我喜欢自己琢磨研究。通常这些服务商会全天候电话轰炸，确实让人招架不住，特别是当你正在开发第一个专业项目时。

切记，他们联系你是因为需要你。与有利于自己的公司联系、拒绝不利于自己的服务邀请，让对方知道你需要时间通盘考虑，研究之后再做最终决定。

结语

我猜大多数人会跳过本文，但我确实认为本文是我写的所有系列文中最重要的文章之一。走上创业路线，特别是成为独立开发人，这是一条漫长而孤独的旅程，很多时候面临的是心理战。自己就是自己最大的敌人，同时也是最可靠的伙伴……这取决于你的心态。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Indie Game Marketing: ARTICLE IV – Psychology

by Jeff Hangartner

PSYCHOLOGY

On my Bulletproof Outlaws blog I cover some of the psychology behind game development and behind running your own business from home. Right now I want to talk a bit about the psychology involved in marketing and sales, because I think a lot of people just focus on the numbers and data and there isn’t a lot of emphasis put on the mental trials you’ll go through. It’s kind of like playing poker, there’s the actual cards involved and that’s important, but there’s also a lot of mentalities and outlooks you need to develop to handle the ups and downs in the game.

Ego And Attachment

To paraphrase Fight Club: “You are not your sales. You are not your website hits. You are not your downloads. You are not your reviews. You are not your App Store rank.”

Learn not to attach your self-worth to how your game does. This can be really hard to do, because you spent weeks, months, sometimes years, putting your blood, sweat and tears into your game and you stayed up all night, worked every weekend, and fine-tuned everything in the game to the best of your skills…it’s your baby, and you’re finally sharing it with the world and hoping to figure out if you can make a living doing your dream job.

Highs and Lows

Your sales do great the first day, and you get a couple 5-Star reviews and you’re thinking “I’m awesome, I did it, I’m gonna’ be a success!!” and start planning out your next game as visions of dollar-signs dance around in your head. The next day your sales drop down to a fraction of what they started at. And you see a few 1-Star reviews popping up. A big review site reviews your game and says the controls are difficult to learn and the game isn’t long enough and gives it 2 out of 5. You reload AppFigures watching in almost real-time as every hour your App Store rank drops. A week later your game is barely selling and you’re miserable…you haven’t touched designing the next game and you’re thinking about how hard it’s going to be to go back to having to work a full-time job while only developing games in your spare time.

When you attach yourself to your stats, your self-worth fluctuates as frequently as your stats do. You’ll go through so many emotional rollercoasters on an almost daily basis that it’ll be hard to really focus on anything else. You’ll start second-guessing your decisions, you’ll be less motivated to work on your next game, and just in general you’ll do a lot of damage to your psyche that will affect your future as an Indie Game Developer.

On the flip side, even when your game does good there’s a risk. You start getting cocky, resting on your heels to enjoy the fruits of your labor instead of jumping into the next project to ensure you have a long-term sustainable income, starting to feel like you can’t make a wrong decision so you stop doing as much research and planning and start just winging things, and any down-swing in stats you hit is even more devastating because it’s knocking you off a much higher horse than you started out on.

Like the stock market or an epic poker game, your stats will go up and down all the time. If you can keep yourself from freaking out when sales are low, or slacking off when sales are high, you can make rational decisions to handle the situation.

You have to pay attention to your stats, reviews, etc. but don’t let them define you as a Game Developer. If you get a bunch of 1-Star reviews, read them and look for commonalities and try to figure out where you went wrong…was it the art style you chose? Was it the controls? Was it the overall game design or theme? Were there massive bugs that crash the game? And how can you fix these things in the future? Would more play-testing have helped? Should you have invested more time or money into an area of development?

Sure, you made some mistakes somewhere, but that doesn’t mean you’re not cut out to be a Game Developer. Just take it in stride and try to learn from your mistakes for the next time.

My Own Rollercoaster

When I started my Bulletproof Outlaws devBlog out, I was working on marketing it a bit trying to get some exposure to build up a handful of Followers for Elusive Ninja. At one point I got linked on Hackernews and I got like 5,000 hits in an hour. I remember freaking out (in a good way) and being so excited and picturing that being my big break and how it was all going to be so easy from there. I even panicked and called my web provider to see what the prices were to upgrade my site to handle that much traffic. …one day later, I was back to the usual 20 – 40 hits a day.

I spent a day running around like a chicken with its head cut off haha If that same thing were to happen again today, my first response would be “Awesome, that’s a ton of hits…let’s see how long it lasts before I get too excited.” It’s a lot less emotionally draining to keep a cool head about this stuff.

When I put out Elusive Ninja, I had decent sales the first couple days and then it dropped down from there. Instead of panicking I looked at it like “Okay, this sucks, but why isn’t it selling? Hmmm, looking into it it looks like people like it, it just doesn’t have any exposure so no one knows it exists. Alright, so this is basically a marketing challenge: How can I get more exposure for my game?” Again, it’s a lot less emotionally draining this way.

I still haven’t turned things around, but I plan to start my next game and will try cross-promoting Elusive Ninja when I Launch the new game, and I have some Touch Arcade advertising coming up, so I’m still not panicking yet. I’m going to stick to my plan and trust that I’ll either be able to turn things around in the future, or I’ll learn enough lessons from this game that I’ll be more capable of turning my next games into successes.

Some people will say this is just delusional confidence and stubborn optimism, but I think you need a little of both of those things to succeed as an Indie Developer of ANYTHING, whether it’s games, music, film-making, writing, etc.

Daily Reports

A lot of times I wish I could get up to the minute stats on my sales from the App Store and think “if I could see them that frequently I could capitalize on sales spikes better!” and that kind of thing. Realistically though, all it’d do is have me checking my stats 24/7 waiting for the numbers to go up and beating myself up when they don’t. I like the AppFigures service because it E-Mails me my stats every morning, so I know when I’m thinking about it in the middle of the afternoon that I might as well cut that thread off in my mind entirely because there’s literally nothing I can do about it until I get the next day’s sales E-Mails. When I started my Bulletproof Outlaws blog I was checking the hits every few hours on my iPhone. Now I check once a week at the most and it’s a lot less nerve-wracking.

Dealing With People

Your ego and attachment to your sales will also often affect how you interact with other people. Whether it’s how you describe how your game is doing to your friends at a party, or how you respond to a bad review. If your game isn’t doing well and it’s got you questioning yourself, you start getting annoyed at your friends for asking you about your business and you react a lot more hostile to criticism. When you can separate your self-worth from your sales, you can handle these things in a more positive manner and sometimes find a silver lining in that dark cloud.

It’s hard, everyone slips up with it, but it’s important to work on this because, especially in this day and age where we’re all so connected via the Internet and everyone is Tweeting and friends with eachother on Facebook, the things you say and do stick around forever. In small-team Indie Development especially, people tend to talk about the names behind projects rather than just the projects themselves.

Notch, Jonathan Blow, Adam Atomic, Edmund McMillen…odds are if you’re in the Indie scene you know the games these guys are famous for making. Indie Devs tend not to be giant faceless corporations, so you want to try to handle your personal interactions with other Developers, the Press, critics, friends and family, etc. in positive, productive ways. This doesn’t mean you have to censor your thoughts or your views, it just means that you should try to remember to present them in a way that doesn’t make everyone think you’re a dillhole.

Building Relationships

Everyone knows it’s important to build relationships with the Press, but don’t forget about building them with your fans, and even your worst critics. Chat with people on your Twitter, check out the websites of people who are following you, reply when people ask you questions (even hard-hitting questions), build E-Mail lists of people to remember to keep in touch with.

My Own Experiences

When I was starting Elusive Ninja’s development, I got an E-Mail from a guy who was planning to move to Calgary and looking for a game design job. I didn’t have any money so I couldn’t use him, but instead of just ignoring his E-Mail or telling him “Sorry man, not hiring right now!” I sent him back an E-Mail with a list of Calgary game Developers. I know the scene here pretty good, and I’ve researched that stuff before so I knew where to find websites that list that kind of thing, so I sent them his way and wished him luck. He was super appreciative and it just took a few minutes out of my time to build that little relationship but now there’s someone out there in Calgary who would probably be happy to help me out if I needed it down the road because of how I handled things.

When my testers send me feedback about my game, I make sure to respond to their E-Mails point by point and thank them for helping me out. When people Retweet my Tweets I make sure to Tweet a “thanks to @whoever for the RT!” back their way. If someone’s looking for a gamedev job on Twitter, I’ll RT their Tweet to help their resume get around because I have a lot of gameDevs Following me. I’m still pretty bad at responding to E-Mails in a timely manner, but I DO try to get around to them eventually haha.

None of this directly affects the sales of your games, but think of this stuff from a longer-term perspective. As you build a reputation up, you start to carry a little more weight and the projects you make tend to get more attention, both positive and negative. It’s infinitely easier to get through tough times when you have a large support base behind you. Plus most people are pretty cool, and making new friends is fun, so don’t look at it as a matter of “What can this person do for me?” but more “How can I leave a good impression on this person so they feel good about our interaction?”

Keep In Touch

In our Business course we were told that the most important thing at a business event isn’t handing out your business cards, it’s collecting other people’s business cards. Because the reality is that most people have too much of their own stuff going on to bother contacting you until they see you as a friend or someone who’s offering something of value to them. Your Twitter Followers will probably give you a shout here and there because you’re offering the value of your game and it’s development and behind-the-scenes stuff to them. But a Reviewer on some huge game news site who gets hundreds of E-Mails a day? If you don’t make an effort to keep in touch with them, you’re probably not going to hear from them again. So shoot them an E-Mail when your next project is going on, remind them who you are, mention that you appreciated their review of your last game and figured they might want a heads-up about your next one, etc.

Value

Relationships tend to work based on value. Whoever’s going to receive the most value from the interaction is the one that’s going to make an effort to stay in contact with the other person. Once you both have a friendship together, you’re mutually giving eachother value so you both keep in touch, but at the start it’s often very one-sided especially when it comes to entrepreneurs starting out as nobodies.

Bob knows Joe is a Reviewer for a big gaming news site and Bob is an unknown so he tries to get Joe’s attention and tries to keep in touch because Joe reviewing his game would get him a ton of attention and exposure (Bob gets the value). A few years later, Bob runs a top game development company and is putting out it’s next multi-million seller hit game that people line up outside of stores for a chance to buy. Now Joe is trying to get in touch with Bob because being able to get an exclusive feature from him would bring his gaming news site a ton of attention and exposure (Joe gets the value).

Ideally you want to form relationships where both sides give eachother value. Bob scratches Joe’s back, and Joe scratches Bob’s back. So when you’re starting out, try to think “How can I give this person value?” instead of “What value can this person give me?” The differences might be as simple as the way you word your E-Mails, or as huge as doing favors or teaming up for cross-promotions.

Dealing With Critics

You’re going to get 1-Star reviews and harsh criticisms. This is just going to happen, it doesn’t matter how good your game is or how big your reputation is.

Somewhere out there are people who aren’t going to like what you’re doing, and the Internet gives them the ability to express that to everyone in the world, including expressing it directly to you.

My favorite example from Elusive Ninja is when I put the trailer for it up on GameTrailers. When I got the trailer up on a video site I was like “This is awesome! My trailer is up on one of my favorite news sites!! I’m so happy, I’ve put so much hard work into this, this is the culmination of a lifetime of hopes and dreams and hard work and–” and then a bunch of the first comments are like “Laaaaame.” and “Sucks!” and “Ninjas are so cliche.” and “Yet another iPhone game that’s pretty but has no substance” haha It was a little disheartening to be honest. But at the same time I understand that the Internet in general makes it pretty easy to shoot out gut reactions and using aliases means people tend to be a little harsher than they might be in person, plus on top of it there really ARE a ton of crappy iPhone games out there and people have gotten used to expecting them to not have much more than pretty art so as soon as people see a trailer that has flashes of that it’s like an instant “meh, forget it”.

So I told myself not to stress it too much because even the newest Mario or Metal Gear Solid trailer will have people saying “Looks dumb!”

Then a friend and I were at E3 wandering around the booths and we went into one and I was like “pfft. Sucks.” and then realized there’s probably some dude who set that booth up the night before and stood in front of it, admiring his work, proudly looking over the culmination of his life’s ambitions building a videogame company from scratch and managing to take it all the way to E3 making multi-million dollar games…and then I come along and I’m like “Laaaaame.” and that poor guy is in the back crying that nobody appreciates all his hard work.

The lesson here is just to not let criticism get to you. Build a thick skin and don’t take criticism of your games as a personal attack.

Kill ‘Em With Kindness

I talked about this back in Article III – Game Related & Maintenance, but I want to stress it again because it’s important. When you’re getting a lot of criticism it can be hard to keep your cool. Try stepping back from the computer and waiting a few hours or a day before responding to anything negative so that you have a chance to cool down a little. Nothing is worse than reacting really badly to someone’s negative comments. It lets them know they’re getting to you which some trolling types feed off, it makes other people think you’re insecure, it keeps you in a foul mood in your personal life, and it extends the back and forth dialogue until you come off like those people who’s 30-page argument with “cooldude69” has morphed into a debate about the political policies of 3rd world countries in the YouTube comments section of a “dog pooping on a baby” video.

Also remember that you don’t have to respond to EVERYONE. If someone is clearly being negative or trying to goad you into an argument, or just seems adamant in their position that you did something wrong in your game, simply stop responding, gloss over their comment in your response, or respectfully agree to disagree. There’s nothing wrong with an “I don’t know what to tell you man, if you don’t like how my game is looking, that’s okay, don’t buy it! ” It’s a lot better than perpetuating the negativity.

Decision Making

I covered this in Article II – Traditional Marketing, but just as a refresher: Make sure you have Business Reasons for the decisions you make. It’s okay to make wrong decisions, everyone does at some point. But if you had solid, well thought-out reasons for why you made your decision, you won’t beat yourself up about it nearly as much as if you just wing your decision making haphazardly.

Trust Yourself

Once you’ve made a decision, let it go. What’s done is done. You did your research, you know the pros and cons, and you’ve picked which way you’re going. Don’t stress it, second-guessing yourself all night and worrying about the outcome, there’s nothing you can do until you see how it all pans out. Maybe it works out good, maybe it works out bad, but trust that if it works out bad, you’ll be able to recover. There are very few situations that are truly impossible to pull yourself out of. Each decision you make and each crisis you survive builds your confidence and these decisions get easier over time.

Everyone Knows Best

You’re going to run into a lot of people who give you unsolicited advice on how your game should be designed, how it should look, how you should run your business, who you should hire, how much you should spend on what. Often these are close friends and family members and they honestly have the best of intentions and are trying to help you by offering up their wisdom from their own experiences.

But the main rule about this that was drilled into us in our Business Class is to ask yourself “Is this person at LEAST as successful at what I’m doing as I want to be?” If they’re not, then take their advice with a grain of salt and think for yourself “Does this make sense to me and jive with my experiences?” It sounds a little cold, but part of being an Indie Developer is learning to weed out what is and isn’t useful information. Your dad might be an amazing tool salesman, but that doesn’t mean he knows anything about the game industry or running a business. Your best friend might make hobby game projects in his spare time, but that doesn’t mean he knows anything about publishing and marketing a game. On the flip side, if a game Developer like Hideo Kojima gives you some advice, listen to it. This doesn’t mean other people never have good advice, just learn to sort the good from the uninformed.

Even if you have no intention of following the person’s advice, be polite and thank them for their input, then just go ahead and do what you believe is right. This comes back to having Business Reasons for your decisions. It’s a LOT easier to avoid second-guessing yourself and to weed out well-intentioned but inexperienced advice when you’ve done the research, calculated the numbers, etc. and you KNOW the reasons you have for choosing Decision A are more solid than the “I just don’t think that’ll work, dude” your friend who hasn’t developed games before is basing Decision B on. He might turn out to be right and you’ll have to hear “See? I told you!” but it’s easier to laugh about that when you know you made the optimal decision at the time regardless of the outcome.

I am, of course, aware of the irony of writing this section in that Elusive Ninja hasn’t really been successful, so you could just write off this entire series of Marketing Articles since I’m not “at least as successful at what you’re doing as you want to be” haha But while my game isn’t a success, I DO have experience taking a game from start to finish, publishing it, trying different avenues of marketing, etc., and I worked in the game industry at an actual gameDev company for 5 years before I started Bulletproof Outlaws, so while I might not have a lot of success (yet!), I DO have experience.

Watch Your Finances

You can’t do anything without some kind of money. You don’t need a LOT of it, but realistically you’re going to have to be able to pay your rent and buy groceries each month at a bare minimum. It’s really easy to ignore your money situation, because when you know it’s not going well you just kind of hope that if you don’t look at your bank account then you’re not really in trouble. But much like accepting that you’re going to make wrong decisions at times, you have to accept that there will probably be points where your finances are low or in the red.

When you know exactly where you stand for money, you can gauge how many projects you can bomb before you’re screwed. You can tell whether you should choose a large project or a small project next, you can decide to scale back game ideas or hire extra help to cram in extra features, you can tell if maybe it’s time to get a part-time job or do some freelance work to help pay the bills or if it’s time to shut things down and go back to a “normal” career.

If other people depend on you (a Significant Other, children, etc.) then this is especially important. You should know and discuss with them “What’s the give up point? How much money am I willing to lose on this before I stop? How much am I willing to go into debt for this, and if I can’t turn it around what’s my plan for paying off that debt?” There’s actually a really awesome Canadian show you can watch full episodes of online called “Till Debt Do Us Part”. I can’t recommend the show enough, it takes really hard-hitting looks at people who’ve gotten themselves into debt and teaches them and the viewers the skills needed to pull yourself out of seemingly hopeless financial situations. Learning to budget properly is a lot better option than having to give up!

Even then though, “giving up” doesn’t necessarily mean never achieving your dream. It just might mean taking a few years to do something else to pull yourself out of a hole before you try again.

For me, I’ve just turned 30 and I don’t have anyone who relies on me for money, and my monthly expenses are pretty low ($600 rent per month, $200 for groceries, $200 for fun stuff like drinking and wing-nights). I don’t have any debt so I’m also willing to go into some debt to pursue this. My cutoff is somewhere around $10,000 in debt before I give up. Through artist friends and general connections I’m making during all of this, if I’m financially tight I can find enough freelance work as an artist to make sure I can pay my monthly living expenses. I’ve got some experience as a bartender and the money in that is great, so I could take that up for a year or two to pay off my debt. And if I want to stick to videogames, there are enough start-ups out there these days and I’m able to re-locate easily enough that I’m sure I could find work to pay off my debt even if it doesn’t pay amazingly or isn’t as fun to work on as working on my own games.

The point is that I’ve planned for the worst-case scenarios and I can pursue my next few games with no concerns or guilt about money lingering over my head stressing me out. I can comfortably invest some money in an expensive Touch Arcade ad because I know exactly what my financial situation is at, and I can tell when to pull money out of certain marketing ventures because they’re draining too much of my funds. It’s important to have this awareness so you can think long-term. I don’t have a ton of money, I’m just really strategic with where I spend it.

Of course if your first game sells millions, feel free to ignore all that and just swim around in a vault full of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck.

Strange Things That Happen

A lot of random stuff starts happening once your game goes live. You’ll start getting a bunch of offers in your E-Mail. Some of them will be legit, some of them will sound fishy, and some of them will be flat out “wtf??” Once your game goes live it triggers a bunch of people’s attention, from marketing agencies to pirates.

Massive Piracy

This will happen the second your game is up on the App Store. You can’t stop pirates. You can invest some development time making your game not work if it detects it’s pirated, etc. but sooner or later someone will find a way around that. Everyone’s game is pirated, so don’t let it phase you…you’re not alone in the piracy boat.

The discouraging part is that usually the piracy happens before the legitimate downloads happen. Elusive Ninja has Flurry in it to track gameplay stats and a couple weeks after it went up on the App Store I was contacted by a guy at Flurry to talk about some promotional stuff. His E-Mail mentioned that my game seemed to be doing great with over 30,000 sales. I was like “wtf?” because I had less than 200 sales at the time according to AppFigures. I checked out my Flurry stats and compared them to my AppFigures stats and…well, compare the two world maps:

I actually laughed when I first saw it because it was so blatant. I had heard iPhone piracy was pretty bad, but there it is slapping me in the face. It doesn’t really bug me because what can you do about it? I remember some guy tracking down who pirated his game and E-Mailing them and getting a big “we pirate your crappy games for justice and honor” response from the pirate himself. It’s all just a waste of energy to me. People will always pirate your game, that’s just the nature of technology. Odds are the people who pirate your game probably weren’t going to buy it so you’re probably not losing any money in the long-run. I wasn’t going to get $30,000 from Asia if it weren’t for those darn pirates messing everything up.

So take it in stride and don’t let it upset you. I decided to use it to my advantage, putting “*** OVER 20,000 USERS! ***” at the top of my App Store description haha It’s technically true, and it makes my game seem more popular when someone new stumbles across it. I considered putting out a Press Release saying “Elusive Ninja passes 20,000 users!” but I figured that’d be a little bit overkill and cross some ethical boundary of mine.

Sketchy Offers

There are marketing agencies, distribution services, review services, etc. out there that you can find via Google, but at times they’ll come find YOU. Sometimes you’ll get a legitimate E-Mail from a service who’s name you recognize, and sometimes you’ll get E-Mails that make you go “hmmm…” The first thing I look for is the amount of bad Engrish in the E-Mail haha After that I’ll Google whatever website the person represents to check out if it looks and sounds legit. I’ll Google for reviews of their services, testimonials from previous clients, the amount of traffic their site gets, etc.

I’ve gotten E-Mails from people with sketchy sounding E-Mail accounts saying “Me & my friends will give u 5-Star reviews on the App Store 4 cheap let me know if u want 2 know mor” And I’ve gotten offers from people who clearly threw up quick fake sites and go around requesting Promo Codes just to get free games, with no intentions of actually promoting or reviewing the game.

A lot of the legitimate offers will sound really good, because that’s their job the way it’s your job to write an awesome description for your game on the App Store.

And a lot of people will be super pushy with their sales pitch. I find a lot of people like to get you on the phone or Skype, which I’m personally not a big fan of because I like to be able to think out my replies and do my research. Often they call people all day long selling whatever their service is and talking live can be a little overwhelming, especially when you’re developing your first professional project.

Just remember that if they’re contacting you, it’s because they need you. Hold meetings on your terms, turn down offers that don’t benefit you, and let them know you’ll need time to think things over and do your research before you make any final decisions.

CONCLUSION

This concludes our look at the psychological side of being an indie developer. I imagine this Article is the one that most people will skip, but I honestly think it’s one of the most important ones. Going the entrepreneurial route, especially working as a solo Developer can be a long and lonely road and a lot of the battle is more mental than anything else. We can be our own worst enemies, or our own most supportive allies…it all comes down to your state of mind.

In Article V – Optimal Marketing Plan, we’ll take a look at the culmination of all 5 of these Marketing Articles in the form of a list of steps that, based on my experiences, I would follow on my next game to spend the least amount of money and focus on the most beneficial areas of marketing and advertising. It won’t guarantee results or anything, but it’ll help Indie Developers channel their spending into optimal channels for Developers with a small marketing budget!（source:gamasutra）