作者：Shannon Drake

随着手机领域的迅猛发展，越来越多人看到手机开发的优势——小团队，低预算，以及快速回报，而我们也因此迎来了更多为自己的手机游戏寻求PR支持的人。但是手机领域的PR却与游戏领域的PR完全不同，我们也发现那些期待着能够通过新闻稿和一些截图中获得更多曝光率的开发者最终都以失望告终。所以在本篇文章中，我们将谈论手机游戏PR所面对的各种挑战，如何为你的游戏找到最合适的用户以及一些提高PR效能的方法。

找到你的用户

我们发现（并且得到用户的证实），比起追踪评论网站以及检查“热门新内容”，手机用户更有可能基于App Store Top 10去做出选择。从整体上看来，手机游戏玩家都是冲动派。他们会因为坐车无聊或在工作空档中寻找一些能够消遣几分钟的内容，而不会追随着游戏发展进程数月时间，就像《使命召唤》的玩家那样。

手机游戏玩家更有可能听取来自好友的口头宣传，以及App Store或Google Play所推荐的内容。如果你的预算或时间只够你做一件事，那么你最好能将时间花费在搞好与谷歌或苹果间的关系上，并将钱投入于广告以及像Tapjoy（刺激下载）这样的服务中。

根据最近的研究，你的应用每天必须赚取4万7千美元才有可能进入前10排行榜单。这是一座陡峭的山峰，简单地说，基于你的游戏价格点，你每天需要获得4万5千至5万的销量。如果有人说包含几份新闻稿和几张截图的PR活动就足以创造每天5万的销量，那么我们现在就不需要在此写这篇文章而应该在游轮上晒着日光浴吧！

手机新闻

从规模上看，手机游戏新闻远小于传统游戏媒体——只有少数网站和作家涉及这一内容，这便意味着手机新闻未拥有PC和主机网站那样庞大的读者。我们发现大多数手机玩家并未将自己当成是“玩家”，即他们将游戏当成是一种生活方式。他们都是在偶然情况下接触到智能手机，或者说是主要致力于其它平台，但同时也是拥有智能手机的玩家。

Angry Birds(from yesky)

此外，手机游戏网站也充斥着许多新闻稿，特别是当准入障碍变得特别低时，即意味着任何人只要拥有几百美元就能够自称为“手机开发者”，并宣称自己“即将发 行游戏”，即使游戏还未存在。他们对现有游戏的更新并没有多大兴趣，即使这种更新很重要；但是像《愤怒的小鸟》这种类型的大规模特许经营游戏来说便是例外 了，如果你获得过《愤怒的小鸟》这样的成功，你便可以忽视这篇文章。尽管玩家可能会因为你的扩展而开心，但是惨痛的教训告诉我们，新闻中只会出现一些一年 前的内容并转向收件箱的下一个内容。

如果要在手机新闻中取得突破，甚至超越传统游戏新闻，你就需要想出具有吸引力的诱惑方法。出色的游戏玩法便是一种吸引力（游戏邦注：发布相关视频或游戏玩法预览），或者一个带有非常棒的故事，或非常出色且具有新颖理念的团队。是的，图像也很重要。人们总是会选择一些看上去较流行或迷人的内容——不一定是基于最前沿的Unreal Engine 4引擎，并且我们也发现作者们通常会忽视那些具有普通或糟糕外观的游戏，即时它从整体上看来是款好游戏。

设定你的目标和期望值

goals(from effective-time-management-strategies.com)

作为PR代理我们在手机领域遇到的一个问题便是潜在客户的模糊目标。他们之所以想要发送新闻稿是因为其它公司也这么做，而不是因为他们想借此提高曝光率或用户意识。另外一个常见的错误观点便是认为新闻稿和审查推动是个魔弹，即我们可以采取简单的行动便将游戏推向App Store前10榜单内容。

不幸的是，我们现在的客户已经发现他们自己的PR活动不能够带来巨大的销量和下载量了。手机用户并不像时髦风尚达人那样会紧跟着新闻信息——用户只需要花费99美分便能够尝试一款手机游戏（而不是50或60美元），所以出现在网站上的新闻稿或审查并不能帮助游戏有效吸取用户的注意。

你可以考虑将PR活动作为主要市场营销活动的伴随物。如果你的游戏特别吸引人并勾起了用户的兴趣，我们便能够获得网站的评审。我们可以去推广你的视频并确保人们能够注意到它。我们可以采取各种可行的方法去宣传你的游戏，但是PR却不是魔弹，并不可能拯救那些普通或糟糕的游戏。在手机领域中尤其如此。

有效的PR活动可以帮助你传达相关信息，但是就其本身而言却不足以推动销量的增长。

计划你的活动

PR的作用在于，它只是你的广泛市场营销和推广策略的一部分。你的关注点应该在于呈现游戏的存在，突出之处以及与其它手机游戏的区别。虽然这是处理许多游戏新闻的标准，但是在准入障碍极低，且玩家数量不断增长的手机领域中这更加重要。

在我们与手机新闻的互动中，最突出的一种情况便是他们希望明确游戏是一种真正的游戏，而不只是另一个宣传片，必须具有可游戏性。已经有许多关于PR职业技巧的文章了，但是我们仍需要对此反复强调。在手机领域中，如果眼前摆着的是一个大型授权游戏，一款现有游戏的续集，或者来自深受喜爱的开发者的下一款大型游戏，那么作家们真正在乎的便只有产品宣传片和截图。

如果你足够幸运能够创造出“愤怒的小鸟：阿卡姆疯人院”这种游戏，那么你的宣传片便广受追捧。如果还有什么情况的话，只能说截图和描述并不包含于其中。手机新闻希望看到的是运行中的游戏，如果他们能够亲自操作的话就更好了。

简而言之，你的视频应该呈现出游戏主题，游戏的突出之处，它具有哪些现有游戏所缺少的元素。在传统游戏新闻中，关于经典公式或略微陈旧图像的不同问题总是会让所有内容变得更具挑战性，但这种设置却是可能的。手机新闻更重视新颖性和闪光处。如果你的产品并不能改变一种类型或呈现一些新机制，那么你便很难获得任何牵引力。

规划你的时间轴

除此之外，你必须确保宣传片是瞄准游戏开发周期的最后阶段，即游戏已经具有了游戏性，或者你需要为此确定一个具体的日期。这么做才能表现出你比那种在自己房间里宣告一款可能永远都不会出现的“游戏”的人诚恳得多，并且能够帮助你将更多宣传片推向作家们的收件箱中。

不过在面对我们的客户时，创造出可游戏的内容才是最重要的。提供给他们一款可游戏的游戏比呈现出任何宣传片更有吸引力，这么做能够让他们根据自己的医院去创造内容，而不是完全基于我们去提供视频和截图。

如今的手机新闻并未拥有足够广泛的基础设施能够创造出主流游戏新闻业那般强大的内容。很少有网站会对预告片，功能，游戏图像，捧场文章，以及那些能够维持长时间涨势或用于造势的文章感兴趣（不过也有例外）。而一款真正出色的游戏值得拥有这些内容，但是对于大多数手机游戏来说，新闻基础设施其实并未存在，作家们也对其不感兴趣。

在计划你的手机活动时，PR能够根据你的视频和其它材料而让你的预告片显得更有趣，如果你的游戏足够有趣的话，他们还会发布一些宣传片等内容。但是大多数手机游戏却很少去执行这种活动，并且会在游戏变得特别有趣时再揭示这些内容。

当游戏发行后，来自新闻界的兴趣便会大大下滑。很少有游戏能够因为之后的修补程序或更新内容获得新闻报告（除非一些大型游戏），所以发行后的宣传重担便自然落到一些非PR渠道上，如社交媒体也没和帐号（游戏邦注：如Twitter，Facebook等），游戏社区等等方法。根据我们的经验，即使是畅销游戏的全面修改也只能得到一些粗略的新闻宣传。

比起执行一些扩展预告片或推广信息的活动，为手机执行PR并运行你的自己活动总是能够带来更多有用的信息。尽管PR应该作为你的市场营销活动的一大组成部分，但是PR本身并不能带来巨大的销量或购买用户。同样的，你还需要设置一些明确的目标，预先传达更多资产和信息，努力去证实游戏是真实的项目，足够有趣，且值得新闻媒体的关注。

（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）

PR Pro Tips: The Care And Feeding Of Mobile PR

by Shannon Drake

With the mobile space red hot and everyone seeing the virtues of mobile development–small teams, small budgets, and fast turnaround–we’re having more and more people come to us looking for PR support for their mobile titles. However, PR in the mobile space is completely different from PR in the gaming space, and we’ve found that developers expecting to get major coverage from an announcement press release and a few screenshots wind up disappointed. In this post, we’ll talk about the challenges of mobile-gaming PR, finding the right audience for your game and some ways to increase the impact of your PR efforts.

Finding Your Audience

We’ve found, and clients have confirmed, that mobile users are more likely to choose something based on it showing up in the App Store Top 10 than careful tracking of review sites and monitoring the “hot new thing.” By and large, mobile gamers are impulse driven. They’re bored on the train or on the can at work and looking for something to pass a few minutes, rather than following the development progress of a game for months on end the way people follow Call of Duty.

Mobile gamers are much more likely to listen to word of mouth from friends and what’s highlighted on the App Store or Google Play. If your budget or time is limited enough that you can only do one thing, your time is better spent working on your relationship with Google and/or Apple through whatever voodoo they require, and your money is better spent on advertising and services like Tapjoy that provide incentives for download.

According to a recent study, your app needs to be making $47,000 per day to crack the Top 10. It’s quite a steep mountain to climb and, in sheer back-of-the-envelope terms, that’s about 45-50,000 sales per day depending on your price point. If a single PR campaign from a single rep consisting of a few press releases and screenshots could drive 50,000 sales per day, we wouldn’t be giving away our secret sauce on our blog because we’d be in Tahiti on a very, very large boat suntanning.

The Mobile Press

The mobile gaming press is smaller than traditional games media in size–there are only a handful of sites and writers that cover mobile–and in circulation, meaning the mobile press doesn’t have the huge number of readers that PC and console sites have. We’ve found that mobile gamers, by and large, don’t consider themselves “gamers” in the sense of people that view gaming as a lifestyle. They’re people who happen to play video games or gamers that mainly play other platforms but also have smartphones so why not?

Furthermore, the mobile gaming sites are absolutely deluged with press releases, especially since the relatively low barrier to entry means anyone with a few hundred dollars can call themselves a “mobile developer” and announce their “upcoming game,” even if it doesn’t exist. There’s little to no interest in updates to games that are already out, even if the updates are fairly substantial; the exception to that would be a massive franchise like Angry Birds, but if you have an Angry Birds-level success on your hands, you don’t need this article. While players may be excited about your new expansion, painful experience has shown us that the press sees something that came out a year ago and moves on to the next thing in their inbox.

Breaking through to the mobile press, even more than the traditional gaming press, requires a compelling hook. A hook can be awesome gameplay–have a video ready or, even better, a playable preview build–or a team with a very cool story or, preferably, both and an awesome, good-looking new idea that hasn’t been seen before. And yeah, graphics matter. People will go for stylistic or stylishly retro or intriguing–it doesn’t have to be cutting-edge Unreal Engine 4–but we’ve found writers will ignore a game that’s mediocre or bad looking, even if it’s an otherwise good game.

Setting Your Goals And Expectations

One of the problems we run into as a PR agency working in the mobile space is hazy goals from our would-be clients. They want to send a press release because a press release is something companies do, not because they want to raise visibility or increase awareness. Another common misconception is that a press release and review push is a magic bullet and we’ll magically lift things onto the Top 10 of the App Store with a short campaign.

Unfortunately, our existing clients have found that PR campaigns on their own do not lead to massive sales or downloads. Mobile users are not as reliant on the press serving as tastemakers–it’s 99 cents to try a mobile game versus 50 or 60 dollars–and simply appearing on a site via press release or even review is not the path to mobile riches.

Think of a PR campaign as accompaniment to the meat of your marketing campaign. We can get reviews on sites if your game is particularly compelling and build interest that way. We can get your videos in circulation and make sure people see them. We can spread the word through the avenues available to us, however, PR is not a magic bullet and cannot save a mediocre or terrible game. This is especially true in mobile, where there’s little tolerance for a broken-but-interesting game of the sort that sometimes find a home on the PC or consoles.

A good PR campaign can amplify your message, but it will generally not drive sales on its own.

Planning Your Campaign

Where PR can help is as part of your wider marketing and promotional strategy. Your focus needs to be on showing that your game exists, why it’s cool, and why it’s different from the massive piles of mobile games already out there. While that’s the standard for dealing with any gaming press, it’s even more critical in mobile, where the barrier to entry is quite low and the number of players in the space is already high and getting higher every day.

In our interactions with the mobile press, the one thing that comes out more than anything is they want to know the game is an actual game, not just another announcement and it’s hopefully playable. Other PR Pro Tips articles have harped on videos, but prepare for more harping. In mobile, writers only care about product announcements and screenshots if it’s a big license, a sequel to an existing title, or the next big game from a much-loved developer.

If you’re fortunate enough to be making Angry Birds: Arkham Asylum, then your announcement will be covered widely. If it’s anything else, screenshots and a description probably aren’t going to cover it. The mobile press wants to see the game in action, even better if they can get their hands on a build and see for themselves.

In brief, your videos should show what the game is, why it’s cool, and what it brings to the table that existing games do not. In the traditional gaming press, having a different spin on a classic formula or slightly dated graphics makes things challenging but not impossible. The mobile press can be much more wrapped up in The New and The Shiny. If your product is not changing a genre or showing off some new mechanic, getting anything resembling traction is going to be extremely painful.

Planning Your Timeline

In addition, only make your announcement toward the end of the game’s development cycle when a playable build is available or you have a definite date when a playable build will be available. This shows you’re more serious than the guy in his bedroom announcing a “game” that will never come out and automatically puts you a step ahead of a huge chunk of the announcements in the average writer’s inbox.

In dealing with our clients, getting a playable build is super important since press want to do their own videos, features, etc., however, for mobile, it’s critical. Offering them a game that’s playable is much more likely to stoke their interest than yet another announcement, and it offers those in need of content the chance to produce some of their content rather than relying on you (or us) to provide them videos and screenshots down the line.

The existing mobile press also doesn’t have the wider infrastructure that mainstream gaming journalism does. Very few sites–with some exceptions–are interested in previews, features, making-ofs, game art profiles or write-ups, and the kind of articles that can support a long run-up or buzz-building campaign. A truly exceptional game may merit some or all of those, but for most mobile titles, the journalistic infrastructure simply doesn’t exist and writers aren’t interested in them.

When planning your mobile campaign, PR might be able to get you some preview interest based on your video and other materials and then release announcement and review coverage if your game is sufficiently interesting. However, most mobile games are not going to get a sustained campaign and the usual slow reveals unless they are exceptionally interesting. Expect, at most, three PR “bursts” of interest… if you’re lucky.

Post-launch, interest from the press falls off completely. Very few games merit coverage for major patches and expansions–though exceptions for huge titles always exist–so the post-launch burden for getting the word out will have to fall on your non-PR channels like your social media pages and accounts (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), your game’s community, and whatever avenues you’ve managed to cultivate. Even major overhauls for bestselling games have, in our experience, failed to merit more than cursory coverage.

Doing PR for mobile and running your own campaigns is more about quick strikes with lots of info than doing extended teaser campaigns and slowly rolling out information. While PR can and should be part of your marketing campaign, PR on its own is probably not going to lead to a significant number of downloads or purchases. As always, set some clear goals, deliver a lot of assets and information upfront, and do everything you can to prove the game is a real project, is interesting, and is worthy of press attention.(source:gamasutra)