作者：Haley Uyrus

与很多人一样，将我带到游戏产业中的引子便是弹球戏。在获得游戏设计和理论的硕士学位后，我几乎尝试了包括图像创作，QA，制作，设计和市场营销等游戏领域中的工作。我推广过许多游戏，即从游戏的开发过程到最终的发行过程。而以下便是我在Failbetter Games的游戏发行后市场营销工作中所所获得的一些感悟：

Fallen London (from sykong)

1.社区对立基游戏至关重要

因为比起成品，现在的游戏更像是一种服务，所以社区的培养就变得更加重要。它能够有效扩展游戏生活并促进玩家间的口口相传，而这也恰恰是每个市场营销者的目标。

直至现在我曾参与过包括开发，发行等阶段。我也发现了强大的社区在这里的重要性。我希望粉丝们都能真正了解游戏，甚至比我了解的更多。而当我发现他们简直就是游戏维基百科时我真的很惊讶，他们就像前卫的测试者一样。

虽然《伦敦陷落》拥有非常广泛的目标用户群体，但它的确是一款立基游戏，所以让我们的一个玩家向朋友推荐这款游戏确实是很有帮助的方法。

2.人们总是会对独立开发者使用传统广告方式感到惊讶

在伦敦看到《辐射4》的户外广告真的很好笑。它真的无处不在。Bethesda非常擅长这种具有即时影响力的做法，即在游戏发行前几个月突然宣称将公开一个备受瞩目的IP。而他们之所以能这么做便是因为拥有巨大的市场营销预算和知名IP：他们可以在伦敦的所有广告牌，Tube广告，公用电话亭，公共汽车站等等地方呈现Pip Boy。人们也已经习惯于这种宣传方式。

但显然人们并不经常看到独立开发者使用户外广告。我是在《伦敦陷落》的iOS版本发行后加入Failbetter，而该游戏的一种推广方式便是列车广告。那些玩过手机游戏的人可能不会去浏览传统的游戏新闻或观看Let’s Plays等视频，所以确保游戏推广活动能够覆盖到非核心玩家领域对于提高游戏认知度和用户获取概率非常重要。我们的许多粉丝便会拍下我们的广告照片并通过Twitter发送给我们，我们也对能在现实世界中看到自己的游戏感到惊喜。

3.现在的独立开发者更需要专门的市场营销者

在2016年7月，共有27849款游戏提交到美国的App Store。在同一个月，有超过631000款游戏已经活跃于App Store了。而当我在写这篇文章时，Steam上共有10644款游戏，当然还包括1802款处于Greenlight状态的游戏。

如果你是一名独立开发者，你可能已经投入了许多精力于游戏中。对于大多数人来说这不只是一种经营理念，这还是一种激情。即使你的主要目标并不只是单纯的游戏销售，但是你还是需要赚些钱去支付你在开发时所投入的一切，当然更不用提你想要进一步创造更多游戏了。市场营销并不是什么邪恶的东西，市场营销能够让更多人知道你的游戏并说服他们购买你的游戏。

对于大多数消费者来说，他们不会突然决定去购买一款游戏。你需要尽早进行市场营销工作，即可能在游戏开发过程中就要这么做了。为你的团队招募市场营销人员。即使只是兼职也没关系。如果你担心在市场营销者身上花钱不值得，请想想你自己既进行游戏开发又进行市场营销将消耗多少时间和时间吧，或者你可能会因为不能投入足够时间去营销游戏而损失更多钱。

4.游戏工作室应该真正总是所有员工

就像之前所提到的，许多人来到游戏产业不只是因为薪酬，他们还想尝试自己真正热爱的事。许多游戏企业是由那些未经过任何业务或HR培训的人员所组成的。因为这些人都是因为对这一工作的喜爱才进入这一产业。所以他们总是热衷于加班，或者会主动去做各种事。如果不存在任何系统去避免雇员们因为劳累过度而倒下或去帮助他们不断成长，你们便有可能遭遇生产进度出现问题或越来越多员工流失的问题。

在一些不同的工作室待过之后，我很高兴能够找到一家真正在抵制加班等雇员所面对的种种问题的工作室。

作为一个工作狂，如果有人能在每天5:30的时候提醒我该回家了真的太好了。基于严格的工作时间，午餐休息时间，每周一天的在家办公，我的大脑能够获得有效的休息，从而也能够更好地发挥创造性并解决种种问题了。有时候你总是能在休息的时候想出一些非常棒的理念。而如果你每天工作10个小时并且在工作和睡觉间的时候又压力满满，你便很容易倒下。

如果Failbetter可以在其它游戏的空档创造《伦敦陷落》和《天光之海》并遵循这些雇员友好型方法，它便既能创造出优秀的游戏也将创造真正有效的工作条件。

5.市场营销和市场沟通部并不总是需要同样的市场营销范本

有些人曾说过，从写作角度来看加入Failbetter有点吓人。毕竟它创造了像《天光之海》和《伦敦陷落》等游戏。

现在，作为一名市场沟通人员，我显然并不负责任何游戏写作内容，但是我却需要负责维持我们的品牌，社交媒体渠道的顺畅，《伦敦陷落》的游戏声明发布，有时候我还需要与我们的社区进行交流。而从“营销你的作品”转向“营销《伦敦陷落》”并不是一件简单的事，特别是对于一个非英国人来说。

说实话，现在我的写作还总是一团糟。就像伦敦的建筑一样：它拥有来自罗马的经典架构，它曾经历了被摧毁，重建，入侵，重建，轰炸与再重建，并最终融合了2000年的发展历史。而除了我是美国人外，我的写作风格范围涉及了包装设计，B2B推广，学术论文和全新独立游戏的宣传内容等等。

在英国待了5年后现在我已经可以成功伪装成英国人了。然后我加入了Failbetter，并参与了《伦敦陷落》的市场营销工作。曾经有玩家告诉我们，他们在《伦敦陷落》中学到的单词甚至比在学校学到的还多。作为公司内部的市场营销者，我需要深入自己所推广的游戏，而在《伦敦陷落》发行的7年间，我是伴随着优秀的故事，深厚的知识以及写作中的细微差别走过来的。这也是我为什么会在谷歌上搜索“单词的起源”或“拼图最初是何时被启用的？”等等内容。

对于那些认为市场营销或市场沟通部分是基于同样的企业风格的人，我想告诉他们事实并非如此。

小贴士：

学习/购买品牌和游戏—-尽可能花更多时间去浏览所有内容以帮助自己理解目标

询问各种问题—-不管这是否能够帮助你理解世界的概念，东西的运行，或可以以及不可以使用怎样的单词和短语

创造例子—-在小型工作室中所有人都是忙于自己手上的工作，所以你最好先专注于编写tweet/帖子/公告然后将其呈现给作家去咨询语调的使用和实在性等

创造一个备忘单—-我便拥有一个文件在记录自己在过去经常用错的《伦敦陷落》中的单词和短语以及经常被问到的问题的回答

（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）

Five Lessons Learned as Marketing Manager at Failbetter Games

by Haley Uyrus

Like many, my path into the games industry was a bit like pinball. After a master’s degree in game design and theory, I’ve done everything in games from artwork, QA and production, design, and finally marketing. Previously, I marketed a plethora of indie titles from development through to release. The following thoughts are what I’ve picked up on after switching to mostly post-release marketing at Failbetter Games:

1. Community is vital for niche games.
As games have grown to become more of a service than just an off-the-shelf product, fostering a community has become indispensable. It extends the life of the game and fosters word of mouth, which is every marketer’s dream goal.

Up until now I’ve only worked on games from development through to launch and not much after. Hopping into a community that’s been going strong for so long is quite the treat. I expected fans to know a lot about the game and of course to know more than I did, but it’s actually astounding how much they know. They are our game wiki, they are our lore wiki, they are our avant-garde testers.

Fallen London has a broad target audience in terms of demographics, but it’s definitely a niche game, and having one of our players recommend it to a friend that shares the same niche interests is incredibly valuable.

2. People are surprised when indies use traditional advertising.
In London the outdoor advertising for Fallout 4 was almost comical. It was everywhere. Bethesda is great at their short-burst-huge-impact campaigns, swooping in and announcing a usually well-pedigreed IP only a few months before its release. They can do this because they have a large marketing budget and a known IP: they can put Pip Boy on every billboard, Tube ad, phone booth, bus stop, and pigeon in London. People are used to this.

They’re apparently not, however, used to seeing indies use outdoor advertising. I joined Failbetter right after the iOS launch of Fallen London, and part of that campaign entailed train ads. People who play mobile games may not read traditional games press or watch streamers do Lets Plays, so making sure part of the campaign reached a non-core gamer space was essential for awareness and user acquisition. Many of our fans took pictures of our ads and tweeted at us, surprised to see us out in the real world (which is great! If you want to share more pictures of our ads on different platforms than they were originally posted on, feel free!).

3. Indies need dedicated marketers more than ever.
In July 2016, 27,849 games were submitted to the US App Store. In that same month, over 631,000 games were already active in the App Store. While I’m writing this there are 10,644 games available on Steam, along with another 1,802 that are on Greenlight.

If you’re an indie developer, you’ve put a hell of a lot of work into your game. For most people it’s not just a business idea, it’s passion. Even if your main goal isn’t purely sales, chances are you need to make some money to pay for the time in development, not to mention if you plan on making more games. Marketing isn’t evil, marketing is making sure the most people possible know about your game, and hopefully are convinced that it’s something they want to buy.

For most consumers, purchasing a game isn’t a snap decision. You need to start your marketing early, probably while you’re still developing. Get a marketing person on your team! Even if it’s a part time deal until things amp up. There are so many things that we can help you out with. If you’re wary about spending money on a marketer, imagine how much your time costs, and how much you’re spending trying to do both developing and marketing, or how much money you may lose by not being able to dedicate enough time to marketing your game.

Hannah, the comms director here, did an awesome presentation about this and tips for hiring a marketer at Develop this year. You can find her slides here.

4. Game studios can function with healthy practices for their employees.

As mentioned above, many people work in the games industry are not only trying to pay the bills, but are trying to do so by doing something they love. Many games businesses are being formed by people who aren’t trained in business or HR. Since those employees may also be in the industry for the love of it. they are often happy to work overtime, or just do it automatically. If there aren’t systems and plans set up to stop employees from burning out, or to help them grow, then there are going to be problems with production schedules and high employee turnover, despite good intentions.

After being at a few different studios, it was wonderful and refreshing to find myself at a studio that has put into place safeguards against things like crunch, burnout and other issues employees may face. It was a bit like finding a unicorn, I’m not going to lie.

As a bit of workaholic, it’s great to have people ask to make sure I’m leaving at 5:30 when the day ends. By having strict working hours, an actual hour off at lunch, and one day a week to work from home, my mind is calmer, healthier, and more able to be creative and to solve problems. Some of the best ideas come from times when you’re not at work, and if you’re working 10 hour days and stressed out for the few hours between work and sleep, those lightbulbs are not going to turn on.

And if Failbetter can create Fallen London and Sunless Sea amongst other games, using these employee-friendly practices,then it’s possible to both make games and not have insane working conditions.

5. Marketing and comms doesn’t always call for solely marketing copy.

A few other people have mentioned this in their “Five Things” – joining Failbetter can be a smidge intimidating from a writing perspective. Sunless Sea! Fallen London! How do you match that?

Now, as a comms person I’m obviously not responsible for any sort of game writing, however, I am responsible for staying on brand and on voice for our social media channels, Fallen London game announcements, and anytime I’m interacting with our community. Switching from a typical ‘marketing your product’ voice to ‘market Fallen London ’ voice is no easy task, especially for a non-Brit.

And I’ll be honest with you, at this point my writing is a bit of a mess. It’s like London architecture: it has classical foundations from the Romans, it’s been burnt down, rebuilt, invaded, rebuilt, bombed, rebuilt, until it’s a complete amalgamation of over two millennia of styles. Except my foundations are American, and the styles range from writing for packaging design, B2B promotions, academic writing, and promoting swaths of brand new indie games.
After five years in the UK I can pretty much masquerade as your average Brit. Then I joined Failbetter, where staying on brand is an entirely different game. It’s English, Victorian English, but not entirely, it’s a bit humourous, a lot dark, and has its own quirks. Players have told us they have learned more words through Fallen London than they did at school. Being an in-house marketing person means diving into the game you’re representing, but with Fallen London that’s nearly seven years of marvelous stories, deep lore, and the nuances of the writing itself. It’s why I find myself googling things like “etymology of the word…” or “when were pie charts first used?”

So for anyone who thinks that marketing or comms copy is always going to be the same corporate style, I have found in-house game marketing to thankfully be quite different!

Quick tips:

Study/Consume the brand and the game – spend as much time as you can reading through everything you can to understand the voice

Ask a lot of questions – whether it’s to help you understand concepts of the world, how things work, or what words and phrases can and can’t be used

Draft up examples – at small studios everyone is very busy with what’s on their own plates, try your hand at writing the Tweet/post/announcement and then share it with a writer for tone and factuality

Keep a cheat sheet – I have a doc full of commonly used Fallen London words, phrases I’ve gotten wrong in the past (‘until’ not ‘through to’), and stock responses to commonly asked questions（source：gamasutra）