本文原作者：Brendan Sinclair 译者ciel chen

Tribute Games的蒙特利尔工作室在其创立以来6年里发行了5款游戏，最新的一款是这个月发行的怀旧平台冒险游戏《Flinthook》.有人可能会觉得说Tribute发行了这么多游戏应该有一个营销套路了吧，然而其共同创始人Jean-Francois Major这礼拜告诉GamesIndustry.biz说游戏市场形势发展太快了，套路什么的根本不顶用。

artvogt_alm_01(from gamasutra)

Major说“现在跟我们发行《Mecenary Kings》（2014年）的形势完全不一样了，我们发现了这样一个窘迫的情况——blogs、IGN、GameSpot不再有以前那么大的影响力了。现在真的有影响力的只有Twitch游戏主播和Youtube用户了。当时我们发行《Mercenary Kings》在那些大型网站的时候，能卖掉非常多的游戏副本，销量一直挺好，到后来才降了下来；后来我们再在同样的网站上发行《Flinthook》的时候，一开始基本没什么游戏主播买我们游戏完，然后现在我们发现用户基数增加依旧缓慢；只有当有比较名的主播玩我们的游戏的时候能带动我们的游戏销量。”

不过这不是说《Flinthook》有什么增添的内容是失败的。事实上，在其他怀旧风游戏比如《Full Throttle重制版》、《迪士尼午后合集》以及主机类的《神奇男孩III:龙之陷阱(Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap)》同期发行的情况下，《Flinthook》上了Steam平台首页 “受欢迎的新游戏” 模块榜首，并维持了整整一个礼拜。

在《Mercenary Kings》发行以后，Steam对其首页做出了一个重大改变——3年前的时候，在Steam上新发行的游戏都能保证在主页上被推荐满24小时。但是随着游戏发行速度加剧，这让这种保证无法再兑现。于是Steam把“新游戏”模块的名字改成“受欢迎的新游戏”——据Major说：这样的变化使游戏工作室在游戏发行方式上带来了重大改变。

举个例子——Tribute没有为《Flinthook》在Steam上预定位置，而是鼓励人们把这款游戏加入愿望单。Major说，是因为“受欢迎的新游戏”这个模块并不会因为你有没有预定位置而决定要不要推荐你的游戏。所以我们不如冒点险抛弃做预订能得来的销量好在首发日得到更多的销量把这款游戏推到“受欢迎新游戏”模块榜首并（希望能）一直保持下去。

尽管《Flinthook》确实呆在榜首一段时间过，不过Major对它没能呆在榜首多久而感到遗憾。不管怎样，这个经历让Tribute更加坚信通过游戏主播和Toutube用户运转的游戏市场是在动态变化的，而在商店首页推荐的游戏榜单的千变万化终究还是消减了首发销量的重要性。

“这真的很奇怪，如今如果首发没能得到好成绩不再意味着游戏产品的失败；而是意味着我们必须保持不断的努力来把游戏做到更好。”Major这样说道。

“游戏产业现在带给Tribute的是一个拉长阵线的打鼹鼠问题（问题接二连三出现，快到让人应接不暇，无法解决到位）。这让工作室最初纠结的类似‘如何联系到媒体以及建立和平台负责人的联系’这类的问题都变得微不足道了”

“我们到现在还在探寻到地要如何为我们的游戏做好营销，市场不断地变化，我们要如何决定我们的聚焦点呢？几年下来什么都变了。几年前行得通的方法照搬到另一款游戏上已经行不通了，对于未来的新游戏就更别提了。所以你得为你下款游戏想出个营销方法来获得尽可能地提高关注度。在这之前我们闲置了思考游戏营销方案的时间，后来才意识到——在游戏市场博弈中起到最少一半决定性因素正是游戏的营销策略。”

Major说游戏各有各的不同，没有什么能当做万能钥匙的方法。对于Tribute来说，他们的目标就是集中注意力在几个能让他们成功最大化的关键性措施上。而现在，这个关键性措施就是指尽可能地取得Twitch主播和Youtube用户的关注。尽管Major期盼这样的趋势能在游戏产业进入到下一种趋势之前扩大化，但他并不知道接下里独立游戏推广之路会通向何方。不过有这么一种可能的方向——就是众筹。

Tribute在众筹这条路上有一定的经验——他曾经通过Kickstart为《Mercenary Kings》做过众筹，给玩家重现了平台冒险游戏2012的黄金时代。尽管众筹活动很成功，但Tribute并不想再次使用Kickstarter这个平台。因为当时工作室为游戏众筹到的金额超出了原定目标7.5万美元达到11.6万美元。然而扣除了Kickstarter的费用和奖励支持者的成本后，真正用在游戏开发上的费用只有大概5万美元，而他们当时算上自己的工资估计的项目预算是70万美元。

“不过那还是值得的，因为当时众筹已经是我们唯一的救命稻草了——然而这里还有很多准备工作要做，而且我认为Kickstarter能带给我们的预算还远不足以启动得了一个游戏项目，”Major还补充道：“我不是在跟Kickstarter唱反调，我也觉得有一天我们可能还会借用到这个平台，不过那个时候我们的目的可能将不再是为了筹集资金——而是为了让更多的人开始谈论我们的游戏，我们要把这个平台当做我们的品牌大使，借此让玩家对这个游戏有所兴奋和期待——毕竟人们对于自己出资支持的游戏项目（无论这个游戏将来能不能成大器），他们总是愿意拿出来自豪地分享，告诉大家自己是这个项目的支持者。”

回归众筹来达到营销目的是Tribute将来有可能施行的一个拟定策略，不过其工作室目前有更具体的计划要做——Major说计划很简单，就是要继续在怀旧游戏《Mercenary Kings》和《Flithook》上下功夫，让他们无论何时发行，都要成为当时最出色的怀旧类游戏。
Major说：“现在新的游戏每天都层出不穷，所以我觉得我们得更多地集中注意力在更大型，更有格调的游戏上。”《Wizorb》（Tribute的第一款游戏）在2011年表现得非常出色，但我们发现从今天的标准看来，《Curses&Chaos》和《Ninja Senki DX》（小游戏）的表现并不是那么令人满意。它们都是好游戏，不过很难博取用户关注，因为目前市场上有太多格调更高，内容更丰富的游戏，所以我们我们得把关注点放在这里。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

In its six years of existence, Montreal-based Tribute Games has released five games, the most recent being this month’s roguelike platformer Flinthook. One might think Tribute would have a marketing routine down after so many projects, but as co-founder Jean-Francois Major told GamesIndustry.biz this week, things move much too quickly for that.

“It’s definitely not the same as when we launched Mercenary Kings [in 2014],” Major said. “We’re learning the hard way that blogs, IGN, GameSpot have less impact than they used to. Now it’s mostly streamers and YouTubers that really influence sales. What’s interesting is with Mercenary Kings, we sold tons of copies at launch because we got featured on those big sites, and then it kind of dropped off. But with Flinthook, we got featured on all those sites again, and now streamers are slowly starting to pick it up, and now we’re seeing our user base grow slowly. Every time there’s a bigger streamer that plays the game, it helps our sales.”

That’s not to say Flinthook flopped by any stretch. In fact, the game made it to the top of Steam’s Popular New Releases module on the front page during a week where retro mindshare was split between releases like Full Throttle Remastered, The Disney Afternoon Collection, and the console launches of Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap.

One big change since the launch of Mercenary Kings has come in how Steam curates its storefront. Major said that three years ago, new releases on Steam were guaranteed to be featured in a module on the front page for 24 hours. But the accelerating number of releases made that approach unsustainable, so Steam changed the key module from “New Release” to “Popular New Releases,” which Major said changed the way the studio launches games.

For example, Tribute didn’t put Flinthook up for preorders on the service, instead encouraging people to add the game to their wislists. The reasoning, Major said, is that the Popular New Releases module doesn’t take into account a game’s preorders when determining whether or not it should be featured, so it’s better to risk losing some of those preorder sales in order to have a larger number of day-one sales to push a game to the top of that chart and (hopefully) help it stay there. (A Valve representative did not return a request for confirmation into its methods for selecting games to surface in the Popular New Releases part of the site.)

While Flinthook did top the chart, Major said he was a bit sad it didn’t stay there longer. Regardless, the experience bolsters Tribute’s belief that the dynamics of marketing through streamers and YouTubers and the changes to how storefronts feature games has ultimately lessened the importance of day-one sales.

“It’s really weird, your day one is not necessarily a deal-breaker if you don’t succeed,” Major said. “That’s something we’ve been struggling to grasp and get better at.”

It’s another in a long line of whack-a-mole problems the industry has presented to Tribute. Even as problems the studio initially struggled with (like reaching out to the media or establishing contacts with platform holders) have become almost trivial, new challenges keep popping up.

“Now we’re still trying to figure out how to market our games,” Major said. “It’s been constantly changing. What do we need to focus on? Over the years it’s changed. Stuff you did the previous year on another title might not work, or it definitely won’t work for your next title so you have to figure out the next way to market your game and get it in front of as many eyeballs as you can. That’s the big time-sink we didn’t really account for. Marketing your game is probably 50% of the battle, if not more.”

Every game is different, and Major said there’s no single approach to marketing that will solve every problem. For Tribute, the goal is to focus on a handful of checkmarks that will maximize their game’s success. Right now, that means a lot of work on getting the attention of Twitch streamers and YouTubers. And while he expects that trend to get bigger before the industry moves onto something else, he doesn’t know what the next big avenue for indie game promotion will be beyond that. However, one possibility could be crowdfunding.

Tribute has some experience with crowdfunding, having Kickstarted Mercenary Kings back in the platform’s golden age of 2012. And while the campaign was a success, it didn’t leave Tribute eager to return to the platform. The studio blew past its original campaign goal of $75,000 and raised more than $116,000 for the game. However, after Kickstarter’s cut and the cost of backer rewards, Major said they had about $50,000 to put toward development of a project that he estimated would have had a budget of maybe $700,000 if the team had been paying themselves salaries at that point.

“It was worthwhile because that was kind of our only option, but it was a lot of work and I don’t think the Kickstarter budget was big enough to make a game off of,” Major said, adding, “I’m not really against Kickstarter, and I think someday we’re probably going to go back to it, but we won’t have the same goals in mind. It will probably be more about getting people to start talking about our game, getting them excited about the title and getting brand ambassadors, people that are really vocal about the project they Kickstarted who will want to share and be proud they backed it before it was even a thing.”

A return to crowdfunding for the purposes of marketing is one hypothetical tactic Tribute may turn to in the future, but the studio has more concrete plans in the meantime. Quite simply, Major said the company will keep putting out retro efforts in the Mercenary Kings or Flinthook mold with an aim to make the best game of the genre in whichever year they come out.

“Because there are so many games coming out every day, I think we’re going to focus more on bigger, flashier titles,” Major said. “[Tribute's first game] Wizorb did pretty well in 2011, but we found out with Curses & Chaos and Ninja Senki DX that [small titles] don’t do as well with today’s standards. They’re good games, but it’s really hard to get any attention because there are so many flashier games, meatier, chunkier games that come out today, so that’s another aspect we’ll try to focus on.”（source：gamesindustry.biz  ）