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GeoffW
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« Reply #20 on: August 04, 2012, 03:23:49 PM » |
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Yes, many those lists are incredibly useful resources, and the marketing one in particular I've at least skimmed nearly all of the pages it links to! One thing I've noticed though is that some of the older articles I've read on indie development are beginning to date - for example I've read suggestions that reviewers should be approached 1-2 months before your launch date due to the long turnaround time of print magazines. Don't bother! Most of the important stuff is online now and takes between 1 day and (at most) a week or two to get done. Anyways the game looks great. Hope it goes well for you!
Thanks! I'm getting really good (as in positive) feedback from reviewers and others who play it, I just need to make sure enough people notice it actually exists. |
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GeoffW
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« Reply #21 on: August 10, 2012, 06:29:03 AM » |
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I haven't done a huge amount of marketing work this week because I've been very busy setting stuff up for launch. Also I've been approached by a casual portal (ArcadeTown) and I've approached a couple of game stores myself. I feel that I'd be in the best position if The Trouble With Robots is available from at least one casual portal and one hardcore game shop in addition to my own site. There are plenty of reasons the game might appeal to both crowds, and this way I'm more likely to succeed in at least one place (hopefully all of them). I also get to learn how these businesses differ. The main thing I did do for marketing was an attempt at viral humour the day after the Curiosity rover landed on mars. Now this didn't exactly take the internet by storm, but I've had a few extra hits and likes as a result of it:  |
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GeoffW
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« Reply #22 on: August 14, 2012, 01:13:11 AM » |
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Something strange happened this morning. My game's Facebook page acquired 16 new likes overnight! It was also doing pretty well last night, whereas ordinarily in the past I'd have been pretty happy with 1 or 2 new likes per day. I check my Facebook ad campaign. I've made some improvements to targeting, maybe the changes have paid off? The statistics say yes, but no, they're not responsible for anywhere near 16 new likes in such a short period. I check the page insights. I search the internet... Indie Love have written a preview of The Trouble With Robots! http://indie-love.com/2012/08/13/the-trouble-with-robots/If the lesson here isn't obvious, I'll spell it out for you: send your game to journalists when it's ready! Indie Love is definitely not the largest site on the internet, yet they've already made a big difference. |
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GeoffW
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« Reply #23 on: August 16, 2012, 12:31:37 AM » |
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Time for an update: I'm still getting lots of new fans off of that first preview, and I've been contacted by another journalist as a direct result of it. I've sent preview / review copies of the game to 18 different sites now (of various sizes; some requested, some a shot in the dark), and I still have more to do. Hopefully I'll get a bunch of positive reviews on launch day as a result of this effort! My latest Facebook ads are divided according to target audience and are slightly optimized towards each group. My figures aren't particularly good yet, but this has proven to be informative - for example it appears that what I guess to be younger gamers (e.g. Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon) are more expensive to reach than, for example, Magic players and PC gamers. There's a nice article about Facebook ads for games here: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/171895/using_facebook_ads_to_find_your_.phpFinally, a friend who works in advertising has offered to come round and show me how to use Google Adwords next week - sounds like a great opportunity! I will of course share some of his tips here. |
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GeoffW
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« Reply #24 on: August 18, 2012, 01:06:40 AM » |
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I've been madly busy setting up distribution this week. That means registering with sites, signing contracts, preparing assets and setting up stores with: Also I've had to learn about and fill out American tax forms (W-8BEN), and try to make plans in case there are any problems on launch day. All in all, there was much more to do than I had expected! Please ask if you want to know more about any of these services (though I may be a bit slow to reply this weekend). |
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GeoffW
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« Reply #25 on: August 20, 2012, 02:33:24 PM » |
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My friend Jason came round today and got me set up on Google Adwords. He works at The Adword Adviser ( http://adwordadviser.com/) so as you can imagine he had a lot of advice to give! I'm still digesting it and I don't intend to really start on this until after launch, but here are some random bits: - use Google Adwords. It appears all over the place, not just on google searches but banner ads all over the internet (the 'display network'), and on youtube.
- use Google Analytics. I've been avoiding this because I already get web stats from my web server, but Jason has convinced me that Google Analytics has far more to offer especially in combination with Adwords. I should be able to find exactly where I'm getting customers from, where I'm not and follow when I'm losing them.
- make sure the target of each advert corresponds to what the advert is saying. Not only is this good for customers, Google gives your adverts a 'quality rating' which affects their placement, and one of the important factors in this rating is how well it thinks the page and advert match. If you don't have a page that's on topic, make a landing page specifically for this purpose.
- split campaigns according to geographical location so that you can bid different amounts according to what is required. For example, users in London are likely to attract higher bids than users elsewhere in the UK.
note: all of this is in my words, any mistakes / misundersandings / gross simplifications are likely mine not Jason's. |
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GeoffW
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« Reply #26 on: August 22, 2012, 08:47:37 AM » |
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I launch tomorrow. Everything's in place except that I need to spend this evening writing a press release, e-mails and stuff like that ready for tomorrow.
Wish me luck!
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GeoffW
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« Reply #27 on: August 30, 2012, 09:27:22 AM » |
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I've not been able to access the TIG Forums for several days (I thought they were down, but others seem to have been posting). In any case I have several catchup posts to make... I launched The Trouble With Robots on the 23rd of August. I was tempted to go live at midnight, but decided against that since I'd be asleep for the first few hours in case anything went wrong. Instead I got up early and uploaded the game and a new version of the web site before 9am (UK time). Once the game was up it was all hands to e-mail stations, sending a press release to over a hundred sites, announcing the game on various social media and so on. You can download the demo of The Trouble With Robots here: http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/demo.htmlFacebook was a flurry of activity all day and according to my freshly set up Google Analytics account, twitter netted me the most traffic on day 1. |
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GeoffW
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« Reply #29 on: August 30, 2012, 01:43:11 PM » |
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I set up an advert to run on reddit gaming ( http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/, 1.9m subscribers) on Saturday 25/08/2012. It was quite pleased that the system allowed me to book a single day, making this a very affordable $30 experiment. My advert displayed at the top of the page in a similar style to the normal reddit stories beneath it. The weird thing about reddit advertising is that you share your ads with other people who buy that space on that day (each page view displays one ad at random), and you have no way of really knowing or controlling how many other people that will be. So it's a bit of a gamble, but my impressions were pretty good: total impressions: 249,176 effective CPM: $0.12 I was expecting a really good click through rate due to the targeting and the fact that the ad appears like a top story on the page. I was a bit disappointed in this respect, though it's possible this was my fault in choosing the wording of the ad: total clicks: 96 click-through: 0.038% effective CPC: $0.31 Another issue is that quite a lot of the impressions were repeat impressions, not unique views, though to some extent I don't mind my ads appearing to the same person multiple times. So was this a success? The cost per click was quite high, but a decent proportion of visitors to my site are downloading the demo and/or purchasing the game, so it's possible I've made a small profit out of it. I will consider refining my strategy and trying this again. |
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GeoffW
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« Reply #30 on: September 06, 2012, 02:16:04 AM » |
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On Saturday I created a page on Steam Greenlight. This was a couple of days after they launched the service but before they introduced the $100 fee ... though it turns out my Steam account hadn't been 'activated' yet so I had to purchase SpaceChem before I could post and that cost £6.99 (plus a bazillion hours of spare time - that game is hard!). Here is The Trouble With Robots on Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93293369I created the page from text and screenshots I'd used elsewhere, with added review quotes at the bottom. It doesn't seem to be possible to insert a link to my site on the Greenlight page, so I had to leave the URL as text. Anyway, my experiences so far have been: - lots of people are looking at my page
- lots of people are saying nice things
- but nowhere near enough to be greenlit any time soon!
As other people have observed, Greenlight commentors are a mixed bag and I have had a couple of nasty comments. Generally these come from people who are clearly looking for something quite different and you wonder why they even clicked on your game in the first place. As an author you can actually delete comments now, but I don't want to make a habit of censorship and I've only deleted one so far (it was utterly incoherent). Overall, I don't think I'm going to be Greenlit any time soon, which is a shame, but I've probably had enough new people discover my game to make it worth my time.
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GeoffW
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« Reply #31 on: September 06, 2012, 11:47:25 AM » |
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I forgot to mention here that The Trouble With Robots is now on Get Games: http://getgamesgo.com/product/the-trouble-with-robotsI hope to get much more exposure and legitimacy via Get Games and a couple of other distributors I'm still setting up with. Unfortunately I don't have any sales figures from them just yet, and I think my contract forbids me from disclosing such things anyway. Sorry. Get Games wanted to go with a slightly lower price, so we agreed to 25% off. Then it occurred to me that I should let customers buy from my site with 25% off as well, so I made a coupon code. Actually I made several and posted them to different places (e.g. reddit GameDeals) so that I can track which ones get picked up. Here is one for TIG: TIGROBOT--- PS: I think this thread would be better with a bit more discussion. So if you've got something to say, please don't feel you have to read everything I've posted before you can comment. Even if it's been said before, there's bound to be something fresh to say by now. |
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GeoffW
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« Reply #32 on: September 07, 2012, 08:28:04 AM » |
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So far most of my marketing effort has been aimed at indie and indie friendly game review sites one way or another. But I've noticed that The Trouble With Robots is going down really well with Magic: The Gathering players, so I wanted to do something specifically to reach that audience. First I e-mailed out copies of the game to a few influential people in Magic circles who happen to regularly write reviews of CCG's or computer games or both. That was pretty easy to do. Then I donated to the popular Monday Night Magic podcast, who promise to read a 'shout out' for every donation. The mention yielded a bump in 'direct' hits to my web site (hits that a user typed in directly to their browser rather than following a link, as you'd expect from a podcast). Nothing huge but I reckon I got a few extra sales and hopefully it's got people talking. Note that I don't recommend you go out and do exactly the same thing, but be on the look out for opportunities specific to your game and your particular audience! I'm still looking for more ways to get attention in the Magic community, particularly amongst more 'casual' groups of players. In other news, I'm going to enter the IGF! At $95 it's a bit of a gamble, but according to my calculations* it's worth it. * - calculations may involve lots of made-up numbers being multiplied and/or added together. |
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GeoffW
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« Reply #34 on: September 13, 2012, 01:38:30 AM » |
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I've had a busy week learning to use Google Adwords, and also putting together packages for another online publisher. Both of these tasks have been surprisingly time consuming! Adwords is definitely a useful tool, I'm still dabbling but I've been able to get quite a few clicks and demo downloads for very little cost (strangely, this seems to be much cheaper than approaching web sites who manage their advertising directly). The system is similar in many ways to Facebook ads but far more detailed - I'd actually recommend starting on something simpler like Facebook if you've never done this before (or hire a company like The Adword Adviser to do it for you!) Google Analytics has been essential, for tracking demo downloads as a result of adverts and for examining details like countries of origin, pages viewed etc. Having said this I'm also starting to see the weaknesses of Analytics, such as not showing much at a resolution finer than days. Also for a couple of reasons I can't accurately track all the way from ads to actual sales right now. A few posts ago I shared my friend Jason's advice to divide campaigns up into different regions according to the cost to reach / value to you of reaching people there. Well, I forgot this advice at first and with effectively equal bids, ended up winning a bunch of impressions mostly from places like Vietnam and Iran - which resulted in plenty of demo downloads but no sales as far as I can tell. I've now restructured my campaign into three different tiers focusing my highest bids on the most developed countries where people are, I presume, more likely to pay. The plan is to spend a few more days or even weeks learning and then scale up my Adwords usage once I'm happy I'm doing it right. |
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GeoffW
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« Reply #35 on: September 18, 2012, 03:53:38 AM » |
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I want to say something about posting on gamer forums - not gamedev forums like this one, but the ones where normal gamers hang out and talk about Call of Duty and Minecraft. We all know that building up a community is important, but this could be a controversial topic because the difference between posting and spamming is somewhat subjective. Before I start, I will say that if you think that simply spamming links on the biggest sites is going to get you tens of thousands of eyeballs ... you've got a lot to learn. The reality is that the most popular forums are well moderated, so there's no point posting anywhere but the most appropriate place and there's no point posting on sites where you aren't going to be welcome. Look for other indie game announcements and see what has gone down well. You'll have to spend time writing something worthwhile and descriptive ( this was my best attempt) and format it nicely, because simple links are quickly ignored. You'll probably find you get more interest on forums where you're already part of the community and it's much easier to write for sites you're familiar with. To be honest though, don't make this a big part of your strategy. I get far more and higher quality traffic from indie game review sites - this was probably not time well spent. |
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GeoffW
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« Reply #36 on: September 25, 2012, 05:22:01 AM » |
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A pattern has emerged in all of the feedback I've had for The Trouble With Robots from customers, friends and reviewers alike. Nearly everyone has enjoyed the game, finding it addictive and well designed. That's great! I'm also pleasantly surprised to find that so many have also enjoyed the humour, after discovering in development how difficult it is to get this right. But two criticisms that have reared their ugly heads again and again, and if this isn't the place to discuss them I don't know where is: - The price
- The length of the game
Notice that these are really two sides of the same problem, that is value for money. I've already addressed the first point by lowering the price to £9.99 (in retrospect I do now think the initial price of £12.99 was a mistake). To address the second point I've decided to make some extra content, which will be distributed via an updated game installer, and a free patch for existing customers (which will also come with a few minor bug fixes). Obviously this is great if you've bought the game, but for me it's definitely an experiment - I don't know if directly addressing people's criticisms is going to increase my sales or if people have already made up their minds one way or the other. We will see soon enough. I haven't yet decided how much extra content I will make, so now would be an excellent time to post if you have any suggestions! |
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GeoffW
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« Reply #37 on: September 27, 2012, 12:37:55 PM » |
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Just a quick note to say that The Trouble With Robots is now on GamersGate: http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-TTWR/the-trouble-with-robotsAll of my numbers suggest that GamersGate is the biggest digital shop I've worked with so far so obviously this is great news! Also their site looks nice and I'm pretty sure Cynical Brit recommended them at some point. --- Those of you who've been following this thread for a while may have noticed that I said TTWR would be on ArcadeTown and it isn't yet ... don't worry, this is still happening, the process has just taken a bit longer than I expected. Though the game wasn't designed for casual portals I can see why they approached me (cute graphics, really easy to get into, addictive) and I'm really curious to see how it does there! |
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GeoffW
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« Reply #38 on: October 06, 2012, 05:36:20 AM » |
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This week I've made a solid start on the expansion, codename 'Megamort', which will contain: - 8 new story levels
- 2 new challenge levels
- possibly new music?
- a few small bug fixes
- some number of new cards
The last point has been a particular nuisance, as there are now enough cards to require a scroll bar on the deck builder screen. This was quite fiddly to implement, it helped to think of the bar as being made up of four distinct components - up button, down button, track and thumb. There are still quite a few dependencies between them though, and various types of mouse input to capture correctly (click, drag, wheel). The scrollable area itself is clipped using Direct3D's 'SetScissorRect'. Other than that it's been fun going back to do some actual development this week! |
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tuckertuck
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« Reply #39 on: October 07, 2012, 12:17:48 AM » |
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Thanks a lot for this GeoffW, We're heading into this phase of our game so it is great to hear about your personal experiences.
I think developing a game is the easy part, marketing and everything else... not so much.
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