During the quarantine, I've put some extra time into making a 17-page guide to Steam wishlists. I just finished it and am excited to share it with those that are here
I'm Logan Williams from Indie Wolverine. We are a marketing studio that has worked on many indie games over the last five or so years (mostly console and PC games). That said, the market has undoubtedly changed, and a new round of helpful resources could benefit many studios. We've recently started moving towards paid content (we still heavily favor organic content) as we have seen the impact it can have on a game.
When reaching out to marketing agencies, make sure they aren't just PR companies. Getting your game covered by games media and content creators is a good start, but there is so much more a marketing agency should be able to provide. Including, but not limited to:
- Social media support - Paid advertising - Community creation, engagement strategies & management - Sponsored content creator support - Trailer and other marketing assets creation
You want a team that can cover all services under the marketing umbrella and not just email blasts and press releases.
Keep in mind, the big struggle with marketing agencies and indie studios is pricing. To have a team handle your social media (not just Twitter/Facebook), community management, content creation, advertising, etc. It takes a lot of hands-on-deck, which requires a lot of money. With PR studios, you can get by with a single person handling media and organic content creator outreach (which is a great value!), but there is no guarantee in exposure and as a result, could lead to a failed project.
I hope I'm not giving the same answers as others, but here are my thoughts:
If we're sending a review copy out, we make the subject line clear and to the point (aka "Game Title: Review Submission") and if we're reaching out to content creators, it depends on the creator, how close are we and what we think will get their attention.
For example, if during our research phase, we notice that X streamer plays a ton of Dark Souls, if the game we're submitting has strong similarities to Dark Souls, we will mention it.
"Game Title: Dark Souls meets Other Similar Game - Steam key included"
We've also been playing with using emojis in our subject lines. That said, we make sure the subject line is still legible without the emojis, just in case the person we're reaching out to doesn't use an email client that displays them.
We try to be clear and concise. However, research can significantly help this process (aka know your audience before you start speaking).
The next step is focussing on how you present your game and how you're going to convince the person you're reaching out to that your game is something they will want to play.
It's been a while! That said, I recently had the opportunity to work alongside a large pool of PR teams on the recent launch of Iratus: Lord of the Dead. We had a ton of fun contributing to the launch and we also learned a good bit. I decided to record a podcast to share my thoughts on the launch and go over some questions from a recent Reddit AMA thread I started on the gamedev subreddit.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask them in the comment section. Also, please forgive my ums during the recording. Was a spur of the moment type thing that I recently decided to turn into a more consistent thing.
I'm new to the whole recording yourself thing, so I tend to ramble on. However, I should get better over time
I've also just uploaded a new video (it's a whole 2 minutes shorter!) that includes 20 indie game marketing tips. Lastly, if you have any questions or even some suggestions, please don't hesitate to let me know.
I put together a video to help clear up some confusion for newer teams in the industry. I've noticed many presentations talk about marketing and PR interchangeably when there are significant differences between the two. With that being said, I put a video together to discuss the main differences and similarities to help educate teams and help them in deciding what services they actually need for their game.
Here's the video:
BTW - If you have any questions (they don't have to be specific to the video), please let me know. I'm actively recording more content and would love to help in answering any questions and possibly showing tutorials related to video game marketing.
It's been a while since I've posted here. We got pretty slammed with client work for the first quarter of this year. With that being said, we just created a Discord server for anyone in the video game industry that's interested in learning and sharing experiences with marketing, PR and business. BTW - If this violates rules/guidelines, please remove.
With that being said, if it's fine, I would like to invite everyone here to join the server. Our goal is to create a thriving community of professionals that want to learn, share and grow together. Here's a link to the server: https://discord.gg/MdaApbn
Just a heads up, the server is brand new, but please don't hesitate to introduce yourself. We will be in the server everyday sharing content and hopefully growing together.
Lastly, I had the opportunity to speak at ECGC this year (presentation is titled "marketing your game in 2018 and beyond"). The video can be found here:
I was waiting to post the video here as I didn't know if ECGC would post the video to their account first (also, we recorded the video on an iPhone, so the quality isn't as good as what ECGC recorded). However, they haven't uploaded anything yet.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
During the last 3 (ish) years, I've been supporting indie studios with marketing & PR services and during this time, I've noticed a few problems within the video game industry and I've started working on some solutions. Today, I'm excited to share one of them.
First, since the launch of Steam Direct, the number of games being released on the largest PC games digital distribution platform has increased greatly. Last month, there were 519 releases, which was the most ever for the platform. Fun fact, there were 559 total releases on Steam in all of 2013. Steam Direct itself isn't a bad thing. However, it's also easier than ever to begin making games with the barrier to entry being as low as possible with tools like RPG Maker, Unreal Engine, Unity etc. Again, this isn't a bad thing, but when you combine the low barrier to entry to Steam and the low barrier to entry into game development, you get what we are seeing now, an oversaturated platform that is starting to mimic what happened to the mobile game market years ago.
With that being said, it's becoming harder than ever to get exposure due to the competitiveness of the market. Years ago, content creators could be seen as low-hanging fruit as they weren't getting as many game pitches as your traditional media, but for the most part, that boat has sailed. However, if you have the right game that translates well to let's plays, it's certainly possible to get picked up by many content creators. This is not a doom and gloom post.
I just want to point out some problems I've identified over time and I don't see them going away anytime soon. YouTubers and Twitch streamers are only going to become more popular, resulting in more people creating content on the platforms, which is also a good thing.
My solution to this is ggContent. It's a platform similar to FameBit (for those of you that have heard of it). If you haven't heard of FameBit, ggContent is a marketplace where video game makers and content creators connect to create sponsored content.
I believe this platform can be very helpful for a lot of people. It can be a great place for content creators who aren't making enough money to go full-time but have an active audience to better monetize their channels and it can be a great place for indie studios to AAA studios to find perfect content creators for their games.
I'm bootstrapping this platform and am starting small. I'm formally announcing the platform tomorrow, but couldn't hold back from sharing it with you tonight. I'm starting off ggContent with a closed alpha sign up phase. I will be accepting sign ups from now until October 31. Sometime after October 31, I will begin to accept users to the platform in manageable batches. I'm doing this, so I can listen to each user in great detail. I'm going to build this platform around the users and will take all feedback, ideas, suggestions to heart.
Also, accepted users will be able to use ggContent for free during the alpha phase (only fees will be payment processing fees). After the alpha, there will be a 10% fee for each agreement.
I'm going to be holding an AMA on the gamedev sub-reddit tomorrow (pre-approved by the mods), but if any of you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. I'll be happy to answer them.
Just wanted to share with you the second episode of my new podcast. In it, I recap last week's news, new releases and I share how I like to quickly find relevant content creators (YouTubers and Twitch streamers) for my clients using Google Video search.
I link to all mentioned articles in the description area for further reading. I hope you all enjoy the video and I hope you get some value out of it.
If any of you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.
I apologize if this comes off as dick-ish (it's definitely not intended to be that way), but if your product isn't good, then marketing (aka communication) is not your problem. If you want to charge players for a product, then it better be good. I didn't say "look" good because there are plenty of games that don't look amazing but are still very good (Undertale is an excellent example).
There are plenty of marketing tactics and ways to get the word out. However, getting the word out doesn't mean people will listen and do what you want. It all starts with a good product.
Regardless, I congratulate you on making a video game and I hope you continue to make more of them.
Earlier today, I decided to pull the trigger and start my first video podcast. I'm calling it "First Cup With Indie Wolverine". I'm starting this podcast to give video game makers a podcast to listen to, that recaps the previous week of video game industry news (so you don't have to read all the latest articles on Gamasutra, Gamesindustry.biz and Twitter).
The first episode can be viewed here:
The episode is very raw (no intro or cool transitions). I will optimize the channel and topics moving forward, based off of feedback, so any and all feedback is welcome. This podcast is for you, so don't hold back. Starting on 10/17, I will post an episode each Monday.
I hope you enjoy the first episode and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.
It's been a while since I've posted here (been really busy). However, I made the time to write a postmortem for a recent promotion I started for one of my clients. I wanted to share it with you all because I not only include the promotion details, but I also show various free tools that I use to do competitive research, create press lists and how I go about messaging press and content creators.
Keep in mind the post is a little long, so it might be best to come back to it when you have a few extra minutes to read it all. If any of you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.
I just wanted to share a link to a presentation I did earlier this month. It's about market research and how to conduct your own market research for your game. Unfortunately, my head is covering a bit of the text in the video presentation, but I also uploaded the slides.
I hope you all enjoy it and find it useful. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask in the comment section below.
I would recommend you push your game back to July. It's not that E3 is coming, it's that press are already being contacted by publishers and developers for meetings etc. At this point, press already have their minds on E3 and what's to come. On top of the E3 black out, you have the Steam sale which is equally a bad time to release your game.
Basically, if you can't release your game in a week or so, I wouldn't release it until early-mid July.
I recently started listening to some indie game podcasts and it got me hooked, so I decided to compile a list of some excellent podcasts that I've been able to find. So far, the list is at 14, but I'm sure it will grow over time. You can see the entire list here: http://indiewolverine.com/2016/03/21/15-excellent-game-dev-podcasts/
I just wrote an article about Steam reviews and how you can use them to built trust with your community and make a better game from review feedback. You can check out the post here: http://indiewolverine.com/2016/03/01/steam-review-audit/
*Warning: at the very bottom of the post, I promote my audit service. However, it's after the post, so you can close the page when you finish the article, and there is a blatant warning before the self-promotion.
As always, if any of you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask in the comment section below
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