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[Rotorist]

We have been talking about marketing strategies here and there, but why not ask the consumers how they hear about games that caught their attention? How did they discover games?

A couple of months ago I opened a thread on /r/truegaming, and received a ton of response. The gamers enjoyed the discussion too and upvoted the post. Take a look:

https://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/3zljza/what_are_your_acceptable_ways_for_indie/

What did I learn from this discussion?

1. Streamers are important
2. Nobody discovers game from big gaming press
3. They often take suggestions from friends
4. Very few people set out to find games, they rather wait for games to come to them

It seems, what's more important is not broadcasting the game everywhere; but rather with surgical precision finding the big influencers who enjoy your game very much.

[readyplaygames]

How do you find "big influencers?" Or can tell if they are "big?"

[Rotorist]

How do you find "big influencers?" Or can tell if they are "big?"

Well, that's the million dollar question isn't it?

The streamer who's interested in your game streaming gameplay and introducing it to his fellow streamers; a well respected member of a huge gaming community (reddit) makes a post about your game; a gaming celebrity takes note of your game and mentions it to the public; all these are big influencers. Finding just the right one and gaining their respect is the hard part. You gotta have a very good game, and knowing who's the right person and what's the right way to approach them... just have to figure it out  you know

[Morch]

Thank you for this information!
I think you had a great idea reaching out to that community.

This does raise questions however:

- What does /r/truegaming represent as a subreddit? (goals, types of discussions, etc.)
- What type of gamers are in there?
- How representative of those gamers are the participants of that discussion?
- Do they represent a "vocal minority" as many online communities do?


 

[alexp]

Very interesting angle and I think it's great that you tried to ask gamers themselves how they find out about new games. The market is pretty saturated with new games being released every day, so it's super hard to get your game noticed.

[Rotorist]

Thank you for this information!
I think you had a great idea reaching out to that community.

This does raise questions however:

- What does /r/truegaming represent as a subreddit? (goals, types of discussions, etc.)
- What type of gamers are in there?
- How representative of those gamers are the participants of that discussion?
- Do they represent a "vocal minority" as many online communities do?


 

Truegaming, in my opinion, is a group of gamers who love to discover theories behind why games are the way they are. Gamers who like to think and discuss deep topics. I picked that place for this discussion because they are very mature, comparing to places like /r/gaming, and quite open with what they think. One of the most healthy places where you can get well thought out opinions.

[joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

1. Streamers are important
2. Nobody discovers game from big gaming press
3. They often take suggestions from friends
4. Very few people set out to find games, they rather wait for games to come to them

Do you have any theories about this data? Do you believe the 137 comments gave you a sample representative of the market, and do you believe that these gamers' knowledge has any specific usefulness for predicting your audience as a whole?

1- Does this match up with your assumptions, or results from other studies / data about streamers and sales?

2- If this is true, why do we see a correlation between large/successful games and adverts on major gaming press?

3 / 4 - these both seem very unsurprising, and in line with everything already known about marketing/business as a whole.

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

2. Nobody discovers game from big gaming press

It might be reassuring for indie devs but i don't think it's the reality.

[joe_eyemobi]

2. Nobody discovers game from big gaming press

It might be reassuring for indie devs but i don't think it's the reality.

Agreed, I can correlate spikes in sales when big name websites have mentioned our game in the past.

I know everyone thinks streamers/youtubers are the be all and end all of marketing, but the problem is the larger they are, the less likely they are to get in touch with.  Guys like Markiplier, Jack Septic Eye, etc must get bombarded with millions of messages everyday, so you're unlikely to get noticed without knowing someone on the inside.

Even mid-tier streamers are getting harder and harder to get hold of now. I'm in the midst of a marketing campaign for our Full Release in Steam in a few days, and our response rate is probably 3-5% - it's pretty grim.

I also feel we have to help out the smaller guys too - for one thing they may grow big one day, and they are part of our ecosystem as well.  If they do well, then so do we in the greater scheme of things.