Facebook + Twitter = Game Dev Win

You finished your game and now you are going to promote it on social media! Yay!

I’ve been coming across this more and more as I talk to different developers from around the world. They’ve been told countless times that they have to get on social media and get the word out, but that’s usually as far as the advice goes. What ends up happening is that these developers tweet a bunch of times about how awesome their game is, then they tweet countless times to their game’s link, and finally they tweet each person they’re following about how awesome their game is and “here is the link!” These same developers then wonder why their sales haven’t budged and why they have no likes on Facebook.

BTW here is a secret about Facebook – you have to spend money at first. Not a lot, maybe $40 at most. That’s enough to get you a couple of hundred likes. That’s enough to get you started. I’ll cover Facebook likes in depth another time.

Back to the indie game developer who isn’t getting any traction. Probably by the time they feel like they’ve exhausted all of their attempts it’s been a couple of weeks. “If nobody cares by now they aren’t going to,” is what they say. And so, at this point, they throw in the towel and start work on the next project. Meanwhile a perfectly awesome game is getting shelved.

How do you avoid this? Get out there now! Before the game is finished, before the first level is finished. Get out on Twitter and Facebook and start talking to people. And don’t spam them, PLEASE. Don’t just tweet, and tweet, and tweet the same thing over and over again. We all know that guy – he’s on all of our feeds. You either ignore him or unfollow him. Don’t do it! Instead start building relationships. Ahhh, there it is. For those who’ve worked in retail sales you’ve heard that before. Your manager comes over after someone walks out and tells you that you need to spend more time getting to know the customer, more time building a relationship with them. The difference between retail and Twitter is that you have all the time you want to build relationships with people on Twitter. And do not be fooled, it is going to take time, know that now. It is going to take more time than you think. In fact, your relationship building is never going to stop. That’s what social media is all about – staying in touch.

Let’s review:

•  Get on Twitter and Facebook today
• Follow some people on Twitter that are interested in the type of game you are making or are planning to make
  • One way to do this is to find a few big-name games that are similar to what you’re making and begin following some people that follow those games (what a mouthful)
  • IMPORTANT: Do not overdo this! Just a few people that look interesting to you from each game
  • Begin tweeting content that your followers (potential customers) are interested in
    • The most effective tweet-to-hour ratio is 1:1 – yes, you should average 1 tweet an hour
    • Over on Facebook you should post once a day
      • A great article
      • An awesome video
      • A random question

After you’ve begun doing this then you will start to get followers. Now it’s show time! Start tweeting at some of your followers and building relationships with them. Don’t just tweet “Hey my game Skin Poison Missile is freaking awesome! Check it out here www…” Instead talk to them about topics you find interesting and they find interesting. You’ll start to notice trends with your followers. People will post about things they are into; this is your opportunity to engage with them.

Back on Facebook answer questions people post and engage in conversation when people comment on one of your posts. It’s the best way to show them that you don’t just care about their “Like”, but you care about them.

All of this is an overview, but it’s a place to start. Also, it takes a lot of time! The biggest thing is going to be sticking to your plan. Social media is here to stay and it is a part of how we do business now. It’s a full-time job in itself and it demands a lot of attention. But the great thing is that it will pay off if you do it right, AND if you have patience. Don’t give up on it. Stay active in your community and when the time comes for you to launch your game you won’t have to tweet about it 30 times a day. You’ll only need to tweet it once, your followers will take care of the retweets.

Talk soon,

-Patrick

Follow me on Tiwtter: @PDS271   

 Startup Gamers helps you make a name in the indie game space

A Digital Story Revolution

There is this chart that has been floating around the Internet for some time. I’m sure you’ve seen it already, but in case you haven’t I’ll post it for you here:

Look at that.  Over $50 million has been donated to independent games on Kickstarter in 2012! And look at the jump from 2011! The significance to this chart is astounding – players want games created for them by developers that understand them. They want games created by others like them. They want games created by you! As the major publishers focus more and more of their money and efforts on creating the next “BIG” game they are inevitably wasting their time. They are mass marketing to the whole planet! While this has worked for years and years in the marketing world for big names such as Coke or McDonald’s the time is coming to an end. We are now firmly set in the information age, meaning people all over the world have access to any information they care to find – and it’s all at their fingertips.

Seth Godin covers this in great detail in his manifesto “Stop Stealing Dreams”. Read it.

Why am I talking about mass marketing and the revolution of crowd funding? Because it is time to look at the true potential of interactive storytelling in video games. All of that $50 million that people donated tells me that people aren’t satisfied with the watered down content they’re receiving from the big publishers. Video games have been around for decades now and we still haven’t come close to tapping their true potential. We’ve seen slow progress in games such as Fable where the player’s overall decisions pave the way of the story – but where Fable fails is its inability to affect your emotions when making those decisions.

What is encouraging is that we’ve begun to see independent games experimenting with interactive storytelling. One game that comes to mind and was recently featured in Geek & Sundry’s Google+ Hangout is the PC freeware game Facade. The game has been out for a long time so many of you have probably played it, but essentially it plops you down in the center of a dinner party with a married couple that you are old friends with. Over the course of the night you are forced to interact with the couple to help them sort out the problems they are facing with their marriage. The game succeeds in the moments of horror that occur when you realize you’ve said something that could impact the lives of these people. The way the game does this is by having the characters act out different situations we’ve all been witness to over the course of our lives. Things such as a couple arguing, disagreeing, and asking you to take one side or another. We’ve all been there at least once in our lives whether it was close friends in school or our parents at home.

If we look to the world of tabletop games we see various forms of interactivity in storytelling. Dungeons & Dragons offers a social interaction with friends. You control the entirety of your character’s personality and decision-making. You and your friends carve out a story that is interesting and rewarding to you all. Some parties have games that go on for years because they get emotionally attached to the stories and the characters.

Another newer indie tabletop game is Fiasco. In this game you and your friends pick general guidelines to a story from the outset. You create your characters and form relationships between them. That in its self is a fun experience because you are creating something, and because of that creation you later become emotionally attached to the story and your character. As the story unfolds it is up to each person at the table to drive it forward in some unexpected way. This is a great example of interactive storytelling.

 “…but for the next big step for genre storytelling, videogames will be a major component.” – Guillermo Del Toro

This statement is too true. With the evidence of crowd funding now becoming the next big step in the global economy, and a whole new generation born into the information age, it is time for video games to take their place as the interactive storytelling format of a generation.

What are you doing to lead the way?

Talk soon,

-Patrick

follow me on Twitter: @PDS271

The Best Web Design For Your Game Site Is Losing You Customers

The first thing that most people do when they start a new company or organization is get a website. It makes sense because nearly the whole world is online. No longer are you restricted to one small area of the world to showcase your talents and products,  instead you have access to everyone. But there is an issue with this, and it could be costing you customers.

For the last 5-10 years we’ve been evolving the way we create websites. It’s now at the point where someone can build a website using drag and drop and get it hosted completely for free by having it ad supported. All of these dynamic websites are great to look at and use when you’re on your desktop or laptop – too bad, then, that most of your audience spends the majority of their online time using their phone.

Jason Spero (Google’s head of Mobile Sales and Strategy) predicted earlier in the year that 1 billion people would use a mobile device as their primary means to access the Internet in 2012. The CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) just stated that by 2013 more than 100 million tablets will have shipped in the US alone. And then there is this piece of information from Common Sense Media: 52% of all children 8yo and younger have access to mobile devices at home, such as a smartphone, video iPod, iPad or other tablet. I can tell you this from my own personal experience – I have two daughters (8yo & 5yo) and they both have their own tablets. In addition, their mother has an iPad and I have a Motorola Xoom. Next year we will most likely get our 8yo a phone for her birthday. And the majority of their friends from school have similar devices.

So what are you thinking right now?

I conducted a very small test this afternoon as I was looking at all of these figures. I went online and randomly selected 50 small indie game developers that follow Startup Gamers on Twitter. I attempted to visit the website of each of these developers from my phone. Now I know that this is just a small snapshot of all of the startups out there, but hear me out:

• 30 of 50 had no mobile version of their site
• 10 of 50 had a mobile plugin installed on their site
• 6 of 50 had no site at all
• 4 of 50 had a broken site-link on their Twitter profile
• 0 of 50 had a separate sub-domain for mobile visitors

Now you may be thinking that at least it was good that 30 had a working site. This is not good, and if you doubt me try using indiegamemag.com or gamasutra.com on your phone – it’s extremely frustrating. By the majority of these indie studios having their desktop site show up on a mobile device they are forcing potential customers to skip right over them. Imagine little Jimmy on his iPhone clicking on a link to your website from Facebook because he thinks your game sounds cool. When he gets there he has to deal with pinching, scrolling, expanding, and trying to tap the correct link because everything is so small. Halfway to the link to your game he’s already pushed the wrong link three times. With one push he is back to his home screen and then back on Facebook – your game forgotten in one minute.

Well at least 10 sites had a mobile plugin installed… this still isn’t great either. A mobile plugin is additional code on your site that tries to slim down your content based on how the site is formatted. While this usually works well the problem is that on a mobile device your entire site still needs to load, and if your desktop site has a lot of pictures and video content it could still take too long to load for little Jimmy. Also, these sites leave hard to navigate menus intact from the desktop counterpart. See the photo of this site on a mobile device as an example.

The last two pieces of the test show no site or broken links. I shouldn’t have to say why this is a bad move.

So what should you do? Simple – design a site from the ground up with mobile in mind. And not only that, but have mobile devices redirect to a sub-domain such as m.startupgamers.com. This way only the content you want to include on your mobile site has to load. I have a few tips on what that content should be:

• Minimal color, pics, and video– While the newest smartphones and tablets can render these things quickly you never know what kind of device people are using. It’s better to leave as much of this out as possible.
• Only include content that is important to your audience – If you are running a Google ad or even a Facebook ad with the hopes of getting people to your page to buy your game then only include the information they need to find out about your game and a way for them to buy it. If you design games for the Play Store then feature an easy to touch button that brings them right to your game in the store.
• When designing the functionality of the mobile site get in the mindset of touch-and-swipe, not point-and-click. Your mobile site should function as if it were an app.
• Always include an easy way for your audience to switch between your desktop site and your mobile site. And once they’ve switched don’t allow it to go right back to the mobile site unless they choose. It is so frustrating to have to switch back and forth because the browser is doing it automatically.
• Finally, create a sub-domain that employs User Agent Detection to automatically redirect mobile devices to it.

If you have a site for your game company then I’ll leave you with this: load it up on your phone and play with it a bit. Do you like it? If not then your audience doesn’t either.

Here are some links:

WPTouch

WURLF

Device Atlas

Talk soon,

-Patrick

Follow me on Twitter: @PDS271

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