Any marketing advice? Thread

Hi there

My team and I are in the process of developing an JRPG style game… we have come up with some marketing ideas but are inexperienced with this side of things.

I was wondering if any of you lovely people have any words of wisdom or tips that you could tell me from your experiences? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

I may not have a lot of experience with marketing for a video game, but I would like to share some advice that may benefit you.

We live in the age where companies will use social media to advertise their products. Why? Well it's mostly because of the fact that everyone is pretty much on some sort of a social community, it makes it easier to spread the word across the Internet.

So what can you do to make sure that your product gets noticed? Well, you must first find out who is your average consumer when it comes to buying your games, or at least your type of games. So in this case, we have a JRPG, or something similar to it. The number one audience that you want to target would be the occasional anime-RPG enthusiast. How do you target them? Well, search the World Wide Web my friend, there are countless of communities that are dedicated to Japanese animation, and chances are, they might even like role-playing games. In this scenario, if I was the head of marketing for your company, I would definitely scour the many sub-reddits out there to find my potential customers. I will make sure to post as much as information as I can, and try to interest as much as people as possible.

Besides Reddit (which I'm sure is the best way of marketing/promoting your product), make sure that you have a Facebook, and a Twitter to create a gathering for your soon to be released game. This is a very important stage, as you surly don't want your game to under-perform in terms of sales when it launches. So make sure that your product is out there on every major social outlet, and keep the fans updated with frequent updates of how the development is coming along. You do not want your fans to dwindle as you they wait for the game to be released, no, make sure that you keep them updated on ETA's and respond to any feedback you receive, be it good or bad.

Overall, once you begin to have a following/gathering for your product(s), you must not let the momentum die down gradually. You must keep the "hype" going by posting daily updates, answering fan questions, and by keeping the social accounts that is marketing your product(s) active as much as possible.

So like I said, use social media as your tool to gain a foothold in this very competitive industry of ours. What sets your game apart from other JRPG's? Why should I buy/try your product when this company claims to have more features in their product? These questions are most likely to be asked by any potential customer and it is your job to keep the customer's knows at a satisfactory level. You must be clear, honest, and absolute with what ever you state.

Again, Reddit is your friend, and in this case with it being a Japanese style game and all, target fans of Japanese animation as I'm sure some, if not most, like to play role-playing games and they will be essential as a core foundation of your consumers. I hope this piece of advice helps you in any way and I wish the best of luck to all your endeavors.

Thank you dagg245 for your help, It was very informative. Best of luck to you in the future

Marketing a game is not an easy task, but it is very important. I am not very experienced but i can somewhat help you by telling what you can possibly do. You said that you guys are still in the development process, so the best thing to do now is to start a Blog or Devlog and update it with what's going on, give some insider news and maintain it well, also use all communities of this genre and others and participate in it and get you game name recognise. Use Facebook & Twitter.for now i would suggest you to start doing it. And once you launch do the post launch marketing, take help of some reviewing website and ask them to give a review of your game of use the Youtube channel : Let's play. If you get recognised by some nice reviewers it'll give you a huge boost. Also if you have some money to sped take up Ad Campaign. Be interactive and invest some time in it.

Anyways best of luck for your project

Good advice. I was looking into using the lets play channels in the post launch.
I have never done a Devlog before. Would it be wise to talk about ideas that didn't work at first? E.g. a music track that didn't fit a level or a character design that needed tweaking. And then talk about how you changed them.

Thank you for your advice and taking the time to reply, it was very helpful. Best of luck in the future

As people stated above its all about active development and showing this to the audience.
If you have a real nice game concept I'm sure people will notice and, if you do it right, the word will spread out there.

Best of luck with the project!

It really depends on the ressources you have! Do you have a full-time person in your team that can market your game?

Thank you Antraxxed and Eageron for your replies.

In answer to your question Eageron. We have two people that will share the marketing side. Working in shifts. So one person will post during day time peak hours and the other will post during evening peak hours.

Hi Blindnuts,

then you really got amazing ressources to really make a very good Marketing. As the previous commentators already mentioned there are lots of ways with which you can promote your game without having to pay big sums of money. You should definitely use Social Media to start up a Community (Twitter, Facebook, G+, Youtube, Reddit etc..). Engage with the people and show them your development progress. And if you are not scared to be copied or anything than you can provide the interested with your progress.

Could you tell me for what platforms you will publish this game?

Hi Eageron,

Thats what we are aiming to do. We were thinking in creating development vlogs, within most aspects of the game dev. So from design the characters, to composing the soundtrack... similar to what Bear McCreary does with the walking dead stuff.

Of course. We are going to publish on windows. And depending on the success of the game re-publish on other platforms.

In a devlog you can add any topic you think is good, but should be development related. Plan each of your devlog with the proper content, add GIF's & screenshots(if any). Look at the TIGsource devlog section, they've got some really good devlogs there from which you can take an idea and get started.

Hey guys just a quick message to say thank you so much for the advice. The blogs have begun.

What do people think of the main characters Krin, Senji, Gale and Lobo?

Our Facebook page: Facebook.com
Our Twitter: Twitter.com
Our web site: Omnicidalstdio.com

Again thank you for your time and advice. It was nice to gain some productive responses.

Hi blindnuts,

we just followed you on Twitter. Congratulations to the launch of the website and the implementation of your Social Profiles. Senji is my favourite! Though I would rethink if I would colour his hair in purple! I would like to see some Jubei Kibagami type style character!

Greetings!

Hi Eageron,

Thanks for following us on Twitter, we've followed you back. Also we have taken your comments onboard thank you.

Hey there,

no worries mate! =) We have to support each other! Much success!