Don’t preach to the converted
A lot of people make the same mistake when they are trying to promote their indie game, they continue to promote to people who have already purchased the game. They focus their attention on communications that only their existing audience will see. All of their effort goes into talking about their latest features in blog post updates, or giving discount codes to the game away on Twitter.
This is not to say you should never continue promoting your game to people who have already bought it. Depending on your business model, there of course may be cause to continue try to sell to people who have already purchased your game, especially, if for example if your game has paid for upgrades built in. (And of course, it is absolutely vital to keep your loyal players happy and regular communication is a huge part of that – this post is more about the promotional aspect of communications)
Many indie game developers spend so much of their time promoting to people already playing the game it can be difficult to see things from a different perspective, they forget to put themselves in places and talk to people who haven’t even heard of their game, let alone played it.
Obviously, the aim is not to go chasing new players at the expense of those already loyal to your game, but if you focus all your marketing and communications efforts on those who are already converted then you will quickly face diminishing returns, investing a lot of time for very little return. In fact, the more time you spend trying to market to people already playing, the more you run the risk of alienating these players.
The key take away is that it is okay to keep promoting to people who have already started playing your game, but when promoting your game, your focus should always be on new players – if you really want to grow the number of people playing, you have to expose the game to new audiences.
Just a heads up in case you’re using a different browser; In Chrome, the ‘LIKE IT? SHARE IT!’ overlaps the comment count. The share panel also overlaps the comments.
I enjoyed the article. It seems like developers have the right idea but the wrong approach.
Legendary indie games generate a lot of talk. The problem is that it shouldn’t be generated from the company itself.
Thanks Can. I actually use Chrome myself and can’t see the over lapping. Does it happen before or after clicking?
Glad you liked the article. I’ve seen a lot of developers seem to spend all their time talking to people already playing the game, rather than try to get new people in. I’m actually working on a series of word of mouth posts that should be coming in the next few weeks, hope you’ll find them useful.
Hmm. Seems to be ok now. Perhaps something went wrong in transmission?
I’m looking forward to upcoming article! Must be an interesting topic to explore. Have you delved into indie game development at all?
Bizzare, not sure why that happened!
It’s a very interesting article, enjoying writing and researching it. Haven’t developed any published games myself, only messing around with javascript games a few years back. But I’ve worked with games clients big and small in my professional life. And obviously a large chunk of my spare time is spent playing them, to the despair of my girlfriend I’m sure.
Wow.
I see life differently now – it’s like I have new eyes.