Of course, we don’t want to name and shame random indie developers. The majority of indie games will be born out of love for the games and for making them, and the last thing we want to do is search around for random games and criticise for the sake of it. We love games and the point of this site is to help them grow, not to hinder them.

We have had a number of developers contact us telling us about their interesting games and asking for feedback. We are always delighted to offer any help we can, and think that this is the best way to do case studies. If they like, we offer to do honest case studies for these developers. If they are happy with the idea, it’s then when we will write up a case study for the site. The other strength of this approach is that it enables us to hear their point of view. Who do they think their target audience is, what do they think their brand proposition is, what is their elevator pitch, what are their goals etc?

We shall upload the first of these case studies soon. If you would like us to give you private feedback or do a case study on your game please let us know via our contact page or in the comment section below. We would love to hear from you!

Plugins don’t equal social

A lot of businesses are thinking around social networks in the wrong way. They see the plugins that the various platforms have and they think that is the way to make their product/website social. The reality is this couldn’t be further from the truth. As Paul Adams says this is just a way to “bolt on” social but isn’t truly social. It takes advantage of a small part of these new mediums and although can result in some good results it often is not enough.

Think differently

The web is being rebuilt around each and everyone of us in a natural evolution for it to reflect our offline world. Whether you like it or not that is what is happening and it is going to be largely based around the social networks that hold the most information about us.

There is a necessity to begin to understand human behaviour because of this. It is no longer a case of “build it and they will come” as content is not the be all and end all of the web. By having the knowledge of what makes humans tick, understanding fundamental human social behaviour you will be one step ahead of your competition when it comes to implementing the social networks out there into your game.

Examples

A prime example of a company who looked at human behaviour, took the data available to them through, in this case, Facebook and are currently reaping the rewards is Zynga. Although we are yet to see how they will do on the stock market it is safe to say that they will be a force to be reckoned with in the near future. By implementing the simple basic idea of playing alongside your friends and taking advantage of the Facebook platform, they have created a company that has more players in one game than the total who bought Call of Duty: Black Ops. The games don’t look as pretty and don’t have anywhere near as many features but people are compelled to keep playing and to join their friends online.

A slightly different example, but a great one showing how to customise around an individual, is the online craft shop Etsy. They use the data available from your Facebook account to pull in all your friends likes to be able to accurately predict gifts which they’ll most likely be interested in. This simple but effective mechanic immediately makes the shopping for a gift experience more enjoyable and effective.

Be creative

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin, Instagram, Foursquare, YouTube and even Soundcloud offer a wealth of data that you can use to make your game more relevant to an individual. By making an experience that directly engages with a person makes them more likely to want to come back for more and share that experience with those they are closest to.

Don’t over step the mark

When looking into what piece of information you want to pull into the experience make sure that what you choose isn’t going to freak people out. Do you really need to known “Relationship status”? If you do then fine but make it 100% clear.

Finally don’t store people’s profiles. It scares people and is a PR headache.

I highly recommend you watch the below video to get a better understanding of what I am talking about. Hopefully you will begin to see new and exciting ways to build games around people rather than trying to shoe horn social into your game.

P.s. One day soon I hope we can just talk about the web rather than saying social every five words.

We’re really happy with the progress we’ve made in the last 3 months and really grateful for everyone who takes the time to read, share and comment on our articles. Hopefully you’ll like the site’s new look and feel. Please do tell us your thoughts in the comments; along with any bugs you come across, though fingers crossed we squashed them all.

I’m also very pleased to announce that we’ve also got a new member on the WOOTcomms team. Sam is going to be joining us writing about all things mobile. You can read a little more about him in his first post here, and check out his bio here.

This means that we’ll be upping out posts to three times a week, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursday. If you want more you can also follow us on Twitter.

Obviously most indie games don’t have a huge budget for development, let alone advertising and marketing, so we hope to be able to bring advice that is not only helpful but also affordable. So that’s essentially our elevator pitch: Advice and insight into marketing indie games on a shoestring budget.

We’ll be looking to continually add to this site, to make it more useful, interesting and relevant for you. So if you have any thoughts, suggestions, or just want to chat, get in touch. We can be found on Twitter and though our Contact page.