One of the sentences in the Kickstarter Dev package was: "We'll also help you promote your game for ONE YEAR."
I haven't been able to find any additional details on this. (Maybe I haven't looked in the right place?) If anyone has a link to this I'd appreciate it if you shared it.
There are several questions that arise from that quoted statement.
When does the one year start?
If we aren't ready to publish our game by the time OUYA ships to the gamers does that affect our promotion time? Or will it be one year from the time we publish the game?
What happens if you publish another game within that first year? Does it also get promoted alongside your first game? Or can we switch the remaining promotion time to the new game? (e.g. promote Game A for six months and then promote Game B for the remaining six months).
I'm also curious about this because in the next two months I need to put together a marketing plan and this is the sole reason I backed as a developer.
Yeah that one sentence was a big part in my decision to back as a dev. Buying a year of promotion from an external company would cost more than the Dev package itself. So I'm interested to see what kind of promotion it is that I bought with the package.
I just assumed our games would be featured in the Ouya App Store...which unfortunately lowered the effectiveness when they bumped up the number of dev kits pledges to around 800. At this point to do so they'd basically need to create a special section in their store for us backers.
Something more effective than our own section would be a random scrolling featured game slot at the top of the store. Each user could see a random pick of the promoted games every time they return to the store screen. If you spread that out across the 50,000 users on OUYA that's a lot better marketing for each of the promoted games. (You're guaranteed that your game will be on the screen a lot more often than if it is just tucked away in a Promoted section on the store with 800 other games.)
Something more effective than our own section would be a random scrolling featured game slot at the top of the store. Each user could see a random pick of the promoted games every time they return to the store screen. If you spread that out across the 50,000 users on OUYA that's a lot better marketing for each of the promoted games. (You're guaranteed that your game will be on the screen a lot more often than if it is just tucked away in a Promoted section on the store with 800 other games.)
I think this is a great idea! I'd love to see a creative/fair solution like this!
Something more effective than our own section would be a random scrolling featured game slot at the top of the store. Each user could see a random pick of the promoted games every time they return to the store screen. If you spread that out across the 50,000 users on OUYA that's a lot better marketing for each of the promoted games. (You're guaranteed that your game will be on the screen a lot more often than if it is just tucked away in a Promoted section on the store with 800 other games.)
This sounds like an interesting idea to me, too. Or, if not this exactly, something more than just 800 games in the Featured slot. ;)
Of course, you have to keep in mind that in between different games taking longer to developer and games getting delayed, not all 800 games are going to come out at once. And some will never release... just a fact of game development. So, you won't actually be up against 800 other games.
Even so, if you're up against just dozens of other games, that's probably too many. That's why innovative solutions like this could be great. There's no limit to what you could do. You could do variations on Anticitizen's idea; for instance, instead of making the promo games each user sees randomize every time they look at the store screen, you could make them only randomize once daily, so games actually get a chance to be seen.
You could do totally different things, too. If the OUYA store has a "similar/recommended games" feature, like the Google Play store, that shows you games similar to what you are currently looking at, you could have a "Promoted" slot at the top of that list that favors Elite Dev package games.
Or you could make it social. Enable a special feature for the Elite Dev games that whenever a friend of yours downloads, buys, or plays a promoted game, you get a little, unobtrusive notification. Of course, OUYA won't feature friends at launch so I guess that specific idea isn't possible, but I bet it would be a great one.
Anticitizen
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Thomas Horwath
Founder | Creative Director
Daylater Studios
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Of course, you have to keep in mind that in between different games taking longer to developer and games getting delayed, not all 800 games are going to come out at once. And some will never release... just a fact of game development. So, you won't actually be up against 800 other games.
Even so, if you're up against just dozens of other games, that's probably too many. That's why innovative solutions like this could be great. There's no limit to what you could do. You could do variations on Anticitizen's idea; for instance, instead of making the promo games each user sees randomize every time they look at the store screen, you could make them only randomize once daily, so games actually get a chance to be seen.
You could do totally different things, too. If the OUYA store has a "similar/recommended games" feature, like the Google Play store, that shows you games similar to what you are currently looking at, you could have a "Promoted" slot at the top of that list that favors Elite Dev package games.
Or you could make it social. Enable a special feature for the Elite Dev games that whenever a friend of yours downloads, buys, or plays a promoted game, you get a little, unobtrusive notification. Of course, OUYA won't feature friends at launch so I guess that specific idea isn't possible, but I bet it would be a great one.