What's your strategy when it comes to press?

Comments

• SpoonThumb Posts: 426Member

  February 2013

  I'm equally unqualified when it comes to personal experience in this matter. However, having talked to many people, done extensive research and also spent much time considering it, I've come to this conclusion:
  
  It's a waste of time
  
  This is all based off mobile, where even developers with really good press coverage and plenty of exposure from large readership websites and magazines are still struggling away on 1000 total lifetime downloads on the app store.
  
  At least for mobile, no one reads reviews before buying a game, because it's so much easier to just hit the store, quickly check through the top 100 chart and play whatever they find there for the 15 minutes on the way to work.
  
  The argument with mobile continues that it's only worth getting featured in pocket gamer or touch arcade because Apple read those sites and it could lead to your game getting featured in the app store
  
  That's the nature of mobile though. OUYA will be different. For a start, most people won't be getting an OUYA in March or even April, so even if you get featured on a big shiny website, most people won't actually have an OUYA to subsequently go and play on.
  
  When people read a good review about an interesting game, if you don't get them to purchase then and there, the chance of them ever coming back to actually buy the game are vanishingly small. Most people are unlikely to browse the web on the OUYA, so are unlikely to ever translate into sales.
  
  I think the exception is in getting reviewed as a launch game. If your game gets held up as one of a bunch of games that a reviewer feels is 'representative' of OUYA at launch, I think that'll go a long way.
  
  The other exception is if people approach you to do an article on your game, in which case, make time for them, as they've probably played the game already and are fans of it, and fans are who you really want to give your time to.
  
  Another case study comes from an article by the maker of the binding of issac:
  
  

  Gamasutra said:

  We finished The Binding of Isaac after about three months of part-time development. We released it on Steam, and it was selling okay; for the first few weeks, the game was averaging about 100-200 copies a day, eventually stabilizing at about 150 a day after a few months. By this point, the game had already exceeded my expectations, but five months after release something very odd happened. Our daily average started to climb. 200 copies per day turned into 500 copies, then 1,000 copies, and by the seven-month mark Isaac was averaging sales of more than 1,500 copies a day and climbing. I couldn't explain it -- we hadn't put the game on sale or anything, so I was clueless as to why sales were continuing to grow.
  
  Then I checked out YouTube, and I noticed that fans of the game were uploading Let's Play videos constantly -- over 100 videos every day, each getting tons of traffic. Isaac had found its fanbase, and that base was growing larger and larger

  What you really want is this fabled word-of-mouth / organic growth, and that can be helped along by having a game that people can be fans of, make "lets play" videos about, discuss with their friends and generally participate in.
  
  Anyway, that's my take on it
  
  

  Twitter
  Website
  
• Aiursrage2k Posts: 58Member

  February 2013

  The guy who made the binding of issac was the same guy who made super meat boy so I would be surprised if it didnt do well on his name alone.
• sodafountan Posts: 38Member

  February 2013

  SpoonThumb said:

  I'm equally unqualified when it comes to personal experience in this matter. However, having talked to many people, done extensive research and also spent much time considering it, I've come to this conclusion:
  
  It's a waste of time
  
  This is all based off mobile, where even developers with really good press coverage and plenty of exposure from large readership websites and magazines are still struggling away on 1000 total lifetime downloads on the app store.
  
  At least for mobile, no one reads reviews before buying a game, because it's so much easier to just hit the store, quickly check through the top 100 chart and play whatever they find there for the 15 minutes on the way to work.
  
  The argument with mobile continues that it's only worth getting featured in pocket gamer or touch arcade because Apple read those sites and it could lead to your game getting featured in the app store
  
  That's the nature of mobile though. OUYA will be different. For a start, most people won't be getting an OUYA in March or even April, so even if you get featured on a big shiny website, most people won't actually have an OUYA to subsequently go and play on.
  
  When people read a good review about an interesting game, if you don't get them to purchase then and there, the chance of them ever coming back to actually buy the game are vanishingly small. Most people are unlikely to browse the web on the OUYA, so are unlikely to ever translate into sales.
  
  I think the exception is in getting reviewed as a launch game. If your game gets held up as one of a bunch of games that a reviewer feels is 'representative' of OUYA at launch, I think that'll go a long way.
  
  The other exception is if people approach you to do an article on your game, in which case, make time for them, as they've probably played the game already and are fans of it, and fans are who you really want to give your time to.
  
  Another case study comes from an article by the maker of the binding of issac:
  
  

  Gamasutra said:

  We finished The Binding of Isaac after about three months of part-time development. We released it on Steam, and it was selling okay; for the first few weeks, the game was averaging about 100-200 copies a day, eventually stabilizing at about 150 a day after a few months. By this point, the game had already exceeded my expectations, but five months after release something very odd happened. Our daily average started to climb. 200 copies per day turned into 500 copies, then 1,000 copies, and by the seven-month mark Isaac was averaging sales of more than 1,500 copies a day and climbing. I couldn't explain it -- we hadn't put the game on sale or anything, so I was clueless as to why sales were continuing to grow.
  
  Then I checked out YouTube, and I noticed that fans of the game were uploading Let's Play videos constantly -- over 100 videos every day, each getting tons of traffic. Isaac had found its fanbase, and that base was growing larger and larger

  What you really want is this fabled word-of-mouth / organic growth, and that can be helped along by having a game that people can be fans of, make "lets play" videos about, discuss with their friends and generally participate in.
  
  Anyway, that's my take on it
  
  

  That was a very inspirational and uplifting article that you posted, i'm glad you did. But upon further reflection I think that you might be dead on with the thought that it doesn't matter. I did see a pretty big spike in youtube views for my game, but i'm pretty sure that it won't translate into many sales (hopefully i'm wrong)

  
  

  At this point I guess i'm trying to do exactly what Gamasutra mentioned, which is to build a fanbase. I just hope i'm not too early and people forget about my game.