Presented by Xsolla
The biggest challenge for a game studio is to consistently stand out. Join Dean Takahashi and other industry professionals at this VB Live event for actionable insights into increasing your game’s visibility, extending its lifespan and growing your business.
It’s tough for a smaller game studio. The market is overcrowded with competitors, the ad networks have become harder to use, especially with the Apple ATT (App Tracking Transparency) changes, making it harder for a smaller game studio to target specific audiences. And after two pandemic-fuelled years of historic highs in consumer spending, the market has actually decreased $1.2 billion, compared to Q1 2021 based on Q1 2022 stats.
“It’s a market that really favors big publishers with deep pockets right now,” said Jon Radoff, CEO of Beamable. “They can cross-sell between games and have the capital to support the other side of the macro economy we’re in.”
Fortunately, industry spending and consumer engagement are still significantly above pre-pandemic levels, but getting noticed by those consumers has become a complicated affair for developers with distinctly shallower pockets. But there’s one tactic that can give your game an edge, Radoff says: tapping into your audience.
“You need to build a strong community around your player game as early as possible because your players are the best resource to understand your product-market fit,” he says. “They are also the people who will become your advocates.”
Community adds to the stickiness of your game and creates surprisingly strong social bonds between players. Community chat and sharing also constantly brings the game to social media, encouraging players to comment and re-engage in game content. The third part is customer acquisition.
Take Discord, for example, which Radoff believes is grossly underused. It is mainly used as a platform for guild chat rooms, but developers are not using it enough as a platform for communication and awareness. Radoff points to a company called Midjourney. It’s not actually a gaming company, but rather an AI art generator. And to actually use the art generator you have to be in their Discord.
“The nice thing is that Discord actually becomes the place where you do the work,” he explained. “And so it has this interesting virtuous cycle.”
“Anytime you can identify instances where you can pull people to a community platform like Discord, even if they don’t necessarily show up for the community, but show up to try the product, you can use that as a way to get up there.” come. awareness in other people. Then that becomes the channel for customer acquisition, instead of doing a lot of expensive advertising where Mark Zuckerberg gets all the benefits instead of your game.”
However, there are challenges to community-driven marketing programs. One is the fact that they are difficult to scale. That’s part of what’s driving the movement toward Web3 gaming, Radoff says. Some developers have hypothesized that players with a vested interest in a game’s economic fabric will also invest in the gaming community, with the hope that their assets will increase in value as the player base grows. But the rise of Web3 gaming has also highlighted the other major challenge that comes with a community-based marketing plan for any game.
“If it’s really about building the community for the long haul, that’s great,” he says. “If it’s just the fairground peddlers flipping assets and speculating, that’s not long-term behavior. That’s not even people who intend to play the game.”
So authenticity is key, both on the studio and gamer side. But developing strategies with natural, organic speed within social media and other online communities, that’s the hardest part.
Can the Wordle formula be replicated?
As an example of that organic speed, Radoff points to Wordle’s success as a social media phenomenon. Suddenly, intriguing green and black grids appeared daily on Twitter and Facebook feeds, as an increasing number of players shared their daily scores. If you knew it, you knew it. And once you discovered it, you wanted to be part of the gang and show off your achievements. The developer didn’t have to create a community; he made it easy to share a daily puzzle result.
While the ultimate financial gain to the developer would be considered peanuts for most studios, it’s still a masterclass in creating word of mouth — and in understanding how the technologies and the platforms where people hang out together. be used. But while it’s the kind of magic that’s easy to copy, it’s not likely to hit twice. A big part of Wordle’s success was also its creativity and novelty. Generating similar excitement is, unsurprisingly, a matter of experimentation, as is the rest of game development.
“I really encourage game developers not to get fixated on the big idea that’s going to work,” he says. “Instead, give yourself the bandwidth and the runway to try out much smaller ideas to find the one that will scale. Start the community earlier and use it as an opportunity for customer feedback. Focus on quick iteration, experimentation and keep building that community so you learn what people want – it’s super important. Especially for a small studio.”
To learn more about the cost-effective techniques that help studios of all sizes reach bigger and better audiences, extend the life of their games and more, don’t miss this VB Live event.
Register now for free!
agenda
- How do you make sure your game stands out in a crowded market?
- How effective UA strategy can make or break a game
- Where and how to spread the word about your latest release
- and more!
presenters
- Jon RadoffCEO, Beamable
- Chris Hewishchairman, Xsolla
- Dean TakahashiLead Writer, GamesBeat (Moderator)