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Game Exposure - Is Gaming Media Useless?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by HonoraryBob, Sep 15, 2017.

  1. HonoraryBob

    HonoraryBob

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    Most articles will tell devs that it's vital to get reviews in gaming media outlets, but all I ever see from gamers themselves (and some devs) is "gaming media is dead / pointless / absurd / corrupt" (etc). Here's Notch himself saying "Nobody has cared about games media for years." in a recent post on Twitter (and see the replies from gamers) : https://twitter.com/notch/status/908610747789451271

    What does everyone think about this? Obviously it can't hurt to get reviews if the reviews are positive, but is it that important? What percentage of gamers read these media sources?

    My own view is that Youtube gameplay videos are probably the most important means of getting exposure, if you look at the numbers of viewers (some individual videos have over 50 million views). But that raises the question : how do these Youtube guys pick which games to play?
     
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  2. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    Just my opinion here... I think basically there has been a big shift over recent years in terms of where gamers (and consumers in general) get their guidance.

    These days the "little" guys and gals are much more empowered. Things are very fragmented as a result. There are YouTubers out there for example that have less than 50 views on their videos and even less subscribers but the subscribers they have are much more likely to listen to their recommendations.

    I am pretty much the same way. I don't watch much corporate stuff (i.e. big / formal company video productions) and am much more interested in what the random little Jane and Joe YTers who are obviously true down to earth gamers think. I have a few I check for reviews and they change often.

    It is very empowering for us all I think. Basically people just find one or more people out there who like the things we like and those are the people whose content we check out. I mean I also checked out TB and Jim Sterling videos but again I still see them as basically just the neighbor next door. Kind of. Not so much these days but at one time anyway.

    I do think all of the exposure you can get is a good thing even if it some "official" gaming news channel. Because that increases the odds that many Janes and Joes will find out about your game and cover it. And that is the ideal I think. To have your game covered by hundreds or even thousands of these Janes and Joes who absolutely love your kind of game with each one reaching just a tiny number of people but the people they reach are much more likely to check out your game.

    Again... IMO.
     
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  3. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    I think that one way to get rich is to sell advice about how to get rich. Meaning the articles you mentioned are highly dubious.

    The reviews are probably irrelevant, what matters it to get people to know that the game exists. Doesn't matter how.
     
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  4. HonoraryBob

    HonoraryBob

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    Sure, but for a small developer with few options and even less money, what's the single most effective method for the time / cost?
     
  5. HonoraryBob

    HonoraryBob

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    About a decade ago, I used to get emails telling me I could make lots of money by purchasing a sheet of paper that would explain how to sell the same sheet of paper to other people. This was the big thing before the Nigerian Prince emails became a thing.


    Yes, but what's the most efficient way for a small, poor developer to get the word out reasonably quickly?
     
  6. GarBenjamin

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    It is impossible to answer mainly because the moment someone answers it on a forum visited by many thousands of people who would jump on it and start doing it that method suddenly becomes much less effective. Unless there is some barrier to entry such as requiring a huge amount of set up work or a very large financial investment that will make it so only very few (a very tiny %) of all of the people who see it can actually do it.

    This is the thing many don't seem to get. All of the items out there in lists as to what to do for marketing were at one time very effective. But the vast majority of methods only remain effective until a certain number of people are all doing it and each new person who does the same thing reduces the effectiveness more and more until finally it is near 0.
     
    Last edited: Sep 15, 2017
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  7. RockoDyne

    RockoDyne

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    Pray to the elder gods. It has about as good of odds as spamming a thousand press releases out there.

    If you don't want to play the eldritch lottery, then you need to spend years building a community... or look for a publisher that can actually advertise.
     
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  8. EternalAmbiguity

    EternalAmbiguity

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    Definitely agree with neginfinity. Regardless of the value of the content, people ARE reading these websites and thus are exposed to what the websites promote. It doesn't even matter if they're all going "Kotaku is trash" or whatever. They're still seeing the content.

    Your "what's the best way for a small developer to get exposure" is another question entirely, however. I imagine one of the best ways is to get a following. Social media, your own website and blog or whatever, maybe a weekly/monthly email talking about your game, that kind of stuff. Getting on these websites is important for sure, but if your game isn't out yet these users aren't able to buy, and thus you need a hook.
     
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  9. Martin_H

    Martin_H

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    Word of mouth, but the game needs to be the most amazing thing ever for that to happen. Like best-in-class in its niche.


    People easily forget that all professional marketing advice for games assumes you have a product that people would want to buy if they just knew about it to begin with. If a game has no audience that wants that kind of game, marketing can't create one. That might work for other types of products where you can exploit fear or greed to get people to buy stuff they don't need, but it's hard with games because no one really needs new games.
     
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  10. GarBenjamin

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    I agree definitely build a community. That is a given. Need that and that should be the goal of all of the marketing. But the "how to do that" down to the specifics of methods is up to each person because again once someone says this is what I did... those "channels" will become flooded by a lot of people trying to do the same thing and get mediocre results because of that. And then people say "that was bs I tried it and it didn't work" well yes because you and 5,000 others tried it and your efforts were lost in all of that noise.
     
  11. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    If you are thinking about marketing then exposure is as vital as it has always been. You need reviews, you need let's plays and you need to get it out there.

    I sense the OP somehow wants to avoid all that but I'm sorry, there is no avoiding all that.
     
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  12. Joe-Censored

    Joe-Censored

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    Gaming media can help start a buzz, but as you mentioned it is the youtubers and community that will really sustain it.
     
  13. RichardKain

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    Exposure and marketing is as necessary as it ever has been. Perhaps even more so, with the increasing number of competitors that you have to stand out amongst.

    But game-specific media itself has changed radically over the past decade and change. It no longer has any centralization. There are no more monolithic organizations that you can go to for promotion. Magazines are dead. Television never covered games properly in the first place. And most of the major media web-sites have declined significantly. Short form blogs like Kotaku and Polygon are more relevant, but the chances of you actually getting a review on those are scarce. They don't review games as often as they used to, and the volume is only increasing.

    One of the best ways to get media attention these days is to simply make some manner of controversy in order to get attention. But this is a very risky approach, and can easily backfire.

    At the end of the day, the current nature of games media means that most of the responsibility for promotion falls on the developer. You'll get much better results from founding your own community around your company, and reaching out to independent media personalities like popular Twitch streamers and You Tube content producers.
     
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  14. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Yep, not all of us can afford TV spots and bus-side billboard ads for just DLC... :D
     
  15. EternalAmbiguity

    EternalAmbiguity

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  16. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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  17. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    I think that looking for the most efficient way is a mistake, because it limits your option and waste your time.
    It is like looking for the most efficient way to learn programming.

    I think that a good idea is to use all the options available.

    Please note that this is an opinion and I might be wrong.
     
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  18. angrypenguin

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    This, or getting someone on board who can do it for you. The issue is that past success is not a reliable indicator of future success unless you can work at significant scale. Looking at what's worked for other indies is somewhat useless for us, unless we abstract what we learn to generalised truisms like "spend time building a community". I mean, that's great advice, but it's missing the critical factor of how you do the building, and that's going to vary based on target markets and current trends.

    If you don't have time to try and measure things until you hit something that works for you, then try to work with someone who's already doing that. You'll have to give them a slice of your pie, but I personally don't have a problem with that - if they're worth their salt then the pie should grow far more than enough to cover their slice!
     
  19. Kiwasi

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    I'm assuming you have a product worth playing? And by worth playing I mean better then all of the competition in the same vertical.

    Once that hurdle is passed, its a case of getting the product out to as many influencers as possible. Focus on the people that are going to encourage others to play your game. That includes game media, YouTubers, early adopters in your community, and storefront curators. Make it as easy as possible for those people to get at your game, and share it with the world.

    And of course send me a Steam key. I occasionally review games on my channel.

    (Disclaimer: I've never got past the product worth playing stage, so the rest of this is theoretical.)
     
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  20. theANMATOR2b

    theANMATOR2b

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    Controversy probably. Everybody seem to enjoy listening to people react, yell, condemn, chastise and opine on others. Depending upon your flavor of controversy - might be risky for any type of future internet business.
     
  21. FMark92

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    I don't know. I haven't cared about games media since 2008. I still watch E3 videos for cringe, though.
    TB talked about it.
    I will now talk about how games get featured on my channel for just over 45 minutes

    Here's your options sorted by cost (ascending) and by effort (descending(? not really sure about the publisher thing. It will cost a lot and you'll still need to put in effort.))
    1. This one is a no-brainer. You/your game must achieve epic maymay status.
    2. Build an audience while you're developing, so that when you're done there will already be a nice chunk of people expecting your game.
    3. Find a publisher.
     
  22. Aiursrage2k

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    Maybe post a demo on gamejolt or itch.io
     
  23. BIGTIMEMASTER

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    About OP, I agree with some of the early responses.

    Before buying a game, I generally check metacritic reviews. Not the professional ones though. I usually find what they have to say too politicized/watered down to be useful.

    I usually read through most of the negative and mixed reviews. If they seem to be intelligently written and raise valid points that might concern me, I'll probably avoid the game. I don't usually bother reading positive reviews at all. If the game involves concepts that interest me, I only need to know if it delivers or not.

    If I can't make a decision based on reading reviews, I look for gameplay videos on youtube. I just search for the game and click whichever videos are on top. I don't follow anyone in particular and I generally don't watch actual reviews.


    About finding games in the first place, occasionally when I want to try something new I search that specific genre on google and see what's out there.
     
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  24. wccrawford

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    This has basically been my approach to all reviews online, not just for games. I've found a *lot* of great products that were reasonably priced this way.

    My guide is whether or not people are complaining about things that will ruin the product for me.

    Game has poor multiplayer? I don't care. Game has poor controls? No buy!

    Rice cooker doesn't do brown rice well? So what? It doesn't last very long before dying? No buy!

    The good reviews basically don't matter. I've already got a product description and probably seen an ad for whatever it is. If reviews manage to say something that the marketing didn't, their marketing sucks!
     
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  25. Fera_KM

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    This is currently how I read reviews on mainstream sites,
    I quickly scroll down to the final score and then read the comment section and get an overview if people generally disagree or agree. I've found this to be the most successful way of filtering so far.
    The only reason I would actually read any content of the review was if someone quoted something in a comment.

    If I'm then interested, I find a 3rd party let's play or similar.
     
  26. VIC20

    VIC20

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    Beside insidemacgames which I frequently visited in the 2000s – the last time I really have read games media was in the 1980s. And I never really watched such stuff on TV.
     
  27. neoshaman

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    The short way to see it is exposure is simply a multiplier, I agree with a lots of people. Test if you have an audience first, generally by having a mvp out, the presence of early adopter is a good indicator of viability (though it can max out if you find a niche). If there is an audience, exposure will just multiply the reach to that audience, provided you expose the right one. Then price range is another multiplier to maximize. In some way we can visualize it as a equation:

    Quality x exposure x price fitness
    (it's not a real equation, just a description)

    With quality = audience fitness
     
  28. angrypenguin

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    If your niche is so small that you can max it out with an MVP and indie / low budget marketing then you've disproved viability and it's time to move onto the next project. The question is how you can know if you've maxed out.
     
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  29. peterk1968

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    I think a good move is that for your first game try to pick something that has a built-in audience. As an example, I started developing apps based on popular new boardgames. That gives me a built in audience of people who already own the boardgame and want an app version, people who are thinking of buying the boardgame (which is more expensive than the app) and test it out using the app first. It's been pretty easy to get an instant audience doing this.

    Once you have a first successful game, it becomes easier. You can cross-advertise within your games. The people who bought your previous games will become a target audience for your future games.

    Don't know if this works for what you are doing, but just thought I'd toss it out - try to think of something that would have an easy, instant audience for at least your first game.
     
  30. ShilohGames

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    You still need to be careful about copyright, though. Making an app of a popular board game may cause you problems when the owner of the board game IP sees what you are doing.
     
  31. peterk1968

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    I never meant to suggest plagiarizing a boardgame. I approach the boardgame companies and get them on-board and we have contracts signed.

    That is the cost for the built-in instant audience that I am suggesting - it's never going to be free - it will cost you a licensing fee or a share of your profits. You pay for a recognized IP - yes, it's an expense, but you know that your sales will be significant and not close to 0. It's a good risk mitigation tactic for your first game.

    To answer the original question more directly. I don;t think the gaming media is useless. You want to get your game reviewed (don't ever pay anything for it though, beyond a free copy of the game) in as many places as humanly possible A lot of times a review will lead to forum discussions and every time the name of your game gets stuck somewhere you increase the probability that someone searching for something will bump into it.
     
  32. EternalAmbiguity

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    Did you do this for your first game as you suggest?

    It seems like a decent idea on its own, but I have trouble believing these established companies would allow use of their IPs by someone with no portfolio.
     
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  33. Kiwasi

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    There are just as many amateur indie board game devs as there are amateur indie video game devs. Sure you need to be an established name to snap up a Day's of Wonder or Fantasy Flight title. But there are countless other small titles out there.
     
  34. peterk1968

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    Exactly. I knew there was little chance of playing ball with a big game company but I thought a small game company with a hot boardgame who could not afford to get an app made themselves would find my offer appealing. I tell them that the app will increase boardgame sales and keep their game in demand longer. Yes, I did do this for my first Unity app. I lost my job a few years ago and tried to see if I could code apps for a living and work from home instead. I'm still doing it and I'm 2 for 2 on deal proposals with intellectual property holders. I don't have a super high salary right now, but I've sold $100k+ in under 2 years with my first app, so it's promising.

    Anyways, using a boardgame is just one way to get an instant starting audience of people who want your game before it's even finished. There are others. Use your imagination. Try to get a buzz going before you put your game up for sale. Don't just send it into the void and cross your fingers.

    I don't know if the original poster is talking about a PC game or an app. When I released my first app, I was approached really quickly by about 12 places who wanted to do reviews of it and I sent codes to all of them. The Pocket Tactics site seemed to generate some good sales and there were some forum posts about the game. Those forum posts stick around forever - anyone who searches those forums with the word "baseball" in their search string has a pretty good chance of bumping into my app. That's great long term advertising and it was free.

    BoardgameGeek is an incredible boost to any any app based on a boardgame, but that might not help you.

    I don't know, hoping for a big gain from a YouTube video poster seems like a long shot. Maybe try to become friends with someone who has tons of followers a year before your expected release date and it might pay off. Otherwise, relying on Youtube/Twitter seems a bit too random. The problem is that it's harder to search video than it is text. If someone mentions your game briefly in a longer video and it's not mentioned in either the title or video description, then that has almost no long term value to you.
     
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  35. angrypenguin

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    Do they have a "built in audience", which is how that suggestion came up?

    Was that your first game and/or your first piece of software, though?

    I'm not knocking the idea. If you can collaborate with someone to grow both of your audiences with little or no extra risk then that's a clear win-win and a great idea. That said, I'd consider it pretty high risk to hand my IP to an inexperienced developer software, board game or other developer.
     
  36. peterk1968

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    Feel a bit bad about going off topic like this, but to answer the questions....

    Yes it did. I chose a board game which had come out recently, was popular and which had sold a large number of units. Using the site boardgamegeek, it was pretty easy to pick a game that met my criteria. I can estimate how many people have bought a boardgame just by looking at how many people have left comments/reviews. My built in audience was the owners of the boardgame who enjoyed it and people who were thinking of buying it and who were on the fence - and it numbered in the thousands,

    I worked up a prototype in a few months and presented it to the company. So that's how I get the companies on board and reduce their risk - I show them a basic, working copy of their game in app form. It doesn't matter that they don't know about me or that I don't have many apps out yet. I'm showing them the goods in advance. It takes me about 2-3 months on average to do prototypes and then 5-6 more months to finish and polish.

    That's a pretty good approach to use for any game actually. Build a basic prototype quickly to see if your game is fun and has a hope of being popular before spending tons of time on window dressing. The original poster mentioned Notch. This is what he did on Minecraft. Kerbal Space Program did the same thing.

    First Unity game and first app. I wrote a PC game back in the early 90's that no-one knows about any more and I don't tell anyone about it.
     
  37. theANMATOR2b

    theANMATOR2b

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    What's the name of it? :D
     
  38. peterk1968

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    i wrote the original DOS version of Faceoff Hockey - again, a boardgame design. This is a review for the Windows version that someone else did after I passed the project on.

    https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/faceoff-hockey-2004-review/1900-6093311/

    Back in the days before Internet everywhere! Not a huge seller but still made enough in the first year to buy a car.
    A lot of draft league players liked my game, so I could sell blocks of 20 games or so whenever a league decided to use it. Instant audience!
     
    Last edited: Oct 4, 2017