Game marketing is based on 4 key elements, also known as the 4 Ps: Product (your game), Pricing, Placement and promotion. So it’s not just about tweeting around and contacting press and content creators.
Technical marketing note: the 4 Ps are also called the marketing mix. Hence the DJ as a cover image. Yes, I like wacky humor. Haha.
Let’s take a look at every P and what it implies regarding your game.
Part 1 : Product
Part 2 : Placement and Price
Part 3 : Promotion
**Disclaimer**
In this piece I’m going to say hard and cold hearted truths about the business reality of game marketing and development. Know that I do think game development is a form of art, but my background and my observations tell me game developers tend to forget it’s also a business. I’ll try to sugarcoat it as much as I can, but not too much so that it’s not bullshit. Ok? Ok. Keep reading then.
(~ 10 minutes read)
Game marketing mix – Product
Yes, accept it or not, your game is a product, even if it is free. I know it’s hard to hear because you probably consider it’s your baby, and I’m not saying it’s not an art piece or masterpiece (again, it most probably is). But in game marketing terms it’s a product with a branding, a core target, customers and competitors. Let’s see what it implies when you’re in pre-production.
Market study
You have a game idea, or at least a genre you want to make your game in* but now you don’t know where to start. Start by analyzing your main competitors.
*Check that popular genres list if you don’t have ideas. But before anything, pick something you love playing, there’s no point in making game development and testing a chore.
By competitors, I mean INDIE competitors. If you’re making a platformer and are comparing yourself to the latest mario game while being alone or a small team, that’s probably a little pretentious, if not silly. Pick some of the most performing indie platformers instead, ie Super meat boy or Celeste for example, and also other similar games with minor success. Play these games, try to get the essence of why they were hits in the genre. If you struggle finding out, read reviews from professional journalists which have experience in analyzing games. And note who wrote articles/made videos about them, it might be useful later on (see part 3). Also, look at their promotional stuff like steam pages, trailers, and capsules (steam page main pic). Now that you did your homework, it’s time to craft something of your own.
Targetting
After finding out what the premises of your game will be, time for deciding what type of players you are targeting. We game marketing devils sometimes do at least one persona profile or several personae, which is some sort of identity card of who your player could be. You can gather there information about who they are (man/woman, age, profession, relationships etc), what they play, their hobbies other than videogames etc.
For starters, think about somebody you know and tweak them somehow to fit your ideal customer profile. But try to be realistic, like don’t make them dreaming of your game day and night.
Here’s a short example to get a better grasp of what a persona looks like:
Quentin, the musician daddy
Quentin is 33, is a professional musician and is married with two kids. He’s been a gamer since he’s 5 and everybody in his family also plays games.
His income is average and he buys around 5 games a year. He mainly plays indie games of all sorts on pc but also plays coop games with his wife and AAA party games on switch with his family.
His favourite games are the we were here series, hades and mario party
His hobbies are watching movies, especially westerns. He likes the nuance and the grey area between good and bad actions you can have in these movies.
He also plays music regularly with friends and families and enjoys well crafted soundtracks in games.
Try to make one that thinks like you, and two radically different people, possibly inspired by relatives, all having different interests in playing your game. It could be the gameplay, the art style, the music, the theme of your game…
If they are complementary, you’ll be able to say « this message is for Quentin », « this one is for X and Y » and « this capsule is for everyone ».
Note for myself and my colleagues: a fun game marketing campaign will NEVER be what people are looking for.
Fine tune your personas as you meet players online or in events, but limit them to 5 maximum to avoid getting lost.
Positioning
Positioning is the art of standing out of the crowd in a more or less saturated market.
Spoiler alert: with 19000 games on steam alone in 2024, videogames are a saturated market. But according to the article linked above, 80% (approx. 15k) had not enough players to get out of Steam’s “limited” games (meaning they couldn’t have collectibles such as steam cards), so there’s still room for you.
So, how should we define positioning? Before giving a concise definition, let’s look at examples of positionings.
According to me, there are 3 main types of positionings in game marketing: copycats, lookalikes and rare stones (the third will surprise you).
What I call copycats are complete and sometimes dishonest copies of an original game. You see that a lot in mobile gaming. You rebrand the game from Flappy bird to Flappy dog, use a flying dog as main character instead of a bird and poof, you’ve got a new game. It’s totally okay to make copycats for learning purposes and/or hobby developing, but I obviously don’t recommend doing this for commercial games because copyright infringement might cost you a lot. It kinda works in other industries, not ours.
Now, I call lookalikes most of the games today. Very few games are 100% unique, and most are « this game + this twist ».
Valorant: Counter Strike + MOBA powers
Fortnite: PUBG + building mechanic
Trine: Action meets puzzle game
Boyfriend dungeon : Dungeon crawler + Dating sim
You see that base concepts of these games are pretty simple and straightforward, and they come from existing genres or even games. Most of the game looks brand new (ie the art, the lore, some gameplay mechanics, game marketing elements…) but also, most of the concept was already there. I’m far from saying having a simple concept is enough, but my point is you don’t have to create a dating-sim-for-mountain-climbing-buildings to thrive on the market (it’s a real game, please do things like that once in a while, knowing these kind of games exist makes people’s days. But it’s not mandatory). Execution is also key, both in promotion and game development. But I’ll get back to that.
Finally, there are rare stones. It’s a tricky name since a rare stone may sound precious, but they can also be weird in the bad sense (because yes, there’s a good and a bad weird). These are very unique games no one has seen before, from the mind of a creative and audacious developer. Sometimes a slightly crazy one.
There have not been that much very famous rare stones over the years, but some of them would be:
- Katamari series, where you roll a ball that glues objects and gets bigger over time (old)
- Space channel 5, a rhythm game where you dance with aliens before shooting them (old)
- Untitled goose game or Goat simulator, two sandboxy games where you play goofy animals (pretty recent)
- Before your eyes, a game where your blinks are part of the controls (recent)
- Very recently, Escape from Duckov, ie Escape from Tarkov starring ducks (might be a lookalike too)
Now, all these games are mildly to wildly successful games. But know that most of these “misc” games can be very tricky:
- Some games are very fun when announced, but not compelling enough to thrive. Lately, I’ve seen a game concept of a worm having a remote job in corporate finance and trying to pretend it’s a human. Fun, right? Graphics looked okay, the post had lots of upvotes and I do believe it’s fun for 5 minutes, but I also think from what I saw that it was not enough to make a hit game. Hope the dev will hear me out and give more content to his game.
- Some of these games are so complicated that they are not marketable. Burgers and tiramisu are two excellent dishes, but arranging them in a single meal is way more tricky than copying an existing recipe with a twist. And what game marketing do for this kind of thing? Is it a desert? Is it a main course? You see the point: it’s not impossible, but it might be harder.
- Execution and a good tutorial are crucial when you do something completely new.
Then again, you might have the best positioning in the world, if execution doesn’t follow it will be hard for you and your players to follow up. But it’s not my job to tell you how to make a good game, other devs are better geared to help you on that. But that’s my introduction to positioning.
You may have noted I haven’t classified genres or scopes of games here, but rather concepts. Because that’s what you’re looking for when you position your game: a strong concept, also called « hook » that markets itself and makes game marketing easier. That’s what should be a good positioning according to me.
Unique value proposition / hook
So this leads us to your unique value proposition or your hook. You should be able to sum up your positioning in one catchy and crystal clear sentance that makes players want to know more. You don’t have to use this exact sentence in your promotional messages, but it has to sweat through every pore of your game marketing, from your visuals, messages and interactions with your players.
Let’s go back to our previous lookalike examples to spot their value proposition:
Valorant: Tactical 5v5 fps with characters (official)
Fortnite: Battle royale with forts and playable pop culture heroes (I made this one)
Trine: Fantasy action game where the player can create and use physics-based objects to beat hazardous puzzles and threatening enemies. (official)
Boyfriend dungeon: Plunder the dunj as you fend off dangerous monsters and take your weapons on romantic dates. (official)
These propositions are short, straight to the point and immediately tell what you need to know about the game, no more, no less. It’s not as straightforward as retail UVPs, you have to be a gamer to understand what it means. But for their target audience, it’s clear and sound.
Now, hooks are slightly different. They are what is interesting in your game and why players should give it interest. It sometimes doesn’t tell everything about your game, but it’s a clear statement of what it is.
Examples again:
Valorant: Counter strike with MOBA powers made by Riot games, creators of international success League of legends
Trine: Fantasy action meets puzzle game with three different gameplays you can switch from with a single button
Boyfriend dungeon: What if a dungeon crawler and a dating sim went on a date? That’s boyfriend dungeon.
Escape from duckov*: Escape from tarkov playing ducks.
What the golf: NOT A GOLF GAME (official)
*This analysis of Escape from Duckov’s positioning, makes perfectly clear how a good hook, alongside a well prepared marketing campaign, can skyrocket your promotion stats. The game has been tested before release and seems to be well developed, but this is game marketing in easy mode.
I wrote most of these hooks myself so they might not be as accurate as if people from the studio wrote it. Also the dating bit is kind of overused, sometime saying “this game and this game” had a child. But it’s here to make a point: before any art or line of code were created, the game core was here. It was marketable from the very beginning because it was new, fun, exciting or thanks to the studio’s aura. The rest is perfect execution in game development and promotion. I won’t be able to help with the first one, but I’ll write about the latter in another article.
Branding
Branding is a whole package: it’s your game visual indentity (ie logos, steam capsules, website design and more), your baseline, your elevator pitch, your potential goodies… And it should come from your positioning.
Let’s take a look at branding from an example we used before : Valorant. We’ll look into the logo and how it was inspired by both FPSs and MOBAS.
This is Valorant’s logo and title with what I suppose were inspirations. Do you see where I’m getting at? Well I’m getting there anyways.
In the upper left corner is League of Legend’s logo. Lol is the ultimate reference when it comes to MOBAs. Its logo is just a letter in a circle. Riot, who develops both Valorant and League of legends, has very talented artists that could have made beautiful icons representing god knows what in a very classy and futuristic way. However, they decided to keep a single letter. Certainly to show this IP (intellectual property) is Riot’s as well.
Now, in the upper right corner is overwatch’s logo. Overwatch was released in 2016, Valorant in 2020. See how the futuristic lettering matches between the two logos? Why would they do that? Because Overwatch is also a futuristic FPS combining teamfights and MOBA-like powers. It sold well, so they probably were inspired by this to create both their gameplay, their game marketing, hence their branding.
I’ll be honest, this analysis is just assumptions at this point, I did not interview any Riot officials to find out. But facts are here, similitudes too, and it’s a breakdown of how you could brand your game yourself.
Here ends Part 1: Product. There’s soooooooo much more to say on the matter, but most of this stuff is purely game development so it’s out of my jurisdiction. For all marketing questions I’m here though, shoot me an email if you have some. And if you feel like it! Until then…
Good luck have fun (with marketing),
Part 1 : Product
Part 2 : Placement and Price (to be written)
Part 3 : Promotion (to be written)
PS: Read this piece about how some games have it the easy or the hard way when doing promotion. And it all depends on positioning, branding and the unique value proposition. It’s a long read but a good one, give it a shot.
