Trying to figure out a game plan

[shindig]

I used to frequent another forum that died, WF, to bounce stuff off people and shoot the shit with like minded folks. I always saw this site promoted there, but never checked it out until now. I tried to make money with online marketing a decade ago and ended up moving into game dev and working a day job.

4 years ago I approached a co-worker and we teamed up, we came up with a game, we put a ton of effort into it, he built the characters, animations, environments from scratch, and gave them to me to build a game. There were set backs, we got busy at work and tabled it for a year, he moved to a different country for 2 years, life happened, long story short I quit a really stressful job earlier this year and pounded on the project for the past few months and just got it reasonably playable and released it on android to get feedback, tighten it up, then port to iOS and do a big marketing push.

So far I haven't even gotten a dozen downloads and it's quite depressing considering the amount of original work that went into it.

I've done a couple small tests buying youtube and amazon ads, youtube was completely worthless, amazon hasn't kicked in yet I just enabled it. I need to get a marketing package of promotional media together I just have no idea what to emphasize.

I think my market is kids and teens and I'm trying to find a way to reach them, I posted it on a gaming subreddit saying "here's my racing game" and a bunch of people downvoted my marketing video before I deleted the thread and wrote me nasty stuff about how it wasn't a racing game because it isn't realistic and was childish. Ugh.

I'm here to learn and get advice. If anyone ever has questions about game dev I'm happy to discuss whatever.

This is my ongoing project I'm trying to figure out how to promote/monetize

 

[CCarter]

Welcome to BuSo @shindig!

Off the top of my head - Don't get discourage cause of Reddit or anyone really. For example the Nintendo Wii looks completely childish but surpassed 100 million unit sold before Xbox360 or PS3 ever did (Source: Xbox 360 vs. Wii vs. PS3: Who won the console wars?). BuSo used to get down-voted in /r/seo and /r/bigseo all the time - it was cause of jealously and general haters. But the reality is when you go to those subreddit they are nothing but 3rd world garbage and questions that have been asked 1,000 times over and over - there is no quality. So why would we give a shit if we get down-voted, we provide quality and the people looking for quality will come here once they find us (what I call hide and seek marketing - the brain showers humans with positive feelings when THEY discover something through breadcrumbs, versus getting pushed upon them - ADs).

I also wouldn't go to a sub-reddit or any Reddit for something like this, you are looking to target I assume users ages 5 to 13, just assuming. I'd recommend first putting some market research together to see what other games align with your target audience - figure out their demographics first (Day 3 of the Digital Strategy Crash Course talked Market Research).

Once you've written down WHO you want to play your game, you'll need to understand how things go "viral" - it's always word of mouth. Reddit, Youtube or Amazon ads only can create more awareness, but very rarily create the initial start for word of mouth. Word of mouth had to start from within hardcore lovers of the game/niche/industry.

There is a great article I mention in my SAAS journal that can round out the idea behind viral marketing: How Viral Marketing Actually Works.

To get an analogy inside and outside your industry, in my personal example with SERPWoo we launched deep within the SEO industry on Wickedfire, GSA forum, and on twitter. All the communication we had was deep within the industry already so when launching it was easy to get the word out there since the channels of communication were directly to SEOs. We didn't launch to the marketing community or the general internet, it was hardcore SEOs. If we launched without any name recognition, without any SEO insiders, or just within the "marketing" realm, we would be dead - or at least have a long road ahead of us.

In your example you aren't going where your target audience is, but rather whether "game developers" go - gaming sub-reddits. I doubt 5 year olds are going to be on a sub-reddit, but also the way you approached it might not have been subtle - hence why you got down-voted.

You have to go to places like a Mario Kart forum, that's a prime place to drop screenshots or videos of your game - without giving the game title away, so the users have to go search for it. It's small tricks like that that get people "looking" for something and then get the "rewarded" feeling when they discover it finally and start using whatever the service it. It's a part of a Traffic Leaking strategy combined with a "hide and seek" psychological game.

What I would do if I were you is find all the places where fans of games related to your racing game hang out, and start monitoring and learning what they like and dislike, then start traffic leaking and dropping breadcrumbs within the community to your game.

You should use ADs later on to re-market to users or solidify brand-awareness, but never to introduce a new game from a game developer no one has heard of. As well there was no pre-hype marketing plan in place, so if you don't have a mailing list to push it to you are missing another weapon within your armory.

Right now it's about understanding who your target audience truly is (maybe you find out it's parents that want a kid friendly game and you'll be marketing to them), then figuring out where they exist on the internet (or offline) and market/traffic leak them to this new game.

Something as simple as giving free in-game "100 coins" within the hardcore potential audience can be enough to get them intrigued.

Target consumers that already play similar racing games versus just general "games" - basically go more hardcore - target the zealot user they will become the Apostle for your game an spread the word for you. In your scenario you potentially created Terrorist for your brand from reddit, but you can turn them around if you get hardcore users to spread the word they love the game.

P.S. The game looks pretty great.

 

[shindig]

Thanks CCarter, you've always been a rockstar. I've got a long road ahead of me trying to figure this all out. Thanks for the links I'm going through them. And finding younger audience forums and leaving breadcrumbs is solid. I'm also filling out dev blogs and what not and figure the more I write about it the more exposure it should get to hopefully eventually find the right people.

 

[shindig]

Anyone have recommendations on a lightweight fast forum software? I tried phpBB but it's so slow it's not even funny, like just the bare install without any content takes 30+ seconds to load LOL

Anyone have a favorite or go to?

 

[Tove]

I've played a similar game on an old PlayStation when I was a kid.
IMO you miss a couple of essential stuff for any game:
- Something to get players addicted or get their dopamine levels high (constantly)
That can be quests, in game currency, hidden stuff withing the game etc.

- Something to keep their attention all the time.
To me the game seems slow paced, you only got those jumps and speed boosts, when I played a similar game when I was a kid it had all kinds of crazy shit every 7-10 seconds, to keep players attention all the time, and to make the race more interesting so anyone can win.

As far as marketing goes, maybe try in-app advertising in other popular games that your audience plays. If your audience is 5-13 yr olds, they are more keen to click on an ad if it is really interesting to them, you would probably need a good chunk of money to hire someone experienced to make that 15-30 second ad video of gameplay.

 

[shindig]

I've played a similar game on an old PlayStation when I was a kid.
IMO you miss a couple of essential stuff for any game:
- Something to get players addicted or get their dopamine levels high (constantly)
That can be quests, in game currency, hidden stuff withing the game etc.

- Something to keep their attention all the time.
To me the game seems slow paced, you only got those jumps and speed boosts, when I played a similar game when I was a kid it had all kinds of crazy shit every 7-10 seconds, to keep players attention all the time, and to make the race more interesting so anyone can win.

Yeah I'm working on dynamic difficulty so if you get first place it'll make it a little harder the next race to ramp it up, after it gets real hard it'll ease up and then start climbing again. And achievements will help a lot.

On the action stuff, I'm actually in a world of hurt, I let some 7-8 year olds play it and it was too difficult because their hand-eye coordination is different from older people. They'd just freeze looking at the hazards and not send any input to steer or jump, then get frustrated cause they kept crashing. So I'm looking to define an easier mode that lowers the number of obstacles and makes steering even easier.

Older people want more action and don't like the simplified controls, younger people need simplified controls, so I'm realizing I need to pick a smaller market and hit it, I tried making something for everyone and it doesn't work for anyone atm...

 

[turbin3]

Anyone have recommendations on a lightweight fast forum software? I tried phpBB but it's so slow it's not even funny, like just the bare install without any content takes 30+ seconds to load LOL

Anyone have a favorite or go to?

Discourse. It's definitely a major improvement, IMO, compared to traditional forum software. It's fairly performant and offers much better UX, "gamification" features that really encourage engagement, etc. I'm not too thrilled that the backend is written in Ruby (not lightweight, but at least not highly exploited and vulnerable PHP-based forums either), but whatever, it works. You can self-host it entirely for free (no "license" to buy like most forum software), minus your hosting costs of course. The easiest way I've found is using the Docker method. I have one instance running with Docker, and it's been pretty nice to work with, keep upgraded, switching to TLS only, implementing basic design / CSS customization, etc.

Just beware of the potential issues in running a site/service in Docker, for production. Lots of horror stories about how people have had issues with that.