Category: Game Marketing Tips

Game Marketing – How to create a game for sale!

Post author By K Storm Studio
Post date March 18, 2024
No Comments on Game Marketing – How to create a game for sale!

Game Marketing Money Making - create game for sale

In this post we are talking about game marketing and how to create a game for sale. Nowadays aside of the major and even medium game companies there are a bunch of solo developers working hard in the making their own games. And many other people also want to start making games, because they dream to create their own stories and make them as games!

Luckily many modern game engines like UnrealEngine, Unity, GameMaker, (and please let us mention K-Engine) that allow developers to create their own games in a quiet easy way, for sure easier than just few years ago when game making was pure coding from scratch. However, despite the game creaction process can be funny I’m pretty confident that many developers also want to sell their games, make money and see their work receiving the right awards for the effort they put into it!

But many people have no idea about how to sell a game, marketing and game marketing or at least how to properly sell a game. Well, please let me explain you some of the basics. A game is a product like any other product in the market, targeted for a specific segment of consumers. Please read the last phrase once again because that phrase contains an essential aspect of the selling process.

The STP model

The STP model strategy

Don’t worry, we will now easily jump deeply into it. Despite the game market segment is so huge, more than 3 billions people in the world play games, every game has his own targeted segment. For example, a very romantic 50 years old woman may not be interested in playing Call of Duty. Or maybe yes but she might be mainly interested in playing a casual game because this is what emerge from the financial game industry stats.

The STP model strategy explained in the chart above is the root where to start.

Segmentation

But what is a market segment? This is a very crucial question. Each of us belongs to a market segment. And this because we simply have different need, personality, taste and different life. And if you think your game can be bought by everyone just let me tell you this: even Google, Facebook and Amazon have been initially designed for a specific and well filtered group of potential consumers. Is that enough for you to convince you that your game cannot be promoted to everyone?

Let’s considering at least 4 important types of customer segmentation:

Geographic segmentation: Based on location, country, state, region, etc.
Demographic segmentation: Based on age, gender, occupation, etc.
Behavioral segmentation: Based on why, how, and how frequently users interact with your website, apps, or store.
Psychographic segmentation: Based on factors such as lifestyle, habits, hobbies, activities, etc.

Ok, after this premises we can now jump into the next important aspect of your game promotion. As you can see we started already in talking about promotion, which is an essential aspect of the marketing.

Targeting

When you have created four or more segments, it’s time to find the most valuable ones. So now you have to properly target to what you consider the best customer segment and the best way to do this is reading datas.

And if you dont have any datas? Start creating short and small ads campaigns to collect datas! There is no other way!

Size: Larger segments with more growth potential are always better.
Profitability: It may be a little hard to calculate profitability, but taking customer lifetime value (CLV) into account and other data is a good way to predict segment profitability.
Reachability: As a corollary to profitability, reachability is another important data point. Usually, customer acquisition cost (CAC) hedged against profitability metrics is a great way to conclude.

Positioning

Once the other two steps are completed, a natural question arises: how to best position the product or service in the brain of your customers? The goal of positioning is to connect with the audience on a personal level and, possibly more importantly, set yourself apart from the competition.

There are three important factors to be considered while your’re positioning your brand or product:

Symbolic positioning: Also known as lifestyle positioning. You can figure out symbolic positioning by asking what kind of image is being projected. To do this is crucial to know exactly what their customers think and want deep inside.
Functional positioning: What particular problems your products or services solve and how they make their lives easier.
Experiential positioning: What experience and emotions your products and service provided to customers.

Buying is pure emotional!

Let me ask you a question? Whenever you make a purchase what convince you to tap your credit card and buy that product? A cool packaging? Price? Your friend? Well, maybe all of that but trust me it is nothing from your consciousness, nothing under your full control and this is because of our brain system. The industry constantly studying this principles and how to drive their customers throughtout the purchase process. Buying is pure emotional! And luckily videogames are products that can deeply touch our emotions. And what is the most important emotion that really work in the selling process? Trust! Are you more comfortable to spend £20 for a game made by a young solo dev or £50 for the last Nintendo or Rockstar Game release?

So now the question is how can you create trust and awareness between you and your potential customers? And then how to achieve them and show them that your game is right for them?

Know your potential customers.

So all the STP model means that you have to properly know your potential customers, how? Do online research. We’ve been talking about market segmentation, targeting and positioning… well this is your first job before start to develop your game. Online you can find many resources in this industry that can strongly help you in figure out which is your ideal customers as mentioned above. Age, sex, interests, country, what games they play, social media they use, how many time they watch gaming videos and how, devices they use to play, how much money they spend to play and so on.

Create games for your potential audience!

Now you might say… hey but I just wanna make games as I want it! Ok, are you gonna buy your game or do you wanna sell them to players out there? Ok it’s fine if you wanna make your games as you want, I understand your point of view, despite that sounds quiet arrogance. Remember this, people want to play games that they want, not that you want! However if you’re an artist and you have nice ideas to bring to life that’s great but in this case you have to identify your target also according to your game idea, style, plot and gameplay.

While you’re creating your games please always think about your potential audience, remember the research you’ve done? So try to fit your idea with their aspectations when they will purchase your game!

Game Marketing

Game marketing and marketing in general as I said starts before you begin your game development process because as we see, first we have to identify our ideal customers and niche and develop our game always considering what they aspect from our game. Remember to constantly monitoring other games they play. And now how can we give our game as many people as possible in our niche and drive them to buy our game instead that others?

I said “instead that others” right? Yes because they can’t buy and play everything! Think about that… how much spare time and money do you think a customer can have? Do you really think they can buy and play all the games in the market? Even in a Niche? That is physically impossible, right?

How to create “trust” as a small developer.

Well, once clarified this important point let me jump back once again to what we mentioned before: trust. Developing trust is crucial if you want to create game for sales and how can you create trust as a small developer that can compete with bigger developers? One of the keypoint is that your game has to look professional. Why? Because the major difference between a professional and good quality game and an amateur made game is in details, and this is a rule for any production. High details with good quality graphic, sound and music, modern updated gameplay… these a the main aspects you should shown in your game pics, videos and demo. So, work hard in achieving a nice good looking result is a key point.

But that is absolutely not enough! Remember the STP model? That is the real “magic formula” for every succes! Spend time to study the audience you want to target to and create products that they want to have. Because this is the first key of the marketing journey. Doing this you will create trust in your customers even as soon as they will get in touch with your product.

And now basically we have to find out customers. And this is another key point that can really help you in increasing sells and create awerness of your game: ads!

Promote your game, the truth!

And now please let me tell you something very raw. There are several ways to ads your game and you have to try them all, but the best way still remain creating ads campaigns! Ok, you may now arguing about that… in the age of the influencer marketing you’re still talking about spending money in ads? Nobody buy after clicking an ads anymore! Nobody watch Youtube video ads! It is not for me!

So why big services like Google Ads or Microsoft Ads or many others are still ongoing if they are not profitable anymore? Because the truth is that those services are still extremely profitable for them and for everyone is able to properly use them for their business. Why? Because you can exactly decide how much money to spend, because you can exactly target the audience you want to share your message to, because you can trust them, because you can read the results and change your campaigns accordingly and so on, because you can save time…!

And even offline ads is another amazing way to achieve your segment. So if you want to create a game for sales you have to start in considering your game as a product cause otherwise still remains one of the numerous games on Steam or Itch or EpicStore or other stores.

Dont be scared to invest a small budget in promoting your game. You will see that after some initial mistakes you’ll be able to generate an income for every click you will get… just properly do your research, develop good games and you will get your loyal fanbase! … And enjoy the game creation process!

Tags game marketing, games for sale, marketing tips, profitable game, selling games

Game Marketing Tips

Visual Novel Games and Marketing for VN Game Developers! (full guide)

Post author By K Storm Studio
Post date February 26, 2024
No Comments on Visual Novel Games and Marketing for VN Game Developers! (full guide)

visual novel games marketing - marketing for vn games - k-magazine

Visual Novel Games are becoming very popular in most of the countries where the entire game industry succed!

Well, the game industry is always the entertainment industry leader everywhere, but some countries spend more money for games, and now Visual Novel Games are stocked in the electronic devices of many peoples out of Japan, where basically VN games genre born and of course where it is still big. A wide range of people find enjoyment in the distinctive fusion of interactive gaming, narrative storytelling, and visual components.

What are Visual Novel Games?

By definition Visual novel (VNs) video games are text-based adventure games that combine interactive fiction and traditional anime or manga art styles to give the gamer the experience of reading a novel in a visual format.

The main device for this type of games still remain the PC, although some are ported to popular consoles, including the Playstation lineup and Nintendo Switch, as well as online platforms like Steam and also other devices like mobile devices.

Simple Visual Novel layout example using K-Engine game engine

At K Storm Studio we love 3D games and this because we are 3D artists and game developers since long time or probably because of the sense of reality or the freedom offered by 3D games. But at K Storm Studio we’ve been also captured by several adventures and visual novel games since ever and this because of the k factor of these games. Which is not the graphic design that is absolutely cool. We love visual novels because of the stories they tell us!

From romance to horror, from thriller to fantasy, drama, adventure and sex. This is the world of visual novels and aside of action games, we love them!

Better then reading a book, more interactive than a movie, catchy like a TV series… these are some of the reason why are coming out around 100 novel games a month!

So do you want to create Visual novel Games?

You are game developers and you want to make your visual novel games. First question you have to answer is in common for every other products. Where and how could you start promoting your VN games? Of course you dont have to tell them what your game’s plot is about at least without spoiling the story, that’s obvious. Strike a balance between revealing enough to generate interest and holding back enough to tease your potential audience. Try to inform the Visual Novel Games communities out there why your game is worth playing and here is the fact, there is a good new about Visual Novel Games.

Visual Novel Games have a specific market segment of the game industry with his own sub-niches as well. The visual novels players have built specific communities of loyal and passionate fans all around the web.

Marketing: the “wedding moment”

As you already probably know, even posting on a specific community means to shoot at the clouds! Why? Because you don’t exactly know who will read your post. This means that everyone can potentially interact with your post, especially people who are not specifically targeted for your game even if you post on a Visual Novel Games community. Also a community on social media doesn’t means that subscribers are there to looking for products to buy! A social media community is more like a place where the people tends to spend their spare time just to be there. However it’s free so why dont?

So How can you achieve your real potential buyer? Of course the better way still remain using ads. With ads you can really find out your potential customer in the moment when he’s looking to buy a product like yours, in the moment when he’s hot and ready to tap the credit card, because that is the moment where he needs to buy a new game. Further with ads if you do your research you can exactly achieve the perfect candidate for your product and build the “wedding moment“!

What about “Influencers”?

Influencer marketing can be another good way to promote your game however there are several aspects to consider before start thinking about “influencers”.

Influencers are not professional figures in some cases. I mean, many of them want to work as influencers also building a career, but many others just started in talking about something on social media consistently and thanks to the opportunities offered by the new world of social media they got many followers around the world.

This is important but not enough to put them as key factor in your company marketing plan.

Often they use rude language, they are boaring and unprofessional. Also ask yourself, how can I effectively make sure that if I spend money with them I can get money in return? Because this is what every entrerpreneur has to consider while is spending money on ads if not… he’s gonna lose money and close his company and his dreams! Is that what you want?

What is the future of influencer marketing?

Who knows…. however there are some bad recent episodes that can make us carefully think about this Have you heard about one of the most famous influencers world wide? Chiara Ferragni is one of the most known influencer in the world but recently many frauds came out from his business.

In this article on PS Newswire is reported how many consumers doubt about of social media influencers because of some sort of negative experience with the product. Another article from the Derby magazine reports few researches conducted by the BBC, CCO and Cosmopolitan where the consumers explain many concerns about the way influencers “promote” the products they get paid for.

In conclusion if you want to plan to contact influencers to promote your games please consider these aspect:

Pros

Many influencers are honest and respectable and they like work even with you
At the present time several customers still trust in them
This type of marketing is often cheap than traditional marketing

Cons

Your campaign results are not measurables
You spend money without receiving instant visit to your store page
You cant control the traffic they send it to you

The power of the “Search Engines”

And here is the fact. Search engines are the best marketing tools ever, why? Because you can come across people who is exactly looking for your product. On search engines people tells the engine what he needs and the engine gives them the best content for them. So what question comes up? How can I inform the engine I’m the best content for them? There are basically two ways at least: advertising as mentioned above but also content marketing. Content marketing doesn’t only means to run a blog or a writing and creating content on other platforms. Content marketing also means to create any type of content that can create links to top the rankings of search engines.

Just a little note. If you are game developers and you want to create visual novel games you have to have the same approach that moves any major company to his success. So think in terms of numbers because search engines do that.

Publising your games on different store platforms for instance is a great way to let your title top the rankings. Running a blog (yes it is) is also an amazing and effective way to have content (links) to give to the search engines. Having a website is also the best way to show yourself as a solid concrete in the web ocean and this is also a must have asset, especially for a small company but also for any solo developer.

Tags game marketing, game marketing tips, visual novel creators, visual novel games, visual novels, vns

Game Marketing Tips K Magazine

Game Marketing – How to deal with music copyright?

Post author By K Storm Studio
Post date February 21, 2024
No Comments on Game Marketing – How to deal with music copyright?

Music copyright can be a very big problem sometimes and this is the reason why the game industry nowadays want to have copyright free music.

Ok all we love music! No matter what genre but we love music. In case of a game I think the music is a relevant part of the gameplay. Like soundtracks for a movie, the game soundtrack can even make the difference. And music nowadays appears to be not a way of expression just like it has been for decades, especially for the youth.

Games are actually more relevant for everyone, both young and older generations. Of course we know that society changes, but there is also another important factor to consider when we talk about the relationship between games and music. Games contains everything! A game can also be a very high quality and artistic product, and I’m talking just keeping from aside the interactivity offered by games. Because if we also consider the major and revolutionary factor introduced by games, the interactivity, there is not competition with any other entertainment industry.

In this scenario when we have £100 or less in our pocket destin to our entertainment and fun what we do? We see what proposts are coming from the entertainment industry well… who wins? Games! Please also read this very detailed article about marketing segmentation and positioning.

Different future for the music?

Of course the time where people use to follow a musician everywhere buying all his albums and merchs is probably gone. Now we have all the music we want in our pocket. And as I said before, the music is not a way to express our vision about life anymore. People use to easily chat on social media about less relevant things than before when older generations wanted to change the world, even on stage! I’m not gonna say that this is good or bad. And also think about the entertainment back in the days. Ok we loved 80s games but ok… be realistic… we got fun but just because we were little kids. Think about the opportunities offered by modern games. There is nothing in the entertainment industry that can compete with, right?

Ok in case of games we are more focused in playing them than to listen to their soundtracks, that’s ok? Despite this, we are often got captured by some amazing soundtracks have been written for games. Some examples? Doom, OutRun, Street Fighter, The Witcher, Space Harrier, Turricane 2, Skyrim and so on.

Licenses for soundtracks

As I said I love and respect the music copyright. But licenses are too restrictive for a game company. If you have a look at all the licenses we have to care about while we are asking for the rights to use a song in a game wow…! Guys that sounds overbearing for me. Why? Because it seems that music is the only and most important part os the project. And I personally respect the effort and the emotion an artist puted into it, but ok, do you know how much effort, time, investments have been involved in the making a game engine? And then the game?

How to avoid your game turning illegal?

Did you know that if just one of the music license expires and you forget to renew it your game automatically turns to be illegal and it will be permanently removed from the market? How could you avoid that?

Well, you should use license free music. Possibly, you should also have the full copyright of the music you use. Online there are several websites that sold copyright and license free music. In this case you have to pay one time and you can use that song without limitations or restrictions, but smeone else can use the same song.

In alternative you can ask help to a musician to create some specific dedicated songs for your game, even using some music kits out there. Consider this, many of the commercial songs are now produced this way.

Our thought about music copyright

At K Storm Studio we strongly believe that music is a very important aspect of any game and it’s essential to improve the game experience. But as a game developer you have to have the entire control of your product. Assets, codes, soundtracks, music, everything should be royalty free so you can easily distribute your game without additional restrictions.

Tags game marketing, game marketing tips, K Storm Studio, kss magazine, music, soundtracks, videogame

K Storm Studio

Universe

Your Products in the Cart

Hi, have an account?

Company

Community

Terms of Service

Support

Connect with Us

K Storm Studio ltd. is a registered company in England and Wales. Company number: 15478749

Log in to your Account

Get the Rebel K-Magazine Straight to Your Email!

JOIN THE REBEL TRIBE!

Join the K-Magazine web tribe and receive occasional emails about gaming, access to new products, promo codes and much more!

By subscribing, you consent to receive emails from K-Magazine and K Storm Studio. You may revoke the consent at any time by clicking "unsubscribe" at the bottom of any email from us.