If you want to make a deep, artsy game, you should consider the audience of people who like that sort of thing and make choices with their interests in mind. Whatever audience you choose to make a game for, keep them in the forefront of your decision-making processes. The first few questions you need to answer before or while designing your game are " Who is your audience," " Does that audience actually exist (or exist enough to make this endeavor financially viable)," and " What does that audience like in a game?" Your gameplay mechanics and positioning are going to be a major part of what appeals to people, so marketing should be your first stop when formulating the very first ideas of your game. There is no overarching general audience you can appeal to or find a common denominator with, but rather just a bunch of different audiences of different sizes.
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Making your game appealing isn’t about selling out. Your game design, aesthetic, name, and every element of your process should be designed to appeal to people, and it needs to be from day one. Your role in making a game is that of a marketer, whether you know it or not. From the game mechanics to the art to the UI, it’s all about what will strike someone’s fancy. Marketing is considering what’s appealing, integrating that into your product, and demonstrating that appeal.Ĭompared to something like a phone, where you have a functional baseline and can differentiate on other elements of appeal (materials, UI, etc.), a game is 100% about appeal. With sales, at the end of the day, your success is going to be bracketed by how appealing the product is, in ways you can’t really influence anymore.
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If you’ve got a finished or nearly-finished product and are trying to convince people to buy it, you’re stuck in the unenviable position of a salesman.
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They’ll ask questions like "when is a good time to start marketing our game?" To me, what they’re describing is "sales," not marketing. Most of the gamedevs I’ve spoken to seem to see marketing as this secondary element of releasing a game, like QA or localization. I won’t bury the lede here: There is no difference. The difference between gamedev and marketing