We held the May Auckland Game Works Meetup on Wednesday night at the new Media Design School premises and we had a great turnout and an interesting panel of speakers. If you weren't there you missed some interesting insights into marketing and strategy with compelling anecdotes and occasional stats and figures from NZ's biggest game development company and a few smaller mobile app teams.
The meetup kicked off with three speakers on the first panel, "How to Market your iPhone game". Leonardo Garcia Curtis spoke about the release of Mad Minute's co-developed game, Space Hawk, and the benefit of having a good trailer. Darren Cottingham from Parkside Media told us about the process of releasing Drift Legends in co-operation with Rush Digital and their advantage in having an already installed userbase via their Facebook community.
Mario Wynands from Sidhe spoke as a member of the panel and also gave a presentation of his own where we got an overview of the fourteen year legacy of Sidhe Interactive and their developing strategy in the market.
A lot of interesting things were said and I felt like I gained some useful strategic knowledge around releasing a game and the various things to avoid. For example, advertising seemed to get short shrift; Mario said the returns from traditional advertising were almost negligible and generally speaking they won't be pursuing that as a means of promoting their product in future. Cross promotion - linking a new game from your existing titles - seemed to be the strongest suggestion to gain leverage.
Transmedia sales were another big pointer - the popular soundtrack for Shatter (by Wellington-based musician Module) helped to increase the profile of the game. Releasing soundtracks seems to be a common strategy in indie circles lately too.
One of the big take aways from the night for me - as obvious as it may seem - was that, when it comes to the app store, your name and icon are the first and best advertising you have so it pays to put some real effort into those! Mario advised that a good name will convey what the game's about and even what sort of game it is (Flick Kick Football is a great example of that).
Overall we had a great turnout and for once, too many pizzas! The follow up mingle after the meet is always a really great way to get to know others and to find some connections (a few cards were traded and jobs discussed : ) and a big chunk of the meetup headed to the local Blue Stone Room for brewskis afterward.
All in all a good meet! If you're in Auckland early next month please consider coming along. It's worth the effort : ).
Comments
One of my takeaways from the evening was that both cross-promotion and transmedia require a "portfolio strategy" - ie, you need more than one game out there. Expecting 1 game to do well by itself relies on luck, no matter how good it is (Angry Birds took ages before it charted). And only once you've got 3+ games can you expect the cross-promotion to kick in. So you'd do 1-2 free games, which include cross promotion to your paid games (or paid in-app purchase), for example.
As an investor I wouldn't invest in one game, but I'd invest in a team with the capability to produce a series of games.
The key asset a lot of the successful studios who were there on Wednesday had was an existing audience. For your first game, consider getting a publisher or partner. I know a lot of indies are philosophically resistant to this, but don't think of it as giving away some of your profits, think of it as expoliting them for their customer database (and figure out how to grow your own while using theirs).
Forgot to mention Mad Minute's upcoming Sharkbait! Sorry Leonardo, was in a bit of a rush lol.
Mad Minute showed us their new iOS game in the making, Sharkbait. It's always interesting to get an insight into a game in development and to hear the proposed plans for monetization. It'd be great to have a postmortem presentation after the release of the game to see how things went!
Can you gyus please remind me what was the name of the conference in Wellington Mario was talking about?
Yes, that's the one! Thanks Damien.