Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

What is Facebook for?

December 5, 2011

The writings are on the wall. Zynga has won Facebook. Facebook is over. And Facebook is very afraid. At the Social Games Summit, it was generally agreed that virality never comes for free anymore, and the rising cost of targeted advertising has made it prohibitively expensive for small start-ups to acquire enough customers on Facebook to make a decent turnover (see Social Games Summit Stats). Nevertheless, Facebook is not going away – this is merely the end of Facebook.com.

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Posted in: Events, Marketing

Tagged with: android, facebook, iOS, kindle fire, mobile games, social games

3 Comments
Spilt Milk Studios Development Diary 17: Tale of Tails

December 2, 2011

Hello! That’s it for this entry.

Had you fooled huh? I’m in a playful mood because I’ve had a haircut.

A serious point will be made about this at the end. Promise. I’m just worried you don’t read that far. You meany.

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Posted in: Guest Post, Marketing, Sales

Tagged with: andrew smith, hard lines, iOS, spilt milk studios

2 Comments
What share does the platform take?

November 30, 2011

The GAMESbrief revenue forecasting spreadsheet is aimed at forecasting gross revenues. Many people have asked me to include the cut taken by the platform holder since, in effect, these costs are always taken out.

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Posted in: Featured, Marketing, Sales, spreadsheet

Tagged with: facebook, iOS, online games spreadsheet, platforms, playstation home, psn, revenue, steam

8 Comments
Frozen Synapse – A Business Mini-Postmortem!

November 29, 2011

Premium can Work: People are willing to pay for something that delivers on a very specific promise and fills a specific need; higher-priced games can work in the indie space, especially as the majority of units are sold during discount periods. Our attempt at a “high price; minimal bullshit” play with Frozen Synapse was largely successful; I feel like we under-delivered on both our server provision and our speed of updating post launch, but all-in-all we still brought players a huge amount of content for the price they paid.

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Posted in: Guest Post, Lessons Learned, Marketing, Sales

Tagged with: frozen synapse, mode 7, paul taylor, premium

28 Comments
The End Of Games Marketing As We Know It

November 25, 2011

This post was originally published as part of a regular series on gamasutra. It is reproduced here with permission. Retention is the key measure of success for a free-to-play game. This fact should send a frisson of fear down the spine of games marketers and salespeople across the globe. The truth that their skills are becoming [...]

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Posted in: Marketing, Opinion

Tagged with: free, free games, free-to-play, retention

4 Comments
Transmedia, Gamification, Advergaming

November 24, 2011

Nicholas’ speaking schedule is getting ever more busy. If you missed Nicholas’ talk on Gamification, Transmedia, and Advergaming at the Games For Brands conference, then do not despair! The presentation is embedded below, and for more detail you can just head over to his post, ‘Gamification. Advergaming. Transmedia. The GAMESbrief guide to marketing and games.‘ [...]

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Posted in: Events, Marketing

Tagged with: advergaming, brands, games for brands, gamification, transmedia

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ARPPU in freemium games

November 23, 2011

Most media people think in terms of normal distributions. If the price of a game “averages” £15 over its lifetime, total revenue = number of units sold x average price. The entire industry therefore fixates on number of units sold. In the free-to-play world, revenues don’t follow a normal distribution. They follow a power-law curve. (Or, to put it another way, the handful of whales – people who distort the spending average in the way that Bill Gates distorts the wealth average – are critically important.)

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Posted in: Featured, Marketing, Sales, spreadsheet

Tagged with: arppu, forecasting, free-to-play, online games spreadsheet, revenue

6 Comments