Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

Be Honest, Be Nice: Marketing And PR For Indie Developers

December 21, 2011

Andrew Smith of Spilt Milk Studios (and the associated developer diaries on GAMESbrief) has written a great piece on indie PR and marketing on Gamasutra. His summary: Be nice. Market to the platform holder, as well as your fans. Use Twitter. Be confident in your voice. Open up a conversation. Believe that everything you’re doing [...]

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Posted in: Marketing

Tagged with: advice, andrew smith, events, gamasutra, marketing, spilt milk studios

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CPA, CAC and Customer Acquisition costs

December 8, 2011

The costs of acquiring customers for Facebook, browser and mobile games is soaring. At the same time, virality is ever more elusive as Facebook shuts down spam messages and mobile has still not harnessed the social graph on a technical level (although word-of-mouth is still very effective).

The cost of acquiring a customer (often called CPA – Cost Per Acquisition – or CAC – Customer Acquisition Cost) is definitely rising. But how far?

That’s a very difficult question. Not least because the difference between CPA and effective CPA (eCPA) is so critical.

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Posted in: Featured, Marketing, spreadsheet

Tagged with: browser games, cac, cost per acquisition, cpa, customer acquisition cost, ecpa, marketing spend, mobile games, social games, spreadsheet

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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: Marketing, Past Events

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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