A Practical Guide to Indie Game Marketing

by Joel Dreskin

Learn how to market for your indie game, even with a small budget and limited resources.

For those who want to earn a regular income from making indie games, marketing can be nearly as vital to the success of the game as the game itself.　 A Practical Guide to Indie Game Marketing　provides you with the tools needed to build visibility and sell your game. With special focus on developers with small budgets and limited staff and resources, this book is packed with recommendations and techniques that you can put to use immediately. As a seasoned marketing professional, author Joel Dreskin provides insight into practical, real-world experiences from marketing numerous successful games and also shares tips on mistakes to avoid. Presented in an easy to read format,　A Practical Guide to Indie Game Marketing includes information on establishing an audience and increasing visibility so you can build successes with your studio and games.

Through case studies, examples, guidelines and tips, you will learn best practices for developing plans for your game launches, PR, community engagement, channel promotions and moreSample timelines help you determine how long in advance of a launch to prepare your first public communications, when to announce your game, as well as recommended timing for releasing different game assetsBook also includes marketing checklist 'cheat sheets', dos and don’ts and additional resources

Genres: Games, Business, Game Design

179 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 4, 2015

Reviews

[Natalia Dołżycka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Basic (I think a little too basic) knowledge about marketing and PR in game dev industry. Worth reading!

[Dmitry]

(The English review is placed beneath the Russian one)

Книга, возможно, пригодится читателям не знакомым с дисциплиной «маркетинг», т.е. не читавших классические университетские учебники по маркетингу. В этом смысле книга лучше, чем отсутствие всяких знаний о маркетинге и PR. Однако с моей точки зрения лучше прочитать основные книги по маркетингу, чем тратить время на такое поверхностное чтения, какое представлено в этой книге.

Главной проблемой этой книги является то, что она написана не профессиональным маркетологом, что означает, что она даёт базовые знания, которые можно найти даже в интернете (блогах, СМИ и пр.), не говоря про обычную маркетинговую литературу. Книга мне даже чем-то напомнила блог, пускай и большой блог. Однако для успешного маркетинга компьютерных игр недостаточно знаний классического маркетинга, т.к. нужно обладать не только теоретическими знаниями, но и практическими знаниями, т.е. практикой успешного выведения на рынок игровых новинок. К тому же примеры должны быть хорошо известны, а их успех – безусловным. Практически любая игровая студия может вывести на рынок компьютерную игру, но лишь единицы могут превратить такой вывод в большой коммерческий успех. Вот этого книга и не говорит, как это потенциально можно сделать, а без этого книга по маркетингу в компьютерной игровой сфере бессмысленна.

The book may be useful for readers who are not familiar with the discipline of marketing, i.e., who have not read classic university textbooks on marketing. In this sense, the book is better than not having any knowledge of marketing and PR. However, from my point of view, it is better to read basic books on marketing than to waste time on such superficial reading as is presented in this book.

The main problem with this book is that it is not written by a professional marketer, which means that it gives basic knowledge that can be found even on the Internet (blogs, media, etc.), not to mention the usual marketing literature. The book even reminded me of a blog, albeit a big blog. However, for successful marketing of computer games, knowledge of classical marketing is not enough because you need to have not only theoretical knowledge but also practical knowledge, i.e., the practice of successful introduction of game novelties to the market. In addition, the examples must be well known and their success must be unconditional. Virtually any game studio can bring a computer game to market, but only a few can turn such a launch into a major commercial success. That's what the book doesn't tell you (how it can potentially be done), but without that, a book on marketing in the computer game industry is meaningless.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's some obvious advice, as well as aspects that would be easy to overlook. Choosing a release date can be tricky. Gaming releases are often seasonal; like sparse over the summer then big releases in the last few months leading up to Christmas. You could target or avoid certain holidays and events based on the content of your game. If you release on Steam, you need to avoid Steam sales otherwise can be buried. You need to time your marketing window as you approach your release date to ramp up interest.

[Ondrej Sykora · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is more or less marketing 101, don't expect much more than you already know from other resources. Or too many secret tips from the game dev world... But it's well written and easy to process, so an OK book when you're just starting.

[Amir Hossein Fassihi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book does a good job on gathering and categorizing the various activities needed for game marketing.

[Josefine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actual rating: 3.5 stars

A very basic guide to marketing through the lens of indie games. Good for those of us with very little knowledge on the marketing aspect of the gaming industry. A little outdated in some areas, such as the advice for social media. Instagram isn’t mentioned and Dreskin recommend posting many times a day on twitter which I think does you more bad than good.