Feedback Game Promotion Attempts Having No Impact!

[RyanC]

Hi everyone, I recently started promoting my game before it's ready for launch in 2017 and am finding it really tough to get any response, should I stop developing it?

I'm on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and I've attempted promoting the game with 4 Twitter accounts, Google add-words for video, Twitter adds, Facebook adds the lot.

The game is 12 months in the making and can be found here

Anyone have some kind of pre-publishing and marketing strategy I can use?

 

[NizarPlayz]

Do you know what i also had a 2d game MAZE:Legend of the coolness which got flop no one liked it. But i hope yours will be awesome in the future

 

[RyanC]

People already do like my game and I'm sure it's fun to play so hopefully will be successful, the only problem is I'm talking about the 5 people that I've manged to show it to because I haven't got a clue how to do marketing.

 

[NizarPlayz]

Well you have to advertise alot and make your game more awesome and fun for people

 

[MrTP]

Hey Ryan,

first of all: I really like your Super Dragon Dash trailers. The trailers as well as the game itself look very professional & entertaining - even if it's not my type of game.
Just one short note: The 2:00 min video is a bit too long for my taste as it shows very similar ingame scenes over and over again. That's why I would keep it a bit shorter and inserting a few black sequences with onscreen text on it before the ingame sequence follows that shows the specific ingame feature and/or content (e.g. MORE THAN 40 LEVELS -> Then showing ingame sequences from different levels, DIFFERENT TYPES OF ATTACKS -> Then showing ingame sequences where the dragon attacks the enemies with different attack types...and so on.)

But Back to Topic...
As written in my other thread 'Know Your Market - Game Releases Per Day (Steam / Appstore / Play Store)' the number of new mobile game releases per day has become insane - so it's understandable that you have the feeling that your marketing activities seem to have no impact. Especially as you are developing a casual game it's even harder to build a living community, as most of your potential users would just download your game because they've found it within the feature section at the Appstore / Play Store.
But this kind of (casual) players are not that engaged into the development process of a game - they are just interested into the final product. Core gamers are bit different at this point, as they want to see the progress on 'their' game and want to be sure that the devs are going into the right direction. They normally giving more feedback and telling their friends what cool game they've found and sharing screenshots, trailers etc.

To cut a long story short...
Even if the mobile market is not my homebase, I would try these things (being in your situation):

• Contacting Apple & Google - and discuss the possibilities of featurings (<- the most essential task)
• Establishing press contacts (websites, lets players etc.) who are focused on mobile games and offering them previews/reviews, background stories etc.
  
• Thinking about the option to pitch my game to mobile game publishers
• Last but not least: Finalizing the game at the best possible quality - while intensively thinking about the monetization model of my game (<- the other essential task)

 

[RyanC]

Thanks very much, just about to take a look at your thread now, that sounds like best advice I've had so far

 

[SnoutUp]

Your marketing has a pretty weird vibe to it, because of all the SEO-y keyword spam. I guess, most people wouldn't care and it might even work, but it feels like you're marketing your game to robots, not humans. And if you want to get people interested in an unreleased product, you have to focus to them. Use ads (if you have funds) after the release, not before it. Having Twitter accounts with bot follows doesn't mean much, when you can't get any real engagement out of them. That being said, it's very hard to build a community around casual games (I know, because I try) and keep people attention with them.

On an unrelated note, I was getting really excited that your game is an isometric dragon RPG... Too bad it's only in the level select.

Hi everyone, I recently started promoting my game before it's ready for launch in 2017 and am finding it really tough to get any response, should I stop developing it?

I'm on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and I've attempted promoting the game with 4 Twitter accounts, Google add-words for video, Twitter adds, Facebook adds the lot.

The game is 12 months in the making and can be found here

Anyone have some kind of pre-publishing and marketing strategy I can use?

 

[JacPete]

i think you reach more people as you think you do. most people are the types of "only reading or watching". i know how it feels to stand in an empty forum thread, but maybe patience and persistence is the key iam low on those skills on some days ^^

 

[gamedev4life]

no demo, really?! if not then make a demo post it here, game jolt, etc.! then get youtube personalities who are open to indie games to play your game.

also may want to try making game dev tutorials using your game's content.

also, try kickstarter! why not, right?

also, try getting greenlit on steam and go for early access later down the line when your demo is successful

dont give up, your getting close!

 

[RyanC]

Your marketing has a pretty weird vibe to it, because of all the SEO-y keyword spam. I guess, most people wouldn't care and it might even work, but it feels like you're marketing your game to robots, not humans. And if you want to get people interested in an unreleased product, you have to focus to them. Use ads (if you have funds) after the release, not before it. Having Twitter accounts with bot follows doesn't mean much, when you can't get any real engagement out of them. That being said, it's very hard to build a community around casual games (I know, because I try) and keep people attention with them.

On an unrelated note, I was getting really excited that your game is an isometric dragon RPG... Too bad it's only in the level select.

Thanks for the feedback, and taking time to look at the game. The isometric map will hopefully feature some game-play such as meeting characters and talking to them to find out secrets within the labyrinth, and building campfires to rest and recharge energy.

 

[SnoutUp]

Thanks for the feedback, and taking time to look at the game. The isometric map will hopefully feature some game-play such as meeting characters and talking to them to find out secrets within the labyrinth, and building campfires to rest and recharge energy.

If this game doesn't work out for you, I would highly recommend to drop the "flappy dragon" part and make a lightweight RPG out of the isometric part. It would be 100 times easier to promote it and excite players about it. People love dragons and people love RPGs.

 

[JacPete]

and the graphic is very good

 

[gamedev4life]

If this game doesn't work out for you, I would highly recommend to drop the "flappy dragon" part and make a lightweight RPG out of the isometric part. It would be 100 times easier to promote it and excite players about it. People love dragons and people love RPGs.

as difficult it is to walk away or abandon so much work you have done, i think snoutup has a good point: ditch the whole "flappy dragon" part of the game (keep it for you portfolio at least!) and focus on the isometric part. that part of the game does look much interesting imo.

 

[Blackened]

I don't really have much to add that @MrTP and @SnoutUp haven't already discussed. I will say that if you intend to pay out of pocket towards an advertising campaign, do your homework before committing to any contract. Soliciting the services of a skilled professional can vastly improve your exposure to the public in ways you may be completely unaware of. Shop around, see what's out there that fits your budget needs. Good luck!

On an unrelated note, I was getting really excited that your game is an isometric dragon RPG... Too bad it's only in the level select.

Yes, I felt EXACTLY the same way about this once I realized it.

 

[RangerX]

And I don't want to be a bad prophet here but sometimes a reality check is important. I think this concerns all of us.
The reality of the videogames market is that it's basically like lottery. There are THOUSANDS of games coming out every year, in fact its probably millions. And only a handful of them will break even. I am not even talking about becoming popular or making money. I speak BREAK EVEN. That's the reality out there. The Apple store (and Steam if not already) is literally a graveyard of games. We know about popular games in there but trust me there are millions we forget, we don't know they exist.

With this said, you probably can do better with your game. It sure doesn't look like that total crappy stuff I see every day in many stores. But if ultimately you don't even break even, don't get discouraged, I would say its just the normal course of things.

 

[RyanC]

If this game doesn't work out for you, I would highly recommend to drop the "flappy dragon" part and make a lightweight RPG out of the isometric part. It would be 100 times easier to promote it and excite players about it. People love dragons and people love RPGs.

Thanks very much for the advice, what do you mean by it would be 100 times easier to promote?

 

[SnoutUp]

Thanks very much for the advice, what do you mean by it would be 100 times easier to promote?

Isometric dragon RPG games are more interesting than flappy dragon games.

 

[RyanC]

Yes perhaps they are, only thing is I must make revenue from the game in order to be able to continue making games in the future. Flappy Bird made so much revenue do to it's ease of use, allowing the most casual gamers to play the game and therefore opening up the target market by millions. That's the strategy I was going for anyway.

 

[Ninety]

Here's some honest feedback on the advertising you've done so far.

First the trailer you linked. The first 10 seconds are near-identical shots of the same thing over and over. You have multiple shots repeated almost exactly (for example the castle flyby at 0:10 and again at 0:28; the castle gate clip at 0:36 is identical to the one directly before it so far as I can tell). Every shot follows the same camera pattern and there is no real narrative (which I'd expect in a trailer completely lacking in all gameplay). Super Dragon Dash could be a dating sim for all I know.

By scrolling through your Twitter for a minute or two I have zero idea how this game plays. The first thing I saw was "like Flappy Bird but with dragons" which frankly would normally be enough to make me close the tab. I kept seeing "dragon flying game" but, again, that tells me nothing about how it actually works.

A word on graphics. This game looks very generic. I can tell you've put a lot of work into it but the average customer is going to see some standard medieval assets, cartoony characters and over-saturated lighting and write it off as a typical mobile game - fun, perhaps, but uninventive. A potential customer wants to know how your game plays first - as in, within ten seconds of being informed about your game. You've completely failed to communicate that. We've seen a lot of pretty assets but with the exception of that Flappy Bird tweet no explanation of what we'll actually be doing with them.

Yes perhaps they are, only thing is I must make revenue from the game in order to be able to continue making games in the future. Flappy Bird made so much revenue do to it's ease of use, allowing the most casual gamers to play the game and therefore opening up the target market by millions. That's the strategy I was going for anyway.

To continue making games in future you need a liveable wage. Flappy Bird clones will not make you a liveable wage. Flappy Bird was a freak success that was immediately followed by literal thousands of clones, all of which have failed to make money. You need to be the next big thing to get rich off the mobile market, you can't just imitate other people's successes.

Now don't think I'm telling you your game is bad. I haven't played it and while it may not be my favourite genre, it's clear you've put a lot of honest work into it. I'm not saying you should give up. What I am saying is that you've failed to show your game's strengths in your advertising and are instead pushing a very generic-looking campaign. I mean no offence; I'm trying to be honest with you here because professional gamedev is hard, unforgiving work and advertising is a cutthroat world.

 

[RyanC]

Thanks for taking time to look at the game trailers and social media pages. I never take offence to constructive criticism. I guess the reason the information is vague is because I'm still deciding on certain design concepts such as whether to make the game a full platform game enabling the user to go back and fourth. I'm intending to add RPG style functionality to the isometric part of the game such as meeting and talking to characters to extract secrets and swap items with them.

As you're already aware these kind of things take a huge amount of time and I just wanted to get some idea if the game will be of interest before going down that long road of development on it. The demographics from the social media campaigns show interest of ages mainly from 13-17 years old and 45+ so I'm wondering if these may be more casual gamers who may not appreciate complex controls and functionality?

 

[Warspite2]

Maybe you can contact a publisher.

 

[Ninety]

As you're already aware these kind of things take a huge amount of time and I just wanted to get some idea if the game will be of interest before going down that long road of development on it. The demographics from the social media campaigns show interest of ages mainly from 13-17 years old and 45+ so I'm wondering if these may be more casual gamers who may not appreciate complex controls and functionality?

I would say this is exactly the case. The mobile market is predominantly geared towards the age groups you mentioned (which is not to say that other ages don't buy mobile games, but that those ages seem to be most profitable). The average age of a mobile gamer in the US is 46.5 (source) (although it's important to note this particular page doesn't include under 18s). Now that doesn't mean you have to scrap the cartoony style - quite the opposite - but it does give food for thought about how you might better target your product. I would go in with a clear target audience in mind.

 

[RyanC]

If this game doesn't work out for you, I would highly recommend to drop the "flappy dragon" part and make a lightweight RPG out of the isometric part. It would be 100 times easier to promote it and excite players about it. People love dragons and people love RPGs.

Flipping heck I just hooked up the isometric part of the game to my Xbox controller. This is fun just walking around the map in 360 degrees right now!

 

[c3pu]

what i learned in the last 6 month.

Facebook sucks big time don't waste your time or money on it. If you don't give them money your post won't even reach the people who follow you.
If you really want to use it either copy/paste or share your instagram pic/tweet. And never put link on a facebook post they get filtered and your reach is even worst than your normal one.

Twitter is good use the right # at the right time and you should see some growth. People on twitter tend to like short clips or gifs over picture or links.

Instagram is surprisingly good. once again # are important and video aren't as popular on Instagram use single pictures or collage.(i usually get twice as much reach on instagram than i get on twitter)

EDIT: Also i tend to believe organic growth and being featured by "media" would be way more useful than adds most people ignore them not accounting for people who block adds.