How do games get promoted?

Video games have long been an integral part of our everyday life.

According to a study by DFC Intelligence, almost 40% of the world's population, over 3 billion people, play video games.

Over the past few years the game industry has experienced an incredibly rapid jump and, if we are to believe the predictions of analysts “Newzoo” company, the net profit of GameDev industry will amount to about $ 197 billion in 2022 (as much as 22 billion more than two years before), which only strengthens the already high position of the game industry.

Much of this, of course, is due to the pandemic, which has affected both the mechanism of game distribution itself and the availability of free time for players (both active and potential). Whereas previously an average person didn't spend more than 2 hours a day on video games, now, according to ONEPOLL's statistical study, the amount of time spent playing video games has roughly doubled.

However, as the basic rule of economics says, “demand creates supply”, and what about game developers in an era of fierce competition for players' attention?

On average, each player has 5-10 games installed on the phone, the same number on the computer, and that's not counting the huge library on Steam, Ps+, etc.

Don't let the fierce competition discourage you, because it's with healthy competition that new, previously unseen solutions are born!

Now, for example, one such solution is advertising integrations with influencers, and online/offline festivals designed for an audience of thousands of interested people.

We seem to be witnessing a new milestone in the history of GameDev industry - the promotion of video games through festivals and different tournaments!

High demand for game content is both a happiness and a headache for all game publishers.

However, if the happiness is ephemeral and transient, the headache can be very long lasting because every publisher is trying to find a new audience for such a sophisticated audience.

That's where tournaments, festivals, massive game activations with influencers, and Twitch.TV streaming platforms come in.

The old methods: advertising banners, targeted advertising, TV commercials, columns in printed media (e.g., American magazine “Electronic Gaming Monthly” or Japanese “Famitsu”) promoting video games slowly lose their relevance, and if just five years ago, it was enough only a positive press and buy traffic through social networks, now it is better to enlist the support of influencer on Twitch.Tv or YouTube.

It's not even that now streaming has become more popular and relevant than the old-fashioned press, and much more effective than buying ads on social networks, the fact that video content has a wonderful property to proliferate further.

How many times have video clips from streams gone viral in hundreds of short clips on TikTok, Instagram, etc., increasing the number of people learning about your game exponentially, increasing the visibility of your game even more?!

However, are there any criteria on which the success of the game depends?

Yes, there are.

The promotion of your game depends on many factors:

1) the device the game is designed for;

2) type of video game (AAA project will be easier to promote than simulator or logic games);

3) theme;

4) genre;

5) target audience of your game;

6) in-game content of the product and how much it engages players;

7) required gameplay skills to enter the game;

8) the game's monetization model: F2P, buying a digital version, or a subscription model.

More often than not, the community stir up interest in the game long before release.

Leaked concepts, screenshots, announcements, fan videos: all have become a full-fledged marketing campaign to promote the game.

Remember how people waited for Cyberpunk 2077, elevating it to cult status even before release.

And the recent hype caused by the leaked early build of the new “GTA” part?

As you can see, the pre-warmed audience brings a huge increase in revenue in the early days of release and sales. For example, “GTA V” brought in a record $800 million on the first day of sales for Rock Star Games.

It is safe to say that the ways of promoting new games have long ago moved beyond the previously erected framework of TV and the press. Now the main tool to promote games is people: viewers who organize events for your game, streamers who collect daily online on Twitch.TV, and the potential target audience of your game, which can cause an information boom in social networks through the literate initial marketing campaign.

In summary, we want to give a simple but no less relevant advice to all game publishers.

Before developing a strategy to promote your game, try to answer yourself three main questions honestly.

1) How good is your game?

After all, if you want to dominate the game world and make money on the game, your game must not just be “good”, it has to be “the best”.

If the quality of the game suffers, no amount of hype will help it in the long run. Just look at the millions of cancellations of “Cyberpunk 2077”, on which “CD Projekt Red” not only lost about 1 billion dollars, but its shares also plummeted by as much as 16%.

2) The target audience of your game!

Who are you doing it for? Male or female? A teenager or an adult? Or will your game be multi-age, and will be equally enjoyable to play at 15 or 40?

Draw a clear, collective image of your target audience, and build your advertising strategy around it. As practice shows – a good campaign often goes beyond the original target audience, attracting more and more attention.

3) Analyse the market. Understand who your main competitors are and what can you learn from them?

Don't be shy, feel free to get to know your competitors' products. Evaluate their successful and unsuccessful solutions, adapt to your strategy, and don't be afraid to learn from others' mistakes.

4) How long will the game content last after release, or will your game be passed in a couple of days and immediately removed from the device?

What mechanisms will you use to retain new players and get users back into the game?

Why would they continue to play your game time after time and consume game content when there are hundreds of thousands of alternatives around?

Video games are the most popular area of the entertainment content segment these days.

There are over 100.000 new games are released every year, and there are constant additions to the old ones as well. In order not to get lost on this background, you need effective promotion of your product, which can be achieved not only by a team of experienced marketers, but also by the aforementioned influencers on Twitch. Tv, YouTube, and TikTok.

However, where and to which Influencers to apply? Which events and festivals to promote your game with?

In order to choose the right influencer to promote your game, Beyond Industries has an analytics service that provides you with comprehensive information about this or that influencer.

This service solution will help you to track all the metrics for each influencer, providing you with a detailed report from which you can build a competent marketing campaign to promote your product.

The service solution from Beyond Industries will help you not only to promote the game, attracting a new audience, but also to retain old players by raising your LTV by 40%.

Ongoing performance integrations with proven influencers with up to 50 metrics known to build effective sales channels with positive ROI. Weekly in-game challenges held without changing the game code or hiring additional staff to conduct them, constant raffles, and even Gift rewards for completing certain achievements will be the best way to promote your new game, increasing its recognition and loyalty among players! GameDev doesn't stand still, so don't you either!