‘Tis the time of year when lists of expected trends for conducting your marketing arrive and make, more or less, educated guesses about what to pay attention to, take under consideration while revising your comms strategy, and also what to avoid in 2023. As we can’t predict the future, here are some of my types for the upcoming year and what can be done to advertise your games more effectively. Even though they are based on data and my previous experiences, these are pretty much shots in the dark (who expected Twitter to take such a drastic turn this year in 2021), so, I’ll be also including my honest opinion on whether they will come to fruition and if it’s something that you should definitely include in your strategy, do if you have spare time or monitor if it even happens at all. Without further ado – let’s start the list.
Czytaj dalej „5 Trends for Video Games Marketing and Gaming Market in 2023”Career Path for Community and Social Media Managers in Gaming
I recall that one of the reasons for me quitting one of my jobs was a lack of a career path for a social media and community management specialist. There were of course plenty of other factors, but this was probably the biggest one. Thinking of it, it’s not a huge surprise, really. The job of a community manager is a pretty new thing in the industry and companies have only started generally adapting it a few years ago. This means that the role is not firmly established yet and that people may face similar struggles as I did with my ambition back then.
Because of this, I came up with a detailed plan of seniority for the role. Sure, I created it sometime after leaving the company and published it in the February instalment of my LinkedIn newsletter but this time I want it to become more than a selfish afterthought as I’d like it to be an open resource for people who may face the same issues as I did. Or maybe their managers or HR want to have some sort of template to adapt to their use. Feel free to do so. I just wanna help with establishing standards for the role, that’s all.
Czytaj dalej „Career Path for Community and Social Media Managers in Gaming”Why Diablo Immortal and Blizzard ultimately won (+YT AUDIO/VIDEO VERSION)
Blizzard hasn’t had the best few years. While the company can list some successes, such as the decently perceived Overwatch 2 tests and the launch of the legacy version of World of Warcraft, in recent times, it’s not considered to be in its heyday. The massive harassment scandal that surfaced last year, oddly political and controversial statements and activities regarding China, losing the position of the MMORPG market leader to Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV, or the “Do you guys not have phones?” remark made by Wyatt Cheng (DI’s game director) when the public didn’t react positively to the reveal of Diablo Immortal, were ones of many mishaps this industry giant had to deal with.
Yeah, Diablo Immortal. A F2P mobile game made by Blizzard in the world of Diablo, their legendary hack & slash series, was quite frowned upon by pretty much all of the stakeholders – fans, other industry professionals, the press, since the beginning. Of course, the game has a lot of problems, such as an unpolished PC port or the infamous harsh monetization policies. Yet, despite that, Blizzard considers the game a success, as it surpassed 30 million downloads and brought more or $100 million in sales during the first two months of the game being on the market. The title also has a decent 3.8/5 rating on Google Play Store – a lot of these reviews are still probably lowering the overall factual score.
Czytaj dalej „Why Diablo Immortal and Blizzard ultimately won (+YT AUDIO/VIDEO VERSION)”The Worst Soul Hackers 2 Review and Endless Persona Comparisons (+YT AUDIO/VIDEO VERSION)
I wrote an article complaining about video games journalists comparing Shin Megami Tensei 5 to Persona, but never published it, or recorded a voiceover for it. I didn’t do any of that, because I was kinda late to the party. However, a new Atlus game is being released later this month, it’s called Soul Hackers 2 and is a part of the Megaten universe, just as Shin Megami Tensei, Persona, Devil Survivor and a couple of other sub-franchises are. And you know what this entails – journos are out of the woodwork with new Persona comparisons! I’m miraculously on time with my content, so let’s get into it. Also a small disclaimer – this is a bit of a rant along with proper analysis, so keep that in mind. The discussed article can be found here.
Czytaj dalej „The Worst Soul Hackers 2 Review and Endless Persona Comparisons (+YT AUDIO/VIDEO VERSION)”A late response to Leffen’s F2P fighting game remarks (+YT VIDEO VERSION)
Leffen, one of the most prominent Super Smash Brothers Melee and Guilty Gear Strive players in the world, published a string of tweets a couple of months ago and they were as follows:
Czytaj dalej „A late response to Leffen’s F2P fighting game remarks (+YT VIDEO VERSION)”Why Video Game Journalists Aren’t Liked By The Gamedev Industry (+ AUDIO/YT VIDEO VERSION)
Hello everyone. I wanted to have an article about the review of Shin Megami Tensei 5 on IGN and talk about how it is fundamentally flawed. The author, Leana Hafer, constantly drew comparisons between the game she reviewed and Persona 5, which made about as much sense as comparing Mount & Blade 2 Bannerlord to Mordhau, or Quake Champions to CS:GO. However, to be honest, the topic fizzed out and I wouldn’t be able to jump on that sweet clout train, so I decided to ditch the entire page that I wrote and start writing again. It’s easy to rag on game journalists for many reasons, like their lack of skill (in the case of Dean Takahashi), lack of integrity which results in bad takes (in the case of Leana Hafer), or just the most stupid takes you’ve ever seen in the case of Ana Valens, or that person who wrote the piece about the knob and balls Gamecube controller on Kotaku a short while ago. However, these reasons are based almost exclusively on the quality of their work as seen by the reader, the person who consumes the content made by them. Because of this, I’d like to talk about the reason why a professional like me really detests dealing with the journalistic lot and I’m convinced that it’s going to be rather shocking to you.
Czytaj dalej „Why Video Game Journalists Aren’t Liked By The Gamedev Industry (+ AUDIO/YT VIDEO VERSION)”Two big updates
Hi, it’s been a while since I last posted here and there are a couple of good reasons for me to do so. In this post, I’ll make 2 announcements, so if you’re interested in the future of this blog, give it a read. Thanks in advance.
Czytaj dalej „Two big updates”Cryptic social media posts can perform well. A few words about gift codes (3 case studies)
Even though I strongly advocate for simplicity and precision when it comes to the creation of copy for social media, I do realise that being a tad bit cryptic in some scenarios will actually be quite beneficial in terms of performance. However, before you put your fanbase to work, you need to know if they will find the effort they will have to put in worthwhile. Here are two similar cases that were leveraged due to being cryptic.
Czytaj dalej „Cryptic social media posts can perform well. A few words about gift codes (3 case studies)”Many Purposes of Social Media Management in the gaming industry (free video and presentation)
I was attending the Game Industry Conference last weekend and I had the great pleasure and honour of delivering a speech there. It regarded different uses of social media management in our industry. As this is not a comprehensive list (mostly due to time constraints and to an almost limitless capacity of human creativity), I think it can be useful. Feel free to use this presentation for your personal training, within your studio/company and for whatever reason you may come up with.
Czytaj dalej „Many Purposes of Social Media Management in the gaming industry (free video and presentation)”Which social media portal is the best for marketing your game? (+ AUDIO/YT VIDEO VERSION)
People are often tempted with the prospect of promoting their games on social media, as they are prevalent in our daily lives. However, before creating great content, interacting with people and running UA (user acquisition) campaigns, there are some huge questions – which social media sites are the best to promote my game? Is using all of them a viable option? And a bunch of other ones that are similar to the two stated above. In this post I’ll describe which platforms are good for you, your games and your studio, what to take under consideration and so on, so hopefully you will be able to choose the platforms that will work for you.
Czytaj dalej „Which social media portal is the best for marketing your game? (+ AUDIO/YT VIDEO VERSION)”
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