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Marketing to Non-Gamers

A topic by Krunchy Fried Games created Aug 14, 2022 Views: 694 Replies: 13

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So, marketing is often seen as the worst part of game dev. There are many, many tips online- and I'm always impressed at how friendly and helpful devs are to each other with this.

There is one problem though: since we're all after attention from the same indie gamers, more marketing often just sets the bar higher- which means more pointless work for everyone to fight for the same audience. So my question is: have you done anything to promote your game to people outside the usual audience?

One creative (and maybe even legal) thing we did, was to get our game, The Bunny Hill Horror, on Google Maps- since it's set in a real life location. This was quite succesful, and it became one of the most visible locations in North Staffordshire for about 6 months until they realised that there was, in fact, no invisible castle on Bunny Hill, and took it down.

Also, we make choose-your-own-adventures and the overlap between people who play games and read novels is smaller than it should be. One thing we did was to have bookmarks printed- which have been very useful as business cards and to strategically leave around libraries. Below is the overly complex one I designed for Witches and Bandits and Swords (Oh My).

So, if you're a dev, please share anything you've done, or plan to. If you're not- what do you think would be a good idea to get people to itchio who wouldn't usually visit? Often marketing techniques might work well for a specific genre or game.

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Midnight Spire Games2 years ago(+1)

Not at all. To describe my work as niche would be doing it a kindness, so I genuinely can't see why a non-gamer would have any interest in it.

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Krunchy Fried Games2 years ago

With niche games in particular, I tend to think if you find your game worth seeing through to release, then other people will want to play it too- and it's just a case of finding them. That's what I keep telling myself anyway...

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ArgondevilGuiderods2 years ago (1 edit) (+2)

nice ideas thanks for sharing.

i havent really attempted any marketing beyond reddit posts. i dont have social media either.

having one of my games included in the excellent indiepocalypse anthology helped me out in the beginning.

I just keep making stuff somehow im getting between 50 and 100 visits per day.

however, when im ready i will consider marketing and always interested to read peoples experiences.

for anyone starting out, i recommend Reddit. solid, easy & free way to share your work. great community too (opinions may differ on this). You can make some nice overlaps in the subreddits. i.e. i share some of my music apps to r/ambientmusic etc

If im completely honest, ITCH.IO in itself has been the best thing for me. great site with nice tools for sharing your projects. It has become the heart of my operations. I LOVE IT. the site and the people. oh and of course the jams... thats a nice way to make something and have fun with a like minded community. I would be lost without this site.

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Krunchy Fried Games2 years ago(+1)

Yeah, we've only got any kind of visibility on itchio- maybe Newgrounds too. Social media's probably a good place to promote your games but only if you're a very chatty person, which we're not. 50-100 visits a day is certainly pretty good! Maybe we'll get that again if we ever finish our beta demo...

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40wattstudio2 years ago(+1)

Impressively creative marketing tactics Krunchy Fried Games!

Ultimately, I think there's no such thing as a non-gamer -- everyone likes entertainment, it's just a matter of appealing to their taste. Say there's a middle-aged woman who currently doesn't play games. Suddenly she takes a job where she has a boring 30-minute subway commute. Before you know it, she's downloaded Candy Crush or some puzzle game off the App Store just to pass the time. Just this morning I took my car in for a vehicle inspection, and as I waited in the waiting room, I could hear one of the ladies sitting behind the counter tapping on her phone playing one of those types of games.

Or maybe there's a hardened Vietnam vet who doesn't play games. But it could very well be that he would -- except that there are scarcely any Vietnam-themed games and perhaps none of those have the realism he's looking for. Or maybe it's a hardware issue where he simply doesn't have a computer powerful enough to run a game like that.

If you can identify what keeps "non-gamers" from playing games, then I think you'll have a better idea of how to proceed with marketing.

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Krunchy Fried Games2 years ago(+1)

Yeah, you make some very good points: what is preventing non-gamers from playing your game is an excellent question for devs to start with. Nintendo are probably the best example of people who've asked this question: Do you not want to be stuck in your bedroom playing games? Here's the Gameboy, here's the Switch. Do you think gaming is just for people who like violence? Here's Nintendogs. Is gaming not improving your life outside gaming? Here's Wiifit and Pokemon Go.

Our specfic issue is that people who read books often turn their noses up at video games- and with some good reason- writing is very low on the list of priorities of game publishers. Take Resident Evil 4- amazing game, terrible dialogue/ story. Also people are often prejudiced against video games: in the same way that people overvalue food from a restaurant where the menu's in French, or think they're getting more cultural value from a black n white film, people might not think they're being culturally enriched (or whatever) from a visual novel or choose-your-own-adventure video game.

I'll stop before this becomes too much of a rant. Thanks for your reply ;)

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40wattstudio2 years ago(+1)

Yep, Nintendo has done a great job of branching out and enticing "non-gamers".

I think part of the reason why writing gets such a low priority in most games is because game developers assume that "Hey, if you're creative enough to program the game, then you must also be creative enough to write the story for it too." But the open world of creative writing is the polar opposite of the constrictive math and logic that is required to make that game in the first place. Each requires a different mindset and it's very rare for someone to be equally gifted in both.

On all the gamedev podcasts I've listened to, I've heard them talk at length about hiring more programmers or composers or artists, but I don't recall them ever saying, "We really needed a better writer." A lot of game companies could easily afford to hire a good writer, but the vast majority of those funds get funneled into the programming, graphics and music.

Going back to your comment about "people who read books often turn their noses up at video games.": I think there are 3 main reasons for this:

1) Unless it's a Choose Your Own Adventure, books are extremely linear experiences. You can read Tolkien's Lord of the Rings a thousand times and Sauron will never win. It's understandable then that readers that *like* linear experiences are less prone to gravitate to games. But that's largely because most people still associate games with lots of choices and multiple endings. If you can create a game with a very linear, one-ending type of story, I think you could have success appealing to that crowd. A visual novel would be an excellent medium for this.

2) Games (and movies) do all the visualizing for you. But although the plot of a book is linear, books give the reader the ultimate freedom in being able to visualize locations and characters according to their interpretation. The more realistic the graphics are in a game, the less freedom the player has in imagining how things look. However, if you keep the graphics simple, you can still allow the player to visualize things according to their taste. An example I like to use is one of my favorite games, Final Fantasy 6. The graphics on that game certainly weren't realistic, and the character movements and animations were very limited, but that very fact gave me the freedom to imagine what it would be like if it were more realistic. I could see the game world as it was presented while simultaneously hold in my mind an idealized, fantasy version of how things would look and behave in real life.

3) Readers like to read, but hardly anybody likes to Re-Read. Yet this is exactly what happens with the vast majority of games. You play a little, get engrossed in the story, then you die. Now you have to suffer through all the same narrative and dialogue you just read all over again (unless the developer was so kind as to permit a Skip button). As an avid reader myself, I think a solution would be to allow for dynamic dialogue and narrative -- but this would take a lot of creative effort to implement well.

Part of the strategy to get readers to play games will be to show readers that games are simply a different medium for telling a story. I think there is growing realization of this as there has been a huge increase in visual novels.

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Krunchy Fried Games2 years ago(+1)

I certainly agree with your point about different thought processes- left and right-brained people, maybe. It used to be so difficult to find a game outside specific genres (e.g. text adventures/ point n clicks) where the writing wasn't terrible. I'm in a two-man team, and take on the creative work, while my friend does the technical stuff, which has worked well for us so far. As you say, unless you're a Leonardo da Vinci style genius, it's difficult to be both.

Yeah, there are differences between linear novels, CYOAs, graphic novels etc. and sometimes you'll be in the mood for one more than the other. I think the main issue for me is intelligent and cultured people who don't think they're "getting as much" from a video game as a book- even if the writing's equally good, which is a view I've heard often. I think it's similar to how I used to procrastinate by playing Fortnite but now I play chess. People see chess as more sophisticated and worthwhile but it just requires a different skillset.

I wonder how much people value "worth" by the sorts of people they see as playing video games compared to the people who read novels- and they're put off by thinking they're the domain of a bunch of sweary 12 year olds.

I re-read books all the time! It probably helps that I have such a terrible memory that I forget much of what happened after a few years.

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Hodslate2 years ago(+1)

In terms of niche marketing I make games in unity 2 and see how the low spec the bar can go. I've had a machine from 1999 run some of my stuff aswell asbrand new ones on Windows 11 natively. As for the soundtracks I use third party promotion on youtube and other than that just Facebook and Discord. Maybe the odd online Retro forum. Never found reddit very worthwhile. Just found it to be a bit of a sloppy mess. Maybe I just didn't understand the app. The idea is to get the games to advertise themselves keep the hamster wheel turning. As for advertising to non gamers I don't know. I keep my stuff niche and it wouldn't appeal to most.

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Krunchy Fried Games2 years ago(+1)

Keeping the specs simple definitely helps. My first experience of playing an FPS game against internet people was Red Crucible 2- there were certainly better games, but that one would work on my low-end laptop and poor internet (I might even have been using a dongle at that point), and it was browser playable through Kongregate and Facebook. Because it was accessible, I played that rather than better games, and obviously, non-gamers are less likely to have high-spec systems so that's a good point to think about.

Good luck with the social media. I'm waiting til we've got at least a beta demo for our next game before I brave that rabbit hole again!

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LinXueLian2 years ago(+1)

Uuuuuuuugh, late to the party but I won't lie - marketing can be a poopoo to do! It's even more difficult when it's not the intended demographic or market that you're reaching out to as well.

But if it helps, I make CYOA games as well - and visual novels, a cousin of some sort to text-based CYOA games. Normally I try to market those either on Twitter/Tumblr (with not so much luck) or on my own original novels (with sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiightly better luck). From personal conversations, I've found that quite a number of people who read novels don't seem to know that there are CYOA games out there; a more game-based version of what they're used to, which doesn't require you to move around and destroy targets, and, which, just like novels, aren't as graphics-heavy as other types of games.

The other thing I've discovered is that novel readers (who are more inclined to at least give the text-based CYOA games a try) seem to generally find it iffy to need to download, unzip and play games, or to download and install an app, which appears invasive or adds additional steps for them to access it. I've made it a point to make my smaller games have a web-based version recently, so they can have a go at it easily with just a browser. It's worked to my advantage so far, so I recommend it.

I do like the name-card in library idea you have! I just can't leave those, because... I'm a bad girl who makes... naughty games hahaha! I might give that a shot with my tamer stuff though, which need more eyes on them. They're not doing as well as my adult-oriented games, for very obvious reasons.

And yeah, adult games don't really need marketing. They seem to market themselves very well on their own LOL. I've gotten rather lazy thanks to it.

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Krunchy Fried Games2 years ago

Yeah, when I tell people I make CYOAs, a common reaction is "I remember those books when I was a kid!" so maybe even those kinds of books don't tend to be aimed at adults, although I don't see why they shouldn't be (a CYOA of the Game of Thrones books would probably have wide appeal).

What are the pros and cons of marketing naughtier games? I suppose you get a bigger audience, but get cut off from some common places to promote- like Twitch. We put out an 18+ version of the Bunny Hill Horror games. These were fairly mild- only occasional nudity and sex, but they still got banned from Gamejolt when they changed their policies, and only remain on Newgrounds.

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LinXueLian2 years ago (1 edit)

Hmmm... if it helps, growing up remembering those books does help with marketing CYOA games. They're basically electronic forms of the books, at least.

Yeah, there are pros and cons when it comes to marketing naughtier games. They're definitely harder to talk about on regular platforms, so I don't really promote there. What helps is that my audience is niche though, and they don't seem to favour Twitch very much. I'm personally not on Steam, Gamejolt or Newgrounds either - not a lot of the stuff are my cup of tea, so I haven't bothered with those places, and a number of the ones I know don't either. They just swarm away like flies once there's no more naughty to be had and... go elsewhere where there is. So that's where I go too.

The only games I've had difficulty marketing are ironically SFW games.

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