How to Market your Indie Game

It’s video time again! In this one, I go into the mystical art of “Marketing your Game”.

Excitement guaranteed, or your money back!

To go along with the video, here are some examples of what I was talking about, images that I think do a good job of immediately capturing the essence of “the fantasy” on offer. Not an exhaustive list, of course, and I’m not saying that this image translates into quality gameplay.

Sometimes, it’s pretty low-hanging fruit. You slap “Batman” or “Mafia” on a box, you immediately understand the fantasy. As I said, some things are shortcuts. Established brands are one. Genres are another. Even companies or individual names can serve that purpose. Bethesda Softworks, Bioware, Will Wright, Sid Meier. Invoke these names and you generate an expectation of a certain type of experience.

Hell, you can apply this principle to more than just individual games. Consider Origin Systems. Their motto was “We Create Worlds”. Evocative, no? The fantasy they were offering was written into their companies guiding principle.

And finally, let me end with an example of how NOT to do it. This one is a complete failure.

The only thing that saves it from being incomprehensible is the fact that the box art clings so tightly to well-worn genre imagery. ‘Cause you sure can’t figure it out from the name “Two Worlds Two”.