Your Ideas Don't Matter… Much

Back at the Nordic Game Conference panel, the room sat dumbfounded at this revelation. If only we had a few more MBA types to compliment our other creative talents, perhaps this would all come as less of a surprise.

And, while we're at it, let's add skilled marketers to the list. With such faith in the awesomeness of our precious ideas, many of us have a "build it and they will buy" mentality. This became evident as I was reviewing proposals from independent developers for a government-based funding scheme recently. As part of the proposal process there were sections to cover marketing and promotion plans, and related budget needs. Admittedly, it is a small sample of only six proposals, but the data is consistent with what I've witnessed anecdotally.

Of the six proposals, half essentially had no marketing plan or budget and were deferring to their publishing partner. One proposal listed USD 100 to cover the cost of putting up a simple website for their game. One proposal wanted a few thousand dollars to buy t-shirts to give out to their friends during the Game Developers Conference (this was for a kid-oriented casual game no less), and a final proposal said they were going to work hard on building buzz via free guerilla marketing tactics.

Now don't get me wrong, a strong word-of-mouth marketing campaign leveraging the latest social media tools and channels should be part of every promotional strategy. But that's different than hoping to put up a blog post and assuming the awesomeness of your game will spread like wildfire just from that alone.

While there are certainly rare examples that a game's buzz builds up to a frenzy on its own, the reality is that deliberate and coordinated marketing and promotional efforts actually do make a difference. During his keynote at Develop in Brighton, biz whizz David Edery discussed this specifically in relation to digital distribution. He noted how the handful of titles that are selected by platform holders for heavy promotion are often the ones that become the biggest sellers. Though, this is more likely an issue of the limited rating and referral systems in place more so than the inherent inability to generate buzz on your own.

So, despite the nirvana of online distribution and free social media tools, the inherent open nature of online means the market is flooded. Even the best of ideas has a hard time staying afloat among a sea of crap. Often seen as the role of the publisher or portal, marketing and promotion is shifting into the hands of the development studios directly. While this is an interesting transition at a macro industry level, the more critical crunch is at the individual developer level, where few have the marketing savvy to rise above a saturated marketplace. Once again, blind adherence to the awesomeness of our own ideas naturally leads to the dangerous viewpoint that not much effort is required to attract buyers.

And, it's going to get worse - or better, depending on your perspective. Many traditional developers are surely squirming in their seats right now. So focused on the purity of ideas and their execution during the production process, the separation of church and state (ie, publishers handle funding, marketing and sales, while developers build the game) has been a well understood - and needed - division of expertise. We are now entering a phase where you won't be able to separate game design from business model design. Though, at that point, investors probably will be very interested in your awesome idea for a great game.