“Knowing who this game is being made for, what we really want to create, and having this clarity makes we evaluate better what is and what isn’t so important [when making a game]” – With this line, Dan Bittencourt explains to us why he believes having a good marketing and business notion is so relevant when developing video games.
One of the most overlooked aspects of indie game production when making your own team is the marketing area. Selling your game to people is as important as developing it, besides, even if it’s a great game, how are you going to show it to the world and make others know about its existence?
Maybe it’s the fear that many people have of the complexity of the business world that drives so many away from it. The idea that you’ll have to find yourself a publisher, and sponsors, and whoever’s going to sell your game and distribute it and so on and so forth. It is indeed an intimidating thought.
But it’s a consensus between specialists in the area that you have nothing to fear. The field of business and marketing is much simpler than it might seem at first.
“They [the publishers] have their doors open for you to talk to them. They are literally making an investment to hear you. […] You can see there’s this entire movement to bring more people to this platform and take these games to other players” Explains Lucas Pessoa, specialist in business development.
Having more people knocking on their doors and asking to sell their games is not only easy, it’s something that those publishers WANT you to do. Now, this might seem obvious at first, but it’s this very notion that many people seem to fail to understand. That publishers and distributors are actively waiting for you to go ask them. That’s why they exist, after all.
Worst case scenario, some big head at Xbox might tell you that your game is still unfinished and it needs more time to be polished and properly finalized.
But if this doesn’t make you less nervous about exposing your game out there, at least know that the market has never been so good for indie games before. There’s an interest about indie developers from the big companies, like Xbox, that is growing each day. And considering the creative boom that the indie scenario has been witnessing in those past few years, it couldn’t be any different. Young developers who want to start their own business by starting projects with whatever resources they have in hand saw their numbers growing exponentially, and the market has fully embraced this movement. The big companies, of course, have noticed this.
That’s not to say that today we live in a much more digital world. Games are being sold in digital media more than physical copies, a fact which only tends to grow. And so does communication. As a result, hitting the target audience is becoming increasingly easier as well. So, the good news is that the world has never been so open and fertile for indie developers as it is now. Sure, difficulties will always exist, but the ecosystem of everything involved in this branch is being extremely simplified by the process of digitalization.
So then again, it all comes back to knowing what you want and what kind of product you have in hands. It’s by thinking around your product and its specific traits that you understand better who to sell to, who to talk to and how to do it.
“I don’t believe that we need to, necessarily, gain new skills to sell a product at the market. I believe more in looking for people who are better than me at certain things. At the banking sector, for example, we have things like Open Finance or Open Banking. Any company nowadays can have its own bank connecting several state-owned companies and offering several different services.” Reminds Thiago Onorato, who used to work at Blizzard. With this, he touches another important topic, which is to associate you with people who excel at this kind of things. Knowing this, it is definitely an investment worth making.
Joining the apparently complex world of business may seem very intimidating for some. But it’s by understanding the market, the audience, the companies involved in it and, mainly, your own product and your objectives, that the process of thinking how to sell your game becomes something much simpler. Even if it can be a challenge, it is no monster to be feared.
It is from challenges, after all, that we grow and learn.
So what better place to test your skills than a game jam? At GameJamPlus, not only you’re going to make your own game, but also learn how to present it and sell it to other companies. Several specialists in the market are available at our event and ready to teach the beginners how to enter the world of marketing and business! So take this opportunity to challenge yourself and make the most out of the event, for I assure you the gaming market cannot wait to discover your ideas!
