Selling a Game: Making People Want to Buy

Keira Peney

Posted on Sun 9 Aug 2009 by Keira Peney under Marketing .
  [Link]

Let’s face it. Most people out there building mods, indie games, browser games, flash games - are doing it for the love, and not for the money. If you’re one person running it out of your bedroom, then you are probably happy enough earning a few bucks from ad revenue.

But if you’re serious about video games earning you enough to pay your bills and let you quit your day job, then you need another skill set. You must be good at writing, drawing, modelling, coding, and animating - or good at finding people who can do those things - but you must also be good at selling.

The internet is either the best thing, or the worst thing, to happen to the industry. If you want to make games the traditional way - big boxes of promo material, shelf space in Game, DRM protected disks going for $40+ a pop… then you’re reading the wrong article.

Can you use the internet to help sell your game? Absolutely. The best part is that there is a very low barrier to entry. Anyone can buy a domain name and some cheap webhosting, and you are ready to go.

First of all, assess your game. Is it a cheap ‘n’ cheerful flash game with an addictive hook? Then you’ve got a good chance of going viral, and ad revenue may well work nicely for you. Is it a more traditional downloadable game with slick graphics? Then you are going to want people to pay for it.

You might think this is as easy as getting x-million people to look at your site. Not true. If your website (or facebook page, or twitter stream, or whatever) is boring, difficult to navigate, or gives off completely the wrong ‘feel’ then you won’t sell anything. So what do you do?

1. Make it easy. Really really easy.

Explain what the game is. Provide a preview or trailer. Put the ‘buy’ link in big letters. If it only works on Windows 7 then SAY THAT. Nothing more annoying than downloading a game that you can’t then play.

Of course, sometimes you want to go for a sense of suspense or mystery. That’s fine - as long as people can still find their way around the site. Especially to the download page, the help page, and the contact page.

2. Remove barriers

What’s a barrier? Simply put - the journey from random visitor to customer should be as painless as possible. That means no long surveys. It means accepting credit and debit cards. It means as few clicks as possible, as every click gives someone making an impulse purchase to decide not to be so impulsive.

3. Provide a Freebie

Nobody likes spending money on something they aren’t sure about. Providing a demo will (hopefully) get them interested enough to see more. Providing a demo means they make a time investment before a financial investment. If you make it easy to buy the game from inside the demo, you will sell more copies than otherwise.

Gamers are often completionist. Let them start, and they will want to finish.

4. Make it Exciting

Okay, you’ve spent the last six months working night and day on this thing. But nobody apart from you - and possibly your Mum - cares. You need the visitors to feel like they would enjoy the game. You need to make it exciting. Use good artwork, preview clips of the most exciting/funny/scary parts, and entertaining language to sell the game.

Once the website is up, test it. Make sure you can actually buy and download the game successfully. Get friends on other browsers and computers to test it. Ask friends if they would - honestly - want to buy the game based on the site.

Once you’re convinced that the site works, you can start the next step. Getting people to actually visit the site.

| del.icio.us | Digg it | Furl | Netscape | reddit | StumbleUpon |

Related Posts

5 Responses to “Selling a Game: Making People Want to Buy

Aaron Says:
August 13th, 2009 at 2:46 pm

One benefit of replayability is that it can increase the longevity of a demo. The more time players spend in a demo, the more time for them to become immersed and fascinated by the game’s post-demo potential.

The Batman: Arkham Asylum demo is a great example.

Write the Game » Selling a Game: Word of Mouth Says:
September 13th, 2009 at 6:55 am

[...] First up, let me apologise for disappearing for a month. I moved house, lost my internet for a while, and then my computer died. Not a good chain of events! However, I’m back now - with my follow-up to Selling a Game: Making People Want to Buy. [...]

Cubefield Game Says:
November 19th, 2009 at 6:55 pm

This is a great post and its very creative indeed but if only you people would properly give cubefield a shot. Its a great game. Very addicitve and very entertaining to all age groups.

John Says:
January 18th, 2010 at 12:03 pm

I definitely agree with the demo….I thought that was a great idea for the PSX to do because I remember playing with just two characters in Tekken, and immediately wanting the game right after that!

Leanora Mcgalliard Says:
January 26th, 2010 at 7:55 pm

Agreed.

Leave a Reply