Getting into the top 10 at Real

[Robert Cummings]

What tips lads? For example

- advances

- lower royalties

- special deals

- phychology

[ggambett]

- Make a great game that lots of people want to buy

[JPGinLA]

<...gasp ...>

Just make a great game and forget all the angles to get an advantage.

</... gasp ...>

Edit: Ggambett, great minds (and small ones) think alike!

[Davaris]

Yeah I agree with these guys. Forget the sales tricks and work on your game in quiet release mode till it starts converting at a good %. Then when its ready hit the portals and clean up. Good games sell themselves.

[Robert Cummings]

Why sell quietly until it does well? Any reason for me not to sell to portals early?

Great advice so far, keep it coming. I treasure your insights and experience.

[Matthew]

Why sell quietly until it does well? Any reason for me not to sell to portals early?

Portals tend to be a one-shot deal. If your game doesn't land in the top 10 after it launches, then generally it won't recieve additional marketing.

[svero]

I agree with ggambett. Make a good game. That's it. The percentage of a percentage of a percentage you get from tricks of the marketing gurus won't help you.

[Chris Evans]

Portals tend to be a one-shot deal. If your game doesn't land in the top 10 after it launches, then generally it won't recieve additional marketing.

Even if you're not aiming for the top 10 on the portals, it's still a good idea to wait a little bit.

I made the mistake of releasing my game too early on one of the portals. I released my v1.0 on my site almost simultaneously with the portal. My v1.0 didn't have any major bugs, but it did have some balancing issues which affected the CR. On my site the game did poorly at first, but then I was able make modifications after getting some player feedback. So the CR on my site improved quite a bit after I posted an updated version a few weeks after release. However, the portal had v1.0, which did poorly after the first week, so it was already out of the rotation. The portals aren't starving for games. If your game doesn't do well, it will be replaced by another new game or by a proven hit. As Matthew said, it really is a one shot deal, especially to make that first impression.

I don't know how much better my game would have done, but I really wish I waited several weeks later before I submitted my game to the portals. If in the future I have a game that's suitable for the portal audience, I'm definitely going to wait until I have a good CR on my direct sales before submitting it to distributors. Lesson learned.

[cliffski]

Portals tend to be a one-shot deal. If your game doesn't land in the top 10 after it launches, then generally it won't recieve additional marketing.

this is 200% true. Starship Tycoon is WAY better than Starlines Inc, which has less efatures and much poorer graphics and gameplay. However not only would Real not upgrade to ST, they actually refused it, in favour of continuing to ship an older buggy version (which still sells).
Low key launch, followed by incremental improvement and steadily building publicity is the way to go.

[Robert Cummings]

How do the portals know about the publicity my game has made? would this mean letting mike sell it at retro (if he likes it)? or Reflexive?

[Bmc]

How do the portals know about the publicity my game has made? would this mean letting mike sell it at retro (if he likes it)? or Reflexive?

Take for example Real.
Your game is released. *They* market it. Once they see that your game has a low Conversation Ratio (number of sales / number of downloads) they will stop marketing it. If your game does well, they would push it more.

They *could* determine the size of the "push" they give your game on it's success on other portals.

I'd worry about getting through the beta process first. Then if your game gets accepted, worry about how you can get it in the top 10.

[James C. Smith]

Here is the secret formula to crack the top 10 on Real (or any big portal)

1) Make a great game that matches the portals audience
2) Do lots of testing and play balancing
3) As a final test, sell a few hundred copies on your own web site and fix any problems that come up
4) Submit the game to big portals

There is no way to improve your games performance in a portal with marketing, advances, lower royalties, or special deals. It’s all about the game. It must be a great game and target the right audience.

[Diodor Bitan]

Original post by James C. Smith
3) As a final test, sell a few hundred copies on your own web site and fix any problems that come up

Is there any problem if this test phase takes a couple of years? Do portals have a preference for "new" games?

[Fantus]

A game that has so much bugs it needs several years of testing is probably not a great game that sells itself automaticly, unless you are talking about an open mmo beta which won't be on portals anyway.

[Batley]

I thought he was just being sarcastic because James said "a few hundred" games ;)

[Sillysoft]

A game that has so much bugs it needs several years of testing is probably not a great game that sells itself automaticly, unless you are talking about an open mmo beta which won't be on portals anyway.
There are reasons other then lots of bugs to keep working and building a game for many years. Especially if you are only 1 person working on it. Starting simple and steadily growing is a solid strategy for selling a game yourself. I don't know if portals prefer 'new' games though. Anyway, if you add enough funky new stuff to your older game doesn't that make it a 'new' game anyways? :cool:

[arcadetown]

Yup, there's nothing like a good game to get on the top lists. Users simply know what they like. Big eyeball numbers rarely lie.

[svero]

It occured to me that I could take all the points in the original list and write a sensible, intuitively obvious, seemingly correct paragraph as to why each would help you achieve top 10 status. I think that's why so many people fall for a lot of the BS that comes out of marketing circles. It's easy to propose stuff that sounds like it should work and sounds right, but is in fact completely wrong. I think it's a little like magic diet pills or some other solution to a hard problem with an easy answer. "Just change your wording to be like this example and you'll sell twice as many games!" Sounds very attractive for next to no work doesnt it?

So just for fun...

- advances

Yes definitely. A publisher advancing money is very concerned with getting their money back so they will promote your game much harder than other titles in order to recoup their original investment.

- lower royalties

Offering to lower your royalty rate means the publisher makes money. It only makes sense that a publisher will promote those titles harder because they make a lot more per sale. So this definitely helps too.

- special deals

There are a number of special deals that can help you achieve better status on the portals. In order to make use of these you have to negotiate directly with the publisher. The exact examples are too numerous to list, but one commonplance example is exclusivity. Offering exclusivity of your title means that the particular portal has something the other sites don't and often they will put it in the top 10 just so customers see that they have something worth visiting for that the other sites can't provide.

- phychology

Many psychological tricks are employed in achieving top 10 status. Not least of these is what's known as neuro linguistic programming. Chomskian language analysis shows us that innate to all human minds is a basic toolset given to us biologically through evolution. At the lowest levels all our minds process language the same way. Analysis done by the Handel marketing institute of Beligium has shown in several peer reviewed studies that careful use of Neuro linguistic programming in product descriptions and titles can in some cases increase sales and trials by as much as 25%.

So there you go :-)

Don't fall for all the BS. Just test your ideas and let the numbers do the talking.

[James C. Smith]

Is there any problem if this test phase takes a couple of years? Do portals have a preference for "new" games?

I don’t think most of the portals care if the game is “new” as long as it doesn’t look dated. They aren’t going to want a 16 color 320 x 240 rez game. But as long as it looks good, it’s age shouldn’t matter. They may prefer that the game wasn’t released in other portals years ago. But if it was on your own web site for a year (as apposed to other portals) they shouldn’t have a problem with that. They probably won’t even mind if it was on another portal a year ago but they would prefer that not be the case.

It is best if the game is finished before you put it on a portal. I don’t just mean bug free. I mean bug free and you are done adding features. Portals don’t like to launch new version of your game every time you add a feature. And they won’t be happy if you add features that are only available in the version on your web site. They prefer to sell finished products and not have to revisit the game after the sale.

It can make sense to “ship” a game and then continue to add features over time and give updated to existing customers. This works great on your own web site and is often the beast way to go for small (one man) teams. But it doesn’t fit will with the model used by most portals. Try to finish all those post ship features before you launch the game in a portal even if it takes a year.

[cliffski]

I agree with wahts said BUT...
if you live in the Uk and saw derren brown on friday night use NLP on simon pegg to presuade him he wanted to buy a red BMX bike... you wouldnt dismiss it so easily.
There again he probably is the best NLP practioner alive...

[svero]

Just to be totally clear. I'm not saying that no marketing techniques work or that nothing you do will ever have any effect. I've found certain things that have worked for me to one extent or another. What I'm saying is that most of what you read about marketing and business is highly suspect. There's a lot of hocus pocus and hype in business and marketing literature. It's a lot like dieting! Magic pills, special diets, dubious products and so on. When it comes to marketing games most anything you want to do can be tested and doesn't really need to be debated. But if you read some marketing trick that seems too good to be true, chances are it probably is.

[svero]

Also.. on the subject of NLP you may want to read..

http://skepdic.com/neurolin.html

Particularly the last few paragraphs about whether it works and the conclusion.

[cliffski]

interesting stuff. I'm pretty sure NLP works very well (a friend of mine is pretty good at it) but theres no doubt that lots of dodgy people have jumped on the bandwagon and written dubious books about it too.
Im in the 50/50 camp on all this. Clever marketing/psycohology does help your game sell, and making the game better does as well. In a perfect world you have both :D.

[svero]

Well I think what the site says about it is probabaly correct. That the exercises and techniques may work but that there's no proof that NLP is why they work. Basically there's no scientific evidence to back up NLP at this time. Doesn't mean it doesn't work, but their techniques could work for completely unrelated reasons like just general confidence boosting or something like that.

[Promaginy]

Portals don’t like to launch new version of your game every time you add a feature. And they won’t be happy if you add features that are only available in the version on your web site. They prefer to sell finished products and not have to revisit the game after the sale.


What about free and for-sale expansions and content? Do portals resent that their game that is being sold does not have this kind of stuff? I am thinking that we will be adding levels to our game on our website, with larger additions being expansions that can be purchased.

To me the portal is a lucrative method to drum up sales and interest in the game, but our own website will have exclusive expansions that we get to keep 90% of the sale. Is this a reasonable strategy?

[svero]

What about free and for-sale expansions and content?

When I did aargon with Realarcade a few years back we wanted to sell the expansions. Real let us put in a link that went to a page on our site that was cobranded and that had only the exapansions but no links to anywhere else on the site. In a nutshell.. you can work stuff out. Maybe policies have changed since then. It was a few years back.

[arcadetown]

- advances
- lower royalties
- special deals
- phychology
Don't fall for all the BS. Just test your ideas and let the numbers do the talking.
Yup. Simply put we let our customers decide and don't try to second guess them. If we promote a poor seller and draw 5 extra sales from it versus promoting a good seller and draw 50 extra sales, guess which one's going to make us more regardless of special deals. To that end, make the best game you can as it has the best chance of selling and thus getting promoted more.

[Itsme]

Also.. on the subject of NLP you may want to read..

http://skepdic.com/neurolin.html

Particularly the last few paragraphs about whether it works and the conclusion.

That person has no idea what he is talking about. You can substitute NLP with any branch of phychology, say psychoanalysis or Geshtalt, and "prove" that it's total fraud.
Or you could say that "hypnosis" is total BS. After all, they've proven that you can not hypnotize a person to kill somebody else.
NLP works and any practitioner knows that. You can measure the effect, too. One can pick out "audiotory" people, change wording so the text will "sound" and show that your response rate went way up. In fact, most educators know that some people learn better by listening, while others by watching or reading.
The sad thing is that people think that somehow NLP can do everything for your - get more sales, better relationships, etc. NLP really is just like taking a typing class or learning shorthand or express reading or HTML - you learn a skill that'll help you in your life.

[Dan Prigg]

yeah, I agree with James.

Make a great game that breaks the top ten. We had tried specific marketing for games that were less than stellar. Ultimately downloads increased but conversion dropped and they dont budge much. People vote with their dollars. If its a game that is doing well we will spend more time marketing it.

[Robert Cummings]

Thanks guys. Some brilliant opinions there.

Dan, if you see a game with huge potential, you'll consider giving it a marketing push anyway? For example a new IP that has AAA quality? We're pushing a lot of funding into this one and will probably be interested in seeing it gets the coverage it deserves too.

[luggage]

Just out of interest just how much funding are you putting into it? Would be quite interesting to know what people's budgets are.

[svero]

NLP works and any practitioner knows that. You can measure the effect, too.

Strange nobody has then! In fact.. so strange it makes me pretty skeptical.

The question of whether NLP "techniques" work on some level and why is debateable. They might. But nobody, to the best of my knowledge, has shown in any clear way that it works or that there is any such thing as NLP in a clear scientific and measured way. And generally when that's the case it means it's BS. Compare that to something real like microwaves, or the atom. I think you know when you're leftovers are hot or your city has been nuked. That stuff is probably for real. See how it's completely changed the world.

If you think NLP works then fine, apply it's ideas and measure it and if there's some success use the new copy or whatever it is you did. You don't need me to believe in it for it to work or fail for you. Personally I'll wait for some good hard scientific evidence before I attend the next seminar. My feeling is it probably works best for the spreaders of hocus pocus who collect seminar fees at my expense and serves as a perfect example of the kind of bs I'm warning people not to get sucked into. But then isn't lucky we can all just test this stuff and know whether it works for us or not?

[Itsme]

Strange nobody has then! In fact.. so strange it makes me pretty skeptical.

The question of whether NLP "techniques" work on some level and why is debateable. They might. But nobody, to the best of my knowledge, has shown in any clear way that it works or that there is any such thing as NLP in a clear scientific and measured way. And generally when that's the case it means it's BS. Compare that to something real like microwaves, or the atom. I think you know when you're leftovers are hot or your city has been nuked. That stuff is probably for real. See how it's completely changed the world.

If you think NLP works then fine, apply it's ideas and measure it and if there's some success use the new copy or whatever it is you did. You don't need me to believe in it for it to work or fail for you. Personally I'll wait for some good hard scientific evidence before I attend the next seminar. My feeling is it probably works best for the spreaders of hocus pocus who collect seminar fees at my expense and serves as a perfect example of the kind of bs I'm warning people not to get sucked into. But then isn't lucky we can all just test this stuff and know whether it works for us or not?


What kind of scientific evidence would you like? Here is an example of a scientific fact related to psychology - suicide rate in various countries change drastically. It's a simple fact based on statistics. But as soon as you start interpreting these results, you'll be attacked for your claims.

The person who wrote the article makes serious logical errors. Here is an example
"Another NLP presupposition which is false is "If someone can do something, anyone can learn it." This comes from people who claim they understand the brain and can help you reprogram yours. They want you to think that the only thing that separates the average person from Einstein or Pavarotti or the World Champion Log Lifter is NLP."

Change that to "anyone can learn HTML" or "anyone can learn microbiology". The logical error of this argument is obvious.

Read what this person wrote on hypnosis

"Using hypnosis to help people recover memories of sexual abuse by their closest relatives ... is dangerous, and in some cases, clearly immoral and degrading"


Read what he wrote on lie detectors - it's pretty obvious that the person is totally ignorant on the subject.

[svero]

I won't be drawn into an off topic debate on NLP and the use of hypnosis. To me... It's pretty obvious who's ignorant here. But if you want to believe in this stuff go ahead and use it. Thankfully you'll be the only one harmed.

[JPGinLA]

Enough!

The answer to the original question is "Make a great game and then Real will put you in their top 10 list!"

Please lock the thread! And, delete the next one that pops up with a similar theme! :-)

-JPG

[Itsme]

Strange nobody has then! In fact.. so strange it makes me pretty skeptical.

Look at any scientific magazine - the proof is there. You just have to read it

Consulting with NLP: Neuro-linguistic Programming in the Medical Consultation
J. R. Soc. Med., Jun 2003; 96: 312.
Mapping Transformative Learning: The Potential of Neuro-Linguistic Programming
Journal of Transformative Education, Apr 2005; 3: 140 - 167.
Using an imaginary scrapbook for neurolinguistic programming in the aftermath of a clinical depression: a case history
Gerontologist, Apr 1993; 33: 265 - 268.
Steve Andreas
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP): Changing Points of Views
The Family Journal, Jan 1999; 7: 22 - 28.


There are virtually hundreds of scientific articles on the subject (some are anti-NLP) and there is clear scientific proof that at least in some areas NLP has consistent and measuruable results.

[Dan MacDonald]

I thought the NLP thing was tossed in for humor, people take things way to seriously. *click*

[svero]

I thought the NLP thing was tossed in for humor, people take things way to seriously. *click*

Its funny if you know just how ridiculous it all is. Otherwise it's something you spend 1000$ for a training seminar on and then it seems less funny when you find your life unchanged except you're 1k in the whole.