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Video Game Marketing

Indie Game Marketing from the author of the Game Marketing book, The Indie Developer's Guide to Selling Games. Video Game Marketing made simple... or at least as simple as I can make it.

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Name:
Location: Philomath, Oregon, United States

As you can see on the left: I am a professional juggler. The rest you can learn from this Blog.

Saturday, February 25, 2006

The BIG list of Names!

Thanks to everyone for their incredible name submissions. I had WAY more feedback than I had anticipated (which is a very good sign!). I'm going to be holding a "mini awards" ceremony. The winners are going to get their entries into the book in the very back (along with a link to your website!)

The categories are going to be "Top 5 funniest name submissions" ; "Top 5 Most Creative Name Submissions" ; and "Top 5 Overall Name Submissions"

Here is the BIG list of all the submissions I'll be picking through this week. Its over 9 pages long!

******************************************************************
Smart Marketing : An Indie Game Developer's Guide
or
Smart Marketing : A Guide for Indie Game Developers
You've Made Your Game, Now Sell It!

Indie Game Marketing For the Masses

Game Marketing : Target Your Market!

Indie Game Marketing Solutions

The Indie Game Marketing Manifesto

1. How to stay alive while beign an independent game developer.

2. The Chronicles of Narnya (im not sure if its used yet...)

3. How to survive in the independet game developing adventure.

4. Make money while making video-games.

5. How to market your video-games.

6. Video-game marketing for Independet developers.

7. How to sell your games and not die in the intempt.

8. The perils of marketing-knowledgeless.

9. How to make a living making video-games.

10. Robocop 3 (again, im not sure if this is used yet...)

80% marketing - 20%coding

-The independent developer's guide to selling games

Game Marketing Matters

Marketing Smarter: Effective Independent Game Marketing

Guerilla Game Marketing for Gorillas and other Neanderthals

Indie Game Marketing Demystified

Game Marketing for the Rest of Us

Game Marketing for the Little Guy

DIY Game Marketing

Indie Game Marketing from the trenches

Indie Game Marketing for Dummies

Learn Indie Game Marketing in 24 hours

Million Dollar Game Marketing

Market your game and make Millions ;)

The Indie Game Developer's Guide to Increasing Sales

Strategies for Increasing Sales: A Marketing Guide for Indie Game Developers

How to Get More Sales of Your Independently Developed Game

Selling Small Games

Indie Game Marketing

Flea Marketing - for the small guy

No, I Am Not That Joseph Lieberman

Captain Joe's Glamour Guide to the Indie Game Scene

When I Grow Up, I Want to Be an Independant Game Developer

Philomathian Dreams: A Transcendental Journey

Liebermania!

Liebermania: Catch the Fever

Liebermania I: The Prequel

You Can Make More Money Selling Anything Other Than Games, Including Your Own Spit: The Title of this Book is the Last Warning I Will Give You

shareware marketing tricks

shareware marketing techniques

shareware marketing secrets

shareware marketing bible

shareware marketing - the definitive guide

small developer software marketing

VG SMARKETING!!

The Game Marketing Guide (to the galaxy)

A Senator's Guide to Game Marketing

Game Marketing Exposed

Marketing Games

Selling your game

Buy this book, sell your game

Buy this book!

Sold!

Marketing Underground

Game Marketing Underground

Underground Game Marketing

BOOK!

Selling illegal goods legally

Buy or Die

To the people: A guide to game marketing

Consumer Whore

Feeding Gamers
From Bedroom to Boardroom
Lieberman's Guide to Making it in the game industry

Making Games for Fun and Profit

Steal this Game Marketing Book

An Idiots Guide to Indie Game Marketing

Got Game? A guide to Indie Game Marketing

Indie Software Marketing Toolkit

And then Came a Game...

The Name of the Game - Indie Game Marketing Workbook

Not the Same Game! An Indie Guide to Marketing Game Clones

Clone Wars, How to Market your Game for Total World Domination

A Day at the Game Grocery - Or how to Market an Indie Game
(get it, market - grocery )

"from developer to consumer - a video game marketing guide"

video game marketing in 24 hours

teach youself game marketing

planes, trains and game marketing

one flew over the game marketing nest

capturing the video game market - a book by terin, who's reyt gud

the video game demographic maze

cake - the incoherent cheese slice of sales toobin.

DMC - the journey from developer to consumer.
From outer space to shelf space: A guide to game marketing
(whoa)

Selling Your Soul: A Guide to Indie Game Marketing

Marketing to Criminals

This book does not contain porn
(Not much porn)

Dial 7 for Game Marketing

Don't touch that dial, Video Game Marketing!

More fun than Poker, Dynomite!

Game marketing for fun and profit

Profit for fun and Game Marketing

SmartClub

Marketeering

Marketing Fun: A Guide to Marketing Video Games

GAME$

I was born a sock puppet, I will die a sock puppet

SKU You

Your game here
(oohh, deep... if you bought it from a bookstore that is)

The game marketing coloring book

Downloadable Marketting

This Book Does Not Have A Free Trial

Game Marketing Made Easy

Game Marketing Played Easy

Game Marketing's Easy Mode

Game Marketing on Easy Mode (or medium or hard mode?)

Winning at Game Marketing
Blasting the Competition with Game Marketing Played Easy
etc..

So you think you can market?

A comphrensive guide to bringing your independent game to the masses

Independent game marketing for dumbass/dummie

Independent game marketing in a nutshell

Joe's guide to independent game marketing

How to sell your indie game to women?

Market your game with this guide or perish in isolation.

Indie Game Development
-a marketing perspective

Indie Game Development
-Marketing your game

The Indie Developer's Guide to Marketing

Marketing your Indie Game

How to Market your Indie Game
1. Make game 2. ??? 3. Profit!
^

this book

When Good Games Go Bad: The Zen of Game Marketing

Selling Shareware : The guide to indie game marketing for the rest of us

Selling Shareware : Marketing for developers

Why you can't sell games for S***!

Indie Game Marketing for Fun and Profit (Well, Fun Anyway)

Harry Potter and the indie game marketing plan
Chapter 1. How to get sued in 1 easy step.

The Game Marketing Manual : Ideas don't sell themselves!

Little Game, Big Market

Win Big with Game Marketing

Uncle Joe's Grand Book of Game Marketing Wisdom

The Game Plan and Marketing

I'm not only the president, I'm also a consumer

Developing a marketable game

Marketing Games: From concept to completion

The solution to all your problems, and marketing video games

The good book (about marketing games)
(text in brackets would be small)

Video games don't sell

Hot coffee your way to success

Scandals, Lies, and what really happened in Roswell

If I was a consumer in your position, I'd buy this book

Portals, Publishers, and Products, and it's not even lunch yet

Cheat codes for successful game marketing

Game over, you lose, without marketing advice

What you did wrong (with your game)

The rules of Acquisition (and other lame geek references)

GameMarketingBook.com, the Book

325 pages of what they neglected to mention in game development
(Number pages should reflect book)

I'm on a mission to take out the competition

Knowing is half the battle

Zen, and the art of marketing indie games?

A VGSmart game marketing book.

1.0 VGSmart game marketing book.

1.0 VGSmart game marketing.

(The) Marketing Game

Indie Business

Fun & Profit: Marketing Indie Games

Evil Marketing Ploys Made Easy!
How to Make More Money Selling Shareware Than You Ever Thought Possible
Mark Etinggs the Advertisement Armadillo.
Hi kids, let's go for a walk with Mark the purple armadillo, he will show you the way to a succesful indie business. Remember kids, marketing first.

"Marketerin" :-)

Game Marketing Complete

Independent Game Marketing Complete

Your Game In Their Hands

D-I-Y Shareware Marketing

How to Market Games and Make Money

How to Market Your Own Games and Make Money

How to Market Your Games and Make Money

How to Sell Your Games and Make Money

How to Sell Your Own Games and Make Money

How to Sell Your Own Games Online and Make Money

How to Sell Your Games Online and Make Money

How Get Rich Marketing Your Own Games Online
(and variations ...)

10 Steps to Game Marketing Success

10 Steps to Financial Freedom by Marketing your Indie Games

Marketing Games: The Bible

Marketing Games: How to Get Rich Selling Your Games on the Internet

Indie Game Marketing

Indie Game Marketing: The Bible

Indie Game Marketing: How to Get Rich (by) Selling Your Games on the Internet

Indie Game Marketing: How to Make Money (by) Selling Your Games on the Internet

From what I know of the subject, I'd call it

Indie Game Marketing: The Most Fun You'll Ever Have Going Broke

Good Luck: You're Gonna Need It

Indie Gamer to Wealthy Gamer: a Manual

Marketing Essentials for your Indie Game business.

Marketing, The Game

Do I Know Your Game?

Indie Games And Eyeballs

Your Game, Your Players, Your Revenue

The Indie Game Developer's Guide to Increasing Sales

Strategies for Increasing Sales: A Marketing Guide for Indie Game
Developers

How to Get More Sales of Your Independently Developed Game

"...And I'll show you mine!: Insider Help to sell your game!"

Friday, February 17, 2006

What's in a name?

Ok so I am darn close to being completely done. Cover art sketches are coming in and I will soon select the winner (If I have trouble picking I may post them here with permission from the artists). Expect some decision on that to be made in the next couple weeks.

One problem: I STILL haven't picked a name!

So submit your name suggestions in the comments area... the winner (if you login and post) will get a free copy of the book! Oooh... ahhhh.

Otherwise I will have to go with
"Joseph Lieberman's Guide to Independent Game Marketing" or something lame like that.

Or "Indie Game Marketing..."

Anyway- Give me suggestions, please!

Saturday, February 04, 2006

A good comment is hard to find

In our last post, someone who didn't give their name wrote:

"i'm sorry but i dont think i'll read your book. What one would need are serious statistics on indy businesses (which are terribly hard to provide), not theories, opinions and anecdotes."

Comments like these are like cockroaches (no, seriously, hear me out!)- If you see ONE it probably means there are thousands more lurking silently.

So I wanted to supply reasoning for why the book is not a book of statistic tests.

The funny thing about numbers in business settings is that they don't follow the normal laws of numbers. See, when you read an analysis of a business decision what you are reading LOOKS like hard numbers and statistics, but is actually an interpretation of data: In short- it is the author's opinions, theories, and personal anecdotes cleverly disguised as fact.

Let's take a math example. Let’s say there are three sales for a product with three key features. We all know 1 + 1 + 1 is 3. So we can write that these three features contribute to 33.3% of sales (yes this is a stupid example, just bear with me)- But what if there is a fourth item? What if it is 1 + 0 + 1 + 1? What if it is 2+0+1?

Now statistics is the ART of predicting these kinds of things, and I understand that. If I had a controlled test and a few million dollars in research money I could test each theory stated in the book and determine if the instances and practices are actually true. Unfortunately, that will never come to pass. Even if I had the power to collect all the data from every game released in the last three years it wouldn't provide me the information to accurately predict business decisions.
What that leaves me with are the principals behind consumer behavior, business, and sales along with limited knowledge of sales facts (those "hard" numbers, most of which I am not allowed to state outright).

The point of the book isn't to give you some ultimate formula to make your game, because by the time that went to print the formula would be wrong (unlike math, business formulas never stay the same). It is to provide the background and underlying principals to make smart decisions and to provide the tools and suggestions to follow through on the principal ideas.

In the end it is a book of advice, something people pay millions of dollars for under the umbrella of consulting. To say that the advice is not worthwhile merely because it is not backed by mathematics would be the equivalent of saying you do not believe the person to be competent.

Now- I can't say I am competent... can't say it and have someone believe it at least, but I leave my reputation amongst the community to speak for me. In the end, I believe my book will be invaluable to someone new to independent game development. I further believe the veterans out there will also enjoy reading it to compare their opinions to mine, find new ideas, and maybe pick up a few new tricks.

So to my anonymous poster I say thank you for providing a GOOD comment; even though it was negative! I hope I have swayed your opinion or at least removed some doubt from anyone else out there who had thought the same thing.