Marketing doesn’t have to be manipulative. Whatever you feel or think about what marketing is, I want to invite you to be open to looking at it in a different way.
We make video games. We want people to play our game. We know that there will be people who will enjoy our game. We know that there are people who will not enjoy our game. The challenge we need to solve is “How could I create visuals that would let someone immediately know that my game is or is not for them without me saying anything?”. Sounds pretty hard right?
Let’s make it easier. If instead we were picking game titles out of a hat to get other people to guess only from a drawing, what would you draw if you picked your game? If that’s still too hard, pretend you picked your favorite video game. What would you draw? Are there references or symbols that only people who played the game would understand?
This is essentially what marketing and promotion comes down to. Other people may use dark patterns to influence and manipulate people, but that isn’t us. If you even wanted to get an idea of which strategies people are using for video games, this is exactly what the Steam Personal Calendar will show you.
In this Studio Session, I got pretty excited analyzing the Personal Calendar and showing how I go through it. You’ll even see me get distracted and use it as a means of doing research and market analysis. This was a fun one for me to record. Let me know if you take me up on my challenge that I propose in the video! I’d love to see what you make.