Sooner or later - probably sooner - we're going to really start marketing Alien Flux, when all of the main problems and criticisms are fixed.

I have a reasonably sound theory that the only significant difference between, say, Unreal 2 and Alien Flux in terms of the number of sales it's likely to achieve relative to effort spent on development is that everyone and his dog knows about Unreal 2 and no-one knows about Alien Flux.

A very significant part of this is advertising. Full-page full-colour advertising in the PC rags.

Guess how much an ad costs?

Ooh, about £3k, last time I checked.

Now, I also know this about advertising in magazines:

The advert will have to appear in more than one magazine. It's got to be everywhere people look or it'll be lost in the noise.
It's got to be advertised at least 3 months' running. It's almost certain to be overlooked the first month but it apparently seeps into the unconcious after a few times.
There is absolutely no point in advertising in an issue where you've got a review. A review is a very powerful advert. Unfortunately the glossies are adept at ignoring shareware games - but the reason is because they're after that advertising cash. If we signed up for 3 ads in a row we'd get a full page review (and, mysteriously, I suspect an inflated rating).


But - hot diggity dawg, that's nearly £10k to advertise in one rag, and we'd need to do about 3 of t'buggers.

What are the chances of making £30k from advertising the game? That would amount to, oh, about 2,500 sales - which doesn't really sound like a lot, does it?

Well - I'm speculating that Blizzard don't waste £30k on advertising in the glossies and expect not to make the money back in some way. In their case they're easily going to make 2,500 sales of Warcraft 50 or whatever. But what about me?

I'm really quite serious about doing this but my wife has major reservations, unsurprisingly, because it involves getting a huge loan from the bank or some investment from somewhere.

Cas :)

The golden rule of buying advertising is never, ever pay the Rate Card price. Especially at the moment, when the advertising industry is still in the doldrums.

You've got to barter for as low a price as you can, and demand editorial coverage as part of the deal. It doesn't have to be a full page ad either, Matrix Games has been placing half page vertical ads in PC mags and very effective they look too.

Good luck!

Well I'm not what you would call a serious gamer and mostly for that reason I stopped buying the PC mags I did some time ago. One thing I particularly noticed though was that the ratings and reviews seemed very biased towards the FPS and 3D shooters - with everyone editors favourite game being Quake, Quake 2 and then Quake 3... it got very tiresome with everything being compared to them. Games using any view other than 3D tended to get slated, and likewise anything that doesnt require the latest top-of-the-range graphics card was deemed old-fashioned and unworthy.

I remember the good old days of mags like Amstrad Action where games were rated on a variety of criteria and paid attention to graphics, gameplay, replayability, ease of play, sound, music, and all the other integral elements instead of how challenging it is to score 20 frags in under 5 minutes and how awesome the new rocket launcher is. Heh. maybe I too am being a bit biased against them, but I just got sick and tired of seeing 50% of the reviews being given to yet another run-of-the-mill 3D shooter with a slight variation in weaponry and terrain texture.

Ok.. so I thought maybe I was succumbing to a little exageration there and probably was. I have just dug out the last games mag I bought and Im just going to flick through and see what they reviewed.

Hitman 2 (Eidos) - "Challenging, cerebral, and maddening"
86% - £35 - Main crit: not enough saves

Medieval Total War (Activision) - "Strategy game of the year, perhaps of the millennium"
93% - £30 - Main crit: perhaps too much detail? nah.

Emperor (Vivendi) - "Continues the great city-building series with pride"
84% - £30 - Main crit: Basically the same as its predecessors

Sudden Strike (CVD) - "Serious flaws mar an otherwise extensive game"
66% - £30 - Main crit: Looks dated, fails to engage, lots of niggles.

The Thing (Vivendi) - "A wise use of the licence but we wish it was more free-form"
84% - £30 - Min Crit: Made for consoles, on rails, derivative.

Icewind Dale II (Virgin) - "A rushed cash-in - lacks the innovation of its inspirations"
65% - £35 - Main crit: Dated, uninspired and insubstantial

Mafia: the city of lost heaven () - "Style and class; the godfather of all driving games"
90% - £35 - Main crit: Limited freedom of action

Delta Force: task force dagger (NovaLogic) - "Generally hateful. Delta Force has hit rock bottom"
34% - £20 - Main crit: Everything other than that you can play an SAS commando.

Tactical Ops (Infogrames) - "Decent shooter but has nothing that makes it a 'must-buy'"
71% - £20 - Main crit: Expensive given UTs budget status.

Zoo Tycoon (Microsoft) - "Devilishly addictive but a little too prescriptive"
61% - £20 - Main crit: Slow-down on larger maps

Another War (Cenega) - "Possibly funnier in the original Polish. Bizarre"
56% - £25 - Main crit: Persistently unfunny

Roboforge (BTL) - "An ugly, lacklustre game which fails to excite in any way"
56% - £20 - Main crit: Tedious, unattractive.

Knights of the Cross (Cenega) - "Cheap as chips (almost), but not quite as tasty"
65% - £10 - Main crit: Pro-nationalist, fairly repetetive


Even with some 'favour' of having spent XXX thousand on advertising and getting a review, would you really want to have a review which competed for praise alongside the likes of Doom III or whatever the most exciting and hyped game is at that point? I would have thought that a less than 75% rating would probably ruin most of the advertising you had paid for.

Also, there's the target audience to consider.. are the readers of such games mags going to want to play a top down shooter and 'save the fluffies'? I don't mean to make out that your game isn't up to much, the latest version I think is great fun, but I don't honestly think it's going to be a serious gamers cup of tea - being perhaps a bit too cute or old-skool for them.

Whilst the idea of a serious ad campaign is an interesting prospect and not something I would instantly scoff at trying, I think you would have to be very selective as to where you run it so as not to waste XXX thousand pounds and risk getting shooting yourself in the foot.


-Z-

Originally posted by Zoggles
Well I'm not what you would call a serious gamer and mostly for that reason I stopped buying the PC mags I did some time ago. One thing I particularly noticed though was that the ratings and reviews seemed very biased towards the FPS and 3D shooters - with everyone editors favourite game being Quake, Quake 2 and then Quake 3... it got very tiresome with everything being compared to them. Games using any view other than 3D tended to get slated, and likewise anything that doesnt require the latest top-of-the-range graphics card was deemed old-fashioned and unworthy.



I totally agree, there is a real obsession with FPS's in these mags which is driving away a lot of gamers (you and me for starters!).

There are great games around that have proved they can break the mould though - PomPom's games and Uplink for starters. If your game's good enough, and it lands on the desk of the right reviewer for the job...

I don't know the world situation, but here in Italy magazines are almost all failed. Nowadays no one buy mag to read the review: internet is much more quick and easy, you can find up to date reviews, get screenshots, and so on.

The mags survive only because they are bundled with some full games, but people usually don't ever read the mag.

I'd buy a web banner or something else. In my opinion, pc mags don't attract a lot of people anymore...

I came across this magazine (http://www.indiemagazine.co.uk/media.html) a while ago and this thread just reminded me of it.

Anyone ever try out the advertising offered there?
It seems to be targeted at the right people.

Carrot, Indie Magazine is a trade mag distributed to independent game retailers in the UK (and I think in Ireland also). So if you want to sell your product direct to the trade then it's the place to promote your game, but it's not a mag that's read by consumers.

Jack, PC mags in the UK are on the decline but they shouldn't be ignored.

The most recent ABC audited circulation figures for PC games mags are:

PC Format - 63,299
PC Gamer - 76,059
PC Zone - 51,088
PC Gaming World - 30,331

That's a total of 220,777 targetted potential buyers - you know they have a PC and they wanna play games.

>I'm really quite serious about doing this but my wife has major
>reservations, unsurprisingly, because it involves getting a huge
>loan from the bank or some investment from somewhere.

I think your wife is right to have major reservations about this plan. In fact, while I've never done it, I'm guessing that you'll never see your 30k again. Advertising is tricky business, and you have to keep in mind that the larger the number of people you reach the worse your focus will be.

Major publishers are really solving a different problem than you are unless you plan on trying to sell this game at the retail level. In their case they know they have a short shelf life of a few months and they have to sell most of their units in that time. As well, they are paying stores for end shelf space and good placement, which is another form of ad. So they do a big name branding campaign building some hype over several months followed by a large retail distribution and hopefully they make their money back.

My advice would be to start with some smaller well placed online ads and see how it affects your sales and try to learn and extrapolate from that before jumping head first into a major debt. For Alien Flux ( a game which I love by the way ) I highly recommend you use the indie ad rates at adrenaline vault for the download highlights section. It's cheap and it covers a similar audience as the computer mags do. That might be a better first experiment. Total cost <100$

That's a total of 220,777 targetted potential buyers - you know they have a PC and they wanna play games.

Well it depends a lot on the kind of game.
If it is a game oriented for kids or young in general, pc mag can be a good choice.
I stopped buying them 5 years ago, as soon as internet was affordable (here in Italy). I write reviews for the biggest italian vg community (http://videogiochi.libero.it) and we have 30.000 hits A DAY. And I'm talking about Italy where pc and games aren't really common.
So getting a review on the web is much more exposure than a pc mag :p

I don't know the advertising cost for a banner on, let's say, Gamesdomain or IGN or other big sites about gaming...

Or maybe pull some mad stunt that might even get a bit of free publicity like getting a thousand pink ballons with fluffies and your web address printed on them, fill them with helium and release them into the sky from Leicester Square in London one Friday night or something lol Maybe just tie the occasional one to some railings here and there. People may well even untie them and carry them around for you ;)

Perhaps get some pink fluffy teddybears and get a few of the smaller shops to display them in their window with a cardboard cut out saying "protect the fluffies - www.puppygames.net". It might get people who see them, talking about them and asking what they are, thus facilitating word of mouth and curiosity.

-Z-

Originally posted by princec
What are the chances of making £30k from advertising the game? That would amount to, oh, about 2,500 sales - which doesn't really sound like a lot, does it?

Firstly, I have a quick question... Have you ever bought a game because of it's glossy in a magazine? Was it an "independent" title? If so, was the glossy the only reason you bought the game?

Think about this in terms of conversions. Will the print adverts generate more than £30k in revenue? How many people who see the print ad will need to 1)remember to go to your site 2)download the demo and 3)buy the game, in order for you to generate the 2,500 sales?

Not to mention that the £30k for the ad does not include preparation -- design, layout, typesetting and color-separation -- which can easily cost £5k.

Well - I'm speculating that Blizzard don't waste £30k on advertising in the glossies and expect not to make the money back in some way. In their case they're easily going to make 2,500 sales of Warcraft 50 or whatever.

Although this is pure speculation, I'm guessing that AAA publishers of 2nd, 3rd, or 8th generation titles spend GOBS of money promoting them. And it's more than just print glossies; they also do online banners, and TV spots as well (heck, I heard a game advert on the radio the other day!).

In agreement with many others in this thread (especially Steve V), you're probably better off pacing yourself with 6-12 month stints of banner ads at targetted websites. Consider that a person reads a magazine once a month, then tosses it (figuratively). That same person may visit the CoolGamingSite.foo site a couple times a week. As has been demonstrated by Steve P with Dweep, an online launch (if planned and executed well) can be a smashing success. After a well-executed, online launch you will probably begin generating considerable revenue immediately. At that point you can probably make a better call as to whether or not £30k in print-media advertising will be worth it. Plus, by having revenue already, you can demonstrate value to a potential lender -- you're likely going to be unable to get an unsecured loan for that amount without a pretty good pitch.

Good luck!

-daniel

The game I will be releasing later this year is a simulation which is similar to Championship Manager (ie text heavy and not big on graphics, but with plenty of depth and gameplay). So my plan is to target the same PC mag reviewers who gave CM4 a good review and send them each a gold disc with my game for review.

My wife definitely wouldn't let me part with the kind of cash you're talking about, so PR is the only way forward for me!

The game I will be releasing later this year is a simulation which is similar to Championship Manager (ie text heavy and not big on graphics, but with plenty of depth and gameplay). So my plan is to target the same PC mag reviewers who gave CM4 a good review and send them each a gold disc with my game for review.
Uhm seems that we had the same idea :p
Well, I hope to release it first! ;)

Was joking, my game won't be similar to CM4 and other, I plan to catch the "occasional player" with simple interface and nice graphics... anyway it is my first attempt on indie game so I hope at least it was worth all the time spent on programming!!

You can take a quick look on the website (work in progress, the forum don't work): www.universalsoccermanager.com

lol, mine isn't a football management sim though Jack. :)

Nice screens btw, do you fancy creating some gfx for me? ;)

I have just finished a 3 month advertising campaign with a UK Games magazine. The advert was only small (10cm x 6.5cm) but I thought it was worth a try.

The advert should have cost £512 per month, but I managed to get them down to £125 per month with a 5% discount if I payed for all 3 months up-front. None of their prices are set, you can always get them down on price!

The results of the campaign:
Visits/Hits from the UK DID NOT increase one bit. This was the main point of the advert as the majority of our hits already come from the U.S.

What I've learnt:
* Maybe I advertised in the wrong computer magazine - more research before jumping straight in?
* Maybe my advert was rubbish and nobody wanted to check out my website?
* Look at other alternatives on the web. It will more than likely save me money!
* Don't believe everything that a sales person tells me when it comes to advertising in their magazine.
* Prices for advertising in a magazine are not set. You can always get them down on price.
* The advertising space that people want to sell you is definately not the last space in the mag!
* Also, they haven't got another company interested in the same ad space as you but they thought they'd contact you first!

This is just my experience of an ad in a published UK magazine. It wasn't a bad experience, just a good learning experience.

Marc.

Ah good it isn't a football (or soccer) management game :) would be a pity to fight between us! LOL

If you need a hand with graphics contact me when you'll need them and I'm sure we can arrange something :)

Firstly, I have a quick question... Have you ever bought a game because of it's glossy in a magazine? Was it an "independent" title? If so, was the glossy the only reason you bought the game?No - it had nothing to do with whether I bought the game at all: it had everything to do with me knowing the game existed.
Think about this in terms of conversions. Will the print adverts generate more than £30k in revenue? How many people who see the print ad will need to 1)remember to go to your site 2)download the demo and 3)buy the game, in order for you to generate the 2,500 sales? That's exactly what I am thinking. If 100,000 people see the ad*, and maybe if we're reasonably lucky by doing such a cunning ad that about 10% of the punters type the URL in to their browser, we already know from experience that about 25% of those who visit will download the demo, and about 3% (we hope) will convert. Meaning a total of only 750 sales, a shortfall of a factor of 3 or so. However if we do a campaign over 3 months instead we're apparently much more likely to pique readers' curiosity - maybe by the 3rd month 50% of the people who see the ad come and check it out. Even so we're not looking at £10k of sales - it's going to make a loss. So how does it work for Blizzard??? Granted that their games are good - some of them have been excellent - but how did they raise the level of awareness of their games so highly in the first place? They started from nowhere just like I did, after all.

Not to mention that the £30k for the ad does not include preparation -- design, layout, typesetting and color-separation -- which can easily cost £5k.Actually it's already designed and is already printed as 2,000 full-colour A6 fliers ready to dump in bars around London shortly :) Chaz, in another life, used to do this for a living! So that's "free".

The ad, in a magazine, is basically going to say

www.puppygames.net

alien flux - free demo - 5 megs

And leave it at that.

Here's another tidbit: I was talking to an avid gaming friend of mine the other day, who buys all the glossy PC games magazines every month, about Pom Pom. "Who?" he asked. Enough said! Advertising is imperative.

I have an extreme reluctance to pay for banner advertising, partly because I've never once ever felt the urge to ever click on a banner ad myself for anything ever; and partly because there have been numerous high-profile essays on why they don't work (google for "banner blindness").

Cas :)

* The number of people who see the ad is far greater than the ABC figure suggests.

Cool, thanks Jack. My gfx are just placeholders at the moment, but I'll fire over a couple of screenshots so you can see what you think. As we're developing similar games but on different subjects, maybe there's room for some cross-promotion? :)

Sorry to hear about your experience Marc. :(
Which mag was it, if you don't mind me asking?

As we're developing similar games but on different subjects, maybe there's room for some cross-promotion?
Yes, I want to put a links section on the game website or even small banner aronud (not too big!)

So how does it work for Blizzard??? Granted that their games are good - some of them have been excellent - but how did they raise the level of awareness of their games so highly in the first place? They started from nowhere just like I did, after all.
Yes, but -remember- its the QUALITY of the game which sell it. If Doom wasn't so good, no one would have bought it.
Blizzard started with Warcraft & Diablo. Think about those two games back in 94-95 and see why they became so famous and sold so much...

No offense to your game, of course. I think no one here can make a game better than Blizzard's ones :rolleyes:

The thing is, what kind of gamer is going to be interested in Alien Flux? My guess is that it'd be the gamer that is either casual or somewhere between casual and hard-core. But a truly hard-core gamer is not likely to be as interested (IMHO). "Hard-core" has sort-of come to mean FPS Quaker apostle. :) Although I sort of consider myself a hard-core gamer, I'm probably technically not one since I've never even played Quake III or Unreal 2000. And that's the kind of people that buy the glossies.

Think about it, how many non-quake fanatics buy or subscribe to glossies? Didn't you cancel your own subscription(s) for that very reason? So obviously, the glossies aren't targetting the sort of gamer you're probably looking for. If they were, you'd probably still be subscribed.

So if you want my take on things, I'd say forego the glossies and invest your advertising dollars elsewhere. Like even ads and top spots at places like download.com.

@FusionLab - The magazine was "GamesTM"

@Marc, I think advertising in a multi-platform mag is risky because if the mag sells 30,000 copies, only 5,000 readers (or even less) might be active PC gamers.

There's a huge retro section in the mag so maybe if your games had been remakes of retro arcade games your advert might have been better targeted? It's difficult to know for sure, especially as I haven't seen any sales figures for GamesTM yet. It's had a lot of praise, but then so did Future's Arcade which ended up being cancelled due to poor sales.

I used to advertise in Paragon's mags a few years ago, but because our products were at retail it was always very difficult to gauge the response. Their rates were always very cheap compared to their rivals though, which made me suspicious when there was no ABC sales data to show how many copies these mags were selling.

Seems to me that with the mass of developers here, it might make sense for you all to go in together and put together a demo CD with all the games. Creating a demo CD of just one game and distributing it is cost prohibitive. But if you got a group, you split up the price, and everyone can evangelize their own are of the glob.

Just a thought.

One place you might consider advertising is Penny Arcade. After visiting Moonpods forum it seems like 90% of the people who bought their StarScape game (and posted in the thread asking about the game) found out from Penny Arcade. No idea what their rates are though but it should be cheaper than advertising in mags.

Penny Arcade viewers also seem more the type to go after action games than puzzle games. Starscape was more my type of game than Alien Flux is though as it has a lot more depth to it.

Also, you should place a shortcut on the desktop after installing the demo.

>No - it had nothing to do with whether I bought the game at all:
>it had everything to do with me knowing the game existed.
>That's exactly what I am thinking. If 100,000 people see the
>ad*, and maybe if we're reasonably lucky by doing such a
>cunning ad that about 10% of the punters type the URL in to
>their browser

10% on even a very targeted ad is quite high. ESPECIALLY when you're talking about someone typing in a url. I think it would be much much lower. Probably <1%

>we already know from experience that about 25% of those who
>visit will download the demo, and about 3% (we hope) will
>convert.

3% conversion is also very high. Maybe not generally speaking. That is... suppose I go to download.com and type in "classic space shooter" in the search bar and Alien Flux comes up. Ok. Maybe there you have a 3% conversion rate change. I'm very targeted. I was looking for something like Alien Flux. Now, contrast that with the guy who just bought the lastest computer gaming world magazine to read about Half Life 2 and saw your add and decided he wanted to look at the game. The chances of converting him, I'd suggest, are much lower. In fact I think generally speaking this is what I've seen with all the advertising I've done. The bigger the crowd I reach the lower the conversion drops. Or in plain english, as my target audience becomes less focused my ability to sell to them drops significantly.

>However if we do a campaign over 3 months instead we're
>apparently much more likely to pique readers' curiosity - maybe >by the 3rd month 50% of the people who see the ad come and >check it out.

I agree that readers will be more interested after seeing a long running campaign. However if I'm right about your initial <1% rate then maybe this goes up to 1% as a vast increase. I think I can say with some certainty that 50% is NOT going to happen. Don't take out a big loan based on that.

>Even so we're not looking at £10k of sales - it's going to make a
>loss. So how does it work for Blizzard??? Granted that their >games are good - some of them have been excellent - but how
>did they raise the level of awareness of their games so highly in
>the first place? They started from nowhere just like I did, after
>all.

Well as to the question of how their advertising pays for itself Blizzard, as I pointed out before, is really solving a different problem than you are. Right now they're building name brand recognition around a whole series of titles and it involves, as others have said, all kinds of ads (not just mags) including payment for retail shelf space. What was Blizzard's advertising like before Warcraft? Had you heard of them then? What game did they develop and for whom before Warcraft? What was say... one of thier MSDOS games? Don't forget they've been around for more than 10 years. You just don't get their kind of brand recognition right away.

>Here's another tidbit: I was talking to an avid gaming friend of
>mine the other day, who buys all the glossy PC games
>magazines every month, about Pom Pom. "Who?" he asked.
>Enough said! Advertising is imperative.

I agree that getting the word out is very important, but a 30k run of print advertising probably won't equate puppy games with blizzard in terms of name brand recognition. A lot of the benefit of name brand recognition is tied directly to your sales point. Suppose you print ads for 3 months. What will happen? Ok... maybe more people will have a vague notion that there's a game called Alien Flux somewhere out there. Then what? They won't see it in a store. So they won't remember it and pick up the box and say.. oh yeah what's this about? and maybe buy it like they would another retail title. Will they see it online? Maybe if you couple your print ads with front page exposure somewhere like computer gaming world, adrenaline vault, bluesnews, and download.com -- Then people will download it in droves, because they've heard about it AND they ran across it somewhere where it's accessible. Now at that point it's up to the game to convert the user into a sale. Now you need more like 50-60k -- I say skip the print ad and go directly for the targeted downloads in the same sorts of places mentioned above. I think if you place a heavy ad on download.com and avault and gamespot - say an elite listing + some newsletters etc.. - and raise your downloads by several 10's of thousands of people you will see a much better advertising turnaround than you would from print mags. Your conversion rate will almost definitely drop though. But you have to consider residual effects of advertising. If you gain 2000 customers and just break even then that's 2000 people who are probably eagerly awaiting your next title. Make sure you find a way of keeping track of them and let them know when alien flux 2 comes out and suddenly your ad made you money. It's more of a long term thing. I use google adwords sometimes. I don't think they ever directly pay for themselves. I do get sales from them though. The benefit is long term gain of customers and general increase in site exposure etc...

>I have an extreme reluctance to pay for banner advertising,

I wouldn't do banner ads. I don't think they work very well. If your goal is to get targeted people to download the game and you really want to try heavier $$$ advertising then I think you might want to start somewhere like Gamespot's HTML newsletter. I think you're much more likely to see people click through and download from that than you would in a print run where they have to actually type in a url.

- Steve