Marketing Plan

Product

‘Squidiverse’ is a puzzle arcade platformer game, featuring an interesting theme that mixes Sci-Fi and underwater imagery and a pixel art graphic style.

Gameplay features the player controlling a small Squid boy, and guiding him on his adventure through different worlds, each holding different challenges. The gameplay is platformer styled, with Squid being able to move, jump, and throw rocks to navigate a side scrolling world.

The environment offers enemies to defeat and puzzles to solve as you have to explore each new sprawling world to collect clues that lead you to the next step.

It’s about reflexes, exploration, puzzle solving, and trial and error.

Competition

Some of the games which are in competition with us are not free to play, which gives Squidiverse an edge over them. What also makes Squidiverse stand out from the competition is its unique combination of themes, and it’s main character.

Place

The app will be available on the virtual store: Apple App Store for iOS devices. There’s a huge range of games on the app store that will serve as our competition. Most of our main identified competition is not on the app store, however there are plenty of other platformers available on the store, so we still face competition.

A majority of the games on the app store are free. All the top grossing games are free, but with in-app purchases. In-app purchases mean once you have the game you can make further purchases to access additional content. Through this method customers are drawn in with the initial free purchase, and then will later be willing to pay for additional features. This cost will be a general expectation among app store shoppers. Anything that does cost is low priced, with nothing in the top paid apps section being above £5.

Price

•  The app will be free, this will be one of our main selling points so it will be important to identify this in our marketing campaign.

•  There will be in-app purchases released later on, that expand the game with new worlds. This way it will not feel like a part of the game is missing, as it’s not power ups or anything necessary to be better or stronger in the game, It’s more like you get the first installment free but have to pay for the sequel.

•  A majority of the identified competition games are paid for, making Squidiverse free will help it compete more strongly.

ISFE Data

Looking at data collected by the ISFE we can see that in apps which can be downloaded from the app store, the majority of downloaded apps are free, this is important information as our game will be a free game with eventual DLC

Also using more data available from the ISFE we can see that genders in gaming are almost equal, this is means we shouldn’t need to really gear our campaign towards a specific gender.

The ISFE (Interactive Software Federation of Europe) was founded in 1998 in order to protect the interactive software sector in Europe, it aims to protect the video game industry and individuals from the threat of piracy.

Target Audience •  Aged between 14 and 20.

•  Our target audience will be casual gamers but the game can also appeal to core gamers.

•  Will be fans of humorous, zany, and vibrant cartoon worlds and characters e.g. Mario, Carton Network

•  The iOS app store has more casual gamers than core so it is ideal for us to release our game to this platform.

•  Indie gamers will be an important audience of our game. The game has mechanics and story and design more common in Indie releases then big AAA titles, like features that reference back to older video games e.g. the pixel art style and platformer gameplay.

Audience Segmentation

•  Casual Gamers - This is also a wide audience as there are many casual gamers, though it would be more effective to advertise to this audience than iOS device owners.

•  Indie Gamers – These will be people who have a love for indie games and also use Rock Paper Shotgun a lot in order to keep up to date with the latest indie games, we will target this audience by having a DevLog written on Rock Paper Shotgun.

•  iOS device owners - This is a much wider audience and less specific as many people use iOS devices for different reasons, some use it for business and don’t game on them at all. It would not be ideal for us to advertise mainly to this audience as it is to vast and less focused on one subject such as indie games.

CORE

CASUAL

MAINSTREAM NICHE

Our game is placed between core and casual, going more towards casual, but just tipping into core. The game is mainly accessible and fun to play, with only a few simple controls used in gameplay. However some more challenging parts of the game, and the way you have to master the simple controls to overcome levels, tips it just over the edge into core. It’s not complex enough to go up into core any more. It’s more Niche because of the offbeat theme, and gameplay very specific to the platformer genre. However the cartoonish tone and memorable character open it up to the mainstream a bit, so it can slightly go over to that side. What is shown here is that ‘Squidiverse’ is at heart a casual niche, however it’s just slightly breaking out of this.

MARKET SEGMENTATION

Marketing Aims

•  Grow an audience through our promotions such as the DevLog, banner ad and advert.

•  By the end of September we want to get at least 500 followers on the Twitter account, to really show the marketing is getting out there.

•  Raise awareness for the game we want to build up hype for the game, get people excited for Squidiverse.

•  Get at least 3 Youtubers to do Let’s Play videos by game release.

Promotions

•  Squidiverse will have a Twitter page to show the progress of the game and keep people updated with information on the game.

•  We want to advertise our game at “REZZED” which is an indie games convention, we will be giving away a few shirts at this event also.

•  We will have shirts for people to buy, which is a away of indirect advertising for our game.

•  We’ll get RPS (Rock Paper Shotgun) to a write a DevLog on our game with a link to the trailer of our game also, we’ll have banner ads on the site also.

•  A banner ad will go out on a few select websites, mainly ones which host or talk about indie games in order to hit our target audience.

•  We’ll have adverts on YouTube videos, with YouTube you can select the types of videos the adverts will go over.

•  We’ll send out betas of the game close to the release date to YouTubers to get them to make videos of them playing our game, this will help build hyper before the release of the game.

Twitter

The Twitter will be the first part of the marketing to launch. Twitter can be used as a great baseline to the marketing campaign, the first point of communication to the audience. Any promotions, events, or progress will be advertised through the twitter account and vice versa. Twitter is the easiest way of communicating and building a relationship with our audience. We want most of our tweets to include visual representations of game progress and characters, because first it will give people an idea what the game is so they can get excited about it, and second because tweets with images typically get more attention and re-tweets.

We will promote the account, and by extension the game, by involving ourselves in the game development community that exists on Twitter. This can be done by re-tweeting and following other developers, and using established hash tags like #gamedev

Publicity Stunt

Indirect advertising, where we get someone to dress up in the Squid mask and run around public places. This will strengthen and use previous marketing – so for example the banner add, will not efficient in getting game downloads, will have got the image of Squid in peoples heads, so that if this stunt comes to their attention they will make that connection. Of course it also works the other way around.

This is a big part of growing our audience, and again the focus is on the character, his visual look as well as his personality.

This also links heavily with the advert, as it’s the same sort of concept of the live action Squid, so the link between the two will be easily made. The advert is almost a budgeted version of this stunt, that will explain the meaning of the strange Squid man when it is later released.

EGX (REZZED)

“REZZED” is a popular indie games convention which draws in thousands of people wanting to see the next big indie game. “REZZED” will be a great opportunity for us to market our game to people interested in indie games, this way we can directly advertise our game to our target audience. Also at this event we will be giving away a limited amount of shirts and hoodies to attract people to our booth and also work as a way of indirect advertising.

T Shirts

The shirt designs are made to promote the game, and to push the Squid character forward. To this aim the T Shirts have been designed around Squids character, showing his distinctive head. The shirts are promotional tools, so we would give them out at game conventions attended, and we would also want to push them close to the release to generate a spike in interest. Our target audience are the kind of people who like to show off that they like specific cartoons, games, or films through branded clothes. The designs fit in with the themes of the game, so they connect with the fans.

Devlog Watch

The DevLog Watch is a feature that looks at upcoming indie games that are being developed. This would be good exposure for the game and would also bring it to the attention of the kind of audience we want.

Banner Ad

Banner ads will advertise the game around the internet, and is our biggest form of direct advertising. They can be posted up on various websites and pull in new audience members without them having to seek the game out.

The banner needs to be placed on appropriate websites, sites which we have the kind of audience we are targeting.

-Rock Paper Shotgun: a site that targets up and coming indie games. -JayIsGames: This site hosts video games including indie made games.

Banner Ad

According to a Google study in 2013 the chance of someone clicking our banner ad is a 0.04% chance, for every $2 we spend on advertising we will receive 1000 views on our ad. So if we price our ad campaign on RPS or JayIsGames at $2000 we would receive approximately 400 clicks on our ad. Then we must also take into account the amount of people that will download our app after being directed to it, for example if 1% of people downloaded it we would receive 4 downloads for a $2000 ad campaign.

But if we look at it in a different light, for $2 we receive 1000 views on our ad, with a $2000 ad campaign that’s the 1000 views on our ad multiplied by 1000 which would mean 1,000,000 people would have seen our ad and now recognize Squidiverse if they see it somewhere else. Our main objective is to grow our audience so this is an effective way of doing so.

Advert

The advert will be distributed on YouTube and be styled more after a short comedy sketch rather then an advert, so it’s almost indirect advertising. This is because it links with our target audience of a 14-20 age range, as people who would go on YouTube and enjoy comedy. It’s also more memorable, as it promotes the character in a funny way which people will remember, rather then just showing gameplay footage. The comedy and YouTube platform also helps increase the changes of the video being shared around and gaining more exposure.

Advert

YouTube Let’s Plays

Sending an early access version of our game to successful Youtuber asking them to review it or record a “Let’s Play” video, will advertise the game further on YouTube as well as promoting it to the already existing fan bases of the Youtubers. Here is a list of Youtubers we will send betas to:

•  Penguinz0 – He is known for playing games no one has heard of and he often finds games to play from Kickstarter, he has a unique comedy style which draws in audiences of the over 100,000 views a video http://www.youtube.com/user/penguinz0

•  CreepsMcPasta Plays – Another YouTuber known for playing games no one has heard of. http://www.youtube.com/user/TheresTwoOfUs

•  IndieStatik – Only plays indie games and his videos draw in a big audience, he also discusses new games in development. http://www.youtube.com/user/indiestatik

Schedule

Our release date is the 20th of November, as it’s a nice distance from any of the big game conventions, and it doesn’t clash with any holidays to avoid the competition. It’s also a Thursday which is known to be a good release date for the app store, as it’s when customers check for new games, and because of how close it is to the weekend; customers will be winding down and looking for entertainment.

Monitoring

Twitter will be a key way of monitoring the success of the marketing. Progress can be seen through the interaction going on Twitter, how many people are following it, using Squid hashtags or tweeting at the account etc. A clear way to gauge the success of the marketing is to look at the followers on a monthly basis, even setting target goals for each month.

By using the YouTube platform we can see the views each video has received, and also gauge reaction through comments left on the videos.

With the banner ads we will be able to see the number of clicks the ad has got with statistics, sites you advertise on may charge you with the amount of clicks the ad has received, with this we will be able see how many clicks it has got.

When running adverts on YouTube it runs on a pay per click system, so like most websites it will charge you based on the amount of clicks a video has received, this is done through a site called AdWords which allows you to set a limit to the amount of click an advert will receive then stop the ad.

Budget

Youtube add costs £140 max for 2 weeks of advertising

T Shirts cost - 250 - £362.50 aprox

Hoodies cost - 100 - £699 aprox

Banners cost - £1178.56

Single screen booth slot at REZZED - £589.28

Estimated Total Budget - £2969.34

Feedback Do you think the promotions link in with the Target Audience?

- What’s the big launch of the campaign? Using the advert or the publicity stunt at the beginning for example would help launch off the game.

- Give examples of the twitter account tweets, pictures, videos, and links to other promotions.

- Expand on the publicity stunt and explain how it will be effective as a publicity stunt. Filming it and uploading it to YouTube would be the best way, and this evokes the popular video ‘Batman in Cambridge’. We should have reference the Batman video and how many views it has got in the presentation to back up the Squid Stunt.

How effective do you think the Devlog Watch on Rock Paper Shotgun will be in growing our audience?

- How many people actually read the Devlog Watch? Should find out what kind of views the Devlog gets to accurately estimate this.

Do you think the time frame of our promotions for Squidiverse is effective?

-  Quite a long lead in time, especially on things like selling t-shirts a few months before the game is even available for download. The shirts need to be able to stand on their own, to appeal to people who haven’t played the game. Then the shirts become in-direct advertising. For this we might need to re-focus and design some T shirts that are funny or particularly interesting in design, without linking specifically to the game. Think of some Squid puns.

- We could use the July start time to focus on the summer holidays, use the beaches and the crowded streets to do the publicity stunts. Also our target demographic will be more active on the internet due to the holiday from education.

Amended Schedule

The release date has now been moved a month closer to the campaign start, just to shorten the marketing and bring everything closer together, so it will work more effectively as a whole. The advert has now been moved right to the start, firstly so it can tie in with Summer and the sunny beach mood, and secondly so it can act as a launch event; something big that announce the game and kick off marketing.

Filming the Publicity Stunt

An amendment to our publicity stunt would be to film the Squid running around as well, and then uploading it onto YouTube. This gives the stunt a longer life, as now it would have the potential to be shared and spread around, rather then just be confined to the people who were there at the time. This also allows for it to tie in more with the campaign overall, as it can link with YouTube and Twitter.

A good reference point is the “Batman in Cambridge” video, which features a man dressed as Batman tearing through Cambridge. Most of the exposure the video has gotten is through the internet. We know about it because we saw the vide, not because we were there when it happened.

The view count on “Batman in Cambridge” shows there is a strong

viewership for this kind of video, as well as the amount of exposure something

like this can get over YouTube.

Rock Paper Shotgun Views

DLC DLC – Downloadable Content, is a form of In-app purchasing. In-app purchases are commonly things needed to progress in the game, but are held back until the player pays for them, while DLC will be whole new aspects of the game, new levels or new missions that continue the play. In-App purchases can often leave customers feeling cheated, as the game was advertised as free, but once bought needs payment to unlock the whole experience.

An example of an app that has DLC is “Plague Inc.”, in this game you must start your own infection to destroy the world. You can get expansion packs that let you have new diseases or more challenging gameplay. For example you can download the “Mega Brutal” pack which adds a new hardest difficulty over “Brutal”