Idea: employ the Marie Kondo method to your community management!
🧹Commit to tidying up your communities
⭐️Imagine your ideal community
🗑️Discard toxic members
🧼Tidy your community spaces
🌱Follow a structure
✨Ask if your members and space spark joy
Mini thread 👇
🧹Commit to tidying up your communities
Cleaning up and banning members is a bigger emotional toll than many expect. Know what your community values are, and stick with them, even if you're challenged on them.
⭐️Imagine your ideal community
Don't just create spaces out of thin air, or think banning "bad people" is all there is to real community development.
Have goals. What does an ideal community look like, how does it function, and why do you want it to be this way?
🗑️Discard toxic members
Nip! Them! At! The! Bud! Don't keep toxic members around because they "talk and contribute" to the space, and you're afraid of silence. They take up space and drive away more genuinely interested members.
🧼Tidy your community spaces
Your community space should have rules that are easily understood, findable, and accessible. Social channels should be easy to find and consistent with your goals.
Make sure your spaces and values are clear and concise.
🌱Follow a structure
Have a process for when problems crop up. What gets escalated? Who makes the ultimate decision, if there's disagreement on whether or not someone should be banned? Does your team know what to do if a player randomly comes to them, instead of you?
✨Spark joy
Having a community that aren't dicks to each other is the bare minimum. How can they be excellent? How are we making spaces don't hide behind a façade of niceness?
How are we/they bettering the space, but also encouraging each other?
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A new white paper on ✨mobile gaming, TikTok, and strategies for success.✨ Conducted by TikTok (and the National Research Group), so read with a grain of salt.
But even if you're not making a mobile game, it has some good insight!! 👇
The mobile gaming landscape has changed! The formula for success now consists of 3 things:
1⃣ Cultural relevance: pay attention to trends & where gamers are
2⃣ Connections: prioritize long term player trust, loyalty, and feedback
3⃣ Community: create group identity and belonging
📳 MOBILE GAMING 📳
📱 Global gaming spend in mobile is more than the PC, console, and handheld markets combined
📱 Mobile gaming growth is coming from Asia and Latin America
📱 South Korea, Brazil, Turkey, and Mexico have had the biggest increase in spend over past 2 years
"Hi I'm a solo dev/small team and we don't have a budget to hire anyone, I have no time to do marketing, and/or I hate marketing. How can I build a community?"
My answer: 👁️👄👁️ You can't.
Or at least, not really? Let's talk about it.
👇
1) You need to invest *some* sort of resource
You can't just do nothing and expect things to happen.
Imagine saying you don't have a budget to hire for art or make it, but you still expect a gorgeous game. Marketing is an investment and deserves thoughtful space in your plans.
2) No money? Use time
Normally spend 8 hours/day programming? Cool! Shave an hour off programming to invest into marketing. It doesn't need to be intense.
*Someone* needs to prioritize posting content, strategizing visibility, and creating connections.
so overtime i've had to try and explain to game communities why devs cannot "just" implement things, or why something takes months and not a week.
here is my non-exhaustive list:
1.
- making sure it works on all devices
- ^ mobile devices in particular are a nightmare with all their different versions, updates, and operating systems
- if being ported to different devices, needing to rework the art/UX
- legal blockers (contract revisions, approvals, etc.)
2.
- abiding by appropriate media and platform policies
- potentially breaking servers for millions of people
- making sure it's actually fun
- if doing stuff with external partners, fitting their timelines, events, specific requirements or additions to your game
OK quick tips for press/influencers on reaching out for keys when a game is days away from launch.
I already have little patience to deal with vague inquiries, and when we're nearing game launch?? hooOOoo boy
🧵👇
1) My inbox is a wreck.
Games generally get the most hype and requests the closer to launch. Every single day I'm getting at least 10 emails for keys (depends hype of the game.)
I have NO time, so I need you to help me make it as easy as possible to justify giving you a key.
2) Tips on ur outreach email:
- A way to verify your email
- Links
- Sentence about relevancy/why this game is interesting to ur audience/how does this benefit me if I give you a free game?
- STATS. Page views! Concurrent viewers! Community size! Etc!
Based on touting your game's benefits and why it's fun.
Example:
- Pupperazzi: "Take photos of cute dogs and upgrade your camera"
- Mondo Museum: "Put your creativity on display to curate the world's best museum!"
So many cool game marketing peeps have a newsletter and now I want one 😤 Except all it'd be is
1) article links I bookmarked for later, forgot about, and oops never looked at again 2) the 67 GDC talks I've been "meaning" to watch 3) screaming
Anyways here are my recommendations for Fricken Good Game Marketing Newsletters™:
🗻 @AdventureMtn - How To Market a Game
- King of email marketing
- Sooo many interesting, researched, and unique topics
- Taught me the phrase "spaceship ass"
📽️ @Derek_Lieu - Game Trailer Editing
- Learn how to make damn good trailers
- Very good breakdown of how to "look" at trailers and what makes them so appealing
- There's always a cat pic