Unit 04 : Snake Escape Marketing Plan

Snake Escape Developed By Trinity Game Studios

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Brief To create a video game, using gamesalad,

that would then be the focus of an in-depth marketing plan.

To create this Marketing plan

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The 4 P's of Marketing(relative to Snake Escape)

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Product The product is a 2D

Platformer video game, designed in vector art style.

It is a 10 level video game that progresses in difficulty.

Set in a snake enclosure, the main character, Jimmy, has to escape.

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Gameplay Video

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Click to Play

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Price The game £0.99 to download from the Apple

App Store & Steam. Revenue will also come from advertising.

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Place You can download the game from the app store

& steam. You can also play the demo version for free on the gamesalad arcade website & steam

Gamesalad Demo Link : http://arcade.gamesalad.com/game/119615

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Promotion Perhaps the centre and basis for this

presentation, Promotion will be looked at in more detail.

But just to name a few process we will use, include; Direct & Indirect Advertising Campaigns, Promotional Campaigns, Viral Campaigns, Social Networking Campaigns etc.

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Marketing Objectives To increase overall awareness of my game To increase overall revenue from the

advertisers on my game To push the reputation of my game

development company “Trinity Game Studios”. To get as big an audience as possible playing

Snake Escape

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Market Research

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Primary Research

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Age Group Yes No

10-24 12 Votes 3 Votes

25-30 4 Votes 11 Votes

30-40 2 Votes 13 Votes

I beta tested the game to a group comprised of 15 people aged 10-24, 15 people aged 25-30 and 15 people aged 30-40. This was to be able to conclusively narrow down the aged group of my target market. The first question I asked was;

Do you think this game fits the age group you fall into?

Age Group Yes No

10-24 14 Votes 1 Votes

25-30 4 Votes 11 Votes

30-40 2 Votes 13 Votes

Would you buy this game?

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Secondary Research

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Gamesalad Users

iPhoneUsers

As there are two means of playing Snake Escape, we can break down all these complicated, mixed up demographic & audiences into two groups and they can either be in one or of course both.We can characterise those who play our game into either being an iPhone user and/or being a Gamesalad/Gamesalad Arcade User. What we can do is look at these two groups and find out common elements within them. With these found out we can then

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I read an article from Forbes magazine, dated 10/8/13, where it was analysing apps, what marketplaces there were for consumers to buy apps and finally who had the greatest market share of “Apps”. I found this important to find out seen as our game was not a cross-platform app. You can only download it from the app store. However we had no knowledge or intention of making this for another marketplace, such as Android or Google, because we just assumed that Apple held the greatest market share of apps. So I wanted to confirm wether I was right.

Link to article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/tristanlouis/2013/08/10/how-much-do-average-apps-make/

The figures were a little bit hard to understand, however this chart did catch my eye, as it confirmed that although the amount of apps downloads to date sold by apple and google are pretty neck & neck, both peaking at just over 50 Billion apps sold to date, it was Apple & more specifically developing for iOS systems that came with the potential to make more income off our App.

(Taken from article listed above)

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I found another article that explains that Apple is able to monetise iOS apps far more effectively than Google Play Apps. http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/android-wins-in-app-downloads-but-ios-makes-more-money/“A new report by the App Annie Index shows that during this year's second quarter, Google Play exceeded Apple's App Store in app downloads by 10 percent; but Apple generated 2.3 times the revenue of Google Play.”

So now its a case of find out the age range of our users and try and put together a picture about what an average consumer playing our game would be interested in and see if there was a great correlation between certain elements. So we looked at our product and began to compare it games that we consider similar to ours. From there we can guage from secondary research, from other game developers market research effectively, what our audience would look like.

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Marketing Assets

Direct, In-direct & Promotional Advertising Assets

Includes Initial Ideas, Feedback, Development & Final Design

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App Icon(in-direct advertising)

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App Icon Research

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Looking at a fewiphone screens ofpeople in my class Ithen came to aconclusion aboutwhat sort of appspeople, in my targetaudience for mygame, would buy.You have youobvious socialnetworking appsand fast food apps.

I feel like these appsthat I have chosenare a fairly closerepresentation ofwhat my targetaudience wouldalready own interms of Apps.

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5 Rough Ideas

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Feedback Idea 1

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Feedback Idea 2

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I wanted to create an app icon that would convey the general mood and emotion of the game. So I began to mock up some initial ideas in greyscale. From there I test out some adding some colour to the image. I thought the idea was okay but I knew that the scary mood of the game wasn’t being convey enough through the colour sketch. Here are some design screenshots where it shows how I made the 2 Initial ideas.

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Here you can see a few ideas that I have tried. Below are the two initial ideas that, pending on feedback from peers, one will get developed into a final idea.

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Feedback:

Mel Ruvolo: “The dark theme is better than the colour as it says more about the games themes, having played the game myself I know its a dark game. Only thing I would like to see is slightly more of his face”.

Beth Farrington: “I prefer the black and white version because I think that it fit better with the theme of the game. The smoky effect makes the aesthetic look more gloomy. SO THE BLACK ONE”.

After looking at the feedback I knew that that darker idea was the one to go with, it hooked them more than the other idea and was more in-keeping with the themes of the game.

As you can see from the final design I have made a few changes to the design. I would only consider them minor changes though as the development idea for this was pretty good as it was. I have moved the eyes & eyebrows up further so we can capture more of the emotion and expression on Jimmy’s face. The logo was hard to place but I settled on the placement above as it doesn’t distract from the rest of the image too much. We know its there yet it blends enough into the design that we are still drawn into the centre part of the design, Jimmy that is.

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Final Design

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In-direct Marketing Stunt

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London Zoo

A serious ethical question could be raised by performing this stunt. However, by people raising it and journalists writing about it it will encourage more publicity for the game. The plan is to attach QR codes to Snakes In London Zoo's reptile enclosure and cause people to log and take it to our facebook page where they can see still shots from our game and join a mailing list to receive a half price voucher 1 week before release date. We will also get someone, probably me to walk round the zoo dressed as a snake and make people aware of the snakes with the QR code.

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We can post about the event on social media, try and take the story to animal rights websites and activists. Almost engage in anti-marketing. Try to get the game recognised and almost try and create an anti-social behaviour edge to the campaign. We can reinforce to audiences that don't know about the event or remind people of the event. We can regularly post & re-post about the event on all the relevant socials and get blogs and small magazine publications to link our game and/or app store link in the article description.

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T-shirt(Direct advertising)

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T-Shirt Research

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I started with trying to make a simple design with an element from the game that only people who have played the game will understand. My initial idea was take influence from fashion and create a small logo, to try and create a sort of Lyle & Scott Tee. And this was my initial idea.

I then received feedback which basically suggested I change design direction to fit more in-line with my logo and web banners

Feedback:

Ryan Worcester – “It is clear that the dark, cloudy texture fits well with your other marketing products such as your website banners and the app icon itself. I would suggest keeping the t-shirt design greyscale, as i feel that the website banners that use little colours work better and also links your marketing products to your app icon design. I feel you should continue to use the cloudy texture on your tshirt design.

I basically after this point started from scratch. As the app icon was such a strong design for me, I wanted to carry the theme of that a long. So I began work on the T-shirt. I only wanted to do one T-shirt as variation in T-shirt designs are so common and so I wanted to refrain from creating so many different styles and just put all my effort into one. The reason why was because I though If i create similar advertising assets because it would make my brand more recognisable and uniformed. So I began to implement my app icon, with some obvious

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The images above will give you a fairly good idea about the main design processes and techniques used to create the t-shirt. The end result follows the same style as the app icon logo and the web banners.

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Final Design

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Web Banner(Direct advertising)

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Web Banner Research

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I first went about finding out about the different web banners and the official dimensions they had to be. It was when I then stumbled upon this image that basically told me the dimensions I should use. As you can see there are a lot on there so I didn't create all of them. 

From then on the basis for all my designs were started in one photoshop file then once I had all the elements in the photoshop file such  as the logo, the texture and colour I would transfer and resize it on another psd to create a web banner with the desired dimensions. The screen grabs below show my initial design and the layers they were on. s

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Feedback Mel Ruvolo : This theme is good you should carry this theme on as the foundation, but maybe add some variations depending on the dimension of the web banner you are creating.Beth Farrington : The design is good, create various sizes.Keeping with the feedback I stuck to using the same theme, but as you can see from the designs below I added Jimmy’s head to some of the web banners, so that the themes from the T-shirt & Logo were recognisable too.

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Final Designs

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Discount Code Leaflet(Promotion)

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One thing that is apparently obvious from researching various discount code leaflets for games etc. Is that they appear to jus re-use a lot of assets form previous graphic design products. In some cases I've just seen them use the cover image, much like the Call of Duty : Ghosts discount code, and put that on the poster. This seems to be a good way of getting your message across, making sure that your brand is identifiable from its recognisable artwork, in a cost effective way. Which if you are a small company, like us, then that is always beneficial.

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I wanted to create something that in practical wouldn’t be a huge leaflet, as I believe that puts some people off when your handing them out. So I created I thought that a good dimension to follow would be the 720/300 (w/h) that I used for the web banner. I wanted to try and keep a theme going with the discount code design. As its a form of physical marketing and something that a potential customer can hold in their hands. I thought I would make it very accessible for them to get the game but I just didn’t know how.

With that in mind this was the initial design that I created, following the same theme as the web banners. Its visually striking and catches people attention.

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Feedback

Ryan Worcester: “I like the design, its going to catch peoples attention. But you need to also link them to the game as well. I don’t know how, but a web address may be to long and overcrowd the design.

Mel Ruvolo: ‘ The design is strong but I think you should add a QR code to make it simple for audiences to view the game and get the discount there and then.”

Action taken:

I took what Mel suggested literally and added a QR code to the design. WIth internet now being pretty much a neccesity for most smart phones. Its a quick and easy way to link audience to the game directly. Here is the finished design.

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Final Design

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Application of Graphic Assets In Marketing Plan

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The T-shirt selling will take place through local and online retailers. Shops which would be ideal to sell in would be places like Fopp, Game, Play.com, Amazon

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Marketing Schedule

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Demo Game For SteamBefore we start to put in place the full schedule, you will read in later slides, we will straight away get the foot in the indie game door by uploading a demo to Steam. The 1 level demo will help to gain a following. How we hold interest is we let players know that a full release is to come. Steam is the most popular place in the world to buy indie games for PC & Mac. Steam has 75 Million Active users, this includes, PC, Mac & the Limited PS3 Edition, our game would not be released on this platform due to functionality. This is a easy & effective way to get the game out to people, and one things for sure is that indie gamers wait for full releases if they like demos. The steam community have an ability to hold an interest for a game. Research into Steam shows that they take:30% of after tax revenue

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We will then start with trying to increase viral-ability of the game. Trying to increase our online presence through web banner advertising which we can specifically target on web sites that correspond with our target market. Social Networking will play a big part. We can try and utilize some word of mouth marketing. On twitter especially, following other game developers, publishers, journalists will help spread the message to their followers etc.

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This shall culminate with the final un-veiling of the full version game at PAX in Boston. I think Pax will work better because I think PAX is a better place to promote Indie Games. The big focus for conventions such as E3 is on big Triple AAA plus titles such as Assassins Creed, Titanfall or WatchDogs. Whilst thats good for them, I fear if we went to E3 our game would be swamped in the buzz and hype about big studio games. Which will ultimately mean our advertising campaign before hand will have been for nothing and will fall flat.

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Significant DatesJan 1st 2013 + : Begin social networking campaign, create pages. But focus specifically on twitter and gaining twitter followers. Follow indie game developers, reviewers, publishers and indie gaming fans. Use twitter analytics to scan for people who search terms such as indie games, platformers etc. Jan 20th 2013+ : Focus on gaining facebook likes and try and increase sharing viral-ability. To try and gain likes more easily, get people to like the page and sign up to a mailing list where 1 week before release you get the discount vouncher code e-mailed directly to you.Feb 6th 2013+ : Hopefully by this stage I should have a good online presence and the ability to get news out quickly to followers. This is where we begin our web banner campaign. Using google Analytics we can push our web banners where they are needed most. Sites such as Steam, IGN, Gamespot etc. 3rd April 2013+ : The ability to get information out to the followers should now be in full force, this is how we will let our audience know we will be at PAX. We begin to e-mail voucher codes out to people to re-post that we will be at PAX.11th-13th April 2013+ : We tag the entire Boston Convention Centre. We tag other peoples booths and direct them round to our set up where they can play our game

13th April 2013+ : Last Day of Pax & Release Day

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Budget

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Expense Cost

PAX Booth $1800 Booth Cost / $1000 For Flights

Web Banners £300 P/W for Sites;FoppGamestationFacebook£650 P/W for SitesGamespotIGNPAX

T-Shirt Costs 1000 T-ShirtsFront Only- £4200Front & Back- £6200

So we know how much various other batch order sizes will be. 500 Tees - F : £2100 F&B: £3100200 Tees - F : £840 F&B: £1240

Twitter Varies Depending Activity: Max Budget £1000https://business.twitter.com/en-gb/products/pricing

Discount Leaflet £73.15 - 1000 Prints

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The Plan & The Audience

I think there are a number of reasons that show why we have targeted our audience correctly with our marketing;- We are going to be at PAX, a mecca for Indie Gamers, Developers & Journalists- We will target our audience will well place web banners- Social Networking is a fast, cost-effective way to increase awareness and overall increase the success of all of my marketing objectives.

These are all the first costs which are non-negotiable and I must make provisions for this. Everything after will be split up between accordingly between where its needed the most. So if we don’t sell a lot of T-shirts, but need more flyers and getting a good response from the Snake Escape Web Banners and need to extend our time & availability online then we will. We may also need to set aside additional costs for the booth at PAX

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The reason why I think the designs fit those age groups, is because there is a tendency in young people to like glossy commercialised looking products. The designs themselves have that dark mysterious feel to them. Audience know exactly what genre the game is even without playing it, you can tell just by the marketing assets. This makes them unique and thats one thing that people in that age range like to feel as well is exclusivity and the feeling of being unique. That is why it may resonant with them so well.

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MonitoringThe most useful thing we can do to measure social networking progress. Would be facebook stats which provide in-depth information if you are registered as a page, instead of just a standard facebook profile. Steam offers, as part of when you register as a developer, you can track sales etc. You can also pay for an upgraded account and get analytics that feed go into about how much people have shared your game from steam on other websites, such as blogs, Social networks.Twitter offer analytics when you start advertising on twitter. Which ads start from 1p. Our max budget is £1000 so that should get us some good analytics and good figures. Ads are everywhere but if they are eye-catching enough which I believe mine are, they are more likely to strike up a connection with my audience. We can monitor through google analytics, this also sorts through how much we are googled, what sites people are visiting after googling us. Which means we could adjust web banner campaigns if people keep heading to a website we are not on.

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Evaluation

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Evaluate feedback from Client, use this to write about alterations

to be made to plan.

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The feedback was very precise and praised good areas of the marketing plan. According to the client I have made a very well structured plan, with no changes to presentation needed. Based on the feedback its just of adding in some slides to clarify points already made. What this does is makes it clearer to the client about marketing plan and also makes it clearer to me as well. Thus allowing me to have full in-depth marketing plan.

Feedback Summary

- Add a Gameplay Video to the presentation, so the client can see the product there and then.- Some more research about Steam Greenlight is needed as you were quite brief, you need to match with amount of research you have done for Google Play Vs App Store research- You need to take into account that although you want to market it at 10-24 year olds, 10 year Olds aren’t going to be able to purchase the game from the app store or steam. You need to be able to explain how you will work around this and still be able to market Snake Escape to children of that age.

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Steam GreenLight

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Steam Greenlight is the way new game developers submit their game to Steam. It requires the steam community to rate your game, the higher the rating, the more steam will get behind your game. This requires an effective advertising schedule in conjunction with releasing the game on steam greenlight. I believe the demo we have submitted is long enough for community steam game testers Here's what else you'll need to submit:

• A valid Steam account• A submission form, chock full of details about you and your game• $100 in cold hard cash—this is a one-time fee, meaning that once it's paid you can submit

as many games to Greenlight as you like• A branding image—essentially box art (512x512px and no larger than 1MB)• Media: At least one video, and four screenshots that represent your game• A description: typically just a paragraph or two that provides voters with an overview of

your game and its featuresThe idea is to do this and build up a solid response from fans on steam, then capitalize on the back of a good demo performance and then start to market the full game on a larger scale directed at the indicated target market.

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Changes To Plan

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I have gone into more depth about figures and success rates of Steam GreenLight. Steam holds a significant market share. However they hold the most market share of my target audience. Hence why I have researched more about sales patterns of indie games. During different periods of the year.

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