This blog post contains all of the conventions, seminars, lectures, and events we’ll be attending during 2018. Keep checking back for more as we update this post, and feel free to recommend en event to us in the comments if you don’t see it here!
October
We didn’t get to do too much during our launch month of September, since we planned to stay close to our computers unless all hell broke loose. Now that October is upon us, we have some great educational and promotional events lined up!
October 15th – Lecture @ The Academy of Innovative Technology, Brooklyn NY
A teacher at this really awesome public high school approached us during Play NYC 2018 to see if we’d be willing to come teach her students for a class or two. We were happy to accept! I’ll be speaking to the students in a closed setting about the reality of launching a mobile game on the App Store, our ongoing Android testing process, and life as an indie developer. This event is not open to the public, but I still thought it would be cool to mention it here!
October 20th – Panel @ College of Arts and Letters Alumni Panel, Hoboken NJ
This is another educational event that isn’t open to the public unfortunately, but it is exciting! Last year I was invited to return to my alma mater to field questions from incoming high school students about the art program at the Stevens Institute of Technology. I’m returning again this year, and since Where Shadows Slumber is out on iOS you can bet your tail I’ll be mentioning it every other sentence.
October 23rd – Postmortem @ Stevens Game Development Club, Hoboken NJ
Jack and I have been invited back to our old stomping grounds at Stevens in order to stomp on the ground. (We’re fantastic at it – it’s all about ankle strength, really.) The Stevens Game Development Club was a fantastic resource for us during our college years. I don’t know if I would even be making games if not for the connections I made during my time with the club. We’re returning to do a full postmortem about Where Shadows Slumber and field questions from an audience of aspiring young indie developers. Come join us if you’re in the area, it’s free!
October 27th – Playcrafting’s Halloween Game Expo
We’re so glad Playcrafting is doing their Halloween Game Expo again this year. After a brief hiatus from the Microsoft Technology Center in Manhattan, Playcrafting is back at their usual spot for a fun-filled Halloween weekend event. We still have pictures from last year, where Jack went as Buster from Arrested Development and I went as “Frank forgot you had to bring a costume.” It was a blast, and we can’t wait to return with our finished game! The Playcrafting general audience has been waiting for Where Shadows Slumber for a long time.
November
November is an exciting month! I’ll be travelling to Australia to hit up two conventions “down under.” I originally wanted to hit up PAX Australia while I was going to be in the country, but we didn’t make it into their indie section. (It will be easier to apply to this stuff now that the game is finished – submitting dev builds is always shaky) Here’s our November schedule:
November 2nd – 4th – Supanova Adelaide
I’ll be visiting sunny Adelaide’s showgrounds to check out the first of two Supanova shows, Supanova Adelaide. I can’t wait to show off the game to an entirely new audience that’s probably never even heard of us before. If we meet any fans down there, I’d be pretty shocked. Surprise me, Adelaide!
November 9th – 11th – Supanova Brisbane
After Supanova Adelaide, I’ll fly to Brisbane for the convention the following weekend. It’s fortunate that they ended up right on top of each other, because Supanova has shows year-round. Lucky! For Supanova Brisbane, I’ll be in their chic Bytes and Backlots section, where are the cool people are.
What Did I Miss?
We don’t have anything solid in December yet. Are we passing up your favorite video game convention? Don’t let us make a terrible mistake! Leave a comment or harass me through some other digital medium, and I’ll update this post!
Now that our game Where Shadows Slumber has been on the App Store for nearly two weeks, I’m getting a better sense of how things work on the platform. The team was very excited to see our game near the “big boys and girls” of the App Store during our launch weekend. However, since then, our ranking in the Puzzle section has dropped. Where we were once #3, we are now only #196 as of this writing. It changes every day!
Apple’s algorithm for displaying these games is likely based on sales figures and the app’s rating – a combination of quality and popularity. Our rating is 4.2 out of 5 as of this writing, and it also changes every day as more reviews trickle in. This blog post is about our struggles this past week to keep our rating in the golden zone.
Mark Cuban always says “treat your customers like they own you – because they do.”
I’m Now A Customer Service Agent!
I did not expect this unlikely transition, but I’ve gone from head artist on Where Shadows Slumber to Game Revenant’s sole customer service rep. Between responding to reviews on our app page through App Store Connect, fielding questions over email, chatting with people through the Game Revenant Facebook Page, and even responding to bug-report tweets (!) most of my time is spent communicating with customers.
That’s a lot better than not communicating with customers of course, but I still wish I had more time to dedicate to promotion. For example, I’ve been dragging my feet releasing a full 1 minute long trailer. It still hasn’t gone live! I also planned to sign up for physical events where I can go to hawk our product in front of real customers, but I haven’t prepared as much of that as I would have liked.
Even so, responding to customers is my number 1 priority. We want our rating (4.2) to be as close to 5.0 as possible. You’ll never get a perfect 5.0, so the question becomes “how do we get our average rating as high as possible?” Most of our friends and family probably already reviewed our game at this point, so we can only get new 5 star reviews from new fans. But my strategy is to be super nice to everyone who left a 1-star review, in the hopes that they change their mind. This has already happened once, so the plan is working! (See above – this user experienced crashes and left a 1-star review. After some compassionate understanding and furious debugging, they changed their mind!)
Furious Debugging and Patching
Speaking of furious debugging, if you read Jack’s post last week, you’re aware that some players have encountered serious bugs with our game. Those problems are gone now, but it’s a shame so much of our launch week was spent focusing on these issues. I’ve learned a valuable lesson about Static Objects and the Memory readout in Xcode – one I shall not soon forget! I had a feeling our first few weeks would be focused on debugging, but I was hoping the errors would not be so widespread.
This caused a delay in responding to customers as well, because I didn’t want to reply to them before the issue was fixed. I’m happy to say that we’re mostly good now, at least on Apple devices from the last three years. If you’ve encountered any serious errors your first time playing our game, please download the most recent version of Where Shadows Slumber from the App Store and you’ll find it good as new!
Help Us Out!
Don’t forget to pick up your copy of Where Shadows Slumber on iOS and leave a 5-star rating. I’m going to ask for that every single time I make a blog post from this point on! It’s super useful and it helps us climb back up to the top of the chart where this game belongs. The higher we are on the chart, the more people will see our game. That means a higher potential for sales, which is money in the pockets of everyone who worked so hard on the game.
And if you’re waiting for Android… just wait longer! We’re ramping up Android testing as we speak. I hope to have more details for you next week.
And share the shortened link with your friends: bit.ly/WSS-iOS
If you’re not sure what “pre-ordering” means, read on…
What Is A Pre-Order?
When a game is available for pre-order, it’s very close to launching on the App Store. So close in fact, that you can tell Apple you want to download the game the instant it becomes available on the App Store! Because Apple knows our game is launching so soon, they may place Where Shadows Slumber on a special “Coming Soon” section of the App Store to advertise it to their customers.
You can’t play it until the game is really available on September 20th, but you can share it with all of your friends! If you pre-order the game, you’ll be charged $4.99 USD on September 20th and the game will load on your device that day.
Tired of waiting for the game to launch? Sorry… we couldn’t pass up this marketing opportunity. Getting the game on App Store’s “Coming Soon” list is a huge boost for a small studio like ours! Besides, it ensures that we can spend the next two weeks marketing and talking to journalists before players get their hands on the game. When people start playing, I’m sure I’ll have to be glued to Twitter and Gmail answering people’s questions and giving them cryptic hints. It’s nice to have a reprieve… this is the calm before the storm.
Do I Have To Buy The Game Right Now?
Yes, you do.
…
Ok, not really. You can wait until the game launches for real on September 20th before committing to a purchase. Some people like to wait until reviews come out from other customers or game journalists – that’s fine with us. (I do that, too) Chances are that if you follow this blog, you’ve already decided that you’re buying the game. If that’s not the case, just wait a few weeks! We’re confident that Where Shadows Slumber will be a critical success. We’ve put years of work into this game, and we know you’ll be impressed with the final product.
Now that the development phase of our product life cycle is behind us, the Where Shadows Slumber team is putting all of its focus behind advertising the game in anticipation of our upcoming launch. Last night, I met with Alba, Noah, and Caroline at Buzzfeed’s NY headquarters to discuss our strategy. (Jack is knee deep in wedding preparation this week, but we sent him our notes afterward) Shout out to Caroline for hosting us and giving us a tour! The Buzzfeed offices are awesome. I made sure to line my pockets with free candy every time I said I was “going to the bathroom.”
We’ve been pretty transparent about our process these past two years. Though I won’t reveal our planned iOS release date in this post, I can share with you everything we discussed at our marketing meeting last night. I hope this give you a sense of how small indie teams try to spread the word about their products. You’ll notice we’re leaning heavily on free / earned advertising, with a smaller focus on paid advertising. You may also notice that this is a ton of work. As we say all the time, marketing is really a full time job! If you can get someone on your team who does that around the clock, go for it. Wearing multiple hats is pretty stressful.
OK, enough whining! Let’s dive into the details…
Teasing With Teasers
The standard formula for movie promotion these days seems to be:
Release a tiny teaser video that builds anticipation for a new product
Release a short video that announces the movie’s release date and builds anticipation for the next trailer
Release a trailer video that hypes up the final product once consumers can take some kind of market action (e.g. buying a movie ticket)
We decided to do something similar with Where Shadows Slumber. Over the next few weeks, you’ll see a few different videos go up on YouTube to announce the launch of the game. Alba composed different musical tracks for each video, and I’m going to film portions of the game to line up with them. (Play the audio file above to hear the rough cut – don’t worry, there isn’t supposed to be a video with it yet!)
Apple has a button on iTunes Connect that allows us to make the game available for pre-order. This wasn’t what we originally planned, but it seems like games that are available for pre-order are featured on a special part of the App Store. (Now that I have a bunch of iPhones lying around, I check the App Store constantly) If we can get on that pre-order list, we may be placed directly in front of a few million people each week. That would be awesome!
I’m not a big fan of pre-ordering games, personally. I tend to wait until games have been out for years before buying them. But I understand there are a lot of fans out there who don’t want to miss our game and want to play it the second it comes out. Also, any chance to get the game in a premium spot on the App Store is one we can’t afford to pass up. Stay tuned to this blog for more information! Teasers, trailers and announcements will all go up here as well as the Game Revenant Facebook Page, Twitter feed, and Instagram feed.
Journalists and Children First!
There’s another standard industry practice we decided to go with: emailing codes to reviewers ahead of time. Apple will give you 100 free promotional codes that allow iPhone users to download your game even if it’s not released to the public. As long as the build is in the iTunes Connect system and has been approved by Apple, they can use the code to get the game for 28 days.
Journalists will get the game ahead of time, and we’re going to insist that they don’t release their reviews before a certain date. (This date will be prior to the full release of the game, but will likely be after pre-orders have begun.) This is usually referred to as an embargo. I used to think it was a dirty word, but my feelings have changed now that I’m a publisher instead of a consumer. The purpose of an embargo is to make sure that smaller outlets don’t get left in the dust by big sites like IGN. You also want to ensure that people play your game thoroughly instead of rushing out a review. By telling people that their review can’t go live before a certain date, you’re giving everyone else time to catch up with the big boys.
We have no way of enforcing this. If Polygon decides to scoop everyone else, there’s nothing we can do against a media giant. I guess I just hold a grudge forever, and don’t send them a code next time? It’s a bit weird. Anyway, if you think an embargo is something only shady game developers do, I think you’re mistaken. If we insisted on a Day 1 embargo, though… that would be a different story. Reviews for the game will definitely come out before the game is playable by the public, have no fear!
The Where Shadows Slumber World Tour!
Ok, not really.
But at our meeting, we tried to list as many local educational institutions we could possibly think of, so we can go on tour giving lectures about the game. That probably doesn’t seem like something that would attract a massive audience, but I think it’s important. First of all, we’re all dying to talk about our game! We’d love to do a talk at the NYU Game Center, Stevens, some NY high schools, and any podcasts that would have us. We have so much knowledge to share!
More importantly though, we need content to post on our various social media channels to keep people engaged. We can’t just post GIFs of the game, or we’ll eventually give every one of our secrets away. So even if Jack and I talk about the game to a small room of 25 high school students, that video can then get posted to Facebook and reach 4,000 people. There’s really no speaking engagement too small or insignificant for us: everything can be spun into a good social media post.
Our list wasn’t very long, sadly. A lot of these institutions would rather see us become a success before booking us, rather than helping us attain success. No problem – I totally understand. We’ll see how the game does at launch, and try to jump from one talk to another. Hopefully we get to the point where people are dying to book us!
Do you have a classroom, podcast, or event that requires a speaker? Email me at contact@GameRevenant.com with details! We’re doing this pro-bono, so there’s no need for speaker fees or anything.
There aren’t too many conventions happening during the remainder of 2018, other than some Playcrafting stuff. So we’re definitely going to whatever Dan Butchko is throwing at the end of September / mid-October! If we put together an actual “tour,” I’ll put some kind of cool map graphic in a future blog post for you to all see. We might try for PAX East 2019, too. Man, it feels weird typing that. Remember PAX East 2017?
A Website Overhaul
Caroline mentioned last night that our current website could use an overhaul – it’s basically just a splash page right now, because that’s all we really needed. Fairly soon, we’ll be ready for the professional website to go live with screenshots from the final game and a few new features. I’m really excited about that! Web design was never my specialty, but it’s so important for putting on a good first impression.
Most people will experience our game for the first and only time through the App Store. But, for those fans who find out about our game via social media or some kind of ad, they’ll probably get sent to the website. What we have up right now is kind of like a demo website – it shows off the team, some awards we won, and our demo screenshots. We’ve also had a presskit up for a year or two, but I don’t know how many journalists availed themselves of that resource.
The new website should hopefully have a separate section for the team (so it doesn’t clog up the main stretch) as well as some sweet parallax effects. We checked out the Firewatch website and got a little jealous. Don’t be surprised if you see us do something similar in the future…
Wait – Are We Spending Any Money?
So far, everything we’ve mentioned has been free advertising. Since we don’t have any paid conventions planned, and the cost of train tickets to Brooklyn doesn’t really count, none of the above counts as “paid advertising.” That’s a good thing, because our tiny indie coffers are a bit empty these days.
However, we’ll be making use of a few sources of paid advertising. These ad networks let you dip your toe in the water with a little bit of money first before going crazy, so we’ll run some test ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Google Search. If you’ve ever wondered how these companies make money, this is how – from us! I also won a contest last year and was awarded $1,000 in credit for advertising on PocketGamer.com, so we may pick up one of their indie bundles.
Our budget is pretty low here: we’re talking less than $3,000 across ALL of these platforms, for the weeks leading up to launch and then a few weeks afterward. Personally, I would love to see the game make a ton of money before doubling down on these ads. I also need to check the stats on the ads themselves to see if people are really clicking through them to the App Store. If you aren’t careful, internet advertising becomes a dopamine game: put money in, see some orange bars fill up, get happy, and repeat. I want results! We may do an entire blog post about our ads if we get some interesting findings. Stay tuned…
What’s Next?
Now that we have this plan in place, we have to actually do all of it! There’s still a few things left to plan, however. I want the team to have a spreadsheet listing every action item we need to do on launch day, with labels for who is responsible and the time this needs to go live. (This is stuff like “when do we post an announcement blog?” and “when do we all change our Facebook header to an advertisement for the game?”)
And of course, I need to plan out a whole series of teaser posts for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Our Instagram in particular could use some love… I’m just learning how to use that app, and we barely have any followers. I haven’t really spammed those channels over the past few years, but now is the time to let people know something is coming down the pipe. I always hear that you need to see something about 20 times before you’ll buy it. I’ve heard that at least 20 times, so it finally makes sense to me!
Thanks for reading this marketing update! If you’re new to this blog, you can find out more about our game at WhereShadowsSlumber.com, ask us on Twitter (@GameRevenant), Facebook, itch.io, or Twitch, and feel free to email us directly at contact@GameRevenant.com.
Frank DiCola is the founder of Game Revenant and the artist for Where Shadows Slumber.
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