Last week I attended the Digital Distribution Summit here in Melbourne with fellow Escape Factory collaborator John. Even though the name makes you think it would be terribly boring, (it probably should have been called the Digital Games Distribution Summit, bit I digress) it was actually very good.

You can watch all of the speakers on the DDSummit site, which you should go and do now, and not bother reading this silly post.

If you are still reading, I will give you my belated thoughts on the content provided in the summit. If you did not attend or have no idea what I am talking about then here is the very brief overview:

The DDSummit was geared towards indie level game developers who are looking to take advantage of the increasingly popular and available digital distribution methods (like XBLA, PSX, WiiWare, AppStore etc..) The talks ranged all over but ultimately were there to help the little guy (thats us!) succeed in this new marketplace. There is a smaller barrier to entry to the indie game market now than any other time in history.

So that is the overview, what are some of the specifics?

Since I am an iPhone developer (so far) I mostly tried to apply everything that was being said to my situation (which is: zero budget development for iPhone).

The biggest thing that I took away from this event was that marketing is the single most important thing you can be doing right now. (cynically, I might even say that it is more important than having a good game) This is of course not really news to me, but having it laid out so many times and so clearly, it really hit home the fact that we are not marketing our stuff enough. This is a common problem with the indies, we are all very good at what we do (which might be programming, artwork, game design, sound, etc..) but we are not really very good at marketing (otherwise we would be professional marketing types right?)

The presenters made many good points re: marketing. If you make the best game ever and nobody knows about it, then nobody will buy it.

That begs the question: How do we, as indie developers who suck at marketing.... how do we get the word out?

This is a summary, in no particular order of the hints, suggestions and tips to better marketing. Some of these are directly from the talks and others are things that I synthesized from my notes.

• Start your marketing on day one. Do not build a protorype, do not write a design document, do not brainstorm game mechanics. The very first thing you need to do is start the marketing process. Write a blog post, tweet, whatever. Then start the actual development. Well, ok that might be a bit hyperbolic, but marketing needs to be in your plan from the very start.
• Marketing should be part of your dev process. Just like everything else you are doing to build your game. Add marketing tasks into the flow. Blog about what you are doing, tweet your advances and your challenges, solicit gamer feedback from your early design ideas
• Define your target audience. Figure out who is going to care about this game you are making. Define a narrow group of people (dont say: this game is for everyone! because it isn't.) focus on a realistic group and cater your marketing to that group.
• Define your brand. As indies this tends to get lost. Also often the brand become synonymous with the first successful game you develop. As indies, our brand is our individual style and story. Half of selling your games and ideas as an indie is having a compelling story. By story I mean who you are and what it is you do.
• Twitter. I think I heard the word twitter or tweet about 900 times. Twitter is the current social networking fad, and you should be using it. Twitter is a multiplier for word of mouth. Similarly, you should be abusing your facebook friends and using all those digital contacts to help push your game.
• Blog. You should have some sort of web site/blog for your game or development studio. (like this one! hello!) Try to keep your blog fairly up to date with current topical posts that people will hopefully find interesting. This will help keep your name and game in the tops of people's minds.
• Make good gameplay videos. Sometime after day 1, when you already started your marketing and everyone is anticipating your game release, you will need to make a good gameplay video. Again, tailor this to your target audience. Be sure to show some actual gameplay though. There is nothing more annoying than a game trailer that has no actual game footage.
• Enter every festival and contest you can. Do you qualify for the entry requirements? then enter it. Even if you don't get in, or don't win you will generally get some exposure and some good game player feedback.
• Engage the community Go and be active in the forums and the blogs that are specific to your target audience. Be a part of the gamer community. Give back via your blog. Post how-tos and code snippets.

That is a pretty good list to start.

Trust me when I tell you that I sympathize with all the indies out there who are already busy just trying to build their games, let alone do all that other stuff. It took me a week just to write this post because I was too busy with other projects. However, in order to be a successful game developer you need to also be a successful marketer.

Cheers!
-B