INSIGHT - How to brand your game through words
pcgamesinsider.bizIn the first of a regular series of columns, Failbetter's marketing chief Haley Uyrus tells us about how developers can brand their projects using words alone
Whether you’re an indie dev or a games marketer, once you have a concrete game idea in development, one of the first things you’ll need marketing-wise is branding. In a digital age where everything is search optimised and transmitted through algorithms, the words you use to describe your game are important.
Branding is basically what marks your game as unique and keeps it from getting lost in the sea of all the other games for sale. Considering ICO Partner’s Steam newsletter often reports over 150 games released on Steam per week–it’s important to make sure your game’s identity is crisp and clear–that way it’ll get in front of the right players, streamers and journalists.
Whether you’re writing a store page, Kickstarter campaign or press release, these bits will be the base structure of your branding:
Title: Self-explanatory, but make sure your title Googles well
Tagline: A snippet of flavour text that can expand upon your title
Genre/keywords: Any applicable categories so people know what to expect
Short description/elevator pitch: How to get your game idea cross in one sentence
Long description: A fleshed out version of your short description that can include setting and backstory (if applicable)
List of USPs/game features: Mechanics and other parts of your game that are unique
1 - All Good Marketing Begins with Research
Outwards
An easy place to start is checking out what’s already on store platforms. Find out not only what your game’s competitors are doing, but also what the latest top-sellers are doing too. It’s just as helpful to find what pieces other games get right as well as what isn’t working for them.
Inwards
Check internally with your team too. If members of the dev team have different ideas about the game’s genre or USPs, then you’ll know which areas of the branding require some extra work. As the
