A screenshot from love you tender (My game)

It’s easy to dive right into marketing your game without taking a moment to figure out who your target market is. Heck, I do it. This is especially the case if the game you are making is still in production. It’s hard to know who will play it from the get-go.

Marketing online often feels like you’re screaming into the void. It takes a lot of time and patience to build up a community, and at the start it can feel pretty discouraging. I wanted to make a resource that game developers can use at any point in their process. Regardless of whether you are just starting out or if you’ve already built a game, this will be a good way to help you find your target market.

First of all it’s important to remember that product-market fit is a two way street. You look at your game to determine your market, and you look at your market when designing your game. Keep in mind that both your product and your market will evolve over time, and that’s natural.

A screenshot from Braid (2008)

Day dream a little bit

Let’s start with a mindset shift. Out there somewhere there is someone who is dying to buy your game. There is someone out there who loves what you love, and loves what you’re making. Focus on the feeling you would get from connecting with that person that truly appreciates your work. Imagine them telling you how fun your game is, how it might have changed their life, brought them peace, opened their mind. Whenever you feel like you’re in a rut, return to this feeling.

Ok let’s get into this. Take out your notebook, a piece of paper, or a text file and write this down.

The Process

1. Identify the genre of your game

There’s three ways to determine your game genre – by mechanic, by story, and by art. Your combination of these three categories will be your unique offer to the world of video games. And each individual aspect will help you place your game in the sea of gamers.

Briefly describe your game mechanics, your story, and your art. If there is no story then try to pin-point the feeling that you wish your players to have when playing your game.

Example

This is what I put for the game that I am currently working on.

Game Mechanics: 2D sidescroller platformer.

Story: The game-feel is heart warming and peaceful. I don’t have a full story laid out, but I know that there will be fantasy elements, unique creatures, and a heavy nature influence.

Art: Whimsical, hand painted with bright colours. Odd looking but endearing characters. Not particularly realistic.

A screenshot from Ori and the Blind Forest (2015)

2. Find similar games

First list up to 3 games for each of the above categories. Three games with similar mechanics, three games with similar story or game-feel, and three games with similar art styles. The games can be new or retro, indie or AAA, but they should be profitable and well-loved games. This will give you a lot of case study material to apply to your own market positioning.

Example

Game Mechanics: Celeste, Donkey Kong Country

Story: Ori and the Blind Forest, Flower, Okami

Art: Braid, Psychonauts

A screenshot from Psychonauts (2005)

3. Identify sister genres

Next, list other media that matches up with your three categories. You can pick movies, shows, novels, anime, music, even things like tabletop games, and hobbies that line up. This information will really help flesh out the entire personality of your ideal player.

Example

Avatar, Princess Mononoke, Star Trek, Nathan Pyle’s Strange Planet, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Dune, The Secret World of Arrietty

A screenshot from The Secret World of Arrietty (2010)

4. Join the fandoms

So now that you’ve found all of the media that is similar or inspirational to your game, pick the top three most related ones. Then find out where the fans of these top three hang out online. Look on youtube for fan videos. Check out subreddits, find twitter communities, and discord channels. What about instagram and facebook groups? Join the groups, follow the hashtags, join the discords, heck, even follow the people on twitter.

The idea is, the people who are interested in the games, movies, books, and other media that you just listed may also be very interested in your game. Time to gain more insight into who these people are, what they like, and what drives them. This is an exercise that you can start now, but the information and understanding will be built up from observation over time.

Save all of the commentary that stands out to you. It’s always a useful reference, and will help in Step 5.

A screenshot from Celeste (2018)

5. Create personas

Once you have an understanding of the people in these similar fandoms, you can start to build character personas for your ideal customer. A persona is basically a fictional and generalized type of person who can represent a subset of your target market. Here are some of the things that will make up a character persona:

Name

Gender

Age

Personal style

Favourite games

Favourite movies

Social media of choice

Job

Current obsessions

Things they hate

Motivations and goals

When creating your persona, you can use as many reference as you can to the conversations or comments you’ve found in your research. If you have specific people you’ve found on twitter, or redditors, or comments on youtube, add their usernames and comments to the persona they fit best. Keep this private, as I have a feeling people would not like to see themselves related to the fictional and generalized personas you create.

A screenshot from Flower (2009)

How to use this information

Part of this exercise is to solidify your ideal game player in your mind. Imagining who you’re making this for, regardless of which stage of development you are in, will ensure you continue to tailor your work and marketing to the right people.

The other side of it is the value you get from engaging with and participating in communities where your ideal players hang out. This will be the main focus of my next blog post – all about tapping into existing communities to build your own.

It’s a good start

I hope this was a helpful exercise for you to find your game target market. I’d be really interested to hear some of what you come up with. What are the 3 aspects of your game genre? What are the motivations of your top persona? Share them in the comments below! It will be helpful for other game developers to see different examples too.

I share a lot more indie game marketing information like this in my Game Dev Friend’s Club – so be sure to join if you want to want to learn more. I’ll be sending an email out as the other blog posts in this series are released. Otherwise, if you have any questions, as always, feel free to comment or tweet me @juul1a.

Much love!

Julia