Frozen Synapse and Notes On Marketing Silliness
by Paul "nervous_testpilot" Taylor · 08/19/2009 (4:05 pm) · 2 comments
We've been working hard on getting our strategy title Frozen Synapse towards a first beta, and we have a week of crunch starting Monday in order to get everything into an operable form....
Synapse was intended as a multiplayer turn-based strategy game, but we alwasy knew that it'd need a compelling single player component in order to draw people in.
We've also had some exciting developments on the graphics front today and these changes will be in the game soon. I'm hoping to get a preview video of this new content up as soon as possible.
The thing I've found most challenging in this very early phase of design is trying to capture the essence of the game at low difficulty levels. I want to draw players in with exciting situations, but avoid overwhelming them straight out of the tutorial. So many games get this wrong and its one thing I'm going to be focussing on next week.
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We've also been putting out initial PR for the game, managing to get on a few big sites like Boing Boing Offworld. Our weekly podcast Visiting the Village is really helping build a little community at this early stage, and that's exactly what I wanted to happen.
It's funny how you can just forget fairly obvious tennets of marketing if you don't practise enough. It's been so long since we tried to promote a game ourselves that I forgot that silliness sells...
When we were working on Determinance, we used to post fairly silly updates (I seem to remember videos of cats tipping over different game boxes) on here and it was really good to get some support for us and our ludicrous endeavours.
So, with that in mind, here's the first part of my gonzo developer diary...
The Meaningless Diary of an Indie Game Man Part 1
I'd syndicate it here but everything on GG has to be unique content, according to the rules. Therefore I'm thinking of coming up with some different GG-specific stuff, probably a little more behind-the-scenes...
Anyway, I wanted to recommend emphasising the personality behind your games. Other developers have artists who are always sketching or producing small content - these can be great opportunities to promote your game. Keeping up a regular flow of fun promo content is always a good plan - not being a dick about it is also wise.
I'm hoping that a mixture of boring things like paying for ads at a low level to build traffic to the blog, and fun things like writing silly provocative updates everywhere I can, will help to build interest in the game.
I've written a big piece for Gamasutra on indie game marketing which should be up fairly soon - most of my thoughts on that subject are in there. Even though I'm a relative beginner in this field, I still thought it would be worth sharing some of the valuable info that's out there.
Synapse was intended as a multiplayer turn-based strategy game, but we alwasy knew that it'd need a compelling single player component in order to draw people in.
We've also had some exciting developments on the graphics front today and these changes will be in the game soon. I'm hoping to get a preview video of this new content up as soon as possible.
The thing I've found most challenging in this very early phase of design is trying to capture the essence of the game at low difficulty levels. I want to draw players in with exciting situations, but avoid overwhelming them straight out of the tutorial. So many games get this wrong and its one thing I'm going to be focussing on next week.
---
We've also been putting out initial PR for the game, managing to get on a few big sites like Boing Boing Offworld. Our weekly podcast Visiting the Village is really helping build a little community at this early stage, and that's exactly what I wanted to happen.
It's funny how you can just forget fairly obvious tennets of marketing if you don't practise enough. It's been so long since we tried to promote a game ourselves that I forgot that silliness sells...
When we were working on Determinance, we used to post fairly silly updates (I seem to remember videos of cats tipping over different game boxes) on here and it was really good to get some support for us and our ludicrous endeavours.
So, with that in mind, here's the first part of my gonzo developer diary...
The Meaningless Diary of an Indie Game Man Part 1
I'd syndicate it here but everything on GG has to be unique content, according to the rules. Therefore I'm thinking of coming up with some different GG-specific stuff, probably a little more behind-the-scenes...
Anyway, I wanted to recommend emphasising the personality behind your games. Other developers have artists who are always sketching or producing small content - these can be great opportunities to promote your game. Keeping up a regular flow of fun promo content is always a good plan - not being a dick about it is also wise.
I'm hoping that a mixture of boring things like paying for ads at a low level to build traffic to the blog, and fun things like writing silly provocative updates everywhere I can, will help to build interest in the game.
I've written a big piece for Gamasutra on indie game marketing which should be up fairly soon - most of my thoughts on that subject are in there. Even though I'm a relative beginner in this field, I still thought it would be worth sharing some of the valuable info that's out there.
About the author
#2
08/20/2009 (10:41 am)
Cheers Brian! Just had some new art assets put in there which I'm going to get a look at later today. 
Torque Owner Brian Crick
Can't wait to see this in action!