using girls to promote computer game

Gertex said:
o hai guys: You seem like you are pretty squared away guy since you took the immense time and effort to create a good product.

Please don't take this the wrong way: Don't ever freaking take a shit, where you eat.

In other words - don't use your sisters girlfriends. You will ALWAYS be indebted to them, FOREVER (even if it's illogical since they only did one photo shoot for you). In their eyes you will OWE your success to them (which technically is bullshit but try convince them off that).

It's always better to pay for what you need and since there are a ton of different methods of marketing a great product - you said you are spending 40k-50k on marketing already - pay the extra couple hundred. To me the couple of bucks, are worth the peace of mind.

Hire yourself a professional photographer, advertise on craigslist and mention that you are looking to trade headshots for them appearing in your advertisements if you REALLY want to go down the hot chick route...

Go the Guerilla Marketing route for instance: Which site/blog/magazine would you like to be featured in? Now, go to Facebook and see if folks in that firm have accounts, that are linked to their company. Next create a facebook marketing campaign and target only their 50 employees with 2 different campaigns.

You can do the same thing for Good Morning America etc. etc.. Find out who their staffers are and do some innovative targeted marketing.

Where is the firm located? What other firms are located within a 2 mile radius? Is there a billboard for rent, which you can advertise on? Will cost you a couple grand but ya think they might react/get curious seeing a billboard that's located directly across the street?

Who are the most influential bloggers/writers that would cover your game? Get their email addresses at which point you make a game out of it - create a website like - Doyouwanttoplaythegame.com (didn't check if that site actually exists - you get the gist) then on the webpage all it says - Do you want to play the game? Underneath you put an easy riddle for them to solve sending them to an image, that gets their curiosity going like kickassscreenshot but make sure it ports them to a different website. Now, they are emotionally involved and want to see what else is there....? Make the riddles harder - the payoff could be a trailer to your game and a little submit form (For a free game including shipping fill out form). Now you have their name and address. Send some swag their way.

On another note... you could make this a fun game for the game community.. simple webpage with blinking cursor and the riddle... Trust me - real gamers (and those are the guys that'll spread the word for you) will eat out your hands doing this.

Another idea - find some of the biggest gaming websites and look at their forums... Who are the mods? Who are the most established members. Then contact them and ask them to beta-test for you - in exchange you'll plant little easter eggs into the game. Think about it: How cool would it be if you played Halo and somewhere randomly is an image that says in graffiti art - 'o hai guys was here'.

Long story short - do your research and then offer your target group, an unusual (outside of the box) hook that get's them interested.

However, pimping out your sister and her hot friends... wouldn't go there... Unless... hold on... how about some nekkid pictures of her here on WF???

Thought so... don't do it!
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^^I agree 1000%

Bro don't ever use family members or friends. Also go on to GFY Webmaster Board and make a thread that you need shots with your game and check everyone's rates. You can get like 5 really hot girls with shots for like $500 easily. If you really want to hit it hard get a well known pornstar to do it (PM my friend has made sites for some so I can prob get you good deal :)). Nerds+Game+Pic with pornstar and game= EPIC and will prob be all over reddit. I'm pretty sure 95% of gamers know or recognize their pornstars.

There are so many ways you can market this. Look at Evony and their hot chick campaign that shit blew up everywhere.

AIM me for more info i-a-m-d-o-t-h-a-c-k without the -
 


Take the 40-50k you were going to spend on advertising, and pay yourself 20k to turn it into a facebook game with micro-payments, then take the remaining 30k and turn it into a CPA offer, get it on one of the larger networks and voila u = millionaire overnight.
 
Gertex said:
Who are the most influential bloggers/writers that would cover your game? Get their email addresses at which point you make a game out of it - create a website like - Doyouwanttoplaythegame.com (didn't check if that site actually exists - you get the gist) then on the webpage all it says - Do you want to play the game? Underneath you put an easy riddle for them to solve sending them to an image, that gets their curiosity going like kickassscreenshot but make sure it ports them to a different website. Now, they are emotionally involved and want to see what else is there....? Make the riddles harder - the payoff could be a trailer to your game and a little submit form (For a free game including shipping fill out form). Now you have their name and address. Send some swag their way.

On another note... you could make this a fun game for the game community.. simple webpage with blinking cursor and the riddle... Trust me - real gamers (and those are the guys that'll spread the word for you) will eat out your hands doing this.

Another idea - find some of the biggest gaming websites and look at their forums... Who are the mods? Who are the most established members. Then contact them and ask them to beta-test for you - in exchange you'll plant little easter eggs into the game. Think about it: How cool would it be if you played Halo and somewhere randomly is an image that says in graffiti art - 'o hai guys was here'.

Long story short - do your research and then offer your target group, an unusual (outside of the box) hook that get's them interested.
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I like these ideas a lot. Instead of using my friends to beta test I might as well use guys who can help promote it at the same time. You got me thinking I might even do a contest where people with Youtube channels can post a trailer or commentary of the game and whoever has the best one gets a new TV or something.

bizzykehl said:
Take the 40-50k you were going to spend on advertising, and pay yourself 20k to turn it into a facebook game with micro-payments, then take the remaining 30k and turn it into a CPA offer, get it on one of the larger networks and voila u = millionaire overnight.
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I am planning to link it with Facebook so it links their data (scores, achievements, etc) to their Facebook username and people can look up their friends' scores. What do you mean by micro-payments though, you talking about Super Rewards and shit like that?

I didn't think about turning it into an offer but that's not a bad idea. I want to sell the game for $5 though so I'd have to offer a pretty low cpa where I think most existing game installs pay at least $1+ ... I'd have to convert at 20% just to break even which doesn't seem feasible.

(O_o) said:
also what did you program your game in?

is it java based? flash?
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It's flash.
 
Stover said:
get these girls trained up on your game and run a straight up elimination tourney... dudes want to play hot chicks... figuring out a longer life span for this model may be more challenging...

lots of different options you could do there. Doesn't have to be elimination tourney either... could be Mortal Kombat style where you have to keep beating people to win the whole thing, each girl being better than the last...
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I thought about this but the number of people who could enter a single tournament would be insanely low compared to the number of games I want to sell.

However I could use the tournament as more of a linkbait thing instead of an actual way to make money. Maybe make it free to enter or have some requirement like the first 20 guys to invite all their friends, and then record all of it including the girls' reactions and post it on the site. I'll have to think about that.
 
btw, for facebook, does anyone know if you can use a business page as a developer account for an app or do you have to use a personal profile?
 
secci said:
personal profile to manage fb applications
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Yeah I'm trying to decide if I want to use my personal profile or if I should make another one with my company name and add "corp" to the end of it or something for the last name. I think it would look a little unprofessional just linking it to my own personal profile so it's a little silly that they want you to do that.
 
one fb profile for personal
one fb profile for professional.
Hell and at least another one for running ads
 
bobby_custard said:
one fb profile for personal
one fb profile for professional.
Hell and at least another one for running ads
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I mean I'd rather have my company name show up as the developer instead of my personal name but fb blocks personal profiles from having words like "media" "llc" etc so it really limits what you can do. I don't really care about people seeing my personal profile I'd just rather have a business name show up.
 
What do you think about offering a free demo vs not offering it? I'm not exactly sure why some games offer demos and some don't, if you look at a lot of Xbox/PS3/PC games there isn't much of a relationship between a game's cost/scale and whether they decide to offer a demo or not.

I think it might be better to offer a demo while the game is still relatively unknown and is still getting off the ground, and then pulling it later. But at the same time I know some other indie games like Minecraft don't (really) have demos and people buy them based on word of mouth and Youtube gameplay vids. And if a user has already bought it, they're more likely to play it more since they already paid for it as opposed to giving up after a couple of minutes because it's too hard or something ... which then leads to better word of mouth advertising. Yet with a demo, I'll be able to attract buyers that probably wouldn't have bought it if there weren't a demo (assuming it's a quality game, which it is).

What do you think?
 
o hai guyz said:
What do you think about offering a free demo vs not offering it? I'm not exactly sure why some games offer demos and some don't, if you look at a lot of Xbox/PS3/PC games there isn't much of a relationship between a game's cost/scale and whether they decide to offer a demo or not.

I think it might be better to offer a demo while the game is still relatively unknown and is still getting off the ground, and then pulling it later. But at the same time I know some other indie games like Minecraft don't (really) have demos and people buy them based on word of mouth and Youtube gameplay vids. And if a user has already bought it, they're more likely to play it more since they already paid for it as opposed to giving up after a couple of minutes because it's too hard or something ... which then leads to better word of mouth advertising. Yet with a demo, I'll be able to attract buyers that probably wouldn't have bought it if there weren't a demo (assuming it's a quality game, which it is).

What do you think?
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Is it a game that looks cool to watch other people play or is it a game you have to actually play to really appreciate it.

Example would be some MMOs. Can you honestly go through watching someone hack and slash some monster to gain a level and be urged to buy it? Probably not. But if you play it, it's like you achieved something.
 
o hai guyz said:
What do you think about offering a free demo vs not offering it? I'm not exactly sure why some games offer demos and some don't, if you look at a lot of Xbox/PS3/PC games there isn't much of a relationship between a game's cost/scale and whether they decide to offer a demo or not.

I think it might be better to offer a demo while the game is still relatively unknown and is still getting off the ground, and then pulling it later. But at the same time I know some other indie games like Minecraft don't (really) have demos and people buy them based on word of mouth and Youtube gameplay vids. And if a user has already bought it, they're more likely to play it more since they already paid for it as opposed to giving up after a couple of minutes because it's too hard or something ... which then leads to better word of mouth advertising. Yet with a demo, I'll be able to attract buyers that probably wouldn't have bought it if there weren't a demo (assuming it's a quality game, which it is).

What do you think?
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Seriously dude, why try to GIVE AWAY your hard built game for free when you have all the advice you can handle in this thread?

Here are some of the main questions to which you have to have specific answers to:

Who is your target audience? (not just any dude that wants to have fun BUT males aged 32-40, that love shooters are married, etc. etc.)

Why should they buy your game?

Where does your target audience hang out?

Who are the influencers of your target audience?

Who are the 'gurus' etc. etc. they follow?

E.G.: If you want to target the above group, check out how much it is to sponsor part of the diggnation podcast or get Kevin Rose to say something funny by planting an easter egg with the diggnation logo into the game. Your target audience watches that show and a side benefit would be a bunch of stories on digg that could bring additional traffic.

Have FUN with it and enjoy the experience.

If you REALLY want to go down that road of giving your shit away free, make it shareware and give only the 1st level away.

You spend an incredible amount of time building a kick ass computer game. Now do yourself justice and do your homework...

Then market the hell out of it.... If nothing else, put the letters 'Acai' in the game title, contact a good network and offer a great commission for your Acai game. Then the folks on this board can market the shit of this and make some coin... (Provided the game is worth a damn..)
 
juntao65 said:
Is it a game that looks cool to watch other people play or is it a game you have to actually play to really appreciate it.

Example would be some MMOs. Can you honestly go through watching someone hack and slash some monster to gain a level and be urged to buy it? Probably not. But if you play it, it's like you achieved something.
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It's an action game and it looks really good in videos. At the same time, I'm trying to decide if offering a short playable demo would result in more sales long-term or not. Personally I only buy games if I'm completely sold on them or a lot of my friends recommend them - if I think it looks cool but I'm still on the fence, I just won't buy it.

Gertex said:
Here are some of the main questions to which you have to have specific answers to:

Who is your target audience? (not just any dude that wants to have fun BUT males aged 32-40, that love shooters are married, etc. etc.)
Why should they buy your game?
Where does your target audience hang out?
Who are the influencers of your target audience?
Who are the 'gurus' etc. etc. they follow?

If you REALLY want to go down that road of giving your shit away free, make it shareware and give only the 1st level away.
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Don't worry, I've had all those things answered for awhile. I have a solid marketing plan and to top it off I have a couple of buddies in Machinima who are gonna post a ton of gameplay videos of it. If I do offer a demo, I'd probably let people try the entire thing with no restrictions but it would cut them off after a specified time period. I tested something like that and it's easy enough to implement and to disallow account switching from the same IP. So people try it, their free time runs out, they like it, they buy it. Or I could scrap the demo period altogether and just expect the marketing and the gameplay vids to be enough to incite the same number of sales. That's 2 good options, I'm trying to figure out which one would be better and how existing games decide whether to offer demos or not.

Basically the pros are:
- Demo: People who weren't completely sold on the marketing/vids get a chance to try it, realize they like it, and buy it. But you lose some people who may think it's too hard, or they just don't like it.
- No demo: Eliminates people who would try the demo and think it's too hard and quit without buying it. But you lose the people who would have bought it after trying the demo and liking it.

Honestly I think it's a fucking amazing game and almost everyone I've invited to test it so far has loved it. That being said, there have been maybe 20% of people who tried it once or twice and thought it was too hard, and never played it again. Those are the people I would lose if I offered a demo - but I might also lose some of the 80% who loved it if I DIDN'T offer a demo and they never had a chance to try it. When I first bought Minecraft I played it a couple times and didn't like it that much, then a few days later I was like "fuck, I already paid for it, I might as well play it," and that was the time I hooked and became addicted to it and started recommending it to everyone.
 
I'd say it depends on how much game you have. Unless you ave a very simply game, where a demo can actually be its own game. a demo can only help you make more sales (as long as it plays like it looks in advertising).

If you have enough game where you can afford to give a small bit of it out, I would definitely do it.
 
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