How developers promoted Dead Cells at the Early Access stage
The former marketing manager of Motion Twin, Steve Filby, told in detail how one of the main indie releases of this summer, metroidvania Dead Cells, was progressing.
In an interview with GamesIndustry, he revealed that the promotion strategy was based on working in three directions: streamers, press and events.
Streamers
“The essence of the strategy for working with streamers was to do everything differently from the rest of the teams,” says Philby. – “The majority seeks to negotiate with the major streamers themselves, to promote themselves with their help, which implies spending money. We did everything completely differently.”
Philby compares the culture of streamers to an echo chamber. All influencers closely monitor what their colleagues and competitors are doing. And instead of paying $30 thousand per hour for one top streamer, Motion Twins began to distribute access to the demo of Dead Cells to small channels. The studio was sure that they were watched by slightly larger video bloggers, who, in turn, are tracked by really popular streamers.
Dead Cells
“We started with streamers whose online audience is 0-5 viewers, gave them a demo, then we had streamers with an online audience of 5-25 people, then from 25-100, from 100-1000 and so on.
This happened gradually over the course of three months,” says Philby. — “And about two or three weeks before the preliminary launch, we pitched the full version of the game to top YouTube and Twitch bloggers under the condition of an embargo. And we saw that they had already played our demo earlier. By the way, many of them had previously asked to send a code with access to it.”
Working with streamers led to the fact that the release of the game as part of early access in May 2017 was supported by a wave of reviews from the media. There was also a publication from Polygon, which gave the game nine out of ten points. The support from the press helped to get free coverage from those top streamers who had previously asked for money for the video.
“Since we had a press and a good base of influencers, the rest of the top streamers could no longer ignore us,” says Philby.
Press
Motion Twins believes that media publications are important, but they do not directly affect sales. “When we look at where traffic comes from, it definitely doesn’t come from the media,” Philby explains.
The role of the press is different. It is necessary in order to attract the attention of key people in the industry. They are her regular readers.
“The coverage of the game by the major press gives it legitimacy in the eyes of people. This increases the game’s awareness among potential buyers, convinces major streamers that the game is worth their time, and also puts the game on the radar of platform owners, which can also be critical for the success of the game.”
How to get to the pages of publications? According to Philby, there are websites and developer communities where journalists traditionally look for good indie projects. Also, many editorial offices still track information about such projects in social media by the tags #gamedev and #indiedev.
Dead CellsEvents
Of the $150,000 that Motion Twins spent on marketing, $60,000 went to participate in exhibitions and conferences. This amount may seem like a lot, but Philby believes that participation in events should not be underestimated. They can meet and discuss the launch of the game with Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and Valve.
“The same Valve tries not to interfere with the promotion, its app store is mostly automated. At the same time, if Valve sees your game, if it’s almost out and it’s doing well with the indicators, it can, let’s say, help a little,” says Philby.
Plus, at b2c events, the sale of merchandise for the game can partially discourage event crutches. The same T-shirts.
Release after early access
A year after the release in Early Access, the developers very successfully released the final version of the game (a month before the second launch, the game had 181 million minutes of views on Twitch, after — 325 million). The company also approached this launch wisely.
Before the full release, she not only announced its date, but also announced the release of the game on consoles, integration with Twitch, a physical release, and also presented an animated trailer.
“Keep reminding people that you’re here,” Philby says. – “When the animated trailer comes out, when exclusive access to Twitch integration and the final version of the game are unlocked, everything is here. They are waiting and literally banging on the door.”
On Steam, Dead Cells currently has more than 1 million owners. Also, as a result of last August, the game entered the Top 10 best-selling Nintendo Switch projects in Europe.
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