Release and marketing plan for a PC indie video game

Abstract

This work aimed to bring value to those interested in independent game development working on their first games. The goal was to find out information about different release platforms, such as what would be the requirements, costs and benefits of releasing a game on each platform.

The study includes a brief look at the video game industry’s state and how did it get there. Followed by presenting information about the most well-known marketplaces for PC games with a high number of users.

As indie game market is quite crowded, a game’s release is easily buried among other titles without effective marketing. The second goal was to find out how to market an indie game effectively on a minimum budget.

The focus on marketing portion was on a first-hand report from a successful indie game developer through an interview, where he described his marketing process. This interview was chosen from many similar ones, as it presented many marketing considerations clearly, starting from pre-production. I also included a basic 4P marketing theory to ground the marketing ideas and concepts.

Qualitative methods were chosen for the study, as a deeper understanding of the subject would be more beneficial in reaching the goal, and for the work to be more easily adaptable to different types of indie games. An in-depth interview was conducted which helped adapt the ideas from the interview in the marketing portion to be best suited for an inexperienced game developer.

The conclusions were to choose the goals for the game’s release before starting the project, whether it would be made to build experience and gather feedback for the game’s ideas, or would it be for potential commercial success and revenue. In the case of the former, the marketing is not as relevant, but it can help getting more engagement and feedback. The marketability of the game should be considered during the pre-production stage, while other efficient methods would be preparing store pages for the game with a well-crafted trailer, visiting indie game festivals and contacting influencers and game media through mailing lists. For the release platform, other than the low initial costs, there are no obvious reasons to avoid any of them in the case of an indie game, where maximizing the game’s exposure is beneficial.