THE BUSINESS
the IGSU as much as I could through networking
and handing out business cards.
• Appearance and Public Image
I feel we excelled in presenting a well-organized
and professional public image. Commonly,
independent developers spend quite a bit of
time creating their titles, but fall a bit short in
the marketing department, and tend to send
out unpolished press material. In fact, I was
recently part of a panel at GDC Europe where we
discussed the often-lackluster press releases
that small studios send out.
One of the major factors contributing to
keeping a clean image and maintaining synergy
throughout the campaign was the excellent
• Support for XBLIG
Word of mouth is the best form of marketing you
can have—your consumers sell the product or
idea for you. In our case, we had over whelming
support from our loyal fans and community.
Early on, Kris had the excellent idea of using
a fan vote to not only involve the community, but
also help spread the word that the Uprising was
making another pass. Again, Josh and Nathan
came to our aid. They had their coworkers create
a poll in which fans could vote for the title they
would most like to see included in the Uprising,
after the first eight finalists were selected by
the developers. We included the two titles with
the highest number of votes in the final two
top 10 IGSU slots. This helped us drive traffic to
me to gauge interest for the promotion. Within
a few hours a number of news outlets picked
up on it, and helped us spread the word. I didn’t
feel comfortable sending the release to any
sites, as I didn’t believe they would feel it was
newsworthy, but apparently they did, as did
developers—within 24 hours we had received
more than seventy titles for consideration for
the IGSU.
Word of mouth is the best form of marketing
you can have—your consumers sell the
product or idea for you.”
team supporting our efforts. You’d be amazed at
how many people will volunteer to help a cause
they believe in. Our first trailer was created by
Christopher Brousseau of Game Production
Studios, whose title DRAGONS VS. SPACESHIPS was
in the IGSU top 25. He did an excellent job of
conveying the image we were looking for, as it
instantly helped sell the campaign and was one
of the first things that gamers saw in terms of
gameplay for the first few weeks. Afterwards,
Ryan Donnelly of VVGtV.com took charge with
creating new trailers, and Zack Parish (Saturnine
Games) continued to create new soundtracks for
each one.
Almost immediately after the IGSU launched,
Nathan Smith and Josh Addison (Blazing Forge
Games, REDD: THE LOST TEMPLE) began to outline
the prototypes for our web site, along with
Kris, who handled a lot of the back-end .aspx
work. From the moment I saw the prototype,
I knew we had something special. In addition,
Nathan drew excellent caricatures for each
title as it was announced and placed them
on the home page. Along the way, the three
of them continued to maintain the site and
add content. When all these elements came
together at once, we effectively conveyed the
image of an organized team, and maintained
the same message throughout the duration of
the campaign.
the Facebook page, which allowed us to speak
directly to our audience, but also to the IGSU site.
If used correctly, Facebook can be an
invaluable marketing tool, but I find that
GAME DEVELOPER | NOVEMBER 2011 30
organizations far too frequently don’t take a
personal approach when interacting with their
audience. The four of us logged on multiple times
throughout the day to post updates, share links
and news coverage on the IGSU, ask and answer
