Patryk Grzeszczuk - Reality-proof planning - how to prepare to survive on the market

foreign [Music] so first of all good after noon everyone it's great to see you all it's a special moment for me because it's my first event since the whole coffee thing has started so I'm both excited and anxious about it I haven't like I got a bit Rusty so I will try to do my best but I have to apologize up front for any mistake that I'm gonna make and so on and so forth um so before I get to the main topic of the event I'm gonna tell you a bit about my last week so last Wednesday I had a

short conversation with mitco who is sitting here encouraging me to do that and we are talking about yeah preparing like our presentations because bitcoast presentation is gonna take place tomorrow right and spoilers it's way better than mine so you should definitely attend this one mine should be fine like six out of ten this is gonna be stuff of Brilliance anyway so we were talking about it last Wednesday and he made me aware of the fact that on Thursday we've got the deadline for delivering our decks and I had nothing at that point so I quickly delivered the deck and this is the second time I'm seeing that so I'm gonna be equally surprised by the content Dot you are so currently I have a huge pleasure of working in 11 bit serving as a game director for still an announced project eight uh as well as

like to a lesser degree but being involved in some other projects I cannot talk about just yet um but all of them once we announce them I think they're gonna be pretty pretty exciting but this is not my first Royal Yodo like uh previously I had an opportunity of cooperating with brilliant people way more smarter than I am which is always great because I've got someone to learn from on a bunch of projects starting like chronologically chronologically speaking starting from I think anomaly uh it was the second one and then Defenders then this war of mine Frost Bank moonlighter and so on and so forth and for those games I've been mostly responsible for creative and strategical planning or communication planning for those games as well as branding and basically managing those campaigns along with the Beloved team of

mine and this is when like working on those things I have gathered some experience that I would like to share with you today and so at this point I should share some up-to-date data with you showing you how challenging our Market is and how difficult it is to survive but we all know that and yet we are here so most probably we want to do what we do or we have no other choice why not both um and so like there is no point in me telling you about all of that excuse me yeah all right um so um sure the market is challenging the market is difficult and it's hard to survive out there and we want to stay afloat but this is where marketing come into play all in white or all in black

in my particular case marketing understood us like the way to convince people that not only you have something to offer for them but you've got something that they should actually be interested in and hopefully they're gonna buy at the end of the day being your product your game and obviously you can think about that as something that we all do because yes to a certain degree having our products out there or rather putting them out there we are doing some form of marketing but in video games to my experience usually it tends to be somewhat limited and based on very very um strict and simple structure so we've got our sure we've got at our marketing we've got our announcement trailer we've got some gameplay reveal we've got our Lounge trailer so we are basically good there is nothing more to that and sure it's a

starter it's a Foundation that we should build upon but if we consider that to be our foundation for a campaign of sort it's rather outdated it's something that used to work at some point where things were easy simple and full of dinosaurs nowadays thinking about how to survive or even thinking about the future I'm trying to see if the joke has landed but um so uh yeah we should think about a more complex not necessarily complex but more efficient way of handling things because as with games like games used to be simple yet exciting but they have evolved and I was absolutely in love with Ninja 30 years ago or so when I was like

playing my first video games on my Atari 65xe with California access disk drive right now I'm more into Securo so my love for ninjas is still true but I'm playing games that are a bit more advanced a bit more evolved and that means I'm showing you that because both of those games are cool but also to tell you that like back in the days having those free beats you are competing with simpler products that hurts that had simpler premises right now you are competing with something way more advanced with bigger budgets with more features and your games are way way more advanced as well so they need more love and more caring on the marketing side of things uh as well so this is why I believe that right now marketing is not about like defining a simple path where we leave some bits for our customers it's more of a creation of a space

so something that is very similar to level design I as I believe because just think about it in marketing planning or basically when you are handling some sort of a foundation for your campaign what you are doing is you are creating a space of sort that should spark interest encourage exploration and ultimately lead towards a specific objective fulfilling which should be gratifying for your participants so again level design at the core of it all it's just that the tools that you are using are a bit different and just like with your levels here people won't always do what you want them to do and that's fine as long as doing whatever they want to do they will find something gratifying and something that hopefully wind will bring them to purchasing uh

your game and obviously obviously there is no ultimate path that will lead you towards your goal I apologize for that but because we are referring to levels before because we are referring to space and creation of one we can easily say that there are at least some coordinates that we can use coordinates that you can actually used to like improve your chances so to speak to find like a proper moment in a proper point at which you should engage educate and convert uh your potential client so those coordinates as I see them and again those are not part of any well-established method nor they come from any book there are books out there obviously that are great and I am more than happy to recommend some of them to you but those are the rules that I am following myself and they tend to work for me or they used to

work for me when I was handling the marketing side of things in our company so this is just my experience I'm not saying this is the best way of doing things I'm saying that this is the way I used to handle them and it worked for me pretty well so maybe hopefully it will work for you as well so rule number one or level number one or coordinator number one however you want to have it good plan good marketing plan should be purposeful what do you think like what does it mean what's the one thing that you should start with when working on your marketing plan time time why time okay so when you think about time and when you like consider your timing the most important element where will that lead you ultimately sell and you're selling your game is

what for you sure why do you want that money yes um okay so and the development is like so creation so doing new stuff doing new new games creating something new this is why we are here so for me I would say bringing that together that this is my grant objective every plan everything that we do marketing wise should in my honest opinion start with us truly understanding what our goal is and obviously as you have said like we we've got like a space and a time that we have to take into consideration and our ultimate goal is to sell our game that's all true but this is too simple to track we need to know beforehand how well we are doing or if we are failing because once we our game is out there it's gonna be a bit too late to actually make any adjustments so as with our objectives in

our game so again back to level design whatever we do in the advanced space of ours we should keep track of our main objective right and obviously as you have already rightfully said I want to sell my game this is the most important part but how should I do that right so how many copies of that game should I sell how quickly should I say sell them so the factory of time for what price who's gonna buy it so who should be interested in my game was the conversion ratio from those people that I'm gonna like reach out to to dogs that will actually make the purchase how many should I reach then through which channels and so on and so forth so so those are the like this is the breakdown of uh questions that you should ask yourself and questions that you actually should have answers for right so obviously we should aim high but keeping our fits on the ground meaning our goals should be challenging but reachable

achievable one way or another but also because of that because of the importance of those objectives that we need to Define for ourselves our plan and this is not the second point this is like the update to the first one so our plan not only should be um purposeful meaning it should have one clear objective of ours or a set of objectives but it should be trackable for me to be able to say if I'm doing things right or should I adjust anything because there is something else that is like interfering me with with with my progression uh so to speak because like numbers matter whether we like them or not we should be able to quantify and evaluate things as we go so we've got this Grand goal right which is like the release of our game and once we have released our our game we would like to push as many copies to the market as possible but we should be able to name our objectives prior to that to

as I have already mentioned educate and not not educate but to evaluate things as we go and then unfortunately along with the release of our game our work does not stop because we have to maintain the product support the product and monetize it Post Release so those indicators that we should track and we should attach to those goals of ours should be uh quantifiable and easy to evaluate prior and after our release and there is like a simple set of factors that usually we should track and be aware of prior to the release to name the most important ones I would say that we should keep track of our wish lists our pre-orders if we are handling pre-orders traffic so Google analytics is like a friend of ours for sure uh Steam Community if we are on Steam obviously we are on Steam unless we are mobile and free to play but if we

are PC or basically we are within that space probably Steam Community over and of or an equivalent of one is going to be something that's going to be of interest of ours and then obviously views and like coverage of our key materials that we are releasing then when it comes to the launch window so to speak we've got again wishlist pre-orders but as well like we've got day one week one performance everything beyond that is post release in my book and product reception because this one will influence our um Effectiveness our efficiency very much and Post Release meet long-term sales wishlist plus conversion because this is going to be important obviously like the importance and the balance will depend heavily on if you have already established Community if you have like an IP that is already known and out there or not and so on and so forth but

in general those are the main indicators that you should keep at the back of your head in my honest opinion so the way I usually do that is either with the Memento style so I start with my grant objective and then I'm trying to take a few steps back thinking about what should I do to achieve that particular thing so my sales what should I do that to achieve them like so probably I should bring people to the store how many of them if it's like 2 Millions people like where can I find them if they are aware of my product or not if they are not aware of my product how should I educate them about the product and so on and so forth so going back is the easiest way for me at least to break a big objective of mine into something smaller easier to understand and easier to

track so the takeaways from the third the first point would be for me set your objective and kpis maybe meaning like key performance indicators track things as you go so you can adjust and you can correct things as you go not to be too late to the party when things are already out there and adjust when needed because sure your plan is going to be great most probably but it will change along the way most certainly because of the fact that there are new factors that are coming into play because of the fact that our Market is unpredictable and things are happening and you have to react to them number two good plan is true to its source meaning that as with Golden Circle by Simon sinek you should start with your product because not only because of the fact that like it is at the essence it is like this one thing that you want to

promote but in my experience understanding your product will give structure to your campaign like the basic structure because if you truly understand what your product is about meaning what's the USB you know what's the main thing you want to say if you know your core features that you want to promote you know the additional beats that you're going to release and that will create like a set of elements for you and that will create like an order of things that you can try to apply try to map on a schedule again referring to time and you can think about what to say first what to say next what to supplement your communication with and then knowing that hierarchy you can think about if I am about to cut something I know what to cut and what to what has to stay there stay there no matter what so understanding your product uh I'm gonna jump over that and it's USB so the main selling proposal plus rtbs meaning the

reasons to believe so why that product is about that particular something that you that you claim it is core features you know what the structure of your campaign should be the basic one because it lacks context at this particular point but you know what the starters are that you should take into consideration and the good part about it is that like it's good to knowing those elements to add like the emotional layer to them for people to care about them because obviously you know that this is important for you as a developer or as a marketing person if you are like skilled and like focused on that but probably some of us are everything we are like people covering development marketing especially in terms of Indie developers right so we don't have that much time for that we should focus on those elements that are the most important ones for for us but at the same time we should make sure that people will relate to them and this is where the emotional

aspect comes into play so obviously numbers tracking but then trying to think about how to make it emotional and relatable for our people and this is what we do usually with most of our titles and like if not all of them I don't want to give you like an example of frostpunk or this war of mine because those are the most obvious ones but for moonlighter for example this is not the product that we have developed internally but one that we have helped to develop and we have published first and foremost the product itself meaning the game itself was developed by digital Sun a highly highly talented Studio from Spain and like the game itself if you haven't heard about it this is like a mix of shopkeeping simulator with dungeon crawling action Zelda like in a vein of those older Zelda titles it is like a love letter to some of those so obviously if when it comes to those

core features it's a roguelite hack and slash mixed with shopkeeping simulator but the way we have dressed that through our marketing campaign was that this is a story of fulfilling dreams because this is something that people can relate to and obviously then once we got our foot in the door with our emotional premise we gained the opportunity of explaining all the features and all the elements out there but that usually in our case is the Second Step because I don't know if you care personally about like roguelike games I don't know if you care about hack and slash but probably being a human being as most of us are uh I know you lizard people are out there as well um so uh you probably have some unfulfilled dreams you probably have some things that you regret you probably have some things that you would like to do differently so giving you a story about

that I've got a higher chance of actually interesting you and then I can tell you but it's a roguelite so yeah so foot in the door through emotions and having all that so having the numbers having objectives having like the emotional liar to it finally you can go big right you can do the biggest campaign ever the most complex campaign ever with all the things out there with all the things that are gonna rule the world right no hell no like the next point that should be on our agenda is that good plan is clear and simple firstly because nobody have time for that internally and externally secondly if something is over complex You're Gonna Lose It or you're gonna forget about it along the way your plan should be simple because you're gonna have enough of stuff to tackle enough of stuff to manage so that when you've got like a complex and multi-layered Matrix to manage as well it's gonna be a

something that will not help but it will make things more difficult for you your plan should be a tool if you've got like a tool and you want to to The Nail using your Hammer your Hammer is like made out of two elements because those two elements are necessary for you to actually get the job done if your Hammer was like multi-faceted and whatnot you wouldn't be able even to grasp it properly the same thing is with your plan your plan should be clear should be simple for you but also for you to explain it to someone that is about to help you someone that is about to be responsible for a particular element of that plan keep it simple keep it effective but keep it simple we are not in the 80s where like we want to draw our Maps as we go like with the game here which is dude mad respect

um I love Eye of the Beholder but being a marketing person I do not want to draw my maps and like keep them in my head I want that to be a modern game one that leads me onward one that creates a puff for me and gives me a marker because again I'm gonna handle a lot of things along the way I don't want to be bothered with additional tasks so understand your premise meaning know what your game is what the core features are what the all the things that are important about your product are and what the hierarchy of those is convert that into a structure for your campaign and keep your work clean and simple so that everyone can understand it like do not create your plan for your management board to show how skilled and how educated you are that's not the way keep it simple good plan is surprising but only for The Outsiders because again like internally you don't

want any surprises you're gonna get enough of those one way or another you want to have something that is actually clear that is like very much grounded and even uh outside of everything I do not believe personally that your plan actually has to be that surprising it's good if it is but it is kind of a quote unquote night nice to have feature obviously if you've got something surprising refreshing that's going to be more impactful most probably but firstly it should be effective it should work it's it so you can reuse stuff that already worked for you if it fits the context in which you exist right now um and internally no surprises whatsoever again let's keep it clear and simple but let's keep it also modular meaning that as we go no matter what we do most probably we're gonna have to cut something most probably something will

uh not be manageable or feasible for us because life happens and when life happens few things happen along the way as well so not everything is going to work not everything is gonna be feasible and the rest has to work without it right it cannot be that you cutting out one thing will make everything else crumble into pieces and no no you want you don't want us you don't want to do that not everything is going to be seen or experienced by your players I know that like on our slides and in our presentations everything looks great we've got like the educational phase we've got the conversional phase we've got all of those phases like we are t zinc and announcing and all of that but no one cares about that Beyond like our small crowd to the degree where they are going to digest everything that we have to say say everything that we have to publish they're gonna see one or two bits maybe free and seeing those beats they should get enough of those

information to actually be interested in our game so for that to happen that has to be modular and those beats those pieces of puzzle that we are publishing should work as a greater whole but also on their own it they have to be impactful enough and strong enough so they can actually be of interest to our peeps not everything will work as intended because we are not Geniuses certainly I am not one so those things however great we consider them to be usually they are good enough at best but that good enough can be good enough actually but let's make sure that like again in separation and especially as a whole they are good enough and like as long as it allows you to stay afloat as long as it allows you to like move on with your campaign you are good but for that to happen you have to make sure that those criteria are met so takeaways prioritize and test

the clarity internally talking to people explaining your plan asking for questions doing all of that share and discuss things openly that's like I cannot express how important that is like me personally I like to keep things to myself so I'm working on something and I don't want to share it because it's not ready just yet which is not good you should share and discuss your things as early as possible because then you're gonna get feedback there you're gonna get other opinions you're gonna see how funneled your vision is and what is outside of your review cone and that's very very important and Kill Your Darlings meaning that if something doesn't fit it doesn't fit no matter how great that idea is if your campaign can do without it probably is not necessary and if something should be cut probably it should be cut but then because of the

previous point when you've got the structure when you know the most important thing and then you know what comes later you know what to cut first because there are some bits that absolutely have to stay depending on your game I won't name that beats because I don't don't know your product but you knowing and understanding your product you should be you should be able to name those beats and then you fight for those killing everything else if necessary good plan is good plan accounts for risks and failures for risks because we should test things as we go we cannot stick only to those solutions that worked for us in the past because the market is changing because our consumers are changing and we have to unplug there are new tools now we've got AI in a second we're going to have something else those things can leverage whatever we do so we have to try but trying new things means that one out of two will probably fail and that's how it is that's all fine as long as we are

prepared for it and we've got a scenario for it right because you know the guy probably you know the quote probably and some of you probably even know that the quote comes from this guy not the guide before uh but yeah we cannot do things over and over again expecting different results we should prepare for different results we should try new things but trying new things mean that we should be able to say that we have failed and we are prepared to go with plan B and one of the internal examples uh that I like actually is our work for children of Marta again a game that we have published few years ago and for that game we have tried a thing on Steam that right now I think is pretty common but to my knowledge I may be wrong about it but to my knowledge we were the first one to do

that and the thing was that for pre-ordering game on Steam when you pre-ordered your our game on Steam you got demo and you could play like the first two levels of the game or that first biome basically I don't remember exactly uh instantly so it was like five months before the official release of the game so you had like a instant gratification for pre-ordering a game which is not usually the case usually you pre-order and for at least I usually when I pre-order I totally forget about the game and then I'm surprised by the fact that I have already bought it um here that was not the case I was pre-ordering and I was getting something and that like that gave us an anonymous boost funnily enough when we have proposed that internally we got a lot of pushback like from some people on some important positions in our company not

pointing any fingers but they were against that because we haven't done that in the past and it was against some of the rules that we have already established and but in this particular case uh actually it was like a corporation because between business and marketing specifically piotrek who was and is responsible for business and my humble person and we were like no no but this is going to work because of the context this is going to work because of that particular thing here it should we should do that we know the rule we want to break the rule should that be a failure for us we know what to do and that's the second important part but we believe that it's going to work and it worked brilliantly mostly building like two things firstly sales in terms of the pre-orders but also wish list which was because like we got additional traffic additional uh the exposition and due to that additional wish list so even those people that haven't paid just yet they

stayed with us and then we were capable of converting them so again like rules are great rules are to follow unless you want to break them then you should break them but you should break them if you are certain that that actually may work for you and when especially when you break your rules think about at least three scenarios and that's basically true for the whole campaign but specifically for those situations uh think about the scenario where you meet your success a scenario where you're like six out of ten in your happy I guess but not that much and whatnot and then like a total disaster you should know what to do if each and every one of them because like use the opportunity of a success but also embrace the failure and think about how to get back out there because you've got stuff to do and for each and every of our games when we prepare like a

marketing plan we've got uh a scenario for a huge success for a that's not good but thank you 10 minutes um for mediocre success and for a failure so okay uh good plan is enabling and that's the most important part and the part that we are forgetting uh pretty often and what I mean by that is that whatever you may think about yourself as a marketer you may be like a very intelligent and very experienced person your marketing plan is not as good as you are your marketing plan is as good as your consumer action is that sounds awkward but what I mean by that is that with each beat whatever you do out there it doesn't matter if people cannot react to that fulfilling one of your goals so it comes back to those previous things right so when you release a trailer what

would you like people to do with that trailer aside from watching because this is obvious right but do you want that trailer to boost your wish lists or you want the trailer to bring people to your product page or you want that trailer to do whatever else think about how to do that by putting end slates preparing links redirecting traffic uh cutting the trailer into smaller beats and using performance campaign and so on and so forth think about what people should do how people should react to your beat every bit and then put that on your map so interaction because again it's about your move but then even more it's about the move of people you are reaching out to with your content well funneling because you want to bring people to your product and you want them to make a purchase so yeah funnel the out of them

as with level design I've watched this cool talk from GDC Dan Taylor I think he was like a level designer for I don't remember what the game was anyway GDC 2013 Dan Taylor great token level design and he had this nice Matrix showing that levels when you prepared them they should educate you they should allow you to play with them challenge you and surprise you so with marketing you've got the same set of rules they are just labeled a bit differently you tease people with your communication you pitch your idea so you sell your game basically you educate them about why should they care telling them all the good things about your game and then you try to bring them to make the purchase which is basically a funnel because at the end of the day getting back to level design I think that a modern campaign should basically play like a walking Sim

but feel like a Souls like so I need to have that sense of an adventure but at the same time I do not want those High thresholds I want to go smoothly I want to experience everything and at the end of the day I want to be gratified by something probably and hopefully by playing your game so do not shy from trying new things account for various outcomes so those various scenarios and funnel your audience towards your goal which you have defined at the very beginning of it all and good plan is relevant the rest point as far as I remember again I don't remember the presentation that much so your plan having those goals having the structure having all the content you've got that but then you've got again time you've got a calendar things are happening put them to use take advantage of them so release calendar think about what other games are being released what are they

doing should you do something differently should you react should you avoid something that's important having your structure you are putting that onto the calendar and thinking about all the things that are happening there events online and offline covered taught us that not everything has to happen offline some online events are of value as well so packs GDC Gamescom TGs bit Summit to name few of them uh digital dragons obviously for industry people and GIC and so on and so forth but steam events online shows those are of value those are generating traffic you should take them into consideration and see how they fit your windows of releasing content of releasing game of doing whatever you do within the limits of your tunnel of your funnel then grassroot initiatives from my perspective sometimes because of the cost efficiency and how many how much money you have to spend on on for example events press tours are brilliant

because they are way cheaper and way more way more effective sometimes dedicated Partnerships you've got brilliant Partners out there I've seen you guys and yeah we we've been working with many partners along the way and usually it is a to a huge benefit for us and pop culture or Zeitgeist there are things happening that may align with the USP with the with the essence of your game it's great to take advantage of that as well with frostpunk in the winter like releasing the game I know it's like Niche example but releasing the game in Japan we used the fact that it was one of the heaviest Winters so we made like an event outdoors in Hokkaido to for the reviewers to actually play people buried in snow which was great which was like on brand right but like with for something more meaningful with this war of mine we got into like the

cooperation with various Charities and organizations that are helping casualties of War right and that was something meaningful but also something that boosted the visibility for the game it wasn't the main goal of that but it helped with that as well but like for various games one of the cool examples for me is bloodborne and I as if I remember correctly for bloodborne uh the marketing agency responsible for that used blood donations so bloodborne because of the name and because of the amount of blood I assume um was connected to basically donating blood and they were preparing some buses and whatnot so again cool thing that was happening and they have connected the dots and then you can put that into your plan and so on and so forth and good plan can be stolen lastly meaning by stolen I mean adapteds now I'm creatively obviously because we

don't want to be that but yes like bad artists imitate great artists still and don't hesitate from doing that like there are things out there that worked and you do not have to reinvent the wheel you just have to think about how those things fit into your plan your game is original your creative ideas are going to be original your plan have to be effective has to be effective sorry and yes boss level at the end of our game which is everything everywhere all at once you are setting your goals and kpis starting with that that leads you to creating a understanding your game and converting that into a structure from that structure you create the campaign you search for relevance so you try to find the whole thing that I have shown you on the Matrix so on the previous slide you try to be as interactive as possible providing people space with like to engage with your

communication with your beats with your game itself and you never stop doing that because your game is a roguelite meaning like your campaign is a roguelite so wherever you stopped you start all over again and then you promote and then you support and then you think about what has changed there is no end to that and that's fine because you know your objectives and after meeting those you're gonna establish some new for yourself thank you very much guys I hope I have managed to feed the time cool um [Applause] so again that's me that tends to work for me uh I hope you're gonna find something insightful here should you have any questions I'm gonna be outside right now and then at the 11 Booth beat 11 bit booth we still have time for one of two questions here are there any yes

hi I'm Mike I'm working with a Japanese gaming industry hey Mike nice to meet you thank you I was wondering what is what do you find most challenging every time when you create a plan um um actually uh it's gonna be a boring and short answer setting objectives is surprisingly difficult because it Demands a lot of internal communication you have to understand the business people you have to understand your product your goals and your company strategy so that those objectives are not just oh we want to we want a success for our game what does it mean like creating and setting quantifiable like graspable objectives this is super super um difficult and important and evaluating those as you go is super important as well and that is like usually pushed aside by our teams

because of the fact that it is difficult but also because of the fact that it shows your mistakes and people shy away from that so it is super the second thing I would say is which proved to be super important for me is to be as clear as possible about the fact that we are evaluating not to punish we are evaluating not to see who's doing good job and who's who's performing worse but about what we are doing that to actually make sure that we can improve in terms of the communication itself and in in terms of the marketing itself so people should be aware of the fact that there are no penalties there there is nothing but awaiting them we just want to make sure that we are doing as good job as possible thank you very much man okay yeah perfect thank you very much guys

have a lovely rest of the event have fun in the in the evening and I'm gonna see you out there cheers