Top tips for great game PR

so hi everyone thank you for uh joining me for this talk i'll try to keep it brief and just share some of my insight and the insight of media and journalists from the mobile gaming industry so the topic of this talk is how to ignite pr exposure for your game launch and i'm just curious to know how many of you guys are developers out there who have actually reached out to journalists or media to cover your game launches can you just raise your hands okay how many of you have been successful how many of you guys have actually got a journalist or a media to write about your game all right sort of half of the crowd so backing up a step i'll tell you a little bit about who we are plarium is uh one of the world's leading hardcore social game developers on facebook and across mobile devices we have seen international success with over 130 million players across our game titles

and one of our game games has has recently been featured by facebook as one of the best games of 2014 so that's a good milestone for us uh game coverage it's definitely one of the most important things that you could do for your game um however it's obviously not an easy task uh you know journalists get tons and tons of requests to cover their games having it done right can definitely make your game or it can break if journalists seem to not like your game very much the thing is that the journalists receive so much requests from developers just like you that it's hard to stand out it's hard to really get their attention or to give them a reason to actually write about your game and like i said the right kind of media exposure can either make or break your title but the thing is that in most cases the game launch itself isn't always the big story there's so much more that can be said uh beyond the game and

you don't necessarily have to take it from me i like i said reached out to a couple of journalists to get their thoughts uh on why they choose to to cover specific games uh versus other game titles that are sent to you know to their desk so starting off with peter wellington who is one of the editors of app spy and he's a writer for pocket gamers so peter shared that it would be good if you provide them with video or images for your game launch and this gets their you know their interest a lot higher to actually cover your games so adding a video to your game definitely helps it stand out next up jennifer allen who is the staff writer for 148 apps mentioned that the main thing that comes up time and time again is knowing who your audience is and and this is a very important tip uh speaking to jennifer she mentioned that a lot in a lot of cases uh developers reach out to her ask her to cover android game titles when all she does is cover uh iphone or ios titles so understanding who

you're reaching out to what they actually cover what interests them is one of the most important things you can do you know take a little bit of time figure out who your audience who you're actually trying to reach out to what they cover what interests them and that'll make your task a little bit easier another tip that i really liked is what is the real story behind your game so the game itself isn't always the story that needs to be told uh is your game you know does it have some unique elements is there a good team behind it uh does it have unique gameplay that the journalist hasn't seen before these are things that you know stand out beyond just you know another casual game launch or another free to play mmo type strategy and that's something that we try to do with clarion we try to always share you know what is the actual story behind the game why did we develop a certain game as opposed to you know something else uh going back to what uh jennifer said earlier finding the run the right fit and this is a tip that that i received

you know time and time again really just understanding who your journalist is what they like to cover uh you know what segments you're actually trying to reach out to so are you reaching out to a journalist that only covers uh iphone games or android games you know don't don't waste your time because you're you're again you're just burning your you know bridges as as you go along so take a little time do your homework figure and figure out who you're actually trying to reach out to what they like to cover uh what platforms they they choose to cover and also what type of you know genres of game do they only cover casual titles uh do they cover mmo or strategy games taking a little bit of time to actually do that homework is going to definitely help you guys out timing is everything this is a very important tip in a lot of cases developers launch their game it gets approved on the app store or it goes live on google play and then they try to you know scramble to try to get some coverage for their game once it's already out there the best thing to do is to try to give journalists or media a little bit of early access to the games you know have

them played for a little while give them a week or a little bit longer before the game actually goes live give them enough time to get into it to understand what the game is and also don't forget that they get so much requests to cover games that there's no way that they can you know publish a post or some exposure for your game within 24 hours so it's going it's going to take usually about a week before you actually get some coverage so you know take that into consideration now this is a tip specifically for developers who are launching via kickstarter and it comes to us from craig chapel who's uh the deputy deputy editor at develop so try and explain why the project should be uh of interest to the journalists and the site they work with and again what are the unique mechanics what's the story behind the game why should they cover a game beyond the fact that you're you know another developer that's launched another great game or project so if you're a kickstarter uh if you're running a project on kickstarter this is something you need to take into

consideration the backstory is really what you should be focusing on so positive vibration this was a tip that i felt was a little bit different from everything that was said earlier but it's still very important and it comes from lena leray from indie games and for some reason and i never really you know took this into consideration but i guess that developers do get a lot of pitches that aren't always very positive like you know they don't excite the the journalists in any way they don't give them anything that really piques their interest and she made a uh a comment on the fact that sometimes uh the the pitches can be depressing or talking bad about a competitor or why your game is better than a competitor so those are things that you should try to avoid you know try to focus on the positive aspects the positive qualities of your game uh the teams behind it uh give them you know something to get excited about hype it up a little bit uh and again going back to what we said earlier add the images the videos the the screenshots that can

be used all these things are essential towards getting uh you know the hopes of getting your your game mentioned a little bit higher so going back to one of my tips and i try to avoid adding my thoughts into this but i think that you know just to to add one of my uh insights is that uh across everything that we talked about up until now the most important thing is really building up a relationship with the journalists and the media even if you're not going to be launching a game emailing them just to say that you enjoyed one of their posts or sharing one of their posts uh or retweeting or sharing you know any type of social interaction that you can have with them building up this relationship with them is essential and that's something that we try to do at clarium not just when we need to launch a game but also when we read something that they really like and we think that it's worth you know sharing through our social communities uh and that's how you you know take your time building up your relationship so don't just wait you know months for four months until your game is actually launched developed on the app store and wait you know try to get that coverage start building up those

relationships ahead of time and you'll be better off when that happens so just a few quick resources that you guys can take away with you on where you can actually get coverage beyond media exposure so i'll make the slides available to you you guys can take a look but i'm curious have any of you guys used reddit or subreddits to share the work you know your games on some of you have so reddit is a great uh social site uh with some subreddits on there where you can share the uh the games that you've launched uh there's you know some sites on there there's some subreddits that are great for indie developers where you can share your images previews of your game uh or just get feedback from the the reddit community uh youtube is also one of the best services in my opinion or the most underutilized social service to get exposure for your game so if you're going to be launching a game creating a teaser trailer creating a full trailer for your game once the game

is live these are definitely places that you should be utilizing we actually created a very active channel on youtube where we create game footage we create gameplay footage teasers trailers and we're also going to be sharing some of the reviews that journalists have created for us that's all going to be on our youtube channel and if you're going to be active on youtube a service that you should take into consideration or get to learn is socialblade which helps you track what are the best channels on youtube who are the best game reviewers uh how big and how popular they are so it's all up there and that is it