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Communication, Marketing & PR in Gaming & Esports - Tarek Hakim, Active DMC
Effective communication, marketing, and public relations in the gaming and esports sectors rely on building emotive, two-way relationships with communities rather than simply broadcasting messages.
- Successful gaming and esports marketing requires shifting from transactional broadcasting to building emotive, two-way relationships that address specific community pain points.
- Deep localization is essential for global success, as demonstrated by Fortnite’s use of regional servers and culturally specific in-game events, and Riot Games’ localized social media campaigns.
- Brands should treat communication as a continuous dialogue rather than a one-way promotional effort to foster long-term trust and loyalty within the gaming ecosystem.
How to scale hyper or hybrid casual games with Unity ROAS campaigns
Unity’s Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) campaigns, branded as Audience Pinpointer, serve as an automated user acquisition tool designed to optimize advertising performance by predicting the value of individual users.
- Unity Audience Pinpointer automates user acquisition by using post-install metrics like IAP, ad revenue, and retention to predict and bid on high-value users.
- To enable ROAS campaigns, developers must first reach minimum install thresholds via standard campaigns to provide the algorithm with sufficient baseline data.
- Maximum bids should be set at two to three times the observed average CPI to ensure the algorithm remains competitive and is not capped during auctions.
PREVIEW: Wishlist And Visibility Masterclass 2.0
The Steam visibility masterclass focuses on demystifying the platform’s algorithmic filtering process to help independent developers maximize their game’s reach.
- Steam’s algorithm prioritizes titles that reach a revenue milestone of approximately $250,000, which serves as the critical threshold for sustained, platform-wide promotion.
- Visibility on Steam is structured as a tiered system where a small percentage of top-performing games receive the vast majority of impressions, while others are algorithmically deprioritized.
- Before launch, Steam’s algorithm gauges a game's potential by monitoring external traffic sources, including social media and streaming platforms.
Play With Your Audience: Enhancing Your Social Strategy Through Theater
The primary objective of this strategy is to enhance game community engagement and brand awareness by utilizing theatrical performance techniques to develop a character-driven social media presence.
- Treating a brand voice as a character rather than a corporate entity fosters more authentic and playful community engagement, particularly for indie titles and narrative-driven games.
- Applying theatrical principles like the improvisational 'yes, and' technique and defined personality pillars allows community managers to build a consistent, approachable brand persona.
- Successful implementations, such as the Bear and Breakfast Twitter account and the Spamton Sweepstakes charity event, have demonstrated engagement rates and follower growth that significantly exceed standard industry benchmarks.
WHOW Games’ Tobias Edl On Growth Hacks And Top Tips For Standing Out In The F2P World
Tobias Edl, Director of Marketing and New Business at WHOW Games, outlines strategies for achieving sustainable growth and player loyalty in the competitive free-to-play (F2P) social casino market.
- Long-term growth in the social casino market is achieved by prioritizing immersive, gamified product design and multi-year media partnerships over short-term performance marketing tactics.
- WHOW Games differentiates its 'My Jackpot' title by applying casual puzzle game mechanics, such as mission-based progression and real-time competitive events, to the casino genre to drive retention.
- The company maintains a 'test-everything' culture that continuously iterates on creative assets to optimize performance while ensuring all marketing materials remain authentic and non-deceptive.
Steam Next Fest 2023 Preview MONO
Steam Next Fest functions as a pivotal visibility engine for independent developers, serving as a primary mechanism to drive wishlist velocity and secure placement on Steam’s influential discovery widgets.
- Steam Next Fest participation is a one-time opportunity, making it most effective when scheduled immediately before the game's full commercial launch to convert demo momentum into sales.
- Developers can estimate their total event performance by applying a 4.0x to 5.0x multiplier to their day-one wishlist totals.
- While top-tier titles can secure up to 60,000 wishlists during the event, most participants should realistically expect gains closer to 1,000 wishlists.
Solid Bash's Matthew Zoern On An Approach That Amplifies A Game's "Fun Factor"
The core philosophy of modern game development centers on a features-based iterative process that prioritizes the refinement of a game’s fundamental fun factor over rigid, milestone-driven production schedules.
- Prioritize rapid prototyping and iterative development of core gameplay loops to validate the 'fun factor' before committing to full-scale production.
- Shift from rigid, milestone-driven schedules to an organic development model that emphasizes player agency and proven mechanics.
- Utilize analytics to observe authentic player behavior rather than reacting to direct user requests, which can inadvertently compromise the quality of the gaming experience.
My Game Dev Dream Is NOW COMPLETE
The commercialization of independent game assets serves as a vital bridge between creative legacy and the financial sustainability of future development projects.
- Independent developers can achieve financial sustainability by commercializing intellectual property from past titles, such as the Neversong soundtrack, to fund ongoing development.
- Revenue generated from physical merchandise sales, including signed vinyl records, is directly allocated to cover team salaries and operational costs for new projects like Twisted Tower.
- Diversifying income streams through physical goods mitigates the financial risks associated with relying solely on the initial launch of a single software product.
Prof standards to promote your game and company. What every indie should know as best practices.
Professionalism serves as a foundational pillar for independent game developers seeking to secure investment and publishing partnerships.
- Professional conduct acts as a primary proxy for a developer's ability to meet milestones and manage business, making it a foundational requirement for securing investment and publishing partnerships.
- Developers must maintain consistent, reliable communication and punctuality to build the trust necessary for long-term industry relationships.
- Public grievances on social media must be avoided to preserve professional credibility, as disputes should be handled through firm, polite, and private discourse.
Keynote: Understanding SKAN 4 0 & Its Implications Mark Menery, Verve Group.
SKAN 4.0 represents a significant evolution in Apple’s privacy-centric attribution framework for mobile app install campaigns.
- SKAN 4.0 replaces rigid privacy thresholds with a tiered 'crowd anonymity' system, allowing advertisers to receive varying levels of data granularity based on install and conversion volume.
- The framework extends LTV tracking capabilities by introducing three distinct postback windows that capture user activity from day zero through day 35.
- Advertisers can now utilize 'lock windows' to trigger postbacks earlier, enabling faster data retrieval for campaign optimization.
Keynote: Mastering Revenue Growth Using LiveOps & Contextual Personalization, Sunil Thomas/Greg Lin
The gaming industry is currently navigating a challenging landscape defined by rising user acquisition costs and shifting privacy regulations, such as Apple’s App Tracking Transparency.
- Implementing comprehensive personalization strategies can increase player lifetime value (LTV) by approximately 35 percent.
- Rising user acquisition costs and privacy regulations like Apple’s App Tracking Transparency are forcing a strategic shift from new player acquisition toward maximizing the LTV of existing player bases.
- Studios are adopting a 'personalization ladder' that progresses from basic demographic segmentation to behavioral targeting and fully personalized content.
Keynote: AI Trends in Performance Marketing - Phil Shpilberg from GamechangersSF
The integration of artificial intelligence into mobile game user acquisition (UA) represents a significant shift from traditional, human-managed marketing toward automated, data-driven optimization.
- AI integration in mobile user acquisition is shifting performance marketing from manual, rules-based management to autonomous systems for bidding, budget allocation, and audience targeting.
- Current AI implementations in the gaming sector deliver a 10% to 20% improvement in return on ad spend (ROAS) while saving hundreds of hours of manual labor per project.
- AI tools currently optimize performance across major platforms including Facebook, Google, Apple Search, and TikTok, though they remain limited by an inability to execute strategies on non-API channels.