Gaming advertisement

Well besides rule of handshake and word of mouth, my division isn't really known by the rest of the company... which is good in the fact that we normally work on upper end telecommunications systems for the DoD and I actually find working in the civilian area of installation to be a bit tedious with permits and extra paperwork.

Basically I dunno about adds in gaming magazines anymore. I guess I believe that if folks are actually reading CGW and others that they probably own a computer and are coming here once they see the website on the page to learn more. I know thats how I found GC1 in a way, saw the box, looked up the website, than went back and bought the game. Website for GalCiv again for getting to GC2.

So in a way the product sold itself to me, based on information I found online but seen offline first.

In conclusion, the only time I read computer magazines anymore is if one of the kits are in need of a new retired military ID card and if I am behind a huge line in the doctors office. So yes, I would look at gaming adds, but are those two or three times a year for two or three hours I look worth what your paying... for that matter is it worth the time having your accountants work it into your budget and make sure your tax credits are getting back to you?

I did like the spread you showed us all though online.

W/R
Suralle Straykat
Kat Lord @ Large

For me it was the internet that hooked me on GalCiv 1.
Penny Arcade, actually. All it took was one little link for me to get to your site and get hooked.

I don't read gaming magazines and probably never will, despite the fact that I am a hardcore PC gamer. I don't see the value. I hear about new games through websites such as Penny Arcade and my friends (some of whom may indeed read Magazines, I'm not sure)

I would personally think that web advertising may be more cost-effective, but I have no intimate financial knowledge of your results with either media. I guess that's the problem with print advertising, as you said: No tracking.

Either way, keep up the good work, I love the game.

Are your ads targetted to a different web address or do they in some way help you know for sure that the ads are driving traffic to your products? If so, then good, if not, then you may just be doing as you said - supporting those that may have helped support you.

I think advertising in magazines is a good thing, as it does help generate buzz and demand for your product among people that might not find you otherwise, but I hope you are set up to verify that you're getting your money's worth from your marketing dollars.

Best of luck either way!

I haven't seen a single advertisement for your game. I first heard of it off of a Freespace SCP message board where someone was trying to mod the ships to work in GalCiv2, and I ended up reading about it in your dev journals. I looked for the game in Best Buy and bought it when it showed up.

Commercial Reality is they published the article because they thought it would be of interest to their readers - and therefore add to the drive to boost their magazine circulation.... I doubt integrity came into it.

The Marketing industry has several companies/institutions that make a living generating projected income from advertising in various sources - kind of a black art, especially when you factor in self-interest in terms of companies hosting the advertising wanting to be seen in a good light.

I would search around for a Marketing Pro and take it from there - given that the guy you end up with is not a Shark himself For example the generally accepted hit rate on a totally cold-call campaign on something not in the news is 0.5%. Doesnt seem a lot, but if the cold-call campaign generates - say - 500 hits from 100,000 cold calls on the phone - it can be well worth while depending on the base cost of the offered item/service and the charges made by the CallCentre. A Marketing Pro would give you the best advertising routes and indicative costs/likely success. The latter they get from researching the results of various ad campaigns from customer feedback.

I know the caution that some have over so called Consultants, but in the Marketing world there is no substitute for quality advice. The guy should be able to give you Reference Sites for work done that you can ring and check up on etc

A Flat rate for work is common - but you should negotiate a flexible contract eg if the guy wants $5000, offer him $4000 up front, then the rest by graduated scale based on the campaign results, capped at - say - 150% of his original quoted rate. Incentivise to get them to focus on you, They love flat rate work that they can use as a fill in .....

Regards
Zy

I personally don't subscribe to any gaming magazines. I've bought the odd PC Gamer over the years (when they're reviewing or previewing a game of particular interest to me), but for the most part I start my info gathering at Gamespot and find web resources from there. That's how I found out about GalCiv 2.

My own personal habits regarding magazine ads involve ignoring them. Long ago, I learned that snappy ads can be made for even the crappiest of games (or any other merchandise). For a print ad to get my attention, it would have to hook me on information; it would have to sell me the concept and not the cool. Based on the two-pager that was thrown up on this site a while ago, I'd say you're probably doing ok for ad design. Even with that though, it'd still be 50/50 as to whether I paid any attention.

Sorry double post -...

Another suggestion is Hire a dedicated Marketing Manager. Say $50K salary plus incentives, that would be circa $120K management cost over the FY. Sounds a lot of additional overhead, but as you pointed out $20K for a double spread is a lot, dont take much to recoup the extra manpower overhead from preventing dud campaigns ... let alone generating a successful campaign in house without using Consultants (who in reality will come closer to $50K plus campaign costs not the example I gave above....)

Regards
Zy

I like to get as much info on a game as i can before i buy it. I use a combination of internet previews/reviews, magazine previews/reviews, the game and/or developer's site, and demos.

Avatar Brad Wardell : "Does that $20,000 two-page spread in a game magazine generate 2X in sales of the game?"

Reply : $20 000 ?! Your excellent game does not require a two-page spread! I "feel" that it is a waste of money. One page in the 3 major PC-games mags should be enough.

P.S. Even though the following observation is off-topic, I would suggest that you charge a small fee for the updates which will follow 1.2 (before the release of the expansion). From 1.0 to 1.2, your team will have done more than enough unpaid work (such as during the weekends). Any customer who has updated the game to 1.1 or 1.2 will have had enough return on his original investment (when he purchased the game). GC2 will be in top shape with version 1.2, before the expansion arrives. Consequently, version 1.3 (and other following updates) should be considered super-gravy and should be financed by those customers who really want more. But since I am new to this forum, I am perhaps suggesting something that has already been discussed (and rejected) on the forum and within the Stardock adhocracy.

The update fee idea really goes against the spirt of what they're trying to sell with this game. I'd never buy another Stardock game if they implemented a 'pay for patch' system. Just like i won't buy anymore of the Massive Assault series since they refuse to include a lan option on their games and charge for their internet service. Cheesy nickel and dime tactics turn off customers.

I'm not sure an advert in a magazine would make me buy a game, but i've been playing for ages. But what it does do is Highlight the fact that the game exists. I would then look for reviews on the game from organisations such as gamespot and even IGN if I got desperate enough. I used to like gamesdomain, but they got yahoo'd. If the review was good then I will consider purchasing.

I wouldn't buy a game based solely on a magazine review though. I'm loosing my respect for computer magazines as a whole, they are too prone to promote what I consider to be weak games that have originated from the mega publishers. Even my beloved Edge have lost their love of PC games. It was only after reading your dev journal post regarding reviews that I learned about independent reviewers and the respect they hold, but if you can consider me as a typical gamer, This meant nothing to me as all I was interested in was the blurb, the guy who wrote the piece is just someone who works for the magazine. If the magazine is disregarded then so is the reviewer. But thats my opinion.

I think it would be a good idea for you to do a spread in a high profile magazine because more people will know GC2
exists. But Its gotta be eyecatching. The best one I've ever seen had to be the one for I-war or Independence war. Fantastic. grabbed my attention and even though its a glorified flight sim with guns and set in space, I bought it on the strength of some of the reviews I read.

later

I read PC Gamer (UK) every month and it's probably still my main source of information. However I don't pay much attention to the ad's. They do make me a little more aware of a title but I dont bother to give them much attention as I know they're biased towards trying to sell me something.

I'd say the more effective print strategy is to have multiple part-page ad's over several successive pages. In other words a vertical column running down the edge of the page highlighting a character or feature of the game. Much more chance of getting the reader to notice your game before they turn past it.

Pay for patch? No one else in the industry does that. Some vertical products sell a "support" package that includes customer support and or patches (like Oracle, etc). But, you don't find this in the Game Industry.

I'm an old timer. Been using DOS since 2.0. I used Wordstar, Lotus Symphony, dBase II, etc. I have observed the industry for a very long time. I think that magazine adverstising is much less effective than web advertising. I learned about GC2 from Gamespot. That "Be the first to download the demo" idea was brilliant. Gamespot and similar websites are free. Free=more people see it. Computer Game World is not free. Much fewer people see their ads. Game enthusiasts like myself visit the sites between tasks at work or at home. I visit the sites about 100 times more often than I buy a magazine. This is the Digital Age. Printed Media, whether it be news or otherwise, is dropping in subscribership like theres no tomorrow. IF I ran a software company, I might put one ad in the most read game magazine, and then focus the remaining 90 percent of my advertising budget into Web ads.

But on magazine ads, who knows. Is anyone seeing them?

While I'm just one person, had it not been for the ad in CGW I would have never heard of SD or GCII. (The 1 page ad) Having seen it, my interest had been sparked enough to visit the site and check things out, view forum members comments of the game, etc. After about a week, I talked myself into heading down to my local Wally World and picking up a copy. Me breaking down and buying another game so soon after shelling out nearly 60 for Civ4 (which I was still playing regularly) was virtually unheard of for me. (My game budget isn't much in the way of priorities)

Needless to say, the ad and this community talked me into my purchase. The way SD handled issues that I had with the game will keep me as a customer for a good while. The day the SD crew release 2-3 patches (A Saturday!) attempting to fix the CTD problem a couple of us had sold me on SD. Many a time have I heard from the big game co.'s that "their game was fine, it had to be my machine." and yet only after 100's of complaints would they decide to patch it (if we were lucky that is). Most of my gaming friends are FPS types but I tell them almost daily how SD attempts to take care of customers. I know that not everyone will be satisfied with everything a company does and I will admit that there are things I would like to see in this game that I doubt will show up. SD is a business and they have to make decisions accordingly but their decision to give A+ Customer Service has ensured that this old gamer will be a return customer with future products they may release.

As for knowing just how well the magazine ad works, why not put a “how did you learn of this game” type spot on the registration. Not everyone will fill it in, but a few replies are better than none.

It's no secret that advertising and branding more specifically has been hogging up all the ' value-added' in more recent decades (just look at the shifting trend on the rapid increase in financial capital spent on advertising and the overwhelming reluctance to invest in anything resembling a factory, and again the rise of contracting, sub-contracting and 'home work') since companies started tagging onto the Nike model and advertising strategy (the removal of the product from the advertisement). There is no question in my mind the importance of branding, and how it affords companies 'strategy'.

But the effectiveness of a single advert, i cant be certain. It partly depends on the advert itself and how well its positioned to its target market. One thing is certain however advertising has been passed off as a cure-all.


I would definetly recommend you reading The Consumerist Manifesto by Martin P Davidson (1992)

As for the Karma thing, well, i'm gonna say what every romantic story in history has said: Follow what your heart is telling you. If it works for sales then great, if it doesn't, at least you're doing the right thing. Its a win win situation far as I can tell.

Cybermage - what you been takin man? I'm with quixecoyote on this one, he's definitely got the right idea.

Does advertising work? Maybe yes to an extent for the younger players, like age 12-20. The problem with advertising is that it is there to sell something (just the good info). I beleive consumers want to know the good and bad info before they buy.

My opinion is in 2 parts:

1) The Present - Now, I am too skeptical about advertising to take any ad for face value. No magazine ad will ever make me by a game because I think there are politics involved with who gets good ratings and so on. How did I find GC2? I was in the mood to play a good space sim and did an online search, I ran across many games, GC2 was one of them. Each time I did further searches about a certain game review, looking for "non-official" opinions of the game. I liked what I saw. Then I bought it.

2) The Past - Gone are the times when I can pick up a box from the shelf and read it to know if I'll like it. To me, there have been waves of crap games in the past 10 years or so. Meaning what is on the box may be what the game is about and some of the content, but I have been burned too many times, paying $50.00 for a game that has a bunch of stuff but isnt playable because of bugs, poor design, hardware conflicts, etc... Of course the internet now has much more information than it did a decade ago and I think it is or will become an important part of cutting through advertisement BS.

small ads work.. ads that make a person visit a website to get more info....

large 1 page ads don't wok for me.. I just ignore them

An ad needs only to be big enough to be noticable. A well done stand out 1 page could work as well as a two page, especially on subsequent insertions.

Your latest two page ad in CGW did get the point across, and I thought they were well done.

Ads will tell new potential users that the game exists and allows for easier sales of the product from people that are predisposed to buy your product ( ie for Galciv2, SF strategy gamers, MOO2 lovers etc,) that your game even exists.

Without advertising, for exaample in CGW, some of their subscription and magaazine buyers are strategy gamers according to their surveys. Without at least one ad, some of those easy sales would not know you exist.

Advertising acts as a bought channel. It counteracts your lack of distribution channel strength by pushing demand from theh consumer up and gets those interested consumers to search you out in retail stores or on your web site.

And advertising acts as a proxy for word of mouth and leverages your positive reviews to more people.

Advertising basically gets you in the decision set for some buyers that otherwise wouldn't consider your product.

How much is enough? Who knows but if increasing advertisng increases sales, probably a agood idea to spend more, If deceasing advertising corresponds to decreasing sales, then it might be worth a try to increase it again to see if it increases again. But there is a risk that after a decline you are throwing good money after bad.

General princple is that if things are going well, don't decrease advertising, considering increasing it. Don't mess with success, wait until sales cool to consider cutting back.

Old advertising adage even to successful companies is that ‘50% of my advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don’t know which half’. That may be changing eventually, but the moral is if your sales are working, some of your advertisng is probably working also.

I have not played a turn based game since I played my first FPS game (Wolfenstien 3D - shows how long I've been PC gaming).

Now anyone who play and competes in FPS games knows there has been a rather disappointing trend by major game makers to design/market games to consoles over PC and basically dumb down the game for the console good example of this is Call of Duty 2 and Rainbow 6 - 4.

So I'm going through the gamespot site looking (and getting somewhat desperate for something new to play) when I come across their section on GC2. After going though that I following the link to the site check the forums and what do I find the people who actually make the game not only post on a regular basis they will respond to Joe nobody post on a regular basis. I also enjoyed reader Frogboys journals and the others two.

After dealing with EA, Activision, UBI etc. this was quite shocking to me and what convinced me to buy the game and after playing it convincing 3 other hardcore FPS guys from my clan to buy it to.

Also, a self selection bias will appear on this forum for internet savvy heavy users. A lot of you store sales may not be forum posters and the posters here may not be a representative sample of those people that responded to your advertising.

Human nature tends to have people not want to admit they responded to an ad, because they don’t want to admit they were manipulated. In research studies word of mouth is overstated and recall due to advertising is almost always understated.

I receive Computer Gaming World and PC Gamer and I do look at all the add in them, If I find a game that looks interesting I will look online to find out more information on it. So I would say they do work, But I didn't hear about GC2 in them I heard about it at Civfanatics Civ4 Forum before you ran the adds in the magazines.

I usually won't buy a game until I read most of the reviews on it from the major online outlets such as Gamespot and IGN then compare them with the CGW and PC Gamer to get a conscious. I also follow a couple of reviewers very closely and they are of course Tom and Bruce, if they give a game a good review then I have will have no reservations in buying it!

Advertising also may get people interested in the game where they will check out the reviews, search the web, ask friends etc. With the advertising spark they may never had heard of you or considered your product purchase. If you ask some of those people why they point or how they heard of you, some if not most may site the review as the reason, even though they may not have read the review without the ad.

The real advertising question is not whether advertsing works but what advertising works better than others and is cost effective in increasing or sustaing sales.

IMHO

Also the payback from an ad is the real decison point. How much additional profit you get from an ad can sometime be measured.

For software, an incremental sale can be almost 95-100% profit, as the physical distribution an manufacturing costs of an additional copy is very small compared to the developmental costs. So for example, you may sell a game for $40, average profit may be $ 5, but your contribtion margin, or extra profit for the last unit sold may be huge, like $35 in extra revenue.

So if you are selling on average 1000 units a week, week after week, with a fairly consistent trend, and the only thing that changes the next week is that you just bought a magazine ad for $10,000. If your sales spike upward to 3000 units the week right after that magazine hits the street and then tapers off daily back to your norm of 1000 per week. If nothing else has changed (and of course that is never the real case) then you can attribute 3000 or more extra sales to the ad or other event. In that case, even though you only sold 2000 extra units the ad generated 2000 x 40 = 80,000 in sales or 70,000 in extra profit.

Not bad, in that case for the 10,000 risk. In that case, 7 ads can completely fail and you can still make money. Of course, things are never that simple in real life.

If an ad works, the profit payoff can be huge, because the profit per increased unit sold is large.

Software is a market where they can be a high payoff for the risk.

And advertising always works better with a good product, and you certainly have a good product.

Good luck on your advertising choices.

The update fee idea really goes against the spirt of what they're trying to sell with this game. I'd never buy another Stardock game if they implemented a 'pay for patch' system. [...] Pay for patch? No one else in the industry does that.

Perhaps I was not clear and specific enough in my previous post. I totally agree with both of you that "patches" to fix bugs and technical problems should remain free : of course!

I was refering rather to "upgrades", such as pertaining to enhanced features.

If you have read all of Brad Wardell's recent posts, you must realize that he and some members of his GC2 team have been working for free "beyond the call of duty". For example, just taking the time to regularly read the forum posts and taking the trouble to reply are time-consuming, and Mr Wardell has stated that he was tinkering with the A.I. code during the weekend!

That's all very nice, but there is a point where grateful gamers should step up and shoulder part of the burden.

Summer is coming : do we expect that Brad Wardell and his team will continue to use up their leisure time to produce updates 1.3, 1.4, 1.5?

My suggestion is NOT that consumers should pay for technical "patches", of course, but rather, that very hungry (and very grateful) gamers should finance feature "upgrades" which go "beyond the call of duty" for the Stardock b-u-s-i-n-e-s-s. I hear some guys holler that they want a more competitive A.I. on the higher levels of difficulty : fine --- why not finance it?

For example. What is $4.95 worth today? Let's suppose that an OPTIONAL "1.33" upgrade would cost 5 bucks : what would be the big drama with that? A single evening at the movies, with popcorn and cola, costs even more!

I say : a $5 upgrade, not a "patch" -- which, of course, should remain free.

I am just trying to float a speculative balloon. I believe that those of us who have purchased GC2 and have updated it to 1.11 have already been blessed with a great deal. Why not, then, support the leading members of the GC2 team instead of exxxpecting that they should continue to work for free during the summer, just for the sake of "passion"?

I am new to this forum. I have no connection whatsoever with Stardock. (To the point that I write "Mr Wardell" instead of the more casual and chummy "Brad" or "Frogboy".) But possibly, as I have implied in my previous post, Stardock has already killed any idea of offering updates at a cost because "The update fee idea really goes against the spirt of what they're trying to sell with this game."

Well, then, here is what I am going to do : I will mail a $5 check to Stardock for all updates beyond 1.11 (starting with 1.2), up to the release of the expansion. Those of you who exxxpect more free upgrades : well, you're in luck, because the leading members of the GC2 will most probably continue to satisfy you for free --- because of their "passion".

Stardock is not Blizzard.