The moment you say “We are going to make a game that is a <genre> with <art-style> graphics” and commit to developing that game you have made about 90% of your marketing decisions for your game. At that moment in the multiverse of potential outcomes for your game, hundreds of Continue Reading

I followed journalist Stephen Totilo as he explored the GDC expo floor and the MIX event. I recorded him interacting with developers and booths and I have some thoughts…. But first, this leads into my broader topic surrounding my study of how journalists play your game… Introducing my Spring lecture Continue Reading

This was a talk by Megan Fox. Game is SkateBIRD Description: A single-person game and, based on community response, gradually scoped it up to a larger game- all the while laying down deals and picking marketing venues so that we knew we’d launch already profitable. Half SkateBIRD post-mortem, half hopefully Continue Reading

Designer / Developer John Romero walks us through In this retrospective of the classic PC game Wolfenstein 3D CZ Side note Wolfenstein 3D was the very first PC Shareware game that I bought. It is also the first FPS I ever played. One night My dad brought home a generic Continue Reading

Link to the talk description CZ Intro: So this is my favorite talk so far. It was so cool what this team does with data to get sentiment about their game. Now both of the speakers work for big companies that have games where they earn hundreds of reviews a Continue Reading

Session link. In this talk Derek Lieu and Dana Trebella ran through some of the most common fallacies they encounter when marketing games. Fallacy: A well-made trailer will automatically get a lot of views False and most don’t go viral Same exactly trailers were posted on two spots and did Continue Reading

This talk was given by a lawyer. Don’t ask me anything about this. The speaker gave a disclaimer that this was not legal advice. Hire a lawyer. I am not a lawyer. I don’t anything about this either so don’t ask me. Hire a lawyer! link to talk description Speaker: Continue Reading

I write this from a hotel room 1 day before the start of GDC. I am in person, giving a talk on making demos and another secret soapbox rant. Every talk that I attend I am going to write up and post here on this blog.  A super mini user Continue Reading

Last month Valve conducted a Q&A with the Slovak Game Developers Association. I love to watch these Valve Q&As because they bring a check to all my wild theorizing. I truly respect Valve for being so open. Their willingness to answer developer questions and allowing us to share our data Continue Reading

So you have some money for marketing! What should you spend it on? In this post I want to spend your money! But only on the stuff that is worth it. The assumption here is that you are a small studio. You are probably working on your first or second Continue Reading