Key for Popular Game

After seeing lots of games on chrome store, iTunes and Google play, and PC games, I saw the main attraction item was the game Banner & Icon and the description. Those 3 makes people attract to a game. For example I didn't know Little Alchemy, but I was searching on Chrome store It banner and its description attracted me, and now I'm addictive to it. There are many games in the world, but only games which look nice and described nicely are played, but that don't mean you should not make a good game! Do you agree? <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

that�s what we call marketing ;-)

people can sell the biggest crap if marketing works out...

Or great marketing can lead to massive disappointment if a game is junk. There's definitely gotta be some balance, but Beaver is mostly right--people are often dumb enough to try anything if it looks good.

The problem you need to be creative to make those good

I mostly operate via mouth to mouth propaganda. I think it happens for a lot of people, that's why the really popular titles outsell the good but not as popular games by a big margin.

Example: DotA - only a custom map for Warcraft III, not marketed at all (in fact not even sold as a product), had a playerbase of around 15 million players in 2010.

Ofc there are also the big AAA titles with heavy marketing budget that get so much attention that people either assume they are good or at least can talk about them with friends, because they also play them.

Mhmm I would go a lil deeper, saying that good PR is way more important than marketing. If you get lots of reviews and articles in blogs or even newspapers etc, this gains a lot of trust in the product. Just if it�s worth the trust of course.

If the press once kicked the whole thing off, there is a big potential on going viral.

Its every game developer dream

Good artwork is sometimes all people have to go by. When you stumble on a random game while searching, the first thing you will see is promotional artwork or screenshots. If you click a video, you are are still looking at art, just with sound and whatnot.

It seems like it would pay to have a great presentation. If you are going to spend a long time making a game, might as well make the presentation good as well. That means title screen art, game art, icons, or anything else you can use to get people's attention.

I agree with you. graphics are a big part of the game experience...even they are somehow minialistic :)

I'm following up with DrewMelton.

The icon or title of a game isn't on the marketing side of things as much as it is simply illustrative work. The first image the player sees has to convey in a split second :

• what broad category of gameplay the game belongs to
• what the setting of the game is

This is not a place to trick the user into thinking that the game is great, but rather a way of conveying information extremely fast, in an entertaining fashion.

And this isn't only important as far as users are concerned, but also when you want to have publishers, editors and journalists pay some attention to your games. They are busy people, often receiving from dozens to hundreds of emails per day. So, you might only have 10 seconds of their attention to convince them that your work is worth taking a look at.

Lastly, PR and marketing are complementary, not opposite. If you don't market your game properly (yet ethically ), for example having a very ergonomic and appealing website to sell it from, it is unlikely that the press will make a miracle out of it.

Regards,

Nathan