Simplifying Your Game’s Message

A game is a huge collection of features, artwork, music, and more. For any consumer, digesting all that information at once is too much. They need a simple message that gets them excited to play your game. Let’s face it, have you ever played a game after looking at the feature list alone? Didn’t think so. And that’s the lesson for today’s post, which I’ve learned from marketing plugins to individuals on my other site.

The Hero Effect

Any product should be designed for the consumer. That product has to help the consumer solve a specific problem and make them feel good. That’s where the hero effect comes in; everyone is a hero in their own story.

You as the producer, have to enable the player to feel awesome, invoke feelings, or meet their needs with your game through the experience. Remember how you used to feel as a kid playing video games? The idea is still the same; you want to feel like a bad-ass when you conquer all the challenges thrown at you. With that said, it shifts your focus.

Focus on the gameplay; focus on the points that the player actively participates in both in your design and marketing strategy. This is how AAA game companies get players excited. Now, how do you accomplish the same effect?

The Hero Effect Exercise

This is something I personally use and think about when creating any content. First, I ask some important questions:

• How will this make the player feel? (Understand their feelings)
• Are we positioning ourselves as an enabler? (Give the player the tools to enjoy the game thoroughly)
• Are we showing them the benefits (No one cares about features, talk about the experience of all those features above all else)

By using these questions, you can improve the perspective you come from when building and marketing your game. The game will be better for it.

Now you might ask, where do features fit into the equation? That will be in the next post.

Stay tuned!