FIND YOUR VOICE, TELL YOUR STORY
Whether you’re new to the games industry or an established player, knowing and communicating your brand is at the very core of being authentic, distinct and successful
I
’ve always fondly described the games industry as big business, small industry. By that I mean it’s always been a global powerhouse of exciting
entertainment opportunity, but equally a place (to quote the infamous Cheers theme tune) where everybody knows your name. Big business it certainly is though, in more
ways than one. According to Ukie, there are thousands of games publishers and developers in the UK alone, and it’s a number that keeps growing. With a proliferation of gaming talent and lower barriers to entry for those wanting to make great games, there are more opportunities than ever to establish your own publishing or development operation. If you can make yourself heard amongst the noise, that is. For newcomers to the publishing and development scene, it can be
daunting trying to make your mark against the big and well established. But what if I told you it didn’t need to feel that way? What if there was another way to carve out a credible place, even without the multimillion-pound marketing budgets only some are lucky enough to have access to? It’s all about how you position your business, and that comes down to
creating and telling the right brand story. Making great games might be what you do, but it simply isn’t enough to say on its own.
44 | MCV/DEVELOP March 2022
We’re all consumers of something, many things in fact and we can test the theory ourselves with any number of examples. If you came across a new coffee shop in town selling “the best sandwiches”, would you immediately rush down there and say, “I must have one of these amazing sandwiches?” Doubtful. You’d probably dig around a little bit to find out how they qualify such a claim. Do they make their own bread? Are they offering never-before-seen filling combos? What is it they’re doing differently that makes these sandwiches so darn good?
Games are no different. Telling your audience that your games are great/immersive/fun or any similarly overused adjective
is likely to fall on relatively deaf ears, as is proudly talking about how passionate and talented your team is. We’ve all heard these claims so often that we’re pretty much immune to them. The meaning has simply been washed away over time. Consumers of any kind expect more from the companies they buy
from these days. They want to know what they stand for and that they share their way of thinking. It’s your brand positioning that drives this. It’s what defines and brings to life your purpose and what you believe in. When you can uncover and really get behind what you truly care about, others will start to care about it too, whether that’s players, press, potential partners or even investors.
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