The game industry is hard – very hard.
I often compare it to the nightclub business model:
- you have to constantly rebrand yourself to stay relevant
- it costs a lot of marketing money to get people in the door
- There’s a short shelf life – except for the ultra ultra rare exceptions
- it’s overwhelmingly full of dudes unless you do something to incentivize women to show up
- The target market has, on average, only $2k disposible income for game-type forms of “entertainment” per year
Indie game developers traditionally have had no way to compete with this other than word of mouth – they can’t afford traditional advertising nor shelf space in stores (or usually even the boxes to print more than a limited run.)
(Kickstarter and indiegogo have been godsends for games like Star Citizen, but at a $2M+ budget I would argue you are slightly out of the realm of “indie.”)
So what can one do? How can you design a game and get people to hear about it if you don’t have anyone to market it for you and you haven’t got the cash to back it up?
Here’s where GameStop and their new GameTrust idea is perfect.
Gamers have been trained to go to GameStop to trade in their old equipment and games for years. They have more shelf space available as games increasingly go toward downloadables, and they can afford to incubate new talent – as they have a ton of data to know what sells and what doesn’t.
They can help encourage and mentor new developers in a way that other companies can’t – I think it is extremely valuable and happily endorse it.
Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/What-do-game-developers-think-about-GameStops-new-publishing-division-GameTrust
Originally Posted On: 2016-04-18