Hello mortals! Your favorite Marketing Witch is back & and I have lotta say!🧙‍♀️
In this episode, you’ll take a peek at how we are preparing for Cave Digger 2- Dig Harder’s Early Access, one of the most important events of our Marketing Roadmap we discussed in the previous episode. Also, you will find a checklist based on my experience and suggestions about marketing materials.
⚒️Why is Steam Early Access important for your marketing?
For us marketers, usually Steam early access is just another excuse to show how pretty your game is, but also a great chance to improve the game before it’s final. Collecting the feedback for devs is more precious than the revenue they get this period because having the player feedback and polishing the game is the goal. Thankfully, even though this is an early version of the game, we have quite much content with Cave Digger 2, so the marketing team is never starved over the materials.
Having an EA was decided at the beginning of CD2 development since we wanted to use it as leverage of our pre-marketing. It is also important for us to see the wishlists, reviews, comments to understand the demand, and communicate with our audience by being fully transparent about what they can expect from CD2.
⚒️Deciding the Early Access Date: Don’t resist Murphy, just go with it.
Deciding on the EA date requires strong nerves, a realistic approach, and a lot of meetings. If you think that everything will be ready on time, I suggest you expect the unexpected. When you lock the date for EA, your game can start to have bugs all of a sudden, and that may affect the players’ experience even though you tested the game a hundred times before. This is expected so don’t panic. As a marketer, we need to focus on the long-term image of the branding/game (and potentially negative attention you may attract ) so you better reconsider your dates.
For example, we locked our EA date to 31st of August for Cave Digger 2 months ago but unfortunately, we’ve encountered new issues during the testing period over the past weeks that require more time before the game is ready for early access release. We want the game to be in the best possible state (even for the early access) before we’re comfortable releasing the game. We also didn’t want to cut out any content that we’ve already promised. Our new release date is the 14th of September, 2 weeks away from the original plan, but we are more confident and motivated now to show you what we achieved!
We also enabled Steam Playtest build, so you can help us tackle these issues by requesting access on the store page, testing it out, and reporting bugs via the in-game reporting form or discord (link below). Huge thanks to all the testers so far!
⚒️What do you need to promote your VR game for Steam EA?
- List your community channels where you’d like to promote
- Make your campaign materials list (make sure you have the right dimension for each platform)
- Test the build 3456232165 times more and have an existential crisis.
- Adjust your message by interviewing the vampires.🧛‍♂️ I meant devs sorry.
- Start to take new screenshots and produce your Trailer + Teaser (without spoiling too much)
- Update your Steam page and other platforms with sexy branding.
- Update your journalist list and send the press release.
- You can consider paid advertisements such as influencer marketing or social media ads. This is a good time for A/B testing.
Lastly, don’t forget to support us, or Clayton will haunt your dreams! 👉Cave Digger 2: Dig Harder on Steam: https://bit.ly/2RayKmS
Cheers!
BegĂĽm.
Random development quote: “Eiks se oo sama tunkea hirveä kasa hubbabubbaa siihen ja sitte korjata jos korjataan“.
