The 10 Minutes Game Sales Potential Test
 Does the Gameplay Stand Out?
Once gamers have their hands on the game and the initial visceral reaction ends, you need to give them a unique experience worth talking about. Unique gameplay is what makes a game stand out fundamentally from the others.
While it’s harder to communicate gameplay in non-interactive ads, this factor becomes very important once a demo is released and when the game is sent to reviewers. If your game is just a clone of other games, it’s not likely to make players enthusiastic about it. Enthusiastic gamers are more likely to purchase the full version of the game and they’re more likely to evangelize the game to people they know.
Don’t underestimate word-of-mouth marketing. With the popularity of blogs, a few enthusiastic comments can reach a lot of people. The buzz around the Wii comes in large part from players passionate about the unique controller talking a lot about it.
Players don’t become passionate about ordinary gameplay. If you want passionate players who’ll rave about your game, you need gameplay that stands out.
Is the Game Unique Socially?
Another great way to create buzz around your game is to involve players in a community. If your game doesn’t promote activities going beyond the game itself and make players reach out to other players, you’re missing on a whole level of word-of-mouth generation.
Pokémon is the best example of this, with more than 140 million copies sold. The marketing genius behind these games is to make players trade creatures with their friends. It created a strong network of people trading with each other, and it also made players try to convince their friends to get the game so they’d have more people to trade with.
MMORPGs are another great example of the positive effect that involving your players socially can have. The passionate members of those games’ communities can be very vocal about the game. They also tend to recruit their friends because they want to play with them.
Being distinctive in this aspect is very important because people don’t talk much about the ordinary. When mods were new, there was a lot of buzz around the games allowing them. Now that they’ve become common, the buzz surrounding those games has dropped substantially. Finding a unique way to involve players socially will help to build buzz.
Is the Idea Behind the Game Easy to Communicate?
Can players explain quickly, easily and in a convincing way why your game is awesome? Can the marketing team? If the high concept of the game is hard to communicate, then you’ll have a hard time convincing players that it’s worth their time.
Peter Molyneux understands this principle very well. The ideas behind his games are strong and simple. Take Black & White: a god game in which you can be the good or the evil god. It’s simple and it’s effective. Another good example is Project Gotham Racing: “It’s not how fast you drive, it’s how you drive fast.” That motto explained the points-for-style system perfectly.
Bizarre Creation's Project Gotham Racing 3
There are many games on the market and many pieces of news about those many games. If you can’t communicate very quickly why your game is worth the interest of the public, the public will just move to the next news story and ignore your game. If players can’t easily tell their friends why your game is cool, they won’t.
In fact, a concept that’s hard to explain may not become a game at all. If you can’t explain the idea behind the game clearly, chances are management or publishers won’t choose that project because they don’t understand it. No matter how good your game idea is, if you can’t communicate what makes it good in a simple and compelling way, it won’t become a success.
Is the Game Based on Something the Market Already Knows and Loves?
Put in other words, will the market “get it” quickly? It’s a lot easier to convince people that a game is good if it’s related to something they already like.
A very popular way of answering “yes” to this question is to base the game on a popular franchise. For example, a popular movie’s fans are more likely to be interested in the game based on it. Same with sequels: if you liked a game, chances are you’ll also like the sequel.
Attaching a popular brand to a game makes it easier to sell, because the game rides on the brand’s popularity. Brands go beyond popular franchises – successful game studios (like Blizzard) and even successful individuals (like Sid Meier) have become powerful brands by themselves. Be sure to get a brand appropriate to games, however: Marc Ecko may be a popular fashion designer, but his name on the box wasn’t enough to make Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure a hit.
You can answer this question positively even if your game is for an original title with no established brand attached. If the game is related to something popular among your target market, it’ll help get them interested in the game. For example, pirates are popular these days because of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. If you make a game about pirates, you’ll indirectly appeal to those movies’ fans.
In short, the fewer obstacles you put in the player’s path to liking the game, the better. Linking the game to something the player already likes is a very good way to achieve this. What’s more, using the right brand can catch his interest in the first place.
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