Do You Really Care? [Marketing Stories]

I had the pleasure of meeting Ian Roberts of Red Redemption yesterday. He's at Develop with his company's environmentally themed strategy game, Fate of the World.

Ian talked at length about the game, the motivation behind it and the educational value of games. He was animated about his subject, proud of his work, and had a sense of marketing story. He clearly cared, and that's an infectious quality.

Contrast this with many other indie teams of two or three young guys at the same show, mostly showing variations on physics gameplay. Mostly explaining the features or controls of their game, their engines, technologies and techniques. Mostly well executed. Mostly admirable. But all essentially the same.

Their pitch was "look what innovation we have developed". Ian's was "Here's our contribution to changing the world." The difference? Today I remember Ian's name. Everyone else belongs to yesterday.

Comments

[John Pickford]

I'm half of a two man team with a physics based puzzler on iOS (Magnetic Billiards:Blueprint).

I care. Really.

I care about making interesting, compelling entertainment.

I've no pretensions as to changing the world. What's wrong with entertaining people?

[Tadhg]

Nothing is wrong with that. I meant not that you need to care about that particular topic, but that it's an example of a marketing story that gets noticed. There are others.

The question is are you getting noticed. All the projects I saw are made by teams who care about what they are doing, but that's not really enough to get noticed to just be impressive.

[PacktExplorer]

The Pickford's marketing story is the best I've ever heard for an iOS game. The Nineteenth Century Video Game Company concept is great: I hope you discover plenty more of your Great Grandfather's plans for future titles.

[Raitens]

Good observation Tadhg. The difference between Ian and the other folks is that most developers focus and communicate WHAT they do. Ian takes it one step further and explains WHY he does it. There's a big difference and people tend to resonate more with WHY than WHAT.