Free-to-Play: Making Money From Games You Give Away

5. Marketing: Reaching Players

Marketing can be a dirty word among the bleeding-heart game makers of the world. It is often misunderstood as being sinister. Yet marketing is nothing more than the process of reaching out to potential players and telling them why your game is worth their time and money. Without marketing your game has no players. The public will not care about your game until people have been exposed to something that makes them see value in it.

Therefore, you must show them a value proposition—something that presents to them what they will get from your game: the pride of growing vegetables, the thrill of slaying dragons or the tactical buzz of matching gems. How such value is presented and how it is put in front of players is ...