My dev partner and I have spent months developing a round based game similar the The Conquerors 3. The rounds are long, lasting 30-45 minutes each. To play the game, you start in a lobby (2d GUI interface) and join a room. You have to wait until enough players join the room for the round to start (4-8 players). However, while there are pros to this, I have come across some significant hurdles while attempting to create an advertising and release strategy.
Because the game is multiplayer and round based, the players have nothing to do while waiting for others to join. This causes a big issue because if there are no players currently in the game when someone joins, they are likely to leave immediately. I have seen some other successful round based games and they succeed because they have a large recurring player base (like TC3).
How would I build a player base for such a game from scratch? Currently I am thinking about spending a large sum of Robux on the initial release to get enough concurrent players to get rounds going before they leave, but this is not a long term viable strategy.
How do I build a player base for this type of game? Am I overthinking it? Should I advertise with a large sum of robux on the initial release day and scale down? Any tips, ideas, or experience would be very helpful. Thanks.
You’d definitely need to advertise. Round based games fail if they don’t have recurring players. Advertising, unless you have limitless funds, is risky sometimes.
I suggest doing the following:
Before release, get friends or literally anyone to test your game. Catch bugs/annoyances.
Look into sponsoring/advertisements, see what works for you.
Get some sort of traffic to your game. Do you have a big group? Use the group shout feature to announce the game.
When you first advertise it, make sure you’re playing it so no players are left in a server alone.
While round based games are fun, they’re a struggle to start up. Good luck!
I would advertise people to the game itself as others are saying.
But a key thing you are going to need here is an incentive for these individuals to continue to come back even with lower numbers.
Unless you have had some previous success you can’t afford to ad bomb every day to generate continuous player counts.
You are going to have to get creative as to how you will retain those you draw in.
Here’s a few ideas:
Make a group based around the game and early players get a special role.
Special in game cosmetics for anybody who reaches a certain “level” or “rank” during the beta period
Any kind of recognition or reward that will make users standout once the game becomes successful should help create a veteran fan base if you execute it successfully.
Thank you. I have around a 100k ad and sponsorship budget. Is this too small to get it up and running? The game is not top chart material due to the genre but it is unique and has high replay value.
It has daily round winning bonuses, progression, a tournament feature, and the ability to join existing rounds to take the place of players who left, among other things. The main incentive is the ability to win new skins and other customizations from loot chests.
I’d recommend starting up a fanbase and adding some medium sized updates. I know this isn’t specifically what you are looking for, but everyone else covered the good stuff lol.