Engage & Play – Catherine Warren

From Gameport.se

Catherine Warren: A Long Engagement: Commit Early and Build Fans for Life

Catherine’s lecture was about fans and all the different kinds of fans that exist. Fans have become a huge part of game creation/movie productions etc. Fans even move towards investors when it comes to crowdfunding. Her statement that your fans and your community build your game is true in many cases, because what is your game if no one is around to play it?

On a bit of a side note she namedropped the value of some social media interactions, a twitter follow is worth $2, a retweet $5, a facebook like $8 and the most valuable thing is the epic facebook share with a value of a whopping $14!

I have a note about slim customer segments, I can’t remember what that was about exactly but I think it had to do with finding your niche, even something that is targeting 1% of the global gamer community can be a financial success if it’s done right, this is something Nathan Vella stressed during his talk at GDC 2012.

Some fans fall into the category of co-creators and I hope I got it right in my notes here, the Transformers, the Creators and the Catalysts. Transformers are people who make remixes of your original work and fan fiction etc. The Creators make podcast and youtube shows about your game and the Catalysts are the people who hang out in the comments sections and forums and give you feedback.

She also thinks that you should have a facebook page/twitter account for all your products ready in case the fans start finding your work. Related to that is to have a list of all your pages/accounts/forums/channels that you have a presence on.

Her final words PUT YOUR FANS FIRST! If you put out things on the internet people will be able to express their opinions and not everyone might love what you have done, in fact some people might hate it. Fans is something that you need to have a constant dialogue with especially when you get negative feedback, negative feedback should be handled in realtime because fans have strong feelings and opinions but they’re also very forgiving.

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