Blockchain’s Braintrust – A question of marketing
It was a pleasure to speak with the team of Cocos-BCX, HoraGames and Alto
How do developers market their blockchain game with their eyes on mass adoption? We speak to this week’s Blockchain Braintrust to find out
While blockchain games have steadily been evolving into increasingly sophisticated projects, they remain held back from mass adoption.
Usually, while there’s a solid underlying vision that titles and projects like Alto, HoraGames and Cocos-BCX have.
There are those out there, either with a coherent or strong project, but with little to no understanding of just how to market themselves.
This is where the Blockchain BrainTrust comes in. We got the opinions of influential members of the blockchain gaming world to get some insight into these questions.
Blockchain games – a matter of marketing
Gabby Dizon – Alto.io
For Gabby, the answer is staring right at blockchain dev teams.
With the vast majority of money pouring into the games industry through mobile gamers, it provides a blueprint for blockchain developers to market effectively.
“Having a strong, engaging game loop similar to what we see in mobile games is crucial for blockchain games to succeed – blockchain gamers still want to be entertained while they are making money from producing scarce digital assets.”
We can certainly see this approach working well for the Alto team in its partnerships with Antler Interactive. There’s a logic to putting blockchain in the very literal hands of players, considering the scale and versatility of mobile gaming.
Goran – HoraGames
Centralized games, as we’ve previously discussed, tend to be siloed experiences.
In stark contrast, blockchain games allow users to have far more of a say in their individual experiences.
As a result, it stands to reason that going mobile, and working with the community is how developers can really jumpstart marketing.
“One of the perks of blockchain gaming is that it is very community-driven, and you should use that approach with your newcomers, or other potential players, at first at least (because later on, if everything scales up, it will be harder to maintain the community on your own).”
In this way, mobile phones and blockchain have a network effect in common. In that users, simply by making use of the technology, will result in its wider spread. Goran does go on to explain that the community can only support a project so long as it is a solid, trend-setting kind.
“Always try to find new inspiration, try to catch up with a current trend if there is one, try to see what the competition is doing and how is that working out for them.”
So while there’s a very real push now from influential names to go big on mass adoption. What specific components of a marketing strategy do developers need to bear in mind?
Caterina Zhang – Cocos-BCX
Operating as a blockchain agnostic platform, Cocos-BCX comes with a long history of experience and knowledge.
Having previously worked with millions of developers, including Big Fish and Zynga, Caterina Zhang maps out some of the questions any developer/project needs to be able to answer.
- “We need to understand first who is the target audience. Obviously, it’s mainly cryptocurrency users at this stage.
- What’s their interest? Value inflation, incentives and full ownership in a digital asset; participation in community governance and collaboration. These two things are exactly the unique features Blockchain games can offer. So you know what to market to your audience.
- What are the marketing or distribution channels? largely different from traditional gaming, we need to look into where the crypto users are concentrated.
- To market blockchain games to masses, the games have to be as fun as conventional games. And working with Media partners like pocketgamers.biz and blockchiangamers.biz are excellent ways of bridging the marketing gap between blockchain games and conventional games.”
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