Hi, I'm Victoria! Join my Community Dev Newsletter for insight into games marketing, social, and community management. Get actionable tips, a skill testing question, and a roundup of resources straight to your inbox every month.
Doing a Competitor Analysis β¨ Community Dev Newsletter #15
Think of things, c'mon brain
Hellllllllo!
Readers of this newsletter know we do a community activity every month. But why? Is it so I can flex? No, wtf! Is it because it's a great way to learn something? Yes. (And I'm not saying my activities necessarily, but the idea behind it.) Is it also a way to get engagement? ... Heh. Yes you got me, bonus points for you.
According to research by the NeuroLeadership Institute, creating (and sharing) your own connections to ideas is the best way to make things you've learned stick. "When we take time and effort to generate knowledge and find an answer rather than just reading it, our memory retention is increased."
So. Yeah! The Community Activity exists because advice is great, but we get so much advice. How much of it sticks? When does consumption become action? I also love it because I don't think I know all the answers. I am a biased human and learning perspectives from others is the best.
This isn't to try and convince anyone to do the Community Activity. I just thought this would some useful perspective to have on learning. :) And now... onto the activity! (Sorry I didn't know how to smoothly segue into it lol.)
Community Activity π
Every month we do a new community activity together. Here's the latest one! This one is a special question submitted by Laura Tallardy - thanks for writing in. :) I think it'd be fun to take community questions, so feel free to ask any, but no guarantees it'll be in a newsletter!
The question:
Feel free to email me back with your answer - I always respond to them! My answer will be in the next newsletter.
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Previous Community Activity π«
Here was the question from last month. Thanks to everyone who wrote in and responded - had some super solid answers. :)
Question refresher:
My response: This is a huge topic - so much so I did a talk on it with Dana Trebella back in 2020 which you can view for free here.
As an ultra quick summary though, here are my thoughts on doing a little competitor analysis!
How and where can you find competitors?
- Find games with a similar genre on storefronts
- Find games with a similar emotional tone/feeling/aesthetic/setting on storefronts
- See what press write about your competitor's game
- Influencers you'd target and what kinds of games they play
- Social media hashtags or searches
- Tools like Steam "More Like This", Games Like Finder, VG Insights, SteamDB, and more
What is this information for?
Viability
- Platforms
- Genre saturation
- Audience size
Marketing
- Game differentiation
- Messaging angles and customer profiles
- Competitors
Insights:
- Player sentiments
- Pricing for your own game
- Gameplay length
Community Chatter π¬
Here are the interesting and helpful things I've seen this month.
General News
- Lmaoooo Twitter being Twitter
- βWhy can't Twitter and TikTok be easily replaced? Something called 'network effects'
- Metricool's TikTok Study 2023β
- βLemon8 is TikTok's sister app which is like a mashup of Pinterest and Instagram
- βReddit moderators brace for a ChatGPT spam apocalypse
- You can now verify where you work at on LinkedIn - this is super useful if you work at a larger company
Games Resources
- βThe GDC Vault has been updated with the 2023 talks! Lots of videos are free to watch
- βBenjamin Glover's post about the popularity of Pizza Tower.
- βGrace Curtis' thread about creating 3 viral TikToks for 3 different games.
- βDerek Lieu pointing out a Reddit thread where people mention skipping the trailers to go straight to screenshots
- βStreamElement's State of the Stream report
- βThe State of Switch 2023 user survey by Switch Weekly
- βThe Games Accessibility Knowledgebaseβ
-
There are additional markdown text formatting options for Discord (not available in all servers yet)
- And if you need to block the new formatting options due to member spam (lol community struggles), here is the regex so you can add it to AutoMod
- βIGDA Foundation's Grantee Program Application is now open (mentorship and development program for students, people looking to get into games, or mid-career game devs)
Community & Marketing Game Jobsβ
βThese are not endorsements.
- βTake-Two Interactive - Marketing Coordinator (Remote)
- βFFXIV - Influencer Manager (London, UK)
- βBehaviour Interactive - Player Support Lead (Montreal, QC)
- βRiot Games - Principal, Global Community Strategist VALORANT (Los Angeles, CA)
- βKlang Games - Lead Community Manager (Berlin)
- βNCSOFT - Community Manager (Irvine, CA)
- βImpossible - Community Manager (Montreal, QC)
- β2K - Community Manager, Mobile (Novato, CA)
- βCommunity Intern - Pixelberry Studio (Remote, US)
I am putting in ALL MY STRENGTH to make sure I have a newsletter ready after this month and not just use up all my waking hours playing Tears of the Kingdom when it drops. Hrggg.
And Happy AAPI Month! :)
β€οΈ
Victoria
I offer this: pic.twitter.com/IpNgZ12oYt twitter.com/lindarendel/stβ¦
The secret to finding fellow producers on social media is to share production related memes. So happy to get to know all of you! π₯° I love how we all can relate to the same joys and challenges of our job no matter where in the world we are or what games we work on. π€ pic.twitter.com/sAaXO5xEcP
April 11th 2023
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Community Dev Newsletter
Hi, I'm Victoria! Join my Community Dev Newsletter for insight into games marketing, social, and community management. Get actionable tips, a skill testing question, and a roundup of resources straight to your inbox every month.