Marketing Your Simfiles

So this is going to be a long post, with a lot of my opinion thrown in to generate some discussion, but I think marketing/branding is something severely overlooked when making/distributing packs. A lot of people like making files and want people to play them yet somehow don't realize they are creating a commodity in the market that is dance games and should pay attention to said market throughout the entire process of pack creation. This is what I've been observing, please feel free to comment with different opinions etc:

Packs, like every other piece of video game content or really anything you see in the work force are projects. The scale of these projects vary, whether it be by the amount of people involved or the length/selection for the song list, but at the end of the day it is rare that a pack is made without a non-significant amount of man-hours required any pack to be completed. This is why I find it extremely odd that for some people, releasing a pack while saying something along the lines of "Here is this group of files, there's a 13 footer, hope you enjoy" is good enough. To use making a video game as an example, it is hard to find a well made game that was successful without at least having a decent marketing campaign. For many companies, marketing takes up as many resources (time, effort, and money) as actual development of their game because the games market is extremely saturated. This may be a hyperbole, but the same can be said about the simfile "market" (look at smo or any other simfile database if you don't believe me when I say there are too many packs that exist for anyone to play all of them). There is an absolute need to market your pack, whether that be by having a descriptive release thread with videos of chart previews, other goodies like fancy readme’s a la Pendulum Act 1/2, or some other creative means to generate interest in your pack.

Some say a good product can market itself. I think this is the case as well, but it is important to define what a good product is in terms of 2016 In the Groove. People seem to be creating packs with no regard for who would play them and while I get that many step for self-fulfillment, the act of releasing a pack seems to reflect a desire for others to play said step artist's work. Successful packs in 2016 tend to reflect the reality that In the Groove has firmly developed niches. The generalist approach, meaning having a little bit of everything, such as FA, stamina, footspeed, you name it, doesn't work and hasn't worked in quite a long time. It is hard to find a pack without a specific theme that gets significant playtime. Back in the early days of In the Groove, packs were a bit more generalist, such as the user expansions to ITG officials (Rebirth etc.), but that was because the game hadn't carved out the niches it currently has. Today, stamina players look for stamina charts, footspeed layers want footspeed, FA players want FA, new players want easier stuff, etc. By trying to cater to everyone, generalist packs tend to alienate everyone for multiple reasons: a) without significant focus on a certain style, those who are looking for a certain niche won't bother downloading a large file in order to find a small amount of content they actually like and b) someone in a certain niche may find by focusing on everything, the quality of charts in their niche may be lacking.

When you look at successful packs, they all follow a certain theme and succeed at that goal. Packs like the Cirque series have a clear goal laid out for each of their installments and the good charts inside said pack demolish said goals. Packs such as The Apocalypse Sampler, while high quality in the actual charts they create, are not really that popular. Despite being marketed towards the niche of hard stuff, the lack of direction (no footspeed or stamina focus) lead to fewer downloads (I have the numbers since it is hosted on my own site if you really need proof). And remember, type of file isn't the only niche to focus on. Vocaloid, Speedcore, and Undertale packs have been successful due to the large overlap of fans with those things and ITG.

A small aside to the massive point above, having a reason to create your pack always helps since it shows that you care about the pack's existence and the quality of the content inside. For example, I created Oh Henry Mad Stamina to help increase my own stamina, which I think reflected the fact that because I am making these charts for me to play, I'm going to make charts that are actually fun, rather than someone like a keyboard player trying to make hard pad charts for the hell of it.

Lastly, that brings us to the brand. This spills over from the last point, but there really needs to be a reason why someone should download the pack and this generally falls into the presentation. Core mechanics (files) are important, but way too many people disregard graphics and consistency. Graphics don't have to be the best, but they should accurately represent the tone of a pack and at least not be awful to look at. You never see games ship out without professional assets made for their product, because presentation is part of what makes something good. Super meat boy with stick figures would not be even close to the same. By releasing things that look good, it shows you are taking this seriously and establishes some dance game rep (a brand). There are a few people who swear by Zaia charts for stamina and people who latch on to other stepartists and I think this is due to the brands they have developed. Do this enough times and you'll basically be a monolith like Coke/Pepsi and have a much easier time getting people to download your content.

Luckily, the point above means it isn't meaningless to release packs in a well populated niche. Despite there already being many packs and files existing for specific subsets of the game already, a well marketed, intriguing pack will get plays. I barely download packs but I've actually spent the effort to download and play files just because they were presented well, even if the files themselves were sub-par.

The point of this post is not to tell people to become sleazy marketing types. The point of this is to tell people to give people a reason to download their packs. If you put a lot of effort into something, try to show people that you did. Presentation and confidence go a long way.

I also realize this post is kinda weird. I'm making it because I'm just kinda fed up with seeing a ton of packs that could be good, but I end up not spending the time to check them out because of how they are presented. I am willing to discuss anything in further detail. Also I typed this entirely on mobile so sorry if there are a ton of typos.

-picante / @@