Nowadays, there are numerous things you can do to positively affect the discoverability of your game. During this talk, you will learn about the actions and techniques used by EXOR Studios to get the word about The Riftbreaker out to the players. You will learn what worked for this project, what didn't, and what you can do to get more eyes on your game on various budgets from an indie developer perspective.

1. The Snowball Effect:
How we got 1M players to try out
The Riftbreaker

2. Introduction
- Piotr Bomak - Community Manager at EXOR Studios
- Joined the studio in February 2018
- Worked on marketing the following titles:

3. Talking points
- Key takeaways from the studio’s previous project
- Marketing and design principles in The Riftbreaker
- Understanding your audience
- The effectiveness of various marketing tools for discoverability
- The importance of focusing your efforts
- Best opportunities for indie developers
- Conclusion and Q&A

4. X-Morph: Defense - key facts
- Released in August 2017
- Day 1 release on PC, Xbox One, PS4
- 5 years in development + 1 year active support
- Most polished EXOR Studios game - over 90%
Steam positive rating
- Sold ~20K units within the first month, and ~50K
units within the first year across all platforms.
- It did ok, but ok wasn’t good enough after +5 years of
development

5. What went right? What went
wrong? - 4 years of silent development
- Focusing on traditional media
- Too scared to show “unfinished” stuff
- No early influencer build
- Limited influencer outreach
- No structured “community building”
- No dedicated marketing budget
- Non existent studio recognition
- Marketing wasn’t embedded into the
production process
- “Grassroots” marketing
- Reaching out to our existing fans
- Regular posting schedule
- Visual gifs presenting the game
- Tech oriented stories on Imgur,
Facebook groups and reddit
- Selling moment-to-moment gameplay
- Very good wishlist conversion

6. Key takeaways for the next project
- Focusing on just a few major marketing beats is very risky
- Every aspect of the game is a potential news story
- More news stories give you more chances to reach your audience
- Game should be announced ASAP to extend the marketing period
- Approach media and influencers as early as possible
- Focus on creating a Minimum Viable Product as soon as possible to be able
to show it to influencers, business partners or to launch in Early Access if
necessary
- Integrate marketing into design and production with dedicated resources
- You only have one chance at a good first impression

7. The Riftbreaker - short project introduction
- Released on October 14th 2021 - Steam, GOG,
Epic Store, Windows Store, Xbox Series and
PlayStation 5
- Day 1 Game Pass launch on PC and Xbox
- Day 1 physical disc release on PlayStation 5 and
Xbox
- Over 1M players overall
- 3.5 years of development, 14 person team
- Custom in-house engine - The Schmetterling
- Most successful EXOR Studios’ game by far!

8. The Riftbreaker - concept goals
- Base building
- Hack’n’Slash action
- Exploration
- Randomized, dynamic gameplay
- Replayable
- Quick to develop and iterate
- Scalable systems and content
- Less polish, more features, more
gameplay possibilities

9. The Riftbreaker - marketing goals
- Marketing integrated from the start
- Focus on a playable/showable build
- Easy to stream
- Dedicated community manager actively
supported by the development team
- Development resources dedicated to
creating marketing assets
- Create marketing beats from all
aspects of the development process
- Understand the audience

10. What are your audience’s motivations?
- Looking for action?
- Looking to socialize?
- Looking to master a new skill?
- Looking for a sense of achievement?
- Looking for immersion?
- Looking for a creative outlet?
- Great source of knowledge on this:
https://quanticfoundry.com/
Understanding your audience’s motivations will
help you create superfans, who will become your
brand’s biggest advocates.

11. The big dilemma of content creation

12. Steam Events are the bread and butter

13. Using social media
- It’s highly unlikely that your posts
will go viral or generate wishlists
- That doesn’t mean you should
neglect them
- Use Facebook/Twitter/Instagram as
a contact point first
- TikTok and Imgur have true
discoverability potential
- Don’t be afraid of a little bit of
clickbait

14. Funnel your traffic into one place
- It is much easier to manage your
audience in one place
- Offer exclusive rewards for joining
your hub
- Make users feel welcome and
heard
- Involve everyone in the team in
interacting with your audience
- Do not overstay your welcome!

15. Building on previous games
- Used our older games to boost our
presence on Steam multiple times
- Added in-game buttons promoting The
Riftbreaker
- Posted information about the new
game on all social channels
- This is why you should use one
account for all games - it builds your
brand

16. The first year of marketing
- Visited GDC 19, PAX East, E3, Gamescom,
PAX West thanks to a government marketing
grant
- Showcasing the game at events had little
effect on our wishlist count, but provided
valuable influencer and business contacts
- Content is king
- Regular dev build streams with interactive
extensions (Twitch and Mixer)
- First “influencer build” sent out on November
14th resulted in 12K wishlists within two
weeks
- 50K wishlists at the end of 2019. Initial wishlist
goal achieved!

17. “Influencer build”
- Survival Mode gameplay
- Designed for 1h play sessions
- Random generated maps
- Streaming integration
- Required a few months of dedicated
development effort from the entire team
- Helped us to refine the gameplay loop
- We opened up closed Alpha sign-ups
through our Discord and pushed that
heavily until the launch of the game
- Valuable feedback tool

18. Zombie Driver’s 10th anniversary sale
- Hidden Steam curator list - Publisher sales
weren’t easily available on Steam yet
- Zombie Driver’s 10th birthday - 24h giveaway.
858K copies given away for free. Didn’t affect
Zombie Driver’s revenue.
- X-Morph: Defense - 90% off
- Wishlist The Riftbreaker located at the
forefront of the sale (no longer allowed but not
enforced)
- 9500 wishlists during the sale
- Revenue was secondary to gaining wishlists
for The Riftbreaker

19. Second year of marketing - before the Prologue
- Gameplay trailer released in March 2020 as a
24h PC Gamer Exclusive. Most successful
traditional press event to that date
- Digital Dragons didn’t generate many
wishlists, but resulted in very successful
coverage from Eurogamer
- 95K wishlists on June 15th - a day before the
Steam Summer Festival

20. Steam Summer Festival 2020
- It was the first edition of the festival that would
be open to everyone
- We dedicated additional two months of
development time to create and polish a
custom gameplay demo. Having an “influencer
build” ready helped us a lot
- Festival build was much more polished than
the “influencer build”
- One of the most popular games during the
event - 42K wishlists from the festival
- 52K Downloads

21. The Riftbreaker - Prologue
- Additional 6 weeks of development to polish the Summer
Festival demo to reach “launch quality”
- Localized into 10 languages
- 146K wishlists a day before the launch of the Prologue
- Released as a separate product
- Launched with a custom Daily Deal that promoted the
Prologue front and center
- Thanks to the huge boost of traffic it landed in the New &
Trending section on day 1 which propelled it even further

22. Prologue results
- 180K downloads, 95% overwhelmingly
positive rating
- 56K wishlists during the Prologue’s 14 day
promotion
- Revenue during the EXOR Developer Sale
was 30% higher than for our previous Daily
Deal on December 4th 2019
- Increased daily wishlist baseline after
releasing the prologue - from ~80 to ~400
- The exposure that we received on Steam also
drew a lot of external traffic like a Twitch
stream by LIRIK (2.6 Million followers)
- 235K wishlists on September 21st

23. The year after the Prologue.
- Second Steam Next Fest - smaller, but still
effective
- Marketing driven primarily by new influencer
builds and closed beta updates
- It was starting to get harder to focus on
marketing in the run-up to launch
- Game Pass deal reinforced our financing
- We started to run paid marketing campaigns
thanks to the additional funding
- Thoughts of doubt:
- Are those old wishlists going to convert?
- Did we lose the point of highest
momentum?

24. Why bother with a prologue?
- A prologue is a separate product
users add to their library
- Users rarely delete anything from
the library
- Once it’s there, your news items
will show up for users
- This reinforces your brand and nets
extra impressions

25. A lot of people actually read those news items!

26. SureFire Games cooperation in China
- Publisher/PR Agency in China
- Measurable wishlist results
- Responsible for:
- Influencer outreach
- Chinese translations
- Chinese social media
- Community management
- China specific Steam key
reseller

27. Xbox & PC Game Pass on Day One
- Microsoft has shown interest after
early presentations in 2019
- Raytracing implementation
started to turn eyes
- Xbox Series build @60FPS
closed the deal in 2021
- Helped us bridge the financing
gap before release and provided
funds for marketing
- Convinced us to sim-ship on
consoles

28. Paid marketing campaigns
- Targeted at medium and small
influencers
- Targeted specifically at influencers that
covered similar games
- Typical campaign budget ranged from
$10K to $20K
- Average wishlist cost at $2-$3
- Additional Facebook and Reddit paid
ad campaigns - average wishlist cost
$2-$6
- Difficult to scale efficiently

29. Influencer marketing
- YouTube worked better for us than
Twitch
- The audience of YouTube stars
watches their videos for the
personality, not the game
- Smaller YouTubers have a more
engaged audience
- Be careful of YouTubers who might
be considered brand risks

30. Choosing the right influencer

31. The snowball effect
- 32 months of marketing
- 389K wishlists
- 550K demo downloads
- 70M Steam impressions
- 3.5M Steam page visits
- 8 physical events
- Hundreds of pieces of media
coverage
- 3.5 years of work

32. What can you do?
I have only time to spend on
discoverability
I have some extra budget kicking
around
I have money to burn
● Create a Discord server or
any other kind of hub
● Have an early playable
build
● Post about your progress
frequently
● Treat every post you make
as a lottery ticket
● Approach other developers
for co-marketing
● Try influencer marketing
● Get some good trailers
● Get a PR agency to handle
press for you
● Go to trade shows for
business opportunities
● You can spend an infinite
amount of money on ads,
PR stunts, etc. The
question is - is it worth it?
● Hiring a person to handle
marketing is an expensive,
risky, but potentially game-
changing move.

33. Conclusions
- Long term marketing requires dedicated marketing
resources
- A structured approach to marketing allowed us to
maintain a constant pace of new content to show
- There was no “one weird trick” to marketing, but our
playable builds were the workhorse of driving interest
- Constant community nurturing helped us make the
wishlists stick
- ~15% of revenue came from consoles (not including
Game Pass)
- Increased marketing focus (understanding what our
players want) resulted in a better game
- The Riftbreaker outperformed X-Morph ~10x within the
first year

34. Questions?
piotr.bomak@exorstudios.com