WRITING
From long, ponderous prose set in far away fantasy lands to compelling literary reportage to sardonic media reviews to technical writing to straight journalism, I continue to write for purpose and pleasure. Here are a few examples.
New Version Rollout
With such a niche project, every single touch point of the grander NESmaker product has to be an opportunity to expand the brand, extend awareness, and grow the community. When it's time to push a new version, getting new features to current users is only part of the design. Using a bit of pageantry and advertainment for the rollout in ways that engage the community and turn them into brand ambassadors helps convert a feature update into a fantastic potential marketing opportunity. I am generally in charge of all marketing and brand strategy for NESmaker. Here is an example of the pieces involved in the fourth quarter 4.5.x NESmaker rollout marketing plan, which increased our user base by 26% in just three months during a global pandemic.
Snapshot of the Marketing Plan
Objective: NESmaker has reached a level of saturation within its direct, active niche. The goal for the fourth quarter of 2020 is to use the 4.5 rollout to broaden the scope of the demographic to reinvigorate the current user base into rolls of brand ambassadors while enticing those with more passive interests to become enthusiastic new customers.
SWOT Analysis: Entering the 4th quarter, the main strength of NESmaker is that it has no competitors. It is the only product that is capable of doing what it does, and there is a strong interest, especially among males between 30 and 55. There were several points of weakness to improve. The first weakness was stagnation. Sales were waning as the excitement of the product's original launch dissipated, and existing users were finding new interests after dabbling with the software. The greatest opportunity was in turning the negative of quarantine protocols into the positive of increased screen time for both active and potential users. The primary threat was determined to be an amalgam of the financial challenges of Covid and the pandemic's effects on third party hardware availability coupled with users' competing priorities.
KPIs: We teamed up with Game Marketing Genie to manage social ads and track conversions while we created content and managed the site. The initial ambitious target was to double our Q3 user base by the end of Q4.
Content Strategies (illustrated below): A complex, multifaceted, transmedia series of content strategies was conceptualized centered around a new version roll out. Rooted in interleaved video content, social ads, and coordinated press, we developed a advertainment campaign that was heavily driven by nostalgia for, and reflection of, a simpler time - very topical during a time of quarantine. Every part of the campaign orbited that central concept.
Current Observed Outcomes: Despite the chaos of the pandemic, sales over October and November were up 120% from 2019 due to this campaign. Ad clicks from social media are up exponentially higher, which has prompted us to analyze our current landing pages to insure we're best postured for conversions, as well as begin to host ads on some of our more experiential sites in the coming year to help generate revenue.
"Summer Camp"
Along with a massive launch email through to our current base of users, we released a 20 part, 3 1/2 hour video taking users from concept to completion of a NES game using the new version 4.5. This was part of a soft launch of the new version with the primary purpose to acclimate existing users to the new changes, so that they could also generate excitement as they showed off their own projects using these new features, and also primed them to provide support for new users.
Resources For All Skill Levels
The second phase of roll out was to release a handful of deconstructed game modules. Pre-existing assets and corresponding code bases were designed to allow users of every skill level to jump in and start creating various genres of games. Users were invited to show off their creations on the forums and on social media. Beginner level tutorials were available that required zero coding, intermediate tutorials utilized the same assets but focused more under the hood of the software and how the GUI interacted with the code, and advanced tutorials took deep conceptual dives into how things worked at the code level. Existing users across the spectrum of skill had broad, diverse projects to show off in a very short amount of time.
The Annual "Byte-Off" Competition
The next part of exciting our user base while expanding our reach was launching the Byte-Off competition. This is an annual, month long jam event where users create game demos based upon a common theme. To put everyone on the same level, all submissions had to make use of the newest version. The competition had accolades and prizes in several categories, which helps foster a breadth of entries. The short, focused deadline yields a huge surge in user creations, and thus, visibility for NESmaker.
For the event, a panel of relevant judges were assembled. This year's judges included Senior Editor from Nintendo Power Magazine Chris Hoffman, Audio QA from Harmonix Orion Dommisse, Chief Experience Officer of Game Marketing Genie Vivek Vasudevan, and Editor In Chief for Old School Gamer Magazine Ryan Burger.
Part of my responsibility was to court these judges, recruit their involvement, and coordinate necessary virtual deliverables for on time delivery to be included in the greater campaign.
Virtual Arcade with Player's Choice Voting
Once the games were submitted, the next phase was to create a place where people could experience them. Aligning with the 35th anniversary of the release of the console, we began our "The NES is Alive at 35" campaign. Now, with over a hundred high quality new game demos playable in a browser based virtual arcade right on our website, we had a vehicle for recursive engagement.
The site also featured a link to an Audience Choice poll, giving competitors a reason to drive traffic to their games. Most people driven to play these games had at least tangential interest to retro games themselves.
Showcasing The Games
During the down time between submission and final judging of the games, we launched a loosely scripted web series in the spirit of MST3K. In playing with this year's theme, "TIMELESS", we constructed an 80s basement in our studio's soundstage. We wrote a frame story involving time travel, clones, cyborg dogs, and all of the 80's iconography we could squeeze on screen in these short vignettes. This frame story was used to show off the submitted games in a unique and entertaining way.
There were several challenges. The first was trying to figure out a way to film while observing Covid related safety protocols. By employing some fun green screen work to turn us into holograms, we were able to have live interactions and even appear to be sharing the couch for long periods of time. A bigger challenge, however, was how to mine for humor in the script. Trying to take cues from other riff shows was a challenge - they always set out to poke fun of the work. For us, though, we wanted to be celebrating the work without the videos feeling promotional. Because of this, we found ways to invoke situational humor at our own expense, much of it revolving around our often exaggerated memories of the 80s.
The 12 Days of NESmas
In the last episode of A Riff In Time, we announce that the short series will culminate at the wards show on December 22nd. In the interim, we provide the 12 Days of NESmas. This more personal video content targeted at newcomers acts as promotional material for NESmaker on a daily basis for two weeks during the holiday season, and has an evergreen quality as a tutorial series for beginners that can live on our website.
The 2020 Byte-Off Awards
Ultimately, the entire version roll out strategy culminates in a year end awards show. This awards show celebrates our growing community, sees developers using our software rewarded and recognized by industry professionals, and pays off on the ridiculous narrative of the web series.