M.S.P.

MANDAL’S
DEOGIRI COLLEGE, AURANGABAD.

PROJECT REPORT
ON
“MARKETING STRETAGY & ADVERTISING IN GAMING
INDUSTRY”
SUBMITTED BY
Mr. Parth Vijay Dalvi
(BBA VI SEM.)

GUIDED BY PRINCIPAL
PROF. HEMLATA CHATLANI MAJOR DR.S
B.JADHAV

YEAR 2018-2019

DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR MARATHWADA

UNIVERSITY, AURANGABAD.
 M.S.P.MANDAL’S
DEOGIRI COLLEGE, AURANGABAD.

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the project report entitled “MARKETING STRETAGY

& ADVERTISING IN GAMING INDUSTRY” submitted by Mr. Parth
Vijay Dalvi is as per the requirement of DR. BABASAHAB AMBEDKAR
MARATHAWADA UNIVERCITY AURANGABAD. In the practical
fulfillment of Bachelor of Business Administration.
(BBA VIth SEM) for the Academic Year 2018-2019.

Project Guide principal

PROF.HEMLATA CHATLANI MAJOR DR.S

B.JADHAV
 Declaration

I hereby declare that the project work entitled “Marketing Strategy &
Advertising in Gaming Industry” submitted to the Dr. Babasaheb
Ambedkar Marathwada University of Aurangabad, is a record on an
original work done by me under the guidance of Prof. Hemlata
Chatlani (Project Guide), Deogiri Institute of Technology &
Management Studies., and this project work has not performed the
basis for the award of any degree or diploma/associate ship/
fellowship and similar project if any.

Parth Dalvi
BBA VI Sem.
Roll No: 09
 Preface

As per the curriculum of 6th semester of BBA, we had to undergone

through a Project Study. I approached Ubisoft Entertainment
Gaming Company for this purpose and got an opportunity to prepare
a report on it.

The topic of my project was “Marketing Strategy & Advertising in

Gaming Industry”. In this report I have put my best efforts to compile
the data to the highest level of accuracy and give my views to the best
of my judgment.
 Acknowledgement

I wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar

Marathwada University for giving me an opportunity to be a part of
such kind of learning experience, which will surely enhance my
knowledge and skills.
I am grateful to Prof. Hemlata Chatlani for their invaluable guidance
and cooperation during the course of the project. She provided me
with her assistance and support whenever needed that has been
instrumental in completion of the project.
The project has been a great experience, the learning and the
exposure, I got though this project was immense and will surely help
me in my future pursuits.
I would like to give my hurtful thanks to my Parents who always gave
me Moral Support.
 INDEX

1 Introduction
2 Company Profile
3 Company History
4 Objectives of the study
5 Scope of the study
6 Research Methodology
7 Data Analysis & Interpretation
8 Findings & Suggestions
9 Conclusion
10 Bibliography
11 Questionnaires
 Introduction

Ubi Soft Entertainment SA)

is a French video game company headquartered in Montreuil, France,
with several development studios across the world.
It is known for publishing games for several acclaimed video game
franchises including Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Just Dance, Prince of
Persia, Rayman, Raving Rabbits, and Tom Clancy's.

As of March 2018, it is the fourth largest publicly-traded game

company in the Americas and Europe after Activision Blizzard,
Electronic Arts, and Take-Two Interactive in terms of revenue and
market capitalization.
UBISOFT
Profile
 Ubisoft History
Overview

Ubisoft Entertainment is a French computer and videogame developer and

publisher with headquarters in Montreuil-sous-Bois, France.

It was founded in 1986 by five brothers, of which Yves Guillemot serves as

chairman and CEO. The company consists of 26 studios spread across 18
countries.

As of 2011, it was the third most valuable independent videogame publisher in

the world, and the second largest in terms of in-house development staff with
over 6,900 staff worldwide. Ubisoft also ranked 26th on the list of the largest
software companies in the world.

Their most famous games and franchises are, The Prince of Persia: The Sands
of Time series, Rayman franchise, Assassin's Creed franchise, Brothers in Arms
and the Tom Clancy franchise which includes the Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon
and Splinter Cell series.
History

Ubisoft's original first logo

Ubisoft was created by the five Guillemot brothers in 1986. Soon the company
acquired publishing deals with companies like Electronic Arts, Sierra On-Line
and Lucas Arts, and exclusive rights to distribute their games in France.

Their first internally developed game, Zombie, was released in 1989, and over
the next several years Ubisoft expanded their distribution to United States,
Germany and United Kingdom as well as forming development studios in Paris
(France), Montpellier (France) and Bucharest (Romania).

In 1995 the company developed and published Rayman for the Atari Jaguar,
Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation.

The game became the bestselling PlayStation title of all time in UK.
 Ubisoft's Old logo.

Ubisoft has expanded heavily through the years. Between 1996 and 2000 the
company established development studios in Shanghai (China), Annecy
(France), Montreal (Canada), Casablanca (Morocco), Barcelona (Spain) and
Milan (Italy), and distribution offices in Spain, Italy, Australia, Belgium, China
and Denmark.

Ubisoft also acquired Red Storm Entertainment (Tom Clancy franchise), Blue
Byte Software (The Settlers) and the games division of The Learning Company
(Prince of Persia).

In 2002 Ubisoft ranked among the top 10 independent publishers in the world
for the first time. Between 2002 and 2005 Ubisoft launched their online gaming
portal ubi.com, opened new distribution offices in South Korea and Austria, a
new studio in Quebec City (Canada) and in 2003 introduced their new logo.
MC2-Microïds was acquired and integrated into Ubisoft Montreal a year later.

In 2006 the Ubisoft Paris developed Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced
Warfighter won the BAFTA award for Best Game of the Year. Between 2006
and 2010 Ubisoft opened distribution offices in Mexico and Poland and founded
studios in Sofia (Bulgaria), Kiev (Ukraine), Chengdu (China), Pune (India),
Toronto (Canada) and Singapore.

They acquired Reflections Interactive (Driver), Digital Kids, Massive

Entertainment (Ground Control, World in Conflict), Nadel (Track Mania) and
the visual effects studio Hybrid Technologies (300, Sin City).

This period also saws the 2007 launch of the Assassin's Creed franchise,
Ubisoft's most successful series to date, and Uplay, Ubisoft's online awards
service, in 2009.

In 2011 Ubisoft created Ubisoft Motion Pictures, their own film division, with
the intent of creating films and television shows based on their game properties.
To date, Ubisoft Motion Pictures has not actually produced any content.
Origins and first decade (1986–1996)

The Guillemot family had established themselves as a farming support business

for farmers in the Brittany province in northwest France and nearby regions,
including into the United Kingdom.
The five sons of the family – Christian, Claude, Gérard, Michel and Yves –
helped with the sales, distribution, accounting and management of the company
with their parents prior to university.

All five gained business experience while at university, which they brought
back to the family business to help improve it, at a time where farming
businesses were starting to wane.
The brothers came up with the idea of diversification to sell other products of
use to farmers; Claude began with selling CD audio media, and later the
brothers expanded to computers and additional software which included video
games.
In the early 1980s, they saw that the costs of buying computers and software
from a French supplier was more expensive than buying the same materials in
the United Kingdom and shipping to France, and came upon the idea of a mail-
order business around computers and software.
Their mother said they could start their own business this way as long as they
managed it themselves and equally split its shares between the five of them.
Their first business was Guillemot Informatique, founded in 1984.

They originally only sold through mail order, but soon were getting orders from
French retailers, since they were able to undercut other suppliers by up to 50%
of the cost of new titles. By 1986, this company was earning about 40 million
French francs.
In 1985, the brothers established Guillemot Corporation for similar distribution
of computer hardware. As demand continued, the brothers recognized that video
game software was becoming a lucrative property, and decided that they needed
to get into the development side of the industry, already having insight on the
publication and distribution side.
On 12 March 1986, the brothers founded Ubi Soft (formally, Ubi Soft
Entertainment S.A.) in Carentoir, a village located in the Morbihan department
in Brittany.
The name "UbiSoft" was selected to represent "ubiquitous" software

Carentoir Village

However, after about two years, the costs of maintaining the chateau were too
expensive, and the developers, about a half-dozen at the time, were given the
option to relocate to Paris.

One of Ubi Soft's first hires was Michel Ancel who was only a teenager at the
time, but had been noticed by the brothers for his animation skills, and he and
his family relocated to Carentoir.
While they established operating offices in Paris, the brothers used the chateau
in Carentoir as the primary space for development, hoping the setting would
lure developers, as well as to have a better way to manage expectations of their
developers.

However, with the chateau's closure, Ancel's family could not afford the cost of
living in Paris, and returned to Montpellier in southern France, while the
Guillemot brothers told Ancel to keep them abreast of anything he might come
up with there.
Ancel came back later with Frédéric Houde with a prototype of a game with
highly-animated features which caught the brothers' interest.
Michel Guillemot decided to make the project a key one for the company,
establishing a studio in Montreuil to house over 100 developers in 1994, and
targeting the new line of fifth generation consoles like the Atari Jaguar and
PlayStation.
Their game, Rayman, was released in 1995 to critical success, and is
considered the game that put Ubi Soft in the worldwide spotlight.

Rayman 1 (1995)

Alongside this, Yves managed Guillemot Informatique, making deals with

Electronic Arts, Sierra On-Line and MicroProse to distribute their games in
France.
By the end of the decade, Guillemot Informatique began expanding to other
markets, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany.

They entered the video game distribution and wholesale markets, and by 1993
they had become the largest distributor of video games in France.
 Distributor storage godown of video games in France

Worldwide growth (1996–2003)

In 1996, Ubi Soft listed its initial public offering and raised over US$80 million
in funds to help them to expand the company. Within two years, the company
established worldwide studios in Annecy (1996), Shanghai (1996), Montreal
(1997), and Milan (1998).
One difficulty that the brothers found was the lack of an intellectual property
that would have a foothold in the United States market; games like Rayman did
well in Europe but not overseas.
When widespread growth of the Internet arrived around 1999, the brothers
decided to take advantage of this by founding game studios aimed at online
free-to-play titles, including GameLoft; this allowed them to license the rights
to Ubi Soft properties to these companies, increasing the share value of Ubi Soft
five-fold.

With the extra infusion of €170 million, they were able to then purchase Red
Storm Entertainment in 2000, giving them access to the Tom Clancy's series of
stealth and spy games, highly popular in the United States. Ubi Soft helped with
Red Storm to continue to expand the series, bringing titles like Tom Clancy's
Ghost Recon and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six series.
The company got a strong foothold in the United States when it worked with
Microsoft to develop Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, an Xbox-exclusive title
released in 2002 to challenge the PlayStation-exclusive Metal Gear Solid series,
by combining elements of Tom Clancy's series with elements of an in-house
developed game called The Drift.
Splinter Cell helped not only to sell the Xbox 360 console, but established both
Ubi Soft and its Montreal studio as important players in the video game market.

In March 2001, Gores Technology Group sold The Learning Company's

entertainment division (which includes games originally published by
Brøderbund, Mattel Interactive, Mindscape and Strategic Simulations) to them.
 Prince of Persia The Sands of Time (2003)

The sale included the rights to intellectual properties such as the Myst and
Prince of Persia series.
Ubisoft Montreal developed the Prince of Persia title into Prince of Persia: The
Sands of Time, released in 2003, another critically successful title.

At the same time, Ubi Soft also released Beyond Good & Evil, Ancel's project
after Rayman; it was one of Ubi Soft's first commercial "flop", as while it has
gained an appreciation over time, it was met with lukewarm reception at its
release alongside a competitive 2003 release market.
 Beyond Good & Evil (2003)

Continued expansion (2003–2015)

On 9 September 2003, Ubi Soft announced that they would change their name
to simply Ubisoft, and introduced a new logo known as "the swirl".
In December 2004, rival gaming corporation Electronic Arts purchased a 19.9%
stake in the firm. Ubisoft referred to the purchase as "hostile" on EA's part.
Ubisoft's brothers recognized they had not considered themselves within a
competitive market, and employees had feared that an EA takeover would
drastically alter the environment within Ubisoft.

John Riccitiello Chief Executive Officer of Unity Technologies

EA's CEO at the time, John Riccitiello, assured Ubisoft the purchase was not
meant as a hostile maneuver, and EA ended up selling the shares in 2010.

Ubisoft established another new IP, Assassin's Creed, first launched in 2007;
Assassin's Creed was originally developed by Ubisoft Montreal as a sequel to
Prince of Persia:
The Sands of Time but instead transitioned to a story about Assassins and the
Templar Knights.
 Assassin's Creed (2007)

In July 2006, Ubisoft bought the Driver franchise from Atari for a sum of €19
million in cash for the franchise, technology rights, and most assets. In July
2008, Ubisoft made the acquisition of Hybrid Technologies, a Piedmont-based
studio renowned for its expertise in the creation of visual effects for cinema,
television and advertising.
In November 2008, Ubisoft acquired Massive Entertainment from Activision. In
January 2013, Ubisoft acquired South Park: The Stick of Truth from THQ for
$3.265 million.

Ubisoft announced plans in 2013 to invest $373 million into its Quebec
operations over seven years, a move that is expected to generate 500 additional
jobs in the province.
The publisher is investing in the expansion of its motion capture technologies,
and consolidating its online games operations and infrastructure in Montreal.

Ubisoft in Quebec City

By 2020, the company will employ more than 3,500 staff at its studios in
Montreal and Quebec City.
In March 2015, the company set up a Consumer Relationship Centre in
Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The center is intended to integrate consumer support
teams and community managers. Consumer Support and Community
Management teams at the CRC are operational seven days a week.

Attempted takeover by Vivendi and present (2015–onward)

Since around 2015, the French mass media company Vivendi has been seeking
to expand its media properties through acquisitions and other business deals. In
addition to advertising firm Havas, Ubisoft was one of the first target properties
identified by Vivendi, which as of September 2017 has an estimated valuation
of $6.4 billion.

Vivendi, in two separate actions during October 2015, bought shares in Ubisoft
stock, giving them a 10.4% stake in Ubisoft, an action that Yves Guillemot
considered "unwelcome" and feared a hostile takeover.
In a presentation during the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016, Yves
Guillemot stressed the importance that Ubisoft remain an independent company
to maintain its creative freedom.
Vice-President of Live Operations, Anne Blondel-Jouin, expressed similar
sentiment in an interview with PCGamesN, stating that Ubisoft's success was
(partly) due to "...being super independent, being very autonomous."

Vivendi also acquired stake in mobile game publisher Gameloft, also owned by
the Guillemots, at the same time it started acquiring Ubisoft shares.
In the following February, Vivendi acquired €500 million worth of shares in
Gameloft, gaining more than 30% of the shares and requiring the company
under French law to make a public tender offer; this action enabled Vivendi to
complete the hostile takeover of Gameloft by June 2016.
Following Vivendi's actions with Gameloft in February 2016, the Guillemots
asked for more Canadian investors in the following February to fend off a
similar Vivendi takeover; by this point, Vivendi had increased their share in
Ubisoft to 15%, exceeding the estimated 9% that the Guillemots owned.
By mid-June 2016, Vivendi had increased its shares to 20.1%, but denied it was
in the process of a takeover.

By the time of Ubisoft's annual board meeting in September 2016, Vivendi has
gained 23% of the shares, while Guillemots were able to increase their voting
share to 20%.
A request was made at the board meeting to place Vivendi representatives on
Ubisoft's board, given the size of their shareholdings.
The Guillemots argued strongly against this, reiterating that Vivendi should be
seen as a competitor, and succeeded in swaying other voting members to deny
any board seats to Vivendi.

Vivendi continued to buy shares in Ubisoft, approaching the 30% mark that
could trigger a hostile takeover; as of December 2016, Vivendi held a 27.15%
stake in Ubisoft.
Reuters reported in April 2017 that Vivendi's takeover of Ubisoft would likely
happen that year, and Bloomberg Businessweek observed that some of
Vivendi's shares would reach the two-year holding mark, which would grant
them double voting power, and would likely meet or exceed the 30% threshold.

The Guillemot family has since raised their stake in Ubisoft; as of June 2017,
the family now held 13.6 percent of Ubisoft's share capital, and 20.02 percent of
the company's voting rights.
In October 2017, Ubisoft announced it reached a deal with an "investment
services provider" to help them purchase back 4 million shares by the end of the
year, preventing others, specifically Vivendi, from buying these.

In the week just before Vivendi would gain double-voting rights for previously
purchased shares, which would have likely pushed their ownership over 30%,
the company, in quarterly results published in November 2017, that it has no
plans to acquire Ubisoft for the next six months, nor will seek board positions
due to the shares they hold during that time, and that it "will ensure that its
interest in Ubisoft will not exceed the threshold of 30% through the doubling of
its voting rights." Vivendi remained committed to expanding in the video game
sector, identifying that their investment in Ubisoft could represent a capital gain
of over 1 billion euros.
On 20 March 2018, Ubisoft and Vivendi struck a deal ending any potential
takeover, with Vivendi agreeing to sell all of its shares, over 30 million, to other
parties and agreeing to not buy any Ubisoft shares for five years. Some of those
shares were sold to Tencent, which after the transaction held about 5.6 million
shares of Ubisoft; the same day, Ubisoft announced a partnership with Tencent
to help bring their games into the Chinese market.
Vivendi affirmed it would completely divest its shares in Ubisoft by March
2019.

Technology

Uplay
Uplay is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and
communications service for PC created by Ubisoft. Ubisoft Club is a reward
program connected to Uplay Members earn rewards by completing certain
actions while playing games published by Ubisoft.
Completing an action gives you a certain number of Units, which members can
use to unlock those rewards or to get a discount on games from the Uplay Store.

AnvilNext

AnvilNext, formerly named Scimitar, is a proprietary game engine developed

wholly within Ubisoft Montreal in 2007 for the development of the first
Assassin's Creed game, and since expanded and used for nearly all other
Assassin's Creed titles and other Ubisoft games.
Anvil is a game engine created in 2007 by Ubisoft Montreal video game
developers for use on Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 3,
PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

Dunia Engine

The Dunia Engine is a software fork of the CryEngine that was originally
developed by Crytek, with modifications made by Ubisoft Montreal. The
CryEngine was unique at the time as it could render large outdoor
environmental spaces.
Crytek had created a demo of their engine called X-Isle: Dinosaur Island which
they had demonstrated at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 1999. Ubisoft saw
the demo, and had Crytek build out the demo into a full title, becoming the first
Far Cry, released in 2004.

That same year, Electronic Arts established a deal with Crytek to build a wholly
different title with an improved version of the CryEngine, leaving them unable
to continue work on Far Cry.
Ubisoft assigned Ubisoft Montreal to develop console versions of Far Cry, and
arranging with Crytek to have all rights to the Far Cry series as well as a
perpetual license on the CryEngine.

Objectives of the study

 The project is an extensive report on how the Ubisoft Company markets

its strategies and how the company has been able in tackling the present
 tough competition and how it is coping up by the allegations of the
quality of its game products. The report begins with the history of the
products and the introduction of the Ubisoft Company.

 This report also contains the basic marketing strategies that are used by
the Ubisoft Company of manufacturing process, technology, production
policy, advertising, collaboration, export scenario, future prospect.

 The report includes some of the key salient features of market trend
issues. In today’s world of cut-throat fierce competition, it is very
essential to not only exist but also to excel in the market. Today’s gaming
market is enormously more complex. Hence forth, to survive in the
market, the company not only needs to maximize its profit but also needs
to satisfy its customers and should try to build upon there.

Scope of the study

 Marketing is a vast and complex area that contains way too much to
cover in a few pages so the focus of this report is on the practical rather
 than the theoretical. It's much more about building great games and
helping to manage them post launch, one of the key areas I find most of
Ubisoft need help with is marketing.

 We plan to write several pages about game marketing that should help a
Marketing management team to create a successful marketing plan for
their game.

 I guess the very first piece of advice I can give you is to think about how
your game is going to be marketed right at the beginning because there
are a couple of important decisions you will make that will impact the
game design and how successful you are in taking it to market.

Research and Methodology

There are several ways to categorize the various market research methods.
The vast majority of techniques fit into one of six categories:
(1) secondary research,
(2) surveys,
(3) focus groups,
(4) interviews,
(5) observation, or
(6) experiments/field trials.

The most basic classification of market research is primary and secondary

research. Secondary research happens to be the first of six market research
methods. The other five are all different flavors of primary research.

Data Analysis & Interpretation

Secondary research is simply the act of seeking out existing research and data.
Secondary data could be US Census data, Twitter comments, journal articles
and much more.
The best thing about secondary research is that is it often free and it usually can
be done relatively quickly. Your job as a secondary researcher is to find
existing data that can be applied to your specific project.

It is possible that you might not be able to find secondary data that is suitable
for your research needs. If that’s the case, you’ll need to conduct your own
primary research…and that’s where we’ll find the other five market research
methods.

Findings & Suggestions

Primary Market Research Method #1 – Surveys

Surveys are perhaps the most widely known and utilized method when it comes
to market research. Surveys come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, from
that little “feedback card” on the table at your favorite restaurant to those never-
ending web surveys that make you want to punch your computer.
Surveys make a lot of sense when the following conditions are true:

 You want to measure something objectively (or quantitatively).

 You have something specific to measure. In other words, you are beyond
the exploratory portion of your research and you now want to test more
specific questions.

 You have a relatively large sample to query.

 You have the resources (time and money) to conduct a survey.

Conversely, surveys are not a great research tool when:

 You are still exploring your topic. In this case, you don’t know the right
(specific) questions to ask in a survey. Instead, you might conduct a
focus group to get a better understanding of the topic. Here is an
example: Let’s say you want to make and sell a better mousetrap. Instead
of using a survey to ask people what color they prefer, you might want to
 hold a focus group with people who have mice problems and ask them
open-ended questions about what they value in mouse control devices.
You might hear things like “doesn’t kill mouse,” “easy to set,” “small
size,” “price,” “disposable,” etc. Now that you have explored the topic
and discovered these attributes, you can then measure their relative
importance with survey devices.

 You don’t have the luxury of time and/or money to run a survey.

 Your available audience is too small (for now, let’s define “too small”
very simply as less than 30 people. If you are curious why I picked the
number 30, here is my rationale).

Surveys are perhaps the most widely known and utilized method when it comes
to market research.
Surveys come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, from that little “feedback
card” on the table at your favorite restaurant to those never-ending web surveys
that make you want to punch your computer.

Surveys can be used effectively for satisfaction research (customers or

employee), measuring attitudes, pricing research, fact gathering (e.g. the
census), and much more.
You’ll find surveys administered in all sorts of ways, including snail mail form,
web forms, face-to-face (that guy at the mall with the clipboard), over the phone
(the guy who calls during dinner), on the sidebar of a blog, and even on mobile
devices via text message or otherwise.
Surveys can be self-administered (the respondent reads and answers questions
alone) or they can be administered by a person who records your answers.

Primary Market Research Method #2 – Focus Groups

Focus groups involve getting a group of people together in a room (usually

physically, although technology is making virtual, or online focus groups more
feasible).
These people fit a target demographic (e.g. “mothers under 40 with an income
over $50k”, “college males who play 8 or more hours of video games a week”,
“guys with red beards under 6 feet tall,” etc.) depending on the product or
service in question.
Participants are almost always compensated in some way, whether it be a
money, coupons, free products, etc.
A moderator will guide the discussion, with a goal of getting participants to
discuss the topic among themselves, bouncing thoughts off of one another in a
natural group setting. Professional focus group rooms will have a one-way
mirror on one wall, with a team of observers on the other side.

Primary Market Research Method #3 – Interviews

Like focus groups, individual interviews are a qualitative market research

method. To simplify things, think of individual interviews as focus groups with
only one participant and one moderator (interviewer). There is a wide spectrum
of interviewing formats, depending on the goal of the interview. Interviews can
be free flowing conversations that are loosely constrained to a general topic of
interest, or they might be highly structured, with very specific questions and/or
activities (e.g. projective techniques such as word association, fill in the blank,
etc.) for the subject.

Like focus groups, interviews are useful for exploratory research. Use this
market research method when you are interested in digging into a specific issue
very deeply, searching for customer problems, understanding psychological
motivations and underlying perceptions, etc.

Primary Market Research Method #4 – Observation

Observational research can come in a different shapes and sizes. In general,

there are two categories:
(1) strict observation with no interaction with the subject at all, or
(2) observation with some level of intervention/interaction between the
researcher and subject.

The greatest benefit of this technique is that researchers can measure actual
behavior, as opposed to user-reported behavior. That’s a big deal, because
people will often report one thing on a survey, but behave in another way when
the rubber hits the road.
Observational research is a direct reflection of “real life,” so these insights are
often very reliable and useful.

Conclusion

All of these areas need to be considered carefully at the beginning of your game
project and the analysis and conclusions are what make up your marketing
strategy. I am working on one now, in fact, for a customer and will happily
(and with their permission) publish it when done.
Once the marketing strategy is complete and you understand how you want to
try and market your game, the next step is to create a marketing plan. The
marketing plan is much lower level and will specifically allocate money to
certain channels that have been identified in the strategy.
Over the coming weeks we are going to continue to publish new posts in this
series about Game Marketing that deal with the channels that should make up
most Indies’ marketing plans.

In particular we are going to cover the following:

 Part 1: Website, Micro-sites, SEO and Google
 Part 2: App Stores and other Distribution Platforms
 Part 3: Advertising and Cross Promotion
 Part 4: PR and Games Review Sites
 Part 6: Social Media Marketing

“Marketing is all about maximizing your ‘catch’ per unit of spend and the exact
approach that will deliver the most bang for buck can vary significantly”

Bibliography
Websites:
www.slideshare.net
www.mymarketresearchmethods.com
www.gamesparks.com
www.google.com
www.ubisoft.com
www.wikipedia.org
www.emeraldinsight.com

Questionnaires

The following three main research questions guided this survey:

(1) How video game developer companies resolve marketing decisions, decide
on their marketing mix and create marketing plans;
(2) how they perceive the importance given to marketing in their industry and
(3) how they measure and judge the success of their marketing activities.