The 5 Best Books to Learn Game Marketing

Making a game is long, hard work. You have to give it months and come up with ideas that mean something to players. But no matter how good you are at game design, how well you code, or how hard you work, if you can’t market your game, you’ll fail.

That’s why I put together this list: to help you learn how to make money from your game from the people who mastered it, and take your first step into game marketing.

If you’re serious about marketing, there are countless resources, articles and courses online. The books on this list are specifically about game marketing.

Video Game Marketing: A Student Textbook

Peter Zackariasson and Mikolaj Dymek

We sometimes forget that games are, above all, a business, and that they need a business plan. This book shows where game marketing differs from classic marketing, and that developing a game is about much more than just making it. In other words, it looks at the business side of game development.

Peter Zackariasson and Mikolaj Dymek cover, from a strategic angle, how to do market research while developing a game, how to run marketing communications, how games become brands, and where game marketing is heading. If you want to look at game development from an entrepreneur’s perspective, this book is for you.

By the end of the book, you’ll have answers to questions like:

• How do you set business goals and objectives for a game, and how do you run a SWOT analysis?
• How do you build a marketing mix, where do video games sit on the product life cycle, and what are owned, earned and paid channels?
• Why and how are games treated as both a product and a service?
• What is gamification, does it only exist in digital, and how do you apply it?

A Practical Guide to Indie Game Marketing

Joel Dreskin

If you’re making, or want to make, an indie game and you understand that marketing matters but don’t really know how it works, this book will give you a good grasp of general marketing concepts and the tactics used in the industry.

“A Practical Guide to Indie Game Marketing” is especially good if you don’t have much budget for marketing, you’re a small team, or you don’t know where to start. Using analyses of successful examples from the industry, Joel Dreskin explains clearly what to do, and what not to do, on the road to making your game a success.

After reading it, you’ll come away with these perspectives:

• Without a marketing plan, you won’t get anywhere.
• A solid brand leads to solid success.
• Keeping up your relationship with the community you have, or will build, is critical for sustainable profit.
• Checklists for game distribution make your life much easier.

If you’re already confident about marketing, A Practical Guide to Indie Game Marketing can still help you grasp a few key principles of game marketing, although from a broader perspective its marketing content is fairly surface level.

Innovation and Marketing in the Video Game Industry

David Wesley and Gloria Barczak

If you want to make games and learn how to market them from the very best, this book is for you. David Wesley and Gloria Barczak approach game marketing through the history of video games and reveal the secrets behind the success of PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo. Written mainly for marketing professionals, managers and, of course, game lovers, it can give you new perspectives on game marketing.

Some of the insights it offers:

• Performance matters, but it means nothing unless your content is strong.
• Know your customer well and build unique value propositions for them into your products.
• The only way to beat piracy is to compete with it. Trying to stop piracy is expensive and usually pointless.
• Value diversity. Many of the innovations that revolutionised games came from artists and musicians.

With examples ranging from Apple’s mobile gaming strategy to Atari, and from Netflix to Game Boy, Innovation and Marketing in the Video Game Industry belongs on every gamer’s and marketer’s reading list.

The Lean Startup

Eric Ries

In this book, Eric Ries opens a scientific discussion about starting and running a startup. “The Lean Startup” brings fresh air to the classic “plan, do, check” cycle of strategic planning by looking at it from an entrepreneur’s point of view. Its “Vision, Steer, Accelerate” structure isn’t a guide for game developers specifically, but it contains knowledge every entrepreneur should have.

Most products and services are built on the assumption that customers will want them. They’re developed for a long time before a real customer ever sees them. But the idea in your head isn’t always the best idea, and it can fail in real life. The same is true in game design. That’s why I think “The Lean Startup” is very useful for game developers, especially when read alongside the other books on this list.

Bonus: Marketing Management (14th Edition)

Philip T. Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller

If you’re thinking “I want to learn marketing management, but I want one book that covers everything”, Marketing Management is exactly what you need. It’s a fairly heavy marketing book, written by some of the most respected names in the field. Once you’ve read it, you’ll know a great deal about marketing management and you’ll know what your next learning step should be.

Turkey is taking strong steps in game development. Finding the right material online isn’t hard, and gamers here are very ambitious. At a time when we’ve started exporting games to the world, I wanted to highlight how much marketing matters. I made this list so you can find, and prioritise, the knowledge you need to fill your gaps as well as possible.

If you’re looking for a shorter, more practical read on game marketing, this blog post is one I found useful.