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Michael Mindes
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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There are a number of ways to talk about and tackle the concept of reach here. I want to personally analyze the 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
The simple bottom line is that if you want to create a hit, then you need to have more people playing your game.
Degree 0
Degree 0 is where I consider the background information, buzz, ratings, advertising, reviews, and so forth. While all of this information is helpful for getting people to make a purchase and want to play your game in the first place, it is not a person who actually played the game.
This is extremely important, because the more powerful your level 0 promotion and marketing is, the more likely somebody will actually open up and play your game rather then just buying it and having it sit on a shelf.
Degree 1
This is where you have your early adopters, demoing retailers, convention library plays, fan base, and so forth. At Tasty Minstrel Games, we publish games that cater to these individuals. We do a significant amount of work to try to match our products to the desires of these individuals.
Optimally, you want to have a large number of Alpha Gamers in this group that play games often, are teaching the games, and are the main source of gaming knowledge. As a company, if you can become a favorite publisher of these individuals, then that is a great start!
It is also important to seek their permission to contact them on a regular basis to keep up to date on what is happening at your company. Without this permission, then it is less likely that when it comes time to actually launch a game that these individuals will be ready for it and anxious for the games to show up.
Degree 2+
Degree 2+ is where a game will either become an eventual hit or not at all. This is where your control over the situation becomes almost nil.
The only aspects that are in your control which will help the spreading of the game here are:
*Bringing these degree 2+ individuals to a degree 1 individual for future games released.
*Shorter game play, Theme, Accessibility, Reach, Fun, Obsession, X-factor. Wait, that sounds like the anatomy of a hit... STARFOX.
Conclusion
Since we have little control over the movement outside of degree 1 as a publisher, it is imperative to concentrate on the levels of degree 0 and degree 1.
If you build the size of degree 0 and degree 1, then everything should propagate through the rest of the board going world, until Kevin Bacon himself is on a talk show saying that he loves the game you published.
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