The Finnish gaming ecosystem turns limitations into opportunities. Case Futuremark / Shattered Horizon
Futuremark game studio – an innovative community based approach to development and marketing
Futuremark is a Finnish software company based in Espoo. For over 10 years the company has focused on making 3D graphics benchmarking software for PC gamers. Their flagship product 3DMark is used by gamers and PC hardware enthusiasts worldwide and has been downloaded more than 45 million times. In January 2008, Futuremark created a games division, Futuremark Games Studio. The studio’s first game Shattered Horizon, a multiplayer first-person shooter played in zero gravity, launched on November 4 2009.
Shattered Horizon is not a mainstream game. It is exclusive to the PC, requires fairly high-end hardware and is only available from Steam, the online digital distribution store for PC games. On top of this the game launched at the most competitive time of year just days before Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Left 4 Dead 2, two highly anticipated games with rumored $200 million and $25 million advertising budgets respectively and worldwide teams of sales and marketing staff behind them.
In contrast, Futuremark Games Studio has two marketing staff and little money for advertising. Marketing Planner James Gallagher talks about the studio’s innovative community based approach to development and marketing.
Making a video game is complex, time consuming and expensive. Making your first video game is especially daunting. And as Shattered Horizon was primarily self-funded and self-published we knew we couldn’t compete with the big studios if we tried to develop and market our game in the same way. Instead of aiming for mass-market awareness we embraced our niche status, we developed our small studio, first game positioning and focused all of our marketing efforts into PR and community. In these channels budget is less important and it is possible for a small, nimble, hands-on studio to be more effective than a big, lumbering, bureaucratic publisher.
From the moment we announced Shattered Horizon we started growing and nurturing communities in our forums, on Facebook and on Twitter. We created places where people who were interested in the game could gather and share their enthusiasm.
We knew we were on the right track with this strategy when we started a closed beta test for our game a few months before the target launch date. In a beta test you invite a select group of players to help you test and balance the game, discover problems and bugs and get feedback on what works and what doesn’t. The key to a successful beta is communication and we made sure we started right by recruiting our beta testers from our existing communities. We chose people who were already willing and active online communicators.
The Beta phase
We said right from the beginning that we would do a "proper" closed beta. We would listen to people, respond and make changes to the game. That was the plan, but we really didn't know what to expect when the beta started.
A week before the beta began we opened a private forum for the testers and started getting involved, answering questions, providing information and helping to set the tone. We must have done a good job in attracting the right sort of people because very quickly we built up a really good community. From our point of view we owe a huge debt of thanks to all the people who posted bug reports, feedback and suggestions. And especially to those who stuck with us when the game still had lots of bugs and glitches.
Futuremark Games Studio is made up of roughly 20 people and all of us were active in the beta forums, reading and responding, explaining design decisions and discussing new ideas. To us this was the natural and obvious way to run a beta but our testers were genuinely surprised at the level of openness and communication. Lots of people said that it was one of the best betas they had ever been in.
The only downside was trying to stay on top of it all. By the end of the seven week beta we had reached over 19,000 forums posts and we had read every single one. But the many late nights spent responding to the feedback were more than made up for by the improvements we were able to make to the game. There are several features, and even a whole level, which were designed and added to the game as direct result of beta tester feedback.
A significant benefit from the beta was the tightly knit and enthusiastic community of Shattered Horizon evangelists it created. When the beta ended and the NDA was lifted this community generated conversations and hype for the game all over the Internet. When we released new screenshots and trailers, or made new announcements, we would always see members of our beta popping up in the comments, explaining the finer points or answering questions from people who were new to the game. If an article or review made a negative comment they could be found defending our game, correcting inaccuracies or arguing against points of view they disagreed with citing their first-hand experience. As any marketer will tell you, nothing is more powerful or persuasive than word of mouth.
When we launched Shattered Horizon we recognized our beta testers’ contribution by including them in the game’s credits. We also gave them a special pre-order discount and offered an additional discount to anyone who had purchased a Futuremark benchmark in the past.
One of the strengths of a multiplayer game is that it can evolve and grow even after launch. Unlike single player games with a set story it is easy (and usually expected) that a multiplayer title will change and develop over time with game balancing tweaks being made, new features added and so on.
We made a commitment that we would continue to support Shattered Horizon and its community after launch. This commitment took two forms. The first is that we regularly update the game. Sometimes there are minor issues that need to be fixed, or features we want to add that were not ready in time for the game’s launch. Other times we respond to feedback from players about an option or setting they want, or a change to the game’s controls or menu. We have done several of these updates so far and each one has reinforced our positioning as a developer that listens and cares.
The second part of supporting the game after launch is planning for the big updates. We have already started work on the first of these, a pack called “Moonrise” that will add a further four levels to the game. For Moonrise we decided to follow the model from our beta. We created a special program called the “Arconauts” for the most valued members of our community. Membership is limited to those who pre-ordered the game and selected beta testers. In future, we will allow players to become Arconauts through special competitions and events. Arconauts get a special badge in our forums that allows us to recognize their contribution publically. It’s a kudos thing for them, a badge of honor in the community.
We have invited our Arconauts to help us test the new Moonrise levels as we creat them. We let them get access to these new levels at a very early stage – something we call “block geometry”. In this state the levels are very unpolished and crude. We let the Arconauts play around with them, looking for problems and helping find gameplay and design issues. Their feedback is collected in a private forum where we discuss the points raised and work together towards making each level as strong as possible.
Initially there were some concerns about how we would make this community interaction work. People were worried that we wouldn’t be able to control the flow of information, or that people would say things that could become PR issues. In the end, we found that people in the team understood the responsibilities and had a natural feel for what was and wasn’t acceptable. We didn’t have to create unwieldy processes or lengthy approval chains. Our actual rules are remarkably simple: 1) Only provide answers for things that fall under your area of expertise, artists shouldn’t talk about code for example. 2) Under no circumstances do we “leak” or give hints about upcoming, unannounced plans or content. 3) Getting involved and saying the wrong thing is less of a risk than not getting involved at all.
Our community focus has found its way into other functions as well. We knew that after we launched the game we would need to provide customer support. We don’t have any full time support staff and we knew that our existing support using email and telephone would not scale or provide a good customer experience.
After a bit of research we choose a community based support solution called Get Satisfaction (http://getsatisfaction.com/). In this tool customers can submit questions, problems, ideas and even praise. Everything is out in the open and other users can search for, comment on and reply to every post. In the case of problems people can hit a “me too” button if they have the same issue instead of submitting a duplicate report. In the case of new ideas, other players can vote for and support the ideas they want implemented. The whole thing is very open and friendly and the interface offers up likely solutions as people submit new topics.
Everyone in our studio is registered and appears in the tool as an employee. We all get involved answering the problems and ideas that get posted. New visitors see straight away that we respond which makes them more comfortable asking questions of their own. Because the tool is public, accessible and encourages self-help we have massively reduced the amount of time we need to spend on support. The tool also helps us prioritize the problems that affect the most people and create content plans around new ideas and features that are most popular.
It is no understatement to say that the positive experience of growing online communities and encouraging our team to join in has completely changed the way Futuremark as a whole thinks about marketing and product development. There is simply no smarter way to run a business than by talking to your customers every day. As a result we have seen huge benefits for no other cost than the time we put in.
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