Week 2
— GDS314 —
Embedded Files
Class notes
Class notes
Marketing is the art and science of basically creating an advantage for the firm and disadvantages for rivals by changing the market. The idea is that the market should not be in equilibrium.
Marketing must be an exchange with two willing parties. In marketing, to drive up the value, marketers will often obfuscate the accurate assessment of what the buying party is gaining and losing.
Marketing should increase awareness, grow a base and provide satisfaction at a profit.
Good marketing changes a "want" to a "need".
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs works with a pyramid of needs, each tier of which can't be achieved if the previous cannot be properly satisfied.
RECOMMENDATION: Read some of Abraham Maslow's stuff.
Relationship Marketing is basically marketing yourself as a business that shares values with the customer and therefore is a better choice, e.g. "Temu doesn't align with your values because of their shady practices, but we do share values with you at your local Kmart."
Basically the construction of a glorified parasocial relationship so the customer throws money at you.
Focuses on customers becoming partners to the company—the best customer offers long-term profit to the company.
Types of customers:
Butterfly: those that are interested in the genre
True friends: those who are interested entirely in your game
Strangers: those who don't care about your game
Barnacles: those who want your game but can't get it
Dunning Krueger effect - ignorance of your own stupidity (thinking you can do something because you don't know how much you don't know)
A logo is for instant public recognition of a company/brand, and a good logo is simple and memorable.
Thumbnailing: put like 30 different versions of your logo/text, view it from up close and afar/big and small, and choose the best one.
Good vector program: Affinity Designer - https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/designer/
Tip from Mark: use paid software for vector art but no subscriptions (ahem Adobe)
Adobe Color is good for playing with colour palettes and colour harmonies, and also very useful for testing colour blind safe colours - https://color.adobe.com
Further Project Ideation
Further Project Ideation
Option 7: Clicker-Style Game, "Gnome Tycoon" (Solo Idea)
BASE GAME:
A gnome manufacturing tycoon which involves the player clicking to manufacture gnomes and ship them off to houses for profit.
The player can also get upgrades to increase production and revenue using their in-game currency called "dollans", which increase every time to the extent that the time between each upgrade increases (incentivising players to use boosts or permanent upgrades), such as:
Gnome volume per click (e.g. four gnomes on single conveyor, then additional conveyor belt needed);
Manufacturing speed (timer after click);
Conveyor belt speed (reduction in cooldown after manufacturing timer);
Revenue per gnome; and
Automated production upgrade, which can only apply to existing conveyor belts one at a time and increases in price drastically.
(STRETCH GOAL) The player has access to boosts which offer different multipliers, such as:
Increase in revenue per gnome for a certain amount of time, to varying degrees and lengths;
Increase in overall speed for automatic gnome production, to varying degrees and lengths; and
Instant cash, either 30% or 100% of current profit.
The player can unlock levels of gnomes by prestiging once they have reached a certain amount of profit. Prestiging will reset the factory and their income/revenue, but will give the player a higher-level gnome. These gnomes include:
Level 1: standard red-hat gnome, 1x value and 100% manufacturing time, 100% prices;
Level 2: orange-hat gnome, 2x value and 92.5% manufacturing time, 110% prices;
Level 3: yellow-hat gnome, 4x value and 85% manufacturing time, 125% prices;
Level 4: green-hat gnome, 8x value and 77.5% manufacturing time, 150% prices;
Level 5: blue-hat gnome, 16x value and 70% manufacturing time, 175% prices;
Level 6 (final): purple-hat gnome, 32x value and 65% manufacturing speed, 200% prices;
After reaching final prestige, player can then blow up their factory and reset the entire game (similar idea to PAYDAY 2's money burning feature which wipes the player's entire offshore account for an achievement and rare currency), which will reset their entire progress (except for Gnome Coins) and will change the skin of all manufactured gnomes to gold as a sign of completion (similar to Getting Over It's golden pot).
MICROTRANSACTION: GNOME COINS
Gnome Coins allow the player to unlock things that can't be unlocked with dollans, such as:
Permanent upgrades that persist through prestiges (all normal upgrades have a permanent variant);
(STRETCH GOAL) Special gnome variants, such as muscley gnomes and wizard gnomes, each of which carry their own boosts, such as revenue increase and/or permanent upgrade/modifier;
(STRETCH GOAL) Skin bundles for factory parts and walls.
Gnome Coins can be received by either watching ads (I'll be having fun with this one) for a small amount, of by buying packages of Gnome Coins, ranging from $1.49 to $49.99 packages. Some packages have bonus Gnome Coins (e.g. $14.99 packages has a bonus 5%).
The player also generates a certain amount of Gnome Coins which are sent into a gnome bank, which can be opened by paying a fixed fee, which at max would give the player more value for the price than an equivalent package would, further incentivising the player to pay for the bank.
STORY POINTS
Your factory name is "Meemaw and Peepaw's [BLANK] Gnomes", with [BLANK] being an empty field that the player can select from a list of adjectives to fill in to personalise their company name.
You compete against two larger companies, "Gnomeski Manufacturing Co." and "G.N.O.M.E., Inc.", who are portrayed as more corporate and soulless brands that you need to dominate.
As you progress, you start to gain market dominance over the other two companies, with the final prestige giving you complete market dominance, and blowing up your factory resetting your market dominance to the beginning.
The market dominance aspect purely exists for narrative purposes. An out-of-scope feature idea could be that the two companies try to sabotage you to stop you from taking over the market, giving more of a challenge to the player.
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