Finding the right communication channels for your game in 2022

Whether you're launching a new game this year or looking to optimise your existing game's communications strategy, here is some practical advice on how to pick the right channels to reach your audience and community in 2022.

Research your Audience

You may already have some insights into your game's target audience. We recommend first extending that research to understand which online channels your audience engages with and how they behave on them - do they want to be entertained, are they asking questions, are they active in sharing user-generated content?

We typically find 3 to 4 audience groups that you should define different communication objectives for. For example:

1. Existing Players: This is your core community, and you need to serve them material to dive deeper into your world - think AMAs, seasonal in-game events, creator packs, user generated content, and more. You need to speak to them in the language of the game and ideally in a 'closed environment' that feels more exclusive, more connected to the developers. We recommend Discord, but a Facebook Group can work too.
2. Fans of similar games / genres: Your goal is for these players to discover your game, potentially through an exciting gameplay trailer or entertaining interview that sums up why they should play it. This audience has many questions that your Community Manager or your community (audience 1) can and should answer. But answers should be easy to understand for non-players and your messages should be shared on public channels that are easy to access for everyone, such as YouTube or Facebook.
3. Content creators and other developers: This audience has its own business goals and is looking for fellow professionals to befriend, to work together, and to leverage each other's networks, audiences or communities. This audience is likely your biggest group of lurkers, following you on Twitter, vetting you on LinkedIn and studying your communication style and player base on Discord and Twitch before reaching out in a private message.

After your research you may conclude that your audiences are spread across the web. Here are some ideas on how to narrow your choice of channels down to the most relevant. After all, it is better to do a few social media channels right rather than doing all of them poorly.

Channel Selection Criteria

Let's talk about three communication channels that are particularly popular with gamers of many genres:

• Discord: Discord servers have, in many cases, replaced forums as the place to huddle your beta testers, core fans, influencers and content creators. Discord is oftentimes treated as the heart of a game's community and the place to discuss everything new and to collect direct feedback. It requires daily engagement and moderation. We love Discord as it as it allows developers to set up single channels for single purposes, like temporary giveaways, or single audience groups, like press contacts.
• Twitch: Content is king - especially video content. An easy way for game developers to create video content is to host a game night on Twitch, which is foremost a video streaming platform for gamers. Here at Keywords we believe so much in Twitch that we recommend game developers that don't have the bandwidth to stream themselves to go ahead and create a branded profile for monitoring and clipping (because your players will stream on Twitch anyway) and to hop into stream chats to say "Hi" whenever time allows. Nothing beats the surprised face of a passionate content creator when you drop in, share some praise and hand out a few game keys.
• Reddit: While Reddit is not as gaming-focused as Discord and Twitch, it is without a doubt a social network that attracts lots of gamers, especially hard-core gamers looking for deeper discussions with top-tier players. While many game developers do not necessarily make Reddit part of their primary communication channels, we recommend creating a branded profile to monitor player sentiment in relevant conversations, reply in fan-made sub-reddits for the game, and befriend the moderation team so you can establish a positive working relationship with them.

Beside these very gamer-focused communication channels, you might now wonder what other social channels you should add to your communication strategy in 2022 and why. It all stands and falls with your audience.

Audience Volume

Looking at the world's most used social platforms, it might look like a no-brainer that you need to be on Facebook and YouTube as these 2 platforms remain for now the world's biggest social networks when looking at registration numbers.

However, research by GlobalWebIndex reveals that by far not all existing Facebook accounts are actively used, whereas even more people watch YouTube videos every month than there are existing YouTube accounts. This is because you cannot see Facebook content without an account, while you can watch YouTube content without a YouTube account.

Furthermore, Facebook is a popular social network among Gen X (born 1965 to 1980) and Millennials (born 1981 to 1996), and even though many Gen Zs (born 1997 to 2003) have a Facebook account, they use it less than other, newer social networks like Instagram or TikTok.

So, when selecting channels for your game's audience, avoid considering audience volume as single criteria. Breaking down social networks by the following additional criteria reveals more nuance.

Audience Quality

Looking at a social network's audience and how close it matches your game's target audience can reveal interesting findings.

We consider at least two quality aspects across all projects we are working on at Keywords, but there might be more depending on your game's niche.

First, you should look at the age bracket of your game's audience. If you are targeting Gen Z with an FPS game for mobile devices that lends itself to jump on internet trends and is meme-worthy you should be on Instagram and Twitter and explore TikTok in your social strategy for 2022.

If you are mainly targeting older players (born 1946 to 1964), you'd better have an active Facebook page and put some advertising money in to increase your reach and get their attention while they browse world news and family updates in their feeds.

The second aspect to look at is location. Every market has its favorite social network. In Europe, Oceania and the Americas, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are dominating, with Instagram being trendier among younger generations, who are more concerned about their digital footprint and prefer to share ephemeral content in 24-hour stories.

In Asia however, people prefer local networks - not only because of restrictions of certain channels such as Facebook in China. When you try to reach the Japanese audience or gamers in Taiwan you should work on your strategy for LINE, whereas gamers in Russia are more likely to follow you on VK and if you're targeting China you need to include WeChat into your strategy.

Audience Behavior

Each social network has its own characteristics that make it more or less suitable for a certain type of user behavior.

For many gamers, Twitter is the go-to channel to ask game developers for support or to share feedback. You might get away with a separate support channel on Discord or a ticket system like Zendesk to which you can forward them to, but do not send them over to Facebook or Instagram to get their replies.

Be sure to create an Instagram channel if your game lends itself to beautiful user generated content or fan art - thinking of city builders or coloring games here as well as popular franchises like Star Wars, Super Mario or Final Fantasy. Your players will not only use Insta to share their own creations but hang out with other fans to get inspired and perhaps start collaborating.

An up-to-date LinkedIn channel is perfect to attract like-minded industry professionals, celebrate achievements and awards and give your company a face by sharing staff spotlights and behind-the-scenes videos.

Audience Engagement Rates

The games industry usually achieves good engagement rates on Twitter. "In 2021, there were more than 2.4 BILLION Tweets about gaming."

Engagement rates on Facebook however are dropping, especially when you have an organic post strategy, not focusing on paid content.

Instagram posts can achieve very high engagement rates provided your game has a unique aesthetic or massive fandom size.

What we see more and more as a game changer is TikTok. Your follower number doesn't matter much there. Each video has a potential to go viral given TikTok's efforts to create and push trends. Jumping on trends, making use of trending sounds and joining TikTok's monthly gaming celebrations with content that focuses on entertainment (not sales) will help attract high engagement numbers.

Advertising Opportunities

If you have a bigger budget for your game's social media presence you need to make the availability of paid advertising options a criterion for your channel selection.

The best ad opportunities on the market are still provided by Facebook as they allow to A/B test and tweak ads on the go, all while they are highly targeted. You can target for example players of your biggest competitor's game in an ad.

Best click-through rates on promoted content happens on Instagram provided the content feels native, non-disruptive and not overly salesy. Instagram is followed by Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

The new player in the house seems to be Reddit as they recently expanded their advertising program, which is great news for game developers considering that Reddit is an extremely popular social network among gamers and has more monthly active users than Twitter.

Primary and secondary channels

Taking all of the above into account, you should be able to define 3 or more primary channels and a couple of secondary channels that don't require your daily (or weekly) presence but can be useful for specific campaigns.

Here is an overview of how we plan to tweak our own social media channels for our English audience this year.

If you're curious as to which recommendations we would make for your game please reach out for a chat with our dedicated Community Management team.

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