announcement
『Worship of the Lambis an action game with elements of cult management and dungeon exploration. The main character, Lamb, is resurrected by the “person in waiting” even though he has been executed once. The object of the game is to defeat the bosses of the old faith who wait deep within the dungeon as you raise your cult as a guru and amass power. The gap between the cute graphics and the black “managing a cult” element attracted attention, and sales of 1 million copies were achieved within a week of its release on August 12. Initially, there were complaints about the number of bugs and game balance, but improvements have been made in the update. As of this writing, 92% of Steam’s approximately 30,000 reviews are positive, maintaining a “very favorable” rating.
One of the factors driving sales was the SNS strategy of this business. The number of followers of the official Twitter account has reached 182,000 as of this writing. Mr. Jared J Tan introduced the SNS strategy of this work. Tan led the community management and social media marketing team for the game. It arrived five weeks before launch and at that time it had around 13,000 Twitter followers. To date it is a form that has increased the number of more than 10 times. He also opened an account on TikTok and has more than 220,000 followers. Both figures are staggering for an official indie game account. How did Mr. Tan increase the game’s attention on SNS?
Tan said he considers five factors when it comes to marketing games on social. The five are: understanding the story, emotionally eliciting content, being an avid fan of avid fans, anticipating trends, and effective use of resources. “Understanding the story” here seems to be referring to the plot of advertising strategy. It’s a task to interview the development team and clarify what are the unique elements of this game and how to quickly convey the message you want to convey. The next “emotion-evoking content” refers to the surprise this work brings to users watching SNS. The gap between a cute character and a cruel act creates humor and works on social media too.
“Be the fanatic’s fanatic,” Tan continues. The official account of this work has maintained a cooperative attitude to user excitement and creation, such as introducing user works with comments. An example of such an effort is Crow’s Followers.
In this work there are many drawings depicting deformed animals, including the protagonist’s lamb. Among these, the believing crow had a beak on the side of its face and a mouth in front of its face, making it appear that it had two mouths. The crow’s face has a questioning look created by the deformation, and according to Mr. Tan, “many people weren’t positive about it.”
Then Mr. Tan posted a picture of a believing crow and its beak on the official account. He encouraged users to freely create and post images of believers. In particular, the “beak image material” seemed to be popular, and many images were actually posted by users, such as adding a beak to a character and attaching a beak to a photo of your pet. It’s an effort to leave it up to the user’s creativity and make it easier to participate in the creation.
Trend anticipation is also important. When it was predicted that a particular topic would become a trend on SNS, posts were said to be prepared accordingly. When the trailer for the movie “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” was announced, he released a movie-style poster, expecting the word “movie” to become a trend. Another case is the case of responding quickly to an unpredictable trend. In September of this year, it became a hot topic that footage of the development of the latest series “GTA” was leaked. Some users have pointed out that the footage right now “looks far from the finished product,” which has led to the movement of more game development companies to release “game footage in the early stages of development” (Related article). “Cult of the Lamb” also caught the movement and released a video of the early development. The corresponding tweet has 62,000 likes as of this writing.
To develop such SNS strategies, “posting materials” such as videos and pictures are needed. Finally, Mr. Tan mentions “the effective use of goods.” In the case of “Cult of the Lamb,” he edited the pre-prepared video and edited it into a “glamorous” high-paced introductory video. Another way to use resources is to publish prepared images for games and products on SNS. For example, the film-style poster image mentioned above uses an image originally prepared for the soundtrack cover. By cropping and editing a material, the material to be published is created.
He also said that a game doesn’t have to be a hit on social media to sell. It’s important to show the game to as many people as possible, and every time they see it, they’re one step closer to buying. It seems that Mr. Tan has already passed on the promotion of “Cult of the Lamb” to another person. The social marketing leader he was responsible for is a position that is not directly related to game development. The behind-the-scenes stories associated with these promotions will likely go unnoticed by users. However, he has contributed to the promotion of this work by devising and implementing multiple strategies. Such publicity brought the game to a large audience, and the quality of the game itself generated word of mouth. Without either, Cult of the Lamb may not have been a hit.
