Increase your Steam Game Wishlist with This Marketing Art Strategy
Here’s how I helped Galactic Starfish Games set up a Marketing Strategy and increase clicks on their Steam page, wishlists, and brand recognition by planning the right tones in their marketing and capsule art.
About the Client:
Galactic Starfish approached Menog Creative, Miguel Nogueira, with a simple but challenging request: artwork that would be compelling enough to drive more visits to their store page, improve their chances of getting a publisher, and capitalize on the brand, thus increasing their following.
The game project's selling point is a strategy game where the user roleplays a poltergeist and commands the outcomes of historical events by playing them.
Deliverables and Services:
Marketing Strategy, designed to increase wishlist count on Steam.
Illustration and Graphic Design, to portray the right story for Galactic Starfish’s title.
Concept Art Consulting.
Is a Marketing Art Strategy worth it?
The Director of Galactic Starfish, Anuraang Pakanati, was in early stage of his project, the project’s scale was promising, the design was engaging, but the art lacked, not only the art lacked, but the ripple effects of not having the right art, were presented and about to manifest, without a well strategized presentation, publishers don’t take you seriously, your game gets scrolled past in the sea of titles over steam, and you’ll never build a following, let alone selling the game. This was important to do first, to get it out of the way, before the problem got too big, and as such, the art style was crucial to make the right first impression.
Sketching Steam Capsule Art That Stops Scrolling and Gets Clicks.
After a series of initial consultations, we agreed on a few points before sketching. Our process with Menog Creative is collaborative and iterative; we break down our goals into a series of phases. Each phase is designed to get us closer to our goals, no matter how ambitious they may be.
In this case, because the goal is indeed ambitious, we want to increase wishlist count on Steam, a competitive market for Games. We started by sketching and strategizing a cinematic story that would be dynamic enough in composition, and get our Steam players to stop scrolling and want to know more about this Strategy Game.
It certainly helped that Genghis Khan, as a historical figure, was on the cover, but we needed to add some extra drama to make our players want to know more. Truth be told, any goal, no matter how ambitious, is broken down by a series of steps. To get the game to the wishlist, we first must get the player to stop and notice the game, then react, click on the game’s Steam page, and eventually, follow the game and add it to the wishlist. One cannot skip phases. There’s no magic bullet to get results, but we can strategize a process.
After a series of discussions with Galactic Starfish, we decided to go for sketch number five, with a few additions and modifications. It was a real pleasure to feel the energy of inspiration hitting the right chords and collaborating with the client. Miguel Nogueira roughly added photos, graphic art, and other elements and pitched the idea verbally. For impact and alignment, it’s important we know what to expect at each stage of our collaboration. If you buy something online on Steam or Amazon, you expect the product to arrive well and within description; you don’t generally like surprises. With projects like this, the same concept applies. By seeking alignment first, we agree to specific descriptions that everyone is happy with, before we even get there.
Researching Cinematography and Design
The idea that an artist can swipe a brush on the canvas and create a perfect masterpiece with no effort but talent has been tossed around for centuries. The mysticism around the work comes from the fact that the audience rarely inquires how things are made.
When researching the right tone and designing a feeling to come across and cause impact on the crowded Steam Library, we researched, by Miguel Nogueira's suggestions, to look into old Akira Kurosawa films, a master of emotion on screen, references faithful to Genghis Khan, and the Great Wall of China, which was the setting of our piece. To get a positive reaction, we need to be faithful to the source material.
Iterating Art Together
The client would make suggestions for our next phases of creative work.
Ensuring Click-through-rate and wishlists
Strategies don’t start and end on how the art is made, but also how it is presented. We went to the Steam library, mocked up a screenshot, and tried to get a sense of how it would be read from a Steam user's point of view. It was important to ensure the elements in the art would read well in a thumbnail view, much like the other games in this Steam list.
We went through a few minimal revisions and layout adaptations to ensure things would still read well and get the reaction in the form of clicks.
We also tested a few fonts together.
By the end of this project, we had a foundation for scaling the current branding, ensuring a strategy to capitalize on Steam market visibility, and making marketing promotional artwork for the Game cover.
“Miguel was amazing and I cannot recommend him enough.
He quickly grasped the essence of the scene I wanted to convey and not only defined the process throughly, but rapidly executed sketches, was receptive to feedback, thoughtful about solutions, and brought his own innovations, all to produce an exceptional work.”
If you’d like Miguel to work on your project, reach out here.