The game obviously has other motivations, but to make this useful we need to narrow it down. It encourages a quiet gameplay style.ĭiscovery motivation: Explore the items given to you, the different rooms, and see the charming ways in which you can interact with the environment. You have to complete tasks to progress, with little to no stress about having to strategize or quick reactions. Using Unpacking as an example, I’d plop it primarily into the Completion and Discovery motivation.Ĭompletion motivation: Complete the game by taking items out of boxes and putting them in the appropriate place. Remember it’s not about broadly appealing to as many people as possible - you want to hone in on who is your core audience so that there is a higher chance that they will both buy your game and leave it feeling satisfied and like it delivered on its promise. What makes someone excited about playing your game? What kind of feeling do you want your players to have? How can you create spaces and content that appeals to these motivations? ![]() Nail down the top two motivations to help you focus and streamline your community plan. To better understand that part, we can use Quantic Foundry’s gamer motivation model as a base. Our normal genres (like “roguelike”) are useful at explaining what a game is about, but don’t explain why folks like them. We can nail down what our community’s core will be like by looking at two facets of the game: genre appeal and theme appeal. Learning Your Game’s AppealĮvery game theme has its niche - a community manager’s job is to not only learn what that is, but also the social norms, language, and places in which that niche thrives. ![]() Before I dive into that though, let’s get into something that some of you may find useful: finding what the appeal of your game is to a wider audience. In order to help boost discoverability, one of the things I suggested we start was a TikTok account. It really paid off, because the game had a strong wishlist count on Steam and a super enthusiastic Twitter audience. This was the only social platform, but the team also worked hard going to multiple shows and events, managing forums, and doing all they could to get the game out there. Part block-fitting puzzle, part home decoration, players can create a satisfying living space while learning clues about the life they’re unpacking.Īt the time of joining, they already had a great Twitter account at around 18k+ followers. Unpacking is a zen puzzle game about pulling possessions out of boxes and fitting them into a new home. Soon, I was brought onto the team on contract as a part-time Community Strategist to help gear it up for launch in Dec 2021. In June 2021, when Wren Brier messaged me looking for community help for their upcoming game Unpacking, I was pumped to work on it. While most of you likely know me because of my job with Innersloth on Among Us or because you’re on my newsletter, I occasionally do freelance community work on the side! But what if you don’t have or want that? How can you build a social network around the cozy, slow, and steady? Let’s explore that using my work on Unpacking as a case study! Background Info Most advice for content creation in games focuses around a very specific meme-ridden or action-packed genre. And I’m not the only one - a lot of narrative, single-player, or relaxed games run into this issue. ![]() Settling into the next place always felt like a new chapter of my life was starting, and that’s a feeling Unpacking captures well.A frustrating experience I’ve had creating content for social media is when I struggled to fully show off a game due to spoilers or a lack of traditional “exciting” mechanics. None of these places ever felt like home until I started unpacking: taping the David Bowie poster with torn edges to the wall, finding a flat surface for my ancient record player, and lining up my Harry Potter books in chronological order on the shelves. Packing and unpacking became an almost annual ritual as I transitioned through a series of apartments in various neighborhoods throughout the Philadelphia area. For me, it was a lot: between the ages of 18 and 26, I moved more than half a dozen times. Part of that might have to do with how often you’ve pulled up stakes. ![]() You might not think stacking plates and organizing books is compelling, but strangely, it really is. Though the mechanics are simple and the campaign can be completed in a handful of hours, Unpacking is a memorable, delightful game that shows that there are still new ways to tell stories in video games out there. Unpacking takes you through a series of homes representing an invisible protagonist’s life from 1997 to 2018, and as it turns out, you can tell a lot about a person by the things they take with them. In Unpacking, described by its creators as a “zen puzzle game,” settling into a new place is surprisingly comforting.
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