Ben Ward, Supergonk: Keeping Up Appearances

Today we had a talk from Ben Ward, founder of Supergonk. Ben spoke of his time working for Bizarre Creations, where he worked as a web developer. From this role, he built an online community around their games, eventually hosting a blog based around the company. This started his career in public relations (PR).

Moving from development to PR, Ben expressed his views on the importance of marketing and PR, claiming them to be just as important as development itself. I happen to agree with Ben on this point; the public are the consumers of your product, and if you have a lack of communication with them, you could lose valuable input and money.

Another person that agrees is Armin Ibrisagic, who is PR manager for Coffee Stain Studios’ Goat Simulator. He says “I always try to have a contact with our fans that’s very down-to-earth.” This lead to one of their social media pages having over 210,000 followers to date (06/02/2015). They talk to the fans as if they’re all their friends, throwing jokes and sarcasm about, unlike the usual monotone and scripted responses you can receive from other companies. However, this fits very much to the theme and tone of Goat Simulator and most likely won’t have the same effect with other more serious games. “This approach has given us extremely positive feedback from our fanbase”, which has definitely paid off for the team.

Also mentioned by Ben Ward, was an email he had received that was thanking him for creating one of the games, released under Supergonk, as it helped bring the lady who sent it and her young daughter together more by playing it. He told us how this made him feel overly joyous, showing that a strong connection with fans plays a strong role in the mentality of the developer, just as much as the figures of business.

References:

COFFEE STAIN STUDIOS. (2014) Goat Simulator. PC. Skövde: Coffee Stain Studios

Ibrisagic, A. (2015) Goat Simulator Post Mortem. Available: http://gamasutra.com/blogs/ArminIbrisagic/20150220/236427/Goat_Simulator_Post_Mortem.php%20?elq=56cc3be324ac430aabcfa3b96d2ffc70&elqCampaignId=12820. Last accessed 6th February 2015

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