How to find a content creator for your game
If you’re a new designer or publisher making tabletop games you might know that it’s hard to get noticed. We live in a world of digital content creators – influencers, writers, videographers, podcasters – who can help spread the word and get your game noticed. The difficult part when it comes to digital content is knowing what, who, and when. Hopefully, I can help you with some of that.
Disclaimer: I am not an expert. This guide is written based on my personal experiences and opinions. Your mileage may vary.
Table of Contents
- Background
- Decide what kind of content you want, and know why you want it
- How should you approach creators?
- Paid content
- Free content
- How do you choose a content creator? What should you look for?
- Support from your peers
- Over to you
Background
I’ve been running Punchboard for four years now. It’s a hobby for me, something I do because I enjoy doing it in my spare time when I’m not working full-time or being the dad in my family. During that time I’ve seen plenty of controversies, and more keep happening. As recently as this week there’s been another example of a content creator being deeply unethical, to say the very least. I wish I could say it’s the first time, but it isn’t, and it won’t be the last time either.
As someone trying to put your game out there in the world you’d be forgiven for not knowing how to get your game seen, or who to trust when you decide how. This guide won’t be recommending or warning off anyone in particular. Instead, I want to give you some basic tools to help you make an informed decision, so that people can find your game, find out if it would be a fit for them, and avoid any pitfalls along the way. Other content creators might disagree with me, but this is my guide, so it’s tough.
Decide what kind of content you want, and know why you want it
I’m not a marketing guru. I write reviews and previews, and I do a little bit of social media posting. I’m not going to tell you what you should be targeting and when, but I can at least point you in the right direction.
Speak to people who do this professionally: consultants. There are some great crowdfunding and marketing consultants out there. Invest in this part and you can take the guesswork out of the realms of “what should I be doing?” and focus on the “who do I want to do this with me?”.
You’ll probably find that you end up looking at a mixture of media and formats based on the stage of your game’s lifecycle that you’re in at any given time. In the build-up you might try to get some interviews on podcasts, then get some short-form (Tiktok, Reels etc.) content to raise awareness before launching your campaign. Once it’s out there in the wild, you’ll probably want to get reviews published so that others can tell the world how awesome your game is.
At this stage, it’s definitely worth thinking about what platforms you want your game on, and why. Let’s take reviews for example, as that’s a part of the puzzle I feel confident in talking about. There are plenty of different ways to get a review out there, but each has its pros and cons. Let’s look at some quick examples.
Where do you want reviews posted?
| Platform | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
| Bright pictures, huge userbase, lots of sharing, opportunities to go viral. Posts used in Stories. | Review word count is limited to around 350, lack of permanent discoverability. No clickable links in normal posts. | |
| Youtube (long-form videos) | Youtube is the default go-to platform. Detailed videos, lots of visuals, gameplay in action. | Organic traffic is harder to reach. Videos need to be entertaining and high-quality to make an impact. |
| Written / Blogs | Quicker to absorb than a video, can be read anywhere, great long-term discovery and SEO possible | Some people are turned off immediately by words. Still images, if any. Copy needs to be engaging and actually get read. |
| Tiktok (short-form videos) | Enormous userbase, massive sharing and viral potential. Videos showcasing your game. | Short videos are hard to give a substantive review. Can be hard to get noticed when people start scrolling. |
| Podcasts | Entertaining, are listened to everywhere, great opportunities to be invited as a guest to answer questions about the game. | No pictures or video can make it hard for a game to stick in someone’s mind. |
Tricky, isn’t it? There’s no perfect all-in-one solution, so it’s common for people to use multiple platforms. And this is just for reviews. This is all on top of paid advertising considerations like Facebook ads, promotion on Google etc.
Once you choose the platforms you want to use, that’s where the most confusing part starts.
How should you approach creators?
You’ll notice I said approach instead of ‘choose’ because even if you want someone to cover your game, there’s no guarantee you’ll get them. There are a lot of reasons why, but I’ll come to those shortly. You’ve got two approaches for this – direct and prospective.
Direct involves just reaching out to people and getting in touch. Most of the ‘bigger’ outlets will have information available about how to contact them, what they expect, lead times, what they cover, and what they explicitly don’t cover. If you reach out to the really big channels, don’t take it personally if they tell you no, and don’t be surprised if their backlog is too big to work for you.
Prospective is where it gets interesting. It’s essentially an open call for people to contact you to see if you want them to cover your game. You could do this via your mailing list, Facebook groups, or posts on social media. If you choose to post on Facebook it is very important to get in touch with the group admins first to make sure they’re happy for you to post your advert. The same is true of any Discord servers, and other community hubs. People want you to contribute to a community, not just leech from it. The last thing you want to do is immediately get a bad name for yourself before you even start.
The most popular route that I know of (and am in no way endorsing) is the Facebook group Board Game Reviewers & Media. Again, check the rules before you post anything.
Once you get this far you get to one of the most contentious issues of them all. Paid-for vs Free content.
Paid content
Be super, super careful when it comes to paying for content. Let me get the most important part out of the way first. It is not normal to pay for reviews. It doesn’t matter who tells you it is, it isn’t. Morally, ethically, and even legally in many parts of the world, a paid-for review isn’t a real thing. If you want someone’s opinion, money cannot change hands. Some creators will tell you it’s okay, they’ll tell you they can remain unbiased, and they’ll tell you whatever it takes for money to leave your account and make it to theirs. Make no mistake – any reviewer worth their salt will stand firm on the principle that a paid review is nothing more than an advert, and should never be called a review. 99% of the reviewers I’ve met, engaged with, or read opinions from online are vehemently opposed to paid reviews and the people who make them.
That said, there is still plenty you can pay a content creator for and keep your morals intact. Playthroughs can be a really good investment, highlighting your game in great detail and showing how it works. You might pay for someone to do a thorough how-to-play video, supplementing the rulebook with something players can use as an alternate reference.
You can even pay for a crowdfunding preview, just be aware that as with reviews, paying for an opinion is a no-no. If you watch the vast majority of preview videos you’ll notice that they’re strictly informational when it comes to the game itself. “This thing looks cool”. “I really like worker-placement in games”. “Look at the great artwork on the board”. The list goes on, but none of it tells you if the person thought the game was good, or fun. There’s nothing wrong with that as such, it’s just something you might not expect or even be aware of. Free previews can get the praise and adoration you’re looking for, as well as gaining exposure for lesser-known creators.
Free content
Most of the creators you will interact with are not professional. I’m not professional. This isn’t my job. I’m not a trained, qualified journalist. We do these things because we have a love of a hobby and the people and things in it, and we want to spread that love. Keep this at the forefront of your thoughts when you deal with creators, and use it to temper your expectations.
When you aren’t paying for a service, generally speaking, you aren’t entering into a contract with someone. You might have a conversation where someone promises to make a video within two weeks of getting the game, but don’t bank on it, especially if it’s your first interaction with someone. There is zero level of expectation on the part of the person writing or recording something about your game. Promises, platitudes, kind words and anything else are great in theory, but it might not always work out.
Previews
If you’re sending out a precious prototype copy of your game, set out any expectations upfront. Explain how many creators need the copy forwarded around to, offer to pay for postage and packing to send it on, and keep in touch with the person so it doesn’t slip through the cracks.
Whether you choose to send the person a final copy of the game is up to you. Don’t let anyone pressure you into it, and don’t believe them if they say you must send them a copy. You might choose to offer one, and it is very common to do so, but there’s nothing written in stone. Especially if you’re doing a small print run and are relying on the income from selling all of the copies to pay the bills.
Reviews
If we’re talking about a review of a finished product instead of a preview copy, understand that if you send the person a free copy of the game, it is essentially a gift. Treat it as nothing more. Don’t get me wrong, most creators are good and will deliver the review they offer, but understanding that you might not get anything in return is just being realistic and will save you a whole lot of heartache.
“That’s not very professional”, you might think, which is where I urge you to read the first sentence of this section again.
How do you choose a content creator? What should you look for?
We’ve got this far. We know what kinds of content we want for the game, and we know whether we want to pay for it or not. If you put out a prospective call for creators you might have had a ton of applicants you’ve now got to filter through them and decide who you want to make something for you. The problem you might face, especially if you’re relatively new to tabletop games, is that you don’t know these people. You might not be familiar with them or their sites, channels, or podcasts. So how on Earth do you decide who you talk to?
It’s not easy, but there are things you can do to help.
Numbers
Ultimately, what you want is to sell your game to people. You want them to enjoy the thing you’ve created, and maybe you want to make some money at the same time. With this in mind, you want to understand how much reach your potential creators have, and ideally, what that reach entails. Let’s look at a few examples.
YouTube – YouTube is nice and easy for the most part. You can easily check how frequently someone is publishing videos, you can check how many subscribers they have, and you can see how many views their videos get. This alone isn’t enough. Subscribers can be bought, and people can knock out poor-quality videos 10 times a day to boast how many they’ve made, but it doesn’t mean anything if nobody is watching them. Tools like Social Blade are great here. You can look at a channel and look for red flags. If their subscribers graph suddenly has a near-vertical ramp in it, there’s a good chance they paid for subscribers. This isn’t what you want. You want real people who really watch their videos.
Instagram / Tiktok – The same is true of Instagram & Tiktok really. You can quickly see how many followers an account has, you can see how often they post, and more importantly, how much engagement their posts are getting. The algorithms in services like these are very clever at putting the right content in front of the right people when their engagement is good. Are they getting lots of comments and likes? Are people sharing their posts and videos? Do their posts make you take notice, and do you enjoy them? If you’re still unsure, ask them. It’s easy to get analytics on their part.
Written / Blogs – As a writer I can say that we’re often forgotten about when it comes to quantifying how well we do. Most people want to know how many subscriptions a person has, which is great if you’re on YouTube, but not so great if you’re posting written pieces to websites. All is not lost though! Anyone using a platform like WordPress can get really useful analytics and demonstrate how many views their work is getting. If they post their reviews on BGG’s forums you can see how many thumbs and comments they get. If you use Google Analytics and Google Search Console you can get even better information. You can find out how many visitors per day they get, and what their SEO (search engine optimisation) is like.
Podcasts – Podcasts can be really tricky. Podcasting platforms have their own analytics tools, so you can speak to the hosts and ask them about their numbers of subscribers and listens per episode, and you can see where they rank in various podcast service charts, but it’s tricky. The best thing to do is have an open and honest conversation and ask questions.
One of the easiest tests you can do is to head to your favourite search engine and search for ‘<name of game> review‘ and look through the first couple of pages, to see if the review of the game you know they’ve reviewed appears there. Choose a game in the same sort of genre as yours. You want to be findable, right? Visible? Do you want your game’s review to appear on page 20 of Google because the creator has terrible SEO and fills their pages with ads or spam in an attempt to make a few quid, or makes low-quality videos?
If you’re in any doubt, ask. Any respectable content creator will be up-front with the information.
Personality
Do a little digging when you think you might have found someone. At least do the bare minimum in terms of due diligence. Read their About pages, watch/read/listen to some of their content and see what you think of it. Someone might have all the warmth and charisma of a robot, but have a dry sense of humour which really resonates with you and your game’s theme. Someone else might wear their political stance front-and-centre and it might be that even if you have the same leanings, you don’t want your game associated with someone so outwardly political.
The best thing to do is exchange some words with someone. People are just people, after all. Strike up a conversation by email, or invite them to talk in a Zoom or Teams meeting if there’s money changing hands. You can very quickly get a feeling for someone, so trust your instincts.
As I was taught in my first (and only) retail job – People buy people first.
Demographics
This is where we start to look at some of the less obvious things. What kind of person does the creator you’re considering interact with the most? Someone might not have the same raw numbers as a bigger, more established outlet, but what if their engagement comes from communities you want to target? Let’s imagine you’ve made a game about being a musician. A creator who’s also a musician may not only have a better understanding of the subject of your game, but they might also engage with musicians in their day-to-day lives, busting open the dam of a new pool of potential players.
Is your game an adults-only party game full of double-entendres and outright naughtiness? That massive YouTube channel that covers family games might not be a good match for you. Maybe you’ve made a game and you’re proud of how eco-friendly and sustainable it is. Look for people who value and feature that aspect of its production. Your game about fluffy bunnies isn’t going to do well on a channel that covers hardcore wargames, and vice versa.
What about just choosing to support a channel that’s run by people from marginalised or under-represented groups? You might just open your game up to an unexpected audience. Be open to avenues you hadn’t considered when you started out.
Raw numbers are a good place to start, but only a part of the whole picture.
Support from your peers
It’s all well and good for me to preach to you like I know everything, but I don’t know it all, I don’t understand it all, and I’m not pretending I do. The stuff I’ve written above is all based on my own personal experience, and from watching from the wings as yet another scandal comes to the surface. But I have my own biases, as we all do. For instance, I want people to consider written content more than they might, because – shocker – I write reviews.
So talk to people in your position. Speak to other designers and publishers. It’s a reassuringly tight-knit group of people for the most part. Those of you based in the UK should check out the Board Game Designers UK Facebook group, and there’s a bigger, international group here at the Board Game Design Lab. Even without that though, reach out to other people. Ask questions, talk to them. People have been through the same things you have, faced the same questions, and made the same mistakes, and many are happy to share the benefit of their experience.
Head to conventions, even if your game is nowhere near being ready to show. Meet other designers and talk to them about their experiences. Find out what they have and haven’t tried, and what worked for them. The digital content landscape is constantly changing, so dedicate a little time to keeping up with what’s going on. As an example of what I mean, during the course of my writing the draft for this piece, X (Twitter) has been banned in Brazil. Not great news for the Portuguese language game you were hoping to promote on X.
Over to you
As I said at the outset, this whole article is written from my perspective from the other side of the looking glass. It’s a small lens to be looking at it through, I admit, and my knowledge of the likes of TikTok and Instagram is far behind those who actively use it, and do well from it.
That’s why I’d like to turn it over to you. Especially if you’re a publisher or designer who has recently been through this whole process, or interacts with it on a regular basis. I’d love to know about your top tips, potential pitfalls, and recommended communities. Please, reach out to me either in the comments here, my social channels (linked at the top and bottom of this page), or good old-fashioned email via adam at punchboard dot co dot uk.
If there’s enough feedback I’ll post another article written from the POV of the people actually in the trenches, dealing with it regularly. Thanks for reading.
