Let that camera roll!

Hi all!

I'm back. With a brand new post. About fans.
Not the ones that are standing outside right now, waiting for us to leave the office, screaming our names real loud while taking pictures. But the ones that are truly dedicated to our games.

Fanbase
Yesterday we were having a social media meeting. We have these meetings on regular intervals to evaluate and schedule the online activities of Xform. One of the recurrent topics is our fanbase.
A few months ago I posted about the importance of your target audience. Knowing who your target audience is is really important during the development process. But after the game is released it's still interesting to follow them. You can track down all kind of info by using site statistics.
But another way to learn more about them is to listen what they say. Or even more interesting... see what they create!

Burnin' Rubber Fanvids

Uploading our content
A fun way to take a closer look at the Xform fanbase is to spend some time on YouTube. If you start watching our game trailers on this channel you will also notice a huge variety of homemade fanvideos from our players.
There are Xform gameplay videos, reviews and How To's. They differ considerably in length and quality, but that doesn't matter. The fact that someone takes the time to create a (simple) video about your game to share it with others is very flattering. In fact, it's like a tribute.

How to... Defeat the baboon boss in Rhino Rush:

Area Zero review: (You don't have to understand the language to hear that this guy is really excited!)

And of course some gameplay footage of the extremely popular Burnin' Rubber series:

The value of fanvids
The biggest value of a fanvid is that it shares your game content. It's a way of free publicity. This means it can attract new players to your game. Any publicity will do. In fact a negative review of your game can attract even more players, because they want to check by themselves if a game is really that bad.
An interesting thing happened with the Burnin' Rubber videos that show game glitches. Apparently people find it funny to see things that go wrong. Because instead of keeping talking about these glitches, other fans started to upload their Burnin' Rubber glitches as well!
Another important thing is that fans start to communicate with eachother through the videos. They leave comments, ask for help or give tips and tricks. Based on their discussions you can find out what they like or don't like about your game. And you can use this information for new games.
 
We noticed that some of our games have a lot of fanvids, others have less. And of course we want to know why this is. So the next weeks I'm going to do some more research on this subject. But now... it's weekend time!
Feel free to add new Xform fanvids to YouTube. We love them. The more the better!

- Shirley