Currently, polish video game industry has an estimated value of 450 million dollars!Gradually, the statistics concerning polish game industry look more and more impressive and that is exactly why Poland is an excellent place for game promotion!

Let’s have a quick look at the history. A game entitled Marienbad released in 1962 symbolizes the beginning of polish video game industry. Its most significant improvement  was witnessed along with the end of Communist times and expansion of capitalist economy in 1989. Nowadays, it is indisputable that Poland is one of the most influential European video game industries and its primary export goods are digital products! It can be confirmed for example by an interesting fact that in 2011 Donald Tusk handed over The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition to Barack Obama as a diplomatic gift.

We are genuinely pleased that Polish creators constantly strive for achieving international successes. Thanks to their hard work and creativity in years 2006 – 2008, the total value of the Polish video game sales market has doubled. The well-earned and resounding triumph of Warsaw-based CD Project RED – the producer of The Witcher – drew the world’s attention to the polish video game industry and conventionally determined the beginning of avalanche of such satisfactory video games as Bulletstorm, Dead Island, Dying Light, Sniper: Ghost Warrior, Lords of the Fallen, Shadow Warrior and so on. Latest news about Witcher 3 says that the game has sold in 6 mln copies all around the world within 6 weeks after a premiere and only in Poland sales has reached 1/4 million copies in the same period. It’s incredible, record score for polish video games industry!

In addition to this, the independent video games industry is strengthening its position on the market. One of the best example confirming this assumption is an independent studio from Warsaw named 11 bitstudios which has achieved an enormous growth owing to such award-winning games as Anomaly: Warzone Earth and This War of Mine. One shouldn’t also forget about Timberman from Digital Melody, games produced in iDreams or global success of Superhot yet before the official premiere of the game! These productions are just some examples of prosperous games as every month brand new and engaging titles come out. Let’s take as an illustration a studio from Warsaw – The Astronouts, authors of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter who have just started carrying out an entirely new project!

The polish video game industry is developing rapidly and that’s an observable fact confirmed in an extensive report prepared by Polygon. In addition to this, regular satisfactory sales statistics have created a favorable environment in Poland for game developers and publishers from all over the world, willing to sell a game in large number of copies. Nowadays, Polish game industry costs 450 million dollars, one in three Poles plays video games  and more than 300 development studios make their own! As if it was not enough, 98% of gamers use their personal computers to play video games! Owing to these statistics Poland ranks second most developed PC gaming industry in Europe. Poles are also more and more convinced about the phenomenon of digitalization of games. Just after a PC premiere, Rockstar sold 37 thousand copies of GTA V in Poland considering only sales on Steam!

To conclude, Poland is becoming the centre of European video game industry. There are more and more gaming events which enjoy continuing popularity amongst gamers. In 2014 approximately 60 thousand fans of interactive entertainment took part in Poznań Game Arena. Being present during such gaming events is an unparalleled opportunity for numerous game producers to generate higher sales! After several years of rapid development, the Polish game industry has become noticeable for gaming giants who discovered its limitless potential. And that’s reasonable since selling games in Poland is highly profitable! So, do you know how to win polish gamers’ hearts and minds?

Stories have been accompanying humankind since the dawn of time and have endured throughout civilization. First, they would be passed on non-verbally, through facial expressions, gestures and uncoordinated bodily movements of early men trying to express their excitement with successful hunting or first encounter with fire. Some of the Egyptian hieroglyphs that are still puzzling today tell the story of the technologies used by the pharaohs, and relations between humans and gods. The philosophical story of the Decalogue was engraved in stone tablets. Stories also covered historical facts, just like when Sun was stopped, and Earth was moved from the centre of the Universe.

A good story is something that lingers in the memory of others, long after it was told; it can make people ponder and revise their way of thinking or it can simply brighten your day. A story requires certain storytelling abilities to be good – it needs solid narration, author’s knack for words, and ability to build suspense in order to evoke a range of emotional response from his reader. Stories have no limits or borders.

A story can be told by a three-year-old scribbling in the sand at the beach, a sailor who sent a bottle-letter to sea or by an intermedia performer starring in a drama. It can be narrated by an author of a radio drama on two lovers sitting on a park bench or by a charismatic leader teaching his values to his nation. It can be related by a speaker at a TedX conference summarizing how our world evolved from atoms to a global village. Stories are also the lifeblood of human relationships. We love to listen to our beloved telling us how their day was, and when it comes to flirting, girls tend to chose those who can entertain them with a great story and don’t get them bored. Or something.

As time passes by, stories take on new forms. The new media revolutionized the way we absorb information: literature now comes with hypertext, media have converged, and cross-media and transmedia storytelling projects have come to life. Despite mass tabloidization and iconization in media communications, stories and narration retain their significance in the modern digital world, which can be confirmed by the phenomena observed in video games as well as promotion and marketing campaigns.

More and more games tackle difficult subjects and are addressed to mature audience, and their creators are continuously looking for new modes of video game narration. Games like Journey or This War of Mine prove that game developers have finally started telling stories not only by weaving them inside games, but also by using game mechanics themselves, i.e. employing all mechanisms behind the player’s interaction with the reality portrayed in the game.

Storytelling also gains more and more importance from the point of view of promotion. Entrepreneurs have noticed that long-term and multi-channel relations between them and their customers prove to be more profitable. Buyers became all the more careful and demanding, and at the same time started to depend on the entertainment and storytelling aspects of promotional communication rather than on dry emotionless press releases.

Content marketing and storytelling marketing come with a far greater viral potential than e-mailing or SEO marketing. Good narration in video games has already proven that it is not always special effects or fast pace that wins the heart of a finicky gamer. If only I had the time, I would gleefully replay my personal indie hits at least once a month: Device 6, Thomas Was Alone, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, Dear Esther, Cart Life and Papers, please. And what about YOU?! Have YOU already played them?

No matter if you’re drifting downstream in an armoured aircraft carrier, working on the fifth instalment of your franchise, or paddling upstream in a ramshackle raft, putting all your efforts in developing an innovative new IP: you need to promote your opus magnum so that you don’t drown in the sea of competitors!

In the last 15 years the video game industry has geared up momentum. If we travelled back to the very beginning of the millennium and told the experts in the industry how rapidly and diversely video games would develop, they would all probably think we were bonkers. The community divided itself into hardcore and casual gamers; the video game market broke fiercely into the Internet, social networks and mobile devices, and now it focuses on introducing innovative equipment using augmented and virtual reality.

Statisticians claim that everyone plays games these days, and although that may be an overstatement, demographic data seem to prove the same. At the same time, we need to understand that each of the game industry segments has been thinned out. Consumers, who were once focused around two leading markets: console and PC, more and more often use these new branches of interactive entertainment. Meanwhile, game developers also need to accept the fact that as the competition grows stronger, they will have to share their target audience with their competitors.

The market entry threshold has been significantly lowered owing to self-publishing and digital distribution, and nowadays we are deluged with a vast number of fantastic games produced by continuously active indie game devs each month. The quest for new models of making money on video games resulted in creating completely new business models, including free-to-play and early access, which became the most popular. Today, independent game developers can also use powerful game engines like Unreal Engine 4 or Unity 5 free of charge, which will soon result in spawning a flood of video games.

We have lived to see times when video game journalists are not able to keep track of all new games and review them on time, even if they are interested only in three particular genres. Nowadays, both mainstream productions, such as Assassin’s Creed Rogue, Cities Skylines or Sid Meier’s Starships, and long-awaited indie sequels, such as Shelter 2 or Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, can hit the shelves within the space of the same few days. And that’s not all – new games supported by crowdfunding sites get published all the time. It’s really hard to keep up!

Game competitions, such as Independent Games Festival or A MAZE, feature hundreds of creative games, only a few of which will be nominated to awards and later be featured in the media, thus eventually finding its way to reach the gamers. Therefore, it is very important to communicate directly with gamers, and at the same time to keep in touch with video game journalists, as well as social influencers and youtubers, as once they become fascinated with your product, their coverage can reach hundreds of thousands of avid game fans all around the globe.

Games with the highest development budgets require the highest levels of promotion, as in order to compete with other blockbusters, they need to focus the attention of gamers on their own products, so that the game can sell well and make back its development costs quickly. However, players have limited financial and time resources, so it is not enough just to get them interested with your game. It is of utmost importance to employ narration dedicated to promoting your product. One AAA game with extensive content and high replayability value purchased by a games fan usually equals several other AAA games that the fan decided not to buy. For game developers who don’t invest in the promotion of their products, mature capitalist economy observed in the video game industry proves to be an unbeatable boss.

Generating income on one’s own account, without the support of publishers and their powerful marketing campaigns has become equally problematic, as gamers are not able to identify true gems in the avalanche of games regularly hitting the shelves of online stores on their own. The growing tendency to purchase games distributed online at a price determined by the purchaser, i.e. the so-called Humble Bundles, also makes it very difficult for game devs to make profit. There was a time when favourable market conditions available to independent game devs would be praised, as everyone was fascinated with the fact that indie products could reach the audience without the outside help of corporate giants.

However, today it is quite common to hear that whereas publishing a game using your own resources is relatively easy, the really hard part is to reach a huge number of gamers and generate profit. It’s like crossing the ocean on a yacht during a storm with a force 10 on the Beaufort scale, relying on an inoperable navigation system, with thunders roaring above your head. Sometimes you get to reach the port safely; however, it may so happen that it is not the million population port city you intended to sail in.

Games need an intriguing and engaging promotion. Nowadays, there are thousands of games for mobile devices only, including hundreds of clones. During numerous gaming events where I worked as a journalist or simply attended them as a participant, I would frequently observe that this need was not recognized; moreover, I would often witness a persuasion communication ineffectively used by game developers, who would talk about their games without genuine involvement, in a very dull and mundane way. For many game creators, running an immersive promotional campaign involving gamers is still not an obvious solution. If you don’t have an ace up in your sleeve, such as fresh and innovative 80 Days or Superhot, without intelligent promotion you will simply go unnoticed and drown.

Some time ago, ludologists were involved in a heated debate with narratologists. The latter wanted the other to know that they incorrectly study only the entertainment, ludological aspects of games, while in fact games should be analyzed through a narrative lens. Video games as a medium can be undoubtedly used as a tool for telling stories, and ludologists have known that from the very beginning of game studies history, as they themselves originated from the narratology culture. It is widely known that the magic of games comes not only from ingenious gameplay or amazing graphics, but also from the engrossing stories they tell! So how should we effectively promote video games? Also by telling engrossing stories! More on that to come!