How the flash mob brought the authors of Sunless Sea almost a hundred reviews in a week

The idea of the #loveindies flash mob was a collective appeal to fans of independent games with a request to tell them about their favorite projects. Firstly, as noted in the studio, a positive discussion of interesting games is generally useful to the industry and the indie community. Secondly, it was a marketing ploy – Failbetter were busy developing a new game and they had almost no funds for PR of existing projects, and with the help of a flash mob it was possible to attract interest in past titles.

Sunless Sky, the studio’s new game Failbetter
The studio sent out a document to other developers describing how the campaign would work.

The developers had to encourage their communities to write reviews on their games, but they also pledged to do something in return. For example, arrange a sale or distribution of in-game items, share unique content with fans, etc.

The campaign was held from July 16 to July 20. During the flash mob, independent studios tried to help each other, for example, a team from one studio could also participate in the campaign and write reviews on other people’s games.

Here are the methods used by Failbetter themselves as part of the campaign:

• The game energy in the Fallen London frituplein has become free for all players;
• Discount on premium content of Fallen London;
• A new helper character in Fallen London, which could be obtained for free;
• Sale of Sunless Sea on iPad and distribution of gift keys for the game;
• The development team reviewed the indie games of other developers they liked every day;
• All week the guys talked with other indie developers, encouraging them to participate in a general flash mob;
• Sending emails to subscribers;
• Constant calls to the community with requests to write a review and direct links to the game pages on Steam and GOG.

In addition, the campaign had its own visual appearance, with logos and banners:

During the week, the hashtag #loveindies was mentioned about 700 times on social networks. Gamasutra wrote about the campaign, Pocketgamer.biz , PCGamesInsider.biz , Letsplayvideogames.com , PCGamesN and Variety. According to Failbetter, 500 thousand users saw posts and materials within the flash mob.

Indie Games Store Itch.io I placed a flash mob banner on the main page and made a game search engine for users who need more reviews. The number of reviews in the store has increased by 30%.

What were the results of the flash mob? The organizers were doing well – thanks to new reviews, the ratings of Failbetter games on Steam reached the status of “Very positive”. Very small studios did not receive much benefit from the campaign – after all, their communities are not large enough and active enough. But even these teams responded positively about the flash mob, since such actions benefit the community as a whole.

Also on the topic:

• The creators of Sunless Sea fired 4 people due to lack of moneyHow do indie studios approach the development of projects on Unity?
• A source:

 Gamasutra