Building a Strong Game Publisher Brand: Strategies, Challenges, and Success Stories

Why Branding Matters for Game Publishers

While your game company may produce a wide variety of games, there are two things that you will need in order to be successful: trust and visibility. By combining all the elements of successful branding, companies become memorable and easy to recognise. This inspires not only trust in the brand’s quality but also customer loyalty. It’s a highly saturated industry, so it’s crucial that branding helps to distinguish a publisher’s portfolio.

Visibility

When a customer sees a game from a particular video game publisher on a shelf, they should instantly have an idea of what sort of experience they should expect from it. This is why branding matters: there are multiple elements that go into creating the visual identity of a brand, from the logo and typeface to the game design, colours and style of packaging.

Key Elements of Branding for Video Games

The core elements of game branding should include the visual identity (which includes colours, logos, and fonts), the voice, the mission, and of course, a name. These all work together to tell your brand’s story. They convey who you are and what customers should expect from what you produce.

Brand name

When devising a name for your company, it’s important to use a strong naming strategy. The name of the game studio is powerful because it brings to mind certain elements of the game experience. In the age of the search engine, it’s also important to make your brand name as distinct as possible. It’s no easy task, but here are some things you can consider:

1. What sets this product apart from competitors? What are its strengths? Your name should reference these points.

2. What is the competition doing with their naming strategies? A competitor analysis will offer up some powerful clues that will influence your strategy. As part of your research, you can also make sure that you identify which of your chosen possible names may be under trademark or copyright.

3. Consider different types of names. There are many ways to name a product. Some are descriptive of the functions they perform, while others are more creative. EA Sports is an example of a name that clearly references the genre of games the company publishes, whilst Valve relies on being different.

4. The most effective names are distinct and memorable. Change the spelling of a word, use a pun, or even use a completely new and made-up word. The important thing is to make sure your name sticks in the minds of your audience.

Logo and visual identity

The logo and visual identity for gaming companies need to reference the type of games they will be publishing or producing. It needs to be instantly recognisable and impactful.

As mentioned previously, the branding of a game company becomes synonymous with the products they create. So much so, that intellectual property such as key game characters become part of this branding. It’s hard to separate Mario from Nintendo.

The visual brand identity needs to combine everything that a customer will see when encountering your brand, from the typeface to the colour palette. All of these elements combine to strengthen your brand’s story.

Voice and mission

What sets a game company apart really starts to shine when it comes to your voice and mission. Your digital marketing and communication strategies will be quite different based on the type of publisher or developer you are.

For example, indie developers tend to be smaller companies that may keep their marketing and community outreach efforts in-house. They may even self-publish. This is because they have much smaller budgets than behemoths like Microsoft, but it also means they can be on the ground, meeting their fans and target audience exactly where they are.

This could include game devs being featured on their social media accounts, answering questions on forums, or making appearances at industry events and expos.

Branding Strategy Development for Game Companies

If you’re starting to set up a game development company, there are a few things you will need to do in order to roll out a strategy for your new brand. Setting yourself apart in an already massive industry may seem intimidating, but we’ve crafted this guide to break up the most crucial elements of a branding strategy, step-by-step.

Audience analysis

The first step is to conduct an audience analysis to determine the type of people your game will likely reach. These insights should include information on everything from the devices they use (will they be on PC, console, or playing mobile games?), to their age group, languages spoken, and where your audience resides.

Conversely, if you already know you are developing for a specific device, then your audience research should focus on these users and their demographics.

It’s not just how and what your potential audience plays. Your analysis should also tap into what is important to your audience on an emotional level. What resonates with them the most? Your branding strategy should therefore incorporate this research.

Research the competition

The next step is to conduct research into your potential competition. Identifying brands that are creating similar games to your company will help you to see what has worked for them (and what definitely hasn’t). Next, identify the companies that are adjacent to yours – not direct competition but operating in the same industry.

Finally, do some research on the brands that aren’t (yet) your competition, but you aspire to compete with one day.

There are plenty of case studies available to learn from. It will also help you to identify where your brand is different so that you can lean into these USPs (unique selling points) to help craft your brand’s story.

Define your brand positioning

Finally, based on the data collected from market research, you can then decide what your brand positioning will be. This will encompass everything your brand stands for and is an essential part of your marketing strategy. Your brand positioning should help your company stay not only relevant but also stand out.

There are various models for brand positioning frameworks that will help you ensure your brand is communicating its message effectively and in a structured manner.

1. The first model is the Brand Benefit Ladder. This starts with the target audience and then builds on that, leaning on rungs that include product features and physical and emotional benefits. This is mostly utilised by fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands.

2. The second model is Simon Sinek’s ‘Why, how and what?’ model. This model answers these three simple questions. Why does your brand or product exist? How is your product different? What does your company do? While most brands communicate the how and what of their products, they don’t effectively explain the why. It’s important to answer this because this is what will make your brand more impactful and memorable. This model is mostly used by purpose-driven brands.

3. The Bullseye Model focuses on the essence of the brand, the heart and soul at its core. The outer rings of this target model include the brand’s visual identity and character, key substantiators, and finally the brand’s values. This is a model that all brands can use for their positioning strategy.

Using a model framework to structure your efforts will help to ensure your brand is positioned effectively. This creates clarity and helps to streamline success.

Case Studies: Successful Branding in Game Publishing

The top names in the industry have brands that are synonymous with the types of video games they produce. A great example of this is Electronic Arts. When they started to publish sports games, a whole new brand was created: EA Sports. While still being a part of Electronic Arts, EA Sports featured a new name, logo, and marketing strategy to go along with it.

While gamers came to know Electronic Arts through games like The Sims, EA Sports attracted a whole different gamer with titles such as NHL, NBA, and F1. So popular were these games, that gamers have now come to expect annual releases under these series. And EA Sports’ tagline, “It’s in the game” is one most video game fans know by heart.

Other publishers can learn from this. While Electronic Arts creates games that appeal to a wide range of players, creating a brand that appeals specifically to sports fans resulted in EA Sports becoming the go-to company for a huge range of sports-related video games from ice hockey to Formula One.

EA has successfully crafted a visual identity that is distinct and recognisable.

Brand collaborations are an excellent branding strategy for video games. The wildly successful PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) combined forces with Mountain Dew – the soft drink brand – in 2020. Mountain Dew is already synonymous with gamers, so working with it seems like a match made in heaven.

The two brands collaborated both in the game world and real life, where gamers could earn rewards for the game by purchasing Mountain Dew products featuring PUBG branding. Likewise, Mountain Dew-branded “fuelling stations” featured heavily in the game itself. The two brands also collaborated on PUBG’s mobile game and social media, with a successful influencer marketing campaign. Versions of this collaboration rolled out in countries around the world.

Common Challenges in Game Publisher Branding

One of the most common challenges for video game branding is standing out in a sea of thousands of games. It’s difficult to get attention when you’re competing with decades-old names like Microsoft, PlayStation, and Nintendo. The industry is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The good news is that there are also more than three billion gamers in the world, so there are plenty of people who could potentially fall in love with the games you publish.

Maintaining consistency in your product portfolio

In order for your audience to associate your brand with a specific gaming experience, you need to have consistency throughout your portfolio. Super Mario games, for example, differ very slightly, arguably being a slightly updated game with each new release. However, these new releases adapt to market trends, ensuring their success.

Adapting to market trends

In order to stay successful, game brands keep a close watch on what their audiences are looking for. After the success of Fortnite – a battle royale game – many publishers were releasing games similar in style.

However, the challenge is to ensure that adapting to trends doesn’t mean betraying what makes the publisher memorable. Audiences that become fans of a specific publisher may feel let down if they change a certain franchise too much. There has to be a balance.

Keeping your brand true to you

Remaining authentic is a challenging but crucial part of video game branding. As previously mentioned, any deviation from a brand’s known identity may result in audience alienation. When adapting to market trends – which is a vital step in a brand’s strategy – it’s important to do so in a way that is authentic and shows genuine consideration for the brand’s loyal customers.

Tips for Effective Branding for Indie Game Publishers

Indie and smaller game businesses don’t tend to have the million-dollar budgets that the big brands have, so they need to be a bit more considered with their approach to branding. However, therein lies their strength. Being an indie publisher or studio becomes a selling point in itself and something the company should lean into. There is still plenty of opportunity, with indie having generated $4 billion in revenue on Steam in 2024.

It’s important to rely on cost-effective strategies that will emphasise authenticity. This could include sharing updates on the process of game production on social media, promoting the game developers themselves on platforms like LinkedIn, and being on the ground with the gamers themselves at expos and events.

Conclusion and Future Trends in Game Branding

Game companies need to ensure they understand the audience they’re producing games for. This will determine their brand positioning, voice, and ongoing strategies to stay top of mind. Consistency across your portfolio is vital, but it’s important to stay adaptable and innovative. Keep up to date with the latest news in the industry to ensure your brand doesn’t get left behind.

If you are a publisher in the video game industry looking to level up, our teams can help you with insights, strategy, and expertise. Having previously assisted Kwalee with their recent brand identity overhaul, we’re positioned to get you to the top of your game.

Get in touch to see how we can help you.