Behind the Curtain - Planning a Brand

One of the things I could have done better with our Nut Hunt Kickstarter was in defining a clear target audience.

We didn’t want to make the same mistake twice, so spent a lot of time defining the brand of Sigil, and honing in on our primary target audience.

This isn’t to say that plenty of people outside of our primary target won’t enjoy Sigil, just like a diverse array of gamers enjoy Nut Hunt. But, having a clear target demographic (and psychographic) helps us in delivering a consistent message.

The following are two documents that we created to help define Sigil’s brand.

Brand Inspiration Book

Our graphic designer for Sigil is Mike Hnath. He isn’t a board game graphic designer first and foremost, but rather specializes in brand development and has done work for some pretty impressive brands like Kraft-Heinz.

The pdf linked below is a brainstorming book he helped us put together as we honed in on what Sigil is as a brand. It includes our inspirations and has the first iteration of some of our brand assets (logo, fonts, etc).

The core mechanism and flavor of Sigil is the board itself. It’s a runic magic circle which players battle to control. It has spells embedded in it that when occupied can be cast for powerful effect.

There are a huge range of magical worlds we could have drawn inspiration from, from the whimsicality of Studio Ghibli, to the bright towers of Narnia, or the gritty dark of Steve Ericson and George RR Martin.

We wanted Sigil to resonate in a way that it feels like it could be part of our world. A secret part of our world that’s whispered about in cold corridors.

We quickly leaned away from high fantasy tropes, and the final game takes a lot of inspiration from dark academia and astrology. Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education, Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House, tarot decks, and secret societies were all brand inspirations.

Target Audience

This second document was a culmination of a lot of conversations and brainstorming. I only wrote it up formally earlier this week when Ori Kagan (who is producing our Kickstarter video) asked for more detail on our target audience.

I was hesitant to share the below document, as I don’t want to discourage consumers who aren’t in the target demographic from checking out and enjoying Sigil. In fact, I expect a huge portion of our player base to not fit firmly into our target demographic.

Our target just defines our marketing efforts and aesthetic choices.

That’s it. Lots of people from all walks of life and game preferences will love Sigil – but it is most effective for us to be consistent with how we present it and to whom.

The Psychographic profile of the target Sigil player is someone who enjoys deep strategy, conflict in gaming (it is a two-player dueling game), along with lesser but meaningful motivating factors from immersion & discover.

Our target demographics are younger professionals age 20-35. We are targeting lifestyle gamers who have the appetite, and capacity to go deep into the strategy of a specific game. Competitive Magic: The Gathering players are a good comp group – with a major difference compared to Magic organized play being our targeting of a gender agnostic demographic.

A Magic: The Gathering tournament

We also anticipate a strong cohort of abstract strategy game hobbyists, who enjoy a diverse range of abstract games without necessarily dedicating significant time to going deep on any one title.

An important differentiating factor between Sigil many abstract strategy games is the visual impact, and strong theme of the game. The game is a work of art, and the journey of emotional resonance is multi-layered with an initial hook based on the visual and thematic elements, and deeper connection based on the strategic depth, discovery and replayability.

Games are for Everyone

Going down the journey of defining Sigil’s brand and target audience was an unfamiliar and at types unnatural feeling process.

Afterall, I believe that games are for everyone.

But, at the end of the day, having a clearly defined brand with central principals and inspiration helped us create a stronger and more resonant product.

In terms of marketing, we’re a small company with limited resources. We need to be intelligent with how and to whom we are marketing our games.

Whether or not you go through as formalized or involved a process in developing your own brand direction for your game, I think that there are a lot of useful ideas that can fall out of thinking through target demographics & psychographics.

And, having the foundation of an audience to return to has helped us make more consistent and stronger product and marketing decisions.

Have you ever been turned off by a game because it felt like it was marketed to someone other than you?