Such a great article. The subject of connecting with an audience is really key. Connecting and building a relationship with one's audience is a lot of hard work

Such a great article. The subject of connecting with an audience is really key. Connecting and building a relationship with one's audience is a lot of hard work, and once you've released something - maintaining that momentum can be a serious challenge. This has been my own experience. In terms of marketing, it's my understanding that two metrics really matter on the success-side: engagement and the gold-standard - participation. Motivating players to buy the game is one thing, however - I think platforms that have inbuilt participation by design - really create a lot of free and ongoing marketing value (e.g. Minecraft, iOS, Little Big Planet etc.) Content creators have to promote the platform in lock-step with their own content. In my opinion, inbuilt participation mechanisms make things so much easier in terms of marketing. You can switch from "I've created something cool" to "look at the cool stuff others have made." Shared aspiration is very powerful. Interestingly, this concept is something that anyone in the dot com, web 2.0, or whatever we're calling the tech scene these days knows. It's almost like the game industry is an island separated from mainstream startup tech (or perhaps I don't read enough). What do you guys/gals think?