Custom Marketing Game Development vs Using Winday: Budget and Timeframes

Everybody is talking about marketing gamification as this next big thing in engaging constantly distracted customers. The stats shared around the Internet are impressive. Fellow marketers are eager to share their success stories. Yet, you remain on the verge. Custom marketing game development is a serious undertaking, and you are not ready to commit. Well, this guide is here to help you navigate the complex world of marketing game dev along with its costs and timeframes.

Why read this guide:

This guide is brought to you by Winday marketing gamification platform that helps businesses launch gamification campaigns within days. It’s a short summary of our expertise in digital marketing and game development coupled with our extensive experience in creating interactive marketing games that grow engagement and drive conversion. Apart from the successful no-code marketing games platform, our portfolio also includes several large projects of custom game creation for larger brands.

What you’ll learn in this guide:

• Three options for creating a marketing game.
• How to build marketing game step-by-step.
• Timeframes and cost of marketing game development.
• Marketing game development comparison: custom vs. ready-to-go gamification platform.
• How to save cost & time using no-code marketing game platforms.

What It Takes to Build a Marketing Game From Scratch

Before diving deep into marketing game development comparison, we’d like to explain what it takes to build a marketing game from scratch. This section will help you understand what options you have when it comes to development and provides a detailed roadmap for in-house development.

Three Options to Create Branded Marketing Games:

1. Build marketing game in-house. Employ a team of professionals and control the whole process within your company.
2. Partner with an outsourcing company. Find a company that provides branded game development services and build your game in close cooperation with them.
3. Use no-code marketing game platforms.

Custom Marketing Game Development: Roadmap

We also explained how the “marketing nature” of the game impacts the development process, what additional people you’ll have to hire and additional steps you’ll have to take in the process compared to regular development. For example, you will not have complex lore like many regular games tend to have even if they are simple puzzles. On the other side, you’ll need to think about marketing functionality like analytics and Marketing technology tools.

Spoiler alert:
This part can get somewhat technical, so if you’d rather learn about the cost of marketing game development, we suggest you just use the table of contents on the right side of the screen and hop to the next section.

Create Marketing Gamification Strategy

A common mistake for many brands that decide to jump on the marketing gamification bandwagon is to skip this step. Many marketers are exceptionally creative people, the must-have trait in our field. Though we learn to control it, the excitement many of us feel when given a chance to participate in something so unique as game development can lead us astray. We might completely forget the difference between a regular game and marketing gamification., i.e., the business objective.

For some of us the thought of game development brings back the earliest childhood memories about the games we used to play. There’s nothing like your first game experience, but you need to remain calm and strategic.

Remember that a game is just a step of your marketing funnel or customer buyer journey. Its design or game mechanics are secondary to the current campaign you are planning. Treat it as a tool to grab attention and trigger interest in your potential customers. Next logical step is to make them make the right decision. Get insights on gaming psychology and how to use it in marketing gamification.

Plan the Budget

The easiest way to plan your budget is to sign up to no-code marketing game platforms. They have fixed monthly payments that can insignificantly change over the year. Outsourcing companies will usually give you a rough estimate once they understand the complexity of the project. The in-house budget will heavily depend on the team composition and chosen technologies.

Salaries will be the biggest expense in your game creation budget.

Assemble the Team

This step is valid for brands that prefer custom marketing games creation in-house. Alternatively you can outsource game development or use one of no-code gamified marketing platform.

Key Roles in Marketing Game Development

1. Project Manager oversees the whole process, has experience in marketing and game development.
2. Game Designer creates game mechanics and balances the game.
3. Technical Director oversees the technical aspects of the game development process.
4. Art Director oversees the creation and implementation of in-game visuals.
5. 3D/2D Artists create in-game design and its components (environment, objects).
6. Animators create the movement and visual effects inside the game.
7. UX Designers create an intuitive user interface and ensure a seamless user experience.
8. Sound Designers are responsible for in-game sounds.
9. Gameplay & Physics Programmers to translate game design into program code.
10. Backend Developers to ensure the seamless communication between game server and player devices
11. Security & Compliance Officer to protect your game from cyber attacks and ensure that your game is in keeping with laws.
12. QA specialists to assure bugless game performance, seamless integrations and great usability.
13. Marketing campaign manager is responsible for the marketing component of the game.

Design Game Mechanics

Game mechanics describe all the interactions between a player and the game as well as the interactions within the game itself. Remember that interactive marketing games should be simple and easy to play. Understanding the game rules shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes otherwise your potential customers will simply disengage.

Compare:

Dungeons and Dragons books that describe the mechanics of a single game. Each manual is approximately 80,000 words.

An example of choosing gameplay goal, difficulty, and time for Bubble Shooter in Winday gamification platform.

Design Appealing Game Graphics and Animations

You know your target audience. Use aesthetics that align with your marketing campaign goals. We suggest against coming up with complex special effects or very detailed game graphics. If a game looks appealing to your TA, it’s more than enough for it to achieve its goal.

Design UI/UX

User interface plays a crucial role in all IT products designed for end users, and they are even more important in interactive marketing games. Apart from regular work on UX in applications, make sure your game app provides clear explanations on:

• Game rules
• Campaign rules
• Data Collection
• Prizes & how to get them

Game Programming

At this stage the core code of the game is created along with the integration of design, graphics, animations. You also create the front-end (player-facing part) of the game.

Acquire Hosting to Deploy Your Backend

An example of the simple P2P hosting.

You need to deploy your game infrastructure (backend) on a server to allow your Target Audience to access your game. There are several types of Hostings, you’ll be choosing between:

1. Bare-metal server (on-prem, co-location or IaaS).
2. Cloud hosting.
3. Hybrid infrastructure.

We suggest using cloud as it requires no maintenance. Plus, it’s cheaper and more scalable if you have a high volume of customers or expect spikes around certain dates of your Marketing Calendar.

Pro Tip:
Remember about server scaling to take into account the increasing number of participants.

Develop the Core Backend Side

An example of a game backend architecture.

Backend is a complex system that enables your game operations. Its key elements include:

• Game servers, where your game is located
• Databases about different states of games for different players
• Authentication and security infrastructure
• Telemetry that collects player behavior data to optimize the game
• CDN to deliver updates & patches

Pro Tip:
Remember about adoptive performance for various platforms including desktop computers, various mobile phones and tablets. Learn more about game development on various platforms.

Ensure Game Security & Compliance

Disclaimer:
The practices laid down in this section present a small portion of general practices that aim to ensure game security and compliance. The contents of this section shall not be perceived as legal advice or security consulting.

Those of us interested in IT security or gaming noticed the abrupt surge of cyber incidents in the gaming industry in 2024. The analyst reported a 94% YoT increase in web attacks on online games. Interestingly the previous twofold surge in attacks took place in 2022. It’s a growth trend and the tides are unlikely to be turned taking into account the current state of cyber crime. Though we haven’t heard of incidents with branded marketing games, we believe it can become an issue in a couple of years as they gain popularity.

Game Security best practices:

1. Data Encryption in transit, at rest and in use.
2. Clean code to decrease the number of vulnerabilities hackers can exploit.
3. Use API security.
4. Get DDoS protection and WAFs.
5. Carry out security audits and pen-testing.

Pro Tip:
If you use authentication in your game (e.g., for an exclusive experience to treat your regular customers), you need to impose strong authentication rules. The safest and cheapest thing would be to utilize single sign on to ensure some other service with a bigger security budget takes care of player’s passwords.

An example of content warning for Cyberpunk game on Steam.

When it comes to compliance in marketing games creation, check with your legal team first. Depending on the residency of your customer base, different laws and regulations can be in place, for example, GDPR in the EU countries or CCPA.

Compliance best practices include:

1. Publish Privacy Policy & Terms of Use.
2. Obtain Player Consent.
3. Age-rate your game, if you have “adult” content.
4. Incorporate accessibility features – it will also benefit your brand.
5. Get copyright and trademarks for unique in-game content.
6. Arrange regular consultations with your legal team to ensure continuous compliance.

Pro Tip:
If your game contains elements of chance (e.g., roulette, random presents dropout), explain it to your legal team in great detail and ask them to check your game for compliance to gambling laws in place in your country or state.

Build & Implement Integration Logic

You need to think about the marketing channels in which you would like to incorporate your marketing game. That’s why you need to build the proper logic for the game integration into other sources like your website, mobile app, etc.

An example of Brand Page with active games by a bookstore.

Build Marketing Campaign Functionality

Last but not least, you’ll need to build on top of your game the functionality for your marketing campaign. It will somewhat increase the cost of marketing game development, but it will give you critical functionality like code distribution systems or user behavior analytics.

Pro Tip:
Remember about edge conditions for max server load, lack of discount codes when a game is still running, or what will happen with the game when the campaign ends.

Steps to Build Marketing Game with Winday

This simple process explains how to build an instant marketing game in Winday Platform. An instant game provides codes that you customers can then use to purchase your products or services. It’s a simpler type of game that we recommend beginning with. Check out the video below:

Up for a challenge? Try creating a Tournament game:

On average, it takes up to 30 minutes to study all game mechanics.

Comparing Costs & Timeframes of Building Games For Marketing

Disclaimer:
Please keep in mind that marketing game development timeframes & costs provided in this section are for outsourced marketing game development. The prices and timeframes for in-house development are significantly higher for several reasons. First, you need time to assemble your team, which can take up to several months. Second, many people with skills necessary in game development aren’t eager to take part in a short-term project, so you might end up with longer contracts. Third, you’ll need to include overhead and benefits (like medical insurance) in your in-house marketing game development cost.

Graphics Design for the Game Theme

Skin selection in Winday.

Custom Development:

This estimation includes creating in-game graphics and animations, user interfaces and incorporation of brand identity in the game. Each process can go through multiple iterations which will impact the total cost.

Cost: $2,000 – $10,000

Time: 2-4 weeks

Winday:

Winday provides ready-to-use templates and customizable game themes, allowing brands to adapt existing graphics or upload their own brand assets.

Cost: Included in the plan

Time: Up to 10 minutes. This time doesn’t include creating your logo, image of promised prices, interface background or game completion icon.

Game Mechanics Development

Custom Development:

Developing custom game mechanics requires a team of developers to create the gameplay logic, rules, scoring, animations, and interaction flows. This involves a lot of technical expertise and time for coding and testing.

Cost: $5,000 – $30,000

Time: 4-8 weeks

Winday:

Winday provides pre-built game mechanics (like Match-3, tournaments, quizzes, etc.) that can be customized for the brand’s specific goals. No need to develop mechanics from scratch.

Cost: Included in the plan

Time: Up to 10 minutes.

Backend Infrastructure Development

Example of Azure PlayFab Backend Infrastructure for Games.

Custom Development:

Creating backend infrastructure involves building a secure system to handle user authentication, database management, storing player data, managing game state, and processing game results, including API integrations, database setup, etc.

Cost: $10,000 – $50,000

Time: 6-12 weeks

Winday:

The platform handles all backend infrastructure for user management, authentication, tracking, and reporting, all integrated seamlessly.

Cost: Included in the plan

Time: Instant

Additional Services Development

Advanced analytics and integrations are essential for marketing game development.

Custom Development:

Developing additional services like email notifications, in-game messages, or customer support tools requires development time for API integration, UI development, and content management systems.

Cost: $1,000 – $5,000

Time: 2-4 weeks

Winday:

Winday has built-in email distribution features, including branded emails, automated responses, and notifications, all ready for use with no development required.

Cost: Included in the plan

Time: Instant

Game Hosting & Server Management

Average prices for hosting on AWS.

Custom Development:

Hosting a custom game requires dedicated server setup or cloud hosting, including security, scaling, and maintenance to ensure smooth gameplay.

Cost: $500 – $5,000 per month

Time: Ongoing maintenance

Winday:

Ready-to-go Gamification Platform provides fully managed game hosting, including scaling, security, and high availability.

Cost: Included in the plan

Time: Instant

DevOps and Infrastructure Setup Total

Continuous Delivery (CD) and Continuous Integration (CI) ensure your game is up-to-date, which increases its security and performance.

Custom Development:

A dedicated DevOps team is required to manage infrastructure setup, deployment, scaling, and ongoing monitoring. This includes creating CI/CD pipelines, server management, cloud configurations, and handling scaling requirements.

Cost: $3,000 – $10,000

Time: 2-6 weeks

Winday:

Our infrastructure is already set up, and no additional DevOps resources are needed.

Marketing Game Development Comparison Summary: Winday vs. Outsource

Custom Marketing Game Development

• Total Cost Estimate: $21,000 – $105,000
• Time Required: 6 – 12 months

Winday

• Total Cost Estimate: Starts from $100/month (based on selected plan)
• Time Required: Minutes to a few hours for setup

Custom Development vs. No-code Marketing Game Platforms: What’s Right for your Business?

Hiring an in-house team can bring you many benefits like employees’ dedication to the project and better control over the process. However, its cost can be too high. The same is true for branded game development services.

Risks to Consider when Deciding on Pricy Game Development

One of the main risks of marketing game development is failure. There’s always a chance that something goes wrong like:

• Your target audience does not like games
• Gamification doesn’t fit your business model
• Customers might simply dislike the game mechanics
• Your UX isn’t intuitive
• The game has way too many bugs

If your marketing game development cost has been substantial, so will be your losses. We all know that marketing campaigns need constant monitoring, multiple tweaking until they start working. Significant budget inputs into a single tool is just not viable for the majority of businesses.

ROI

When talking to customers, B2B sales reps often emphasize that it’s not about the cost, it’s about the value of our product. And they’re absolutely right. The AAA game titles budgets can equal those of Hollywood blockbusters, but they profit from sales.

The development of Baldur’s Gate 3 reportedly reached a whooping $100M. By February 2024, Larian Studio had sold 10M copies. With prices ranging on average between $40 and $80 dollars per copy in different countries, the studio’s revenues from sales not only covered the development cost but also left Larian with enough money to design yet another gem of a game.

Similarly, your company may be able to afford the marketing game development cost of $100K. The big question is how much will your game bring your company revenue-wise. Remember that you will not be able to sell copies like Larian, Bethesda, or Blizzard. Nor will you be able to sell in-game content like Riot or King Digital. Your “game monetization” if you will is the purchases your customers get from you.

Hiring issues

One of the key issues of in-house custom marketing game development is hiring. The issues include:

• Talent scarcity on the market.
• Reluctance of some people to get hired for a short period.
• Your lack of experience in hiring game developers.

A peculiar excerpt from an article on hiring Game Designers.

Lack of understanding of the marketing gamification

Interactive marketing games are a relatively recent addition to the marketing toolkit. That’s why the number of specialists who truly understand the specific aspects of marketing games creation is relatively small. If you leave the reins in the team’s hands you might end up with a product that doesn’t serve predefined marketing goals of your campaign. In another scenario, your attempts to influence the development can be perceived negatively by a team who will see you as an outsider with no real experience in game design.

You can face this issue both with an in-house team and an outsourcing company because not all such companies have experience in marketing gamification.

Timeframes

The headhunting and hiring issues will inevitably translate into longer marketing game development timeframes, which will increase the cost of game development even more.

Glassdoor screenshot shows a lot of Game Dev positions open for over month despite 6-figure salaries, let’s wish them to finally find their ideal candidate.

Create Marketing Games with Winday

Winday is a platform that enables you to easily build branded marketing games. Benefits of Winday Gamification Platform:

• Create within 30 minutes and launch marketing gamification campaigns within days
• Have up to 10 active games simultaneously
• Have a limitless amount of game drafts stored for the future
• Easily tweak your games as you go to see how your audience response
• Сhoose game format – instant game, tournament, or exclusive game
• Choose between 5 game mechanics to see what works with your audience
• Choose from 40+ skins and palettes to match your game visuals and brand identity
• Maintain brand consistency with customizable game UX and branded communications
• Something didn’t work? start from scratch without significant budget loss.
• Save 99% of marketing game development cost and time.