"Someone compared the Apple App Store to the warehouse at the end of The Raiders of the Lost Ark - full of magnificent treasures but impossible to find anything - and with the App Store, it's like looking at it through a letterbox."

Oliver Birch, the founder of new marketing agency PlayReplay, is clearly sceptical of online communities discovering and promoting the best games to their peers. "Build it and they will come?" he asks. "I'd love that to be true."

Of course, he wouldn't really.



PlayReplay's raison d'etre is that small, often independently produced, digitally distributed games need marketing as much as boxed games - and that most content-focused start-ups aren't doing any.

"We see a lot of developers investing time, money, blood, sweat and tears into making their game but then moving move onto the next project without giving it any marketing support - financially or time-wise," says Birch. "It's not completely their fault, as for years they've been removed from the route-to-market decisions that were made by publishers."

If developers are to reclaim control, they need to act at a little like publishers, too. "They need to start thinking about marketing much earlier in the game's development," Birch argues. "It should be considered at the first concept meeting, and built into development budgets."

So do independent developers need to raise millions for print and TV spots to back their low-budget productions? No - their games need marketing, but not the same kind of marketing.

That user ratings and word of mouth drives digitally distributed game sales isn't in dispute. The aim, says Birch, is to start the conversation, to try to tilt it your way, and to keep people talking to exploit online's long tail potential.

Birch calls this 'agile marketing'. At heart is an appreciation of how power has shifted. "Content creation such as wikis, blogging, micro-blogging, YouTube and so on are now in the hands of opinionated gamers, and any marketing strategy has to adapt," he contends.

"Consumers don't just go online for a specific reason or to look for one piece of information now - they actually live in this space, leaving a trail of thoughts and feedback that's shared, reviewed, commented on, and shared again. These people can tell your product's story." But, he continues, "you need to provide them with something to talk about."