My brother and I have been working on an indie game, and I want to start trying to market it. I feel gross just thinking about that but it's a necessary evil or no one will ever hear about or play it. Anyway, I want to know how people discover new games because I think that'll help me figure out a marketing strategy.
Do you find them on social media? (Twitter, etc.)
Hear about them from friends?
Games journalist?
Streamers/YouTubers?
My roomate reads all the garbage gaming news so I don't have to. Thankfully we pretty much like the same stuff. Otherwise twitch/youtube.
Edit: You should shill your game here when you're ready none of us will mind.
I would love to! However my real name is all over it and idk how I fell about that...
Honestly I would not share your real name here, however I can guarantee that any game that Casey Explosion recommends I check out soon after :)
The last game I found was a one man project called Starseed that someone posted about here.
I’ll find all my games by word of mouth. I don’t have enough gaming time to really try out games on the hope that they’ll be good, and game reviewers have shit taste, and are bought and paid for.
I’d suggest streamers and YouTube as the best low budget marketing. Just asking streamers/YouTubers to play it is a good start. If it’s still in beta. Alphabetagamer has a decent following.
Yo I really enjoyed that Starseed game and I forgot to tell the OP good job. Hope they're still around.
I posted Starseed, but I did not make it. I just randomly felt nostalgic for it, played it, then decided to share.
Ah gotcha, well good post anyway. I was surprised how fun it was.
My suspicion was that people found most of there games through youtube, because that's how I do it lol. I can't actually imagine buying a game without having seen it first. Yeah I have no faith in games journalist also. Thanks for telling me about Alphabetagamer, I'm going to try to get on there!
I don't listen to any about indie games specifically but the Easy Allies podcast has a good mix of AAA/indie coverage
They're a worker co-op made up of former Gametrailers people
Oh cool! I have never actually had a reddit account. I use to just lurk on the old sub lol. I've wanted to try posting about the game on there but I'm not sure about how to do it successfully
I'd wait til you have a trailer/steam store page/actually launched to do it (or maybe one post for the trailer & another for launch), and maybe try contacting the mods there in advance? They can be a bit gung ho about removing things that are totally relevant to games news. I've also seen indie devs do AMAs there to announce the release of their game so maybe look into that.
We have an itch.io page but haven't yet made a steam page. So I'll definitely do that before reaching out to youtubers. Thanks for the tips about reddit!
Youtube seems like the main way people find games, I know that's how I do it! I have been working on a big list of relevant youtubers to send keys to so that my main plan.
My boomerfication is well under way, I’ll just look through steam tags or google “[genre] games” when I have a specific type of game in mind
From what I have read that's how a lot of people find games; steam tags are super important for marketing apparently! So don't feel too boomerish about it lol
A strategy game about castle building. Idk if it's really their vibe but it would be awesome to see them play it!
Usually word of mouth, sometimes youtube. If I go looking for a game it's usually on RPS
I like RPS as well! I thinking try to get covered on there would be amazing but I have no idea how to go about that.
Search around gamasutra for tips.
A lot of websites have a contact page - you may also end up tweeting at journos there - but honestly, this probably has to have an answer out there.
Make a presskit to make it easy to see more - https://dopresskit.com/
Have a Demo/press build and a way to access it.
You can Do this, the indie game community is pretty nice.
That's a good plan!I'm working on a list of websites/journalist with their contact email or website. We're still working on a demo but yeah I'm going to wait til we have that to contact people. That press kit site is perfect, thanks for sharing it! I've been discouraged at times but the more I learn about it the better; you're right I CAN do this!
Thumbs up for Rock Paper Shotgun, especially for indie and under the radar stuff.
Usually I get news about gaming stuff secondhand from streams/LPs. I don't really go out of my way for news otherwise. A lot of the Vinesauce streamers are variety streamers and will play indie stuff they get sent keys for occasionally.
My plan rn is to really go for streamers and youtubers because I feel that I can pull that off. Also it seems like how most people find new games. What is vinesauce?
Vinesauce is a group of streamers. Think there's like nine of them? A lot of them are variety streamers, decent viewership sizes, and as a bonus none of them are chuds afaik.
That sounds great! I'll add them to my list of streamers to send keys to
obscure indie stuff i learn about from nookrium or splattercat on youtube
less obscure indie stuff from matn or aavak
double and triple a stuff from podquisition or dropped framesWe're definitely obscure indie aspiring to be less obscure indie lol. I follow nook and splatter, they are great! I'll definitely check out matn and aavak!
It gonna try! I agree I think that's definitely the best way to try to get people to know about the game
Do you remember who they were? I'm working on a big list of relevant streamers to contact once the game is getting close to release.
I'd say that having tags and keywords and references to similar games would probably make it more likely for me to find it. Besides Steam and word of mouth, I sometimes find games by like finding a reddit thread for "games like Fire Emblem" or just googling "Turn-based tactics games." I'm fairly insular in that I don't use Facebook/Twitter, I don't follow games journalists or streamers much.
I suspect a lot of people find their games like this. I have read that what often makes someone click on a game they see is it reminding them of a game the like, but with a twist/novelty. So yeah I think trying to tie it to similar popular game is a great idea
r/TwoBestFriendsPlay is just a bunch of people pushing games they like. It's pretty much where I found out about what is now most of my game catalog.
