How to Market a Game

Using information provided:

CS commonly involves discovering/developing corresponding enumerations / associations needed to support/to focus on given science field/area. Depending on how 'novel' support is required for given field/area; may have to 'invent' necessary protocols/language/etc. based on required enumerations/associations 'discovered'/needed for a given science field/area. Very helpful if students also look at non-CS areas would want to use CS classes for. aka genomics, web back-end development, AI, etc.

Novel game dev[3] "invention" as in (?) software engineering'(?). Implication of novel taken as 'on own'/free lancing. Game developer more full process/multi-hat development / broader set of process(es) within given field than CS. Still have to 'discover' what 'sells'/'client(s) interested in buying'. (vs. directed discovery bounded by science area/field) . aka ID Software's inventive development approach[0] vs. discovering 'novel ways of using' doom game engine[1][2].

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[0] : https://charlesboury.fr/articles/id-software-principles.html

[1] : psdoom : https://psdoom.sourceforge.net/

[2] : doompdf : https://github.com/ading2210/doompdf

[3] : https://howtomarketagame.com/2023/09/28/the-missing-middle-in-game-development/

> I think moving to Substack (retain domain) would be a much stronger way to build in the long term

Hmm, the danger there is that one is putting a lot of one's eggs into a fickle basket. In the early days of Facebook we had a page with 20k+ followers, and we got a lot of engagement there, people followed us to be informed of when we published anything new. Then one day Facebook introduced 'boosting,' and overnight our posts were hidden from all but a fraction of our audience. Paying to boost each post would convert them into ads, which is not how we wanted to reach our readers. Our site traffic plummeted. I would have happily just paid FB a flat rate to retain access to our audience, but that option was not on offer.

I was already a proponent of the "own your platform" philosophy[1] (aka "Don’t build your castle in other people’s kingdoms"[2]), but that misguided reliance on Facebook really cemented it. It's nigh impossible to own everything we rely on, but I'm reluctant to give any company that much power over my project again.

[1] https://www.chuck.is/platform/

[2] https://howtomarketagame.com/2021/11/01/dont-build-your-castle-in-other-peoples-kingdoms/

John Romero wants you to feel okay about the term "boomer shooter". [1]

Pull quote:

"The funny thing about boomers, it doesn’t even matter because for people who made up the term boomer shooter, anyone who’s old as a boomer, boomers are actually the kids of World War Two vets.

"That’s my mom. My mom is 20 years older than I am. She’s actually a boomer. So, boomers are not typically developing games.

"It’s funny. It’s a funny name. And I usually say it is a boomer shooter. It’s got a shotgun in it. It makes a big boom sound and you’re shooting. it doesn’t bug me. It’s really like you’re trying to nail the aesthetics of the style and that’s like that’s a phrase that kind of says what you need to know."

[1] from https://howtomarketagame.com/2023/09/25/john-romero-on-his-book-doom-guy-and-developing-games-at-a-small-scale/ and HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37649594

What kind of marketing or outreach have you done for your game?

Edit: I ask because the devs on Tiny Glade are ex-DICE (I think?) and definitely ex-Embark Studios, two very well-known AAA studios, and they've been very active both in the Rust community (Discord, Meetups, etc), the Houdini community (conferences and meetups) and elsewhere to promote this game during development..

So they already had a personal brand and an audience built-in, which I'm sure helped.. Plus it's a great game.

If you want to give the marketing side a real try for your game, this is a decent resource if you're not already familiar with it: https://howtomarketagame.com/

(No affiliation but I know a few indie devs who were not well-known and had no pre-existing audience, and had success with the approach).

Peak concurrent users in a day topped out around 10 on Steam (it's a niche game). Other stats: there's about 40 people on the Discord and there are 27 reviews on Steam. That's as a free game--I assume the numbers would have been lower (probably much lower) if it cost actual money.

As far as monetization on Steam, what are you getting at? DLC? I'll admit to not knowing (mostly as a player and, more recently, as a developer) of any other way to spend money on games besides buying them or DLC on Steam. Edit: I'm ignoring "free to play" since I don't like that model (as a player or developer).

Edit: Wow, looks like the median indie game makes barely $1k: https://howtomarketagame.com/2023/04/25/what-if-steam-didnt-take-30/

Howdy, here are a bunch of communities that I shoot the gamedev breeze with asynchronously:

- https://twitter.com/IndieLegion

- https://howtomarketagame.com/ Discord

- https://twitter.com/gamediscoverco Plus subscription's Discord

- Godot Engine's Discord

I've connected more deeply with some of the folks I've met on there, so it hasn't felt lonely at all.

I'm also doing an indie dev masters via Falmouth, and my cohort meet up weekly (and we have a Discord for daily chatter), and it's a great community, but I'm not sure if that will last past graduation in a few weeks.

(I'm on the marketing video super cringe)

https://www.falmouth.ac.uk/study/online/postgraduate/indie-game-development