Streamers, how important are they?One side of our release that really amazed me was the amount of attention we got from streamers both live on Twitch and pre-recorded on Youtube. I knew by 2014 that this side of gaming was massive and probably even more important than mainstream press and traditional games criticism to the success of your average indie game. So we spent a lot of effort in attracting them, alongside the more usual press outreach.
Throughout 2014 I had tried and mostly failed to get free indie exhibitor spots at various game conventions like PAX, EGX and Tokyo Game Show (we got to an Insomnia and GameCity, but none of the bigger ones). This was my main reason to find a publisher so that they could pay to showcase the game at those bigger events. I signed with Versus Evil in Jan 2015 and we then did a huge amount of them in the following six months:
- Jan: PAX South, Texas
- Feb: Casual Connect Indie Zone, Amsterdam
- Mar: GDC press event SF, PAX East Boston, EGX London
- Jun: E3, Los Angeles
Doing a big event like PAX well can get you a lot of attention. Versus Evil did a great job here, and from our very first event at PAX South things really picked up. I wrote a
big blog post talking about PAX South specifically so check that out for more info.
In terms of streamers PAX South is where
Jesse Cox and
Dodger played Guild of Dungeoneering for the first time. I believe they were just wandering past and were attracted by the name / logo / crowds. They hadn't heard of it before anyway. It's definitely the kind of game that they both like. 'Discovering' our game here kinda turned them into our champions in their circles. For example that same PAX weekend they were doing their
usual podcast with TotalBiscuit and WowCrendor and they brought up GoD. So now we're suddenly on TB's radar.
They kept up this championing from then on. For example, at PAX East in Boston in March Dodger came over to our booth with several other streamers that she
specifically brought over to make sure they played GoD.
One thing you should do if you want the mainstream press to review your game is to send them a 'review copy'. This is your 99%-finished version of the game that you share with them say a month before launch so that they have time to play the game and write a review ready to publish on your launch day (you generally include an embargo asking them not to publish anything til launch day). Even for indies I think this is a good idea. In our case we sent out our review build to press 1 week before launch (we just didn't have it ready before then). What we decided to do for streamers was to send them that same review build the week before launching
with permission to stream the game straight away, a week early. This was in contrast to actual reviews, which were embargoed til launch day.
(on twitch's front page)
This got us a lot of streaming. We got a massive amount of folks on Twitch playing the game live during that week. Also a lot of videos on youtube, including some big ones like Jesse Cox & WowCrendor. At this time we were also doing preorders on steam (with a preorder bonus of our first DLC for free, when it came out), and it was translating to sales. I spotted us at around the #36 mark in the steam top-sellers list a day or two before launch, which was pretty amazing. Folks who bought still had to wait til launch day to play, too.
Very interestingly we were brought up on the cooptional podcast again on July 16th, two days after our launch. Have a look at the segment
here. Jesse Cox is really excited about the game, and both Dodger and Margaret Krohn join in (note: I showed the game to Margaret at GDC in March). TotalBiscuit says he has played the game but found it
mind numbing, ouch! By the end the others have convinced him to give it another go.
The very next day TB posts his 'WTF is ... Guild of Dungeoneering' video. When I saw he had posted a video that morning I had already watched the cooptional segment where he called the game mind numbing. I wasn't sure if I was about to watch a video where he ripped us to shreds! Fortunately it was actually a great video where it's clear he's played on and seen more of the game and some actual strategy and fun. Phew! (This video is the most-watched video about the game on Youtube, with over 382K views as of now.)
Here's my mom defending me on facebook, ha ha!
A side note on getting featured by Steam. Part of the reason for doing preorders and getting streamers playing early was to maximise our chances of being picked by Valve for a frontpage feature (the big one at the top, which is hand curated). Our publisher was talking to their valve contact a lot during this time, pointing out all the attention and how we made the topselling list already. And it worked, we got a frontpage feature by Steam the day BEFORE launch day, and it stayed up there for about a week. This was amazing. On launch day we were in the top 10 selling chart all day, peaking at #6.
Take that GTA V and Witcher 3!
I think it's interesting just how many things you need to do over a long period of time to end up getting a video from someone with as big a following as totalbiscuit. He's actually posted a video about how he chooses games to feature, and talks about why he picked GoD specifically.
Segment here. Really worth a listen if you are making games and wondering how to get them in front of streamers. As he says he installs a
lot of games that he then doesn't post a video about.
'Big' streamers, one-off videos, and the long tail of streaming I've been focused on the streamers with big followings above, and we were lucky to get quite a few of them playing GoD. But that is definitely not where this ends. There is a huge amount of streamers playing games to tiny and medium sized audiences. The really big ones tended to do a single one-off video of Guild of Dungeoneering, which was nice and all, but I really liked seeing the smaller channels who did much more in-depth series. I think that kind of exposure is super-valuable for a niche game like our own. Here's two streamers who played through the entire game (and our expansion) over the course of many, many videos:
Baertaffy &
Kikoskia. There's over
20,000 videos on youtube about Guild of Dungeoneering now, which is insane.
The approach to get on these guys' radars is the same (and smaller/bigger streamers also look at what others are playing, so there's a nice network effect here). One thing I did was I was happy to give out game keys to almost anyone who emailed me to ask, as long as they looked genuine (I did filter out people pretending to be streamers), no matter how small their audience was. Everyone (including myself) starts small after all.
Make sure your game is streamer-friendlyWe kind of lucked into this, mostly. I didn't particularly design GoD to work especially well for streaming, live audiences, etc. (though I will do for future games, and am doing so for new game modes we are working on). The game DOES work quite well for it though! Even simple things like it being entirely turn-based, with no timers to do anything, ever. You can stop playing to read your chat on twitch, have a discussion about what to do next, etc and that's no problem. Also the roguelite elements are a natural fit for streaming, of course. Stuff like your guys being disposable, loss being frequent, but not game-ending.
We did a couple of easy things specifically for streamers though. One was keeping a graveyard showing every single dungeoneer you had lost, with their name and stats etc. I constantly see streamers popping back into the graveyard to see their history. A second thing was letting you rename your characters. When you get a dungeoneer they get a random name but you are immediately prompted to rename them. Streamers
love being able to rename ingame characters after people who are watching their stream. Very easy and super fun for everyone!
My favourite videoJust want to close up with my favourite video about Guild of Dungeoneering:
Really love this. Am already a big fan of Felicia Day (particularly 'The Guild'), and it's just wonderful to see them playing the game and laughing with & at each other. Really shows the strengths of the game!
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