next »

[Zogthor]

I've focused in social media and email marketing for the last couple of years for various clients and small businesses. Presence online is very important to expand your reach to potential end users. Since signing on for an indie game project, new platform tools popped up in my research to add to my toolbox of what to use. This included GameJolt and IndieDB, as well as several other indie game sites.

I've seen a lot of people really push IndieDB as where to primarily feature your project and it seems to be a great place to showcase your game and progress. However, it doesn't seem as robust for driving engagement as other social media platforms. Rankings fluctuate dramatically from day to day and don't seem to carry too much weight on the actual quality of the project.

Is anyone out there used IndieDB as their main spearhead for their marketing campaign? How have you specifically used to promote your game?

[Zarkonnen]

IndieDB has probably been the most important media presence for my game, and it's been pretty good to me. Things I have learned:

• Don't look at your game ranking. It's calculated on a 24-hour basis and is hence largely meaningless. My game has been #7 when I put out a popular news item, but it's usually at more like #300. That is not to say that you can't use occasions where your game's ranking is high to boast about it... 
• Instead, look at number of watchers. There's no ranking of that, unfortunately, but it's a good way of tracking progress.
• Put out frequent news items. These are vetted by IndieDB staff and may end up on the front page, which most of your traffic will come from.
• The one thing that really, really matters to IndieDB staff with news items is pictures. Enough pictures -> front page. (OK, it not being misspelled gibberish is probably also a good idea.)
• No one on IndieDB cares about video. My articles get hundreds of views, my videos get single digits.
• People care slightly more about screenshots, but still not very much.

What do you think of GameJolt? My impression was that it was mostly about free games?

[Neeko]

Excellent advice Zarkonnen. I'm surprised to hear that videos and screen shots don't attract a lot of views compared to articles. I would have thought the opposite! I'll keep that in mind for sure.

[Zarkonnen]

Actually, looking at the numbers, it's less extreme than I thought. This piece of concept art got 350, and the trailer got 420. Most posts get between 250 and 600, though this one got 2300 because it was featured in the front page banner.

When it comes to videos, are there any good places to submit trailers/dev videos/etc? I usually just tweet about them.

[darklight]

Excellent advice Zarkonnen. I'm surprised to hear that videos and screen shots don't attract a lot of views compared to articles. I would have thought the opposite! I'll keep that in mind for sure.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but a new article can potentially appear on the front page / will appear in the article feed, whereas new screenshots are not publicized at all, unless you write an article about them.

[TwistedJenius]

@darklight
They're bumped up in the "images" section of the site. 
http://www.indiedb.com/images

@Zogthor
There's a couple of things to remember about IndieDB when comparing it to other social media.  First, it's indie game specific, so you know what that anyone who is there is looking for indie games. 

This also means that the site is set up with the intended purpose to present your game to the audience.  For example, the page layout of any given game on IndieDB are much more effective for doing this, in my opinion, than something like facebook or twitter.  The pages are designed specifically to have all of the information that a potential fan/customer could want right there.  You have the description of the game, followed by the screen shots, then latest news items/updates, and a clearly marked menu right above the description and under the game's banner that links to all of the other pages in that game's section, so that the fans can easily find whatever information that they want very quickly and thus makes it easier to assess the game and therefore take an interest in it. 

Finally, the other advantage of IndieDB over other types of social media is that it allows you to download things like demos, beta/alpha tests, or any other content that you want to make available to people directly from the game's page with little difficulty. And because it's intertwined with Desura, you can even sell your game from your IndieDB page.

In some ways you might argue that it may seem more narrow than other social media, and in a way it is.  But it's also a site where 100% of the audience is into indie games, and that, combined with the fact that it does seem to get a reasonable amount of traffic, is what makes it valuable. 

Quite a lot of the people that stumbled onto my last game did so through IndieDB. 

[Müsta Klaki]

So... you just make an article (blog post) and it goes up on the front page?

Or it has to be deemed front-page worthy? Or... what?

[fractilegames]

So... you just make an article (blog post) and it goes up on the front page?

Or it has to be deemed front-page worthy? Or... what?

When you post an article it needs to be approved by the staff. They may choose to "archive" it if they think its not worthy of the front page. Archived posts will not be shown on front page, but will be visible on your game page and your watchers still get notified.

It seems that only articles with no images and/or very little content get archived.

[Müsta Klaki]

So... you just make an article (blog post) and it goes up on the front page?

Or it has to be deemed front-page worthy? Or... what?

When you post an article it needs to be approved by the staff. They may choose to "archive" it if they think its not worthy of the front page. Archived posts will not be shown on front page, but will be visible on your game page and your watchers still get notified.

It seems that only articles with no images and/or very little content get archived.

I made a blog post, but then realized I can make a Game section for my game w/ tons of information.

So I did that, and it's under approval. But I already made the blog. Is there any way to attach that blog post to the game's news? They seem like they could be the same thing, and go into the same spot on the home-page or something. One of the rules is you can't make a news post the same as any article on the site, but if that article gets homepage I'd rather it be attached to the game it's about as opposed to just my profile.

[Constan7ine]

I've found IndieDB to quite effective for marketing. It's biggest asset is the fact that it's so targeted toward indie games.

I also agree the popularity rankings aren't particularly effective and games go in and out on a daily basis. My game (http://www.indiedb.com/games/boxman-begins) was briefly more popular than Minecraft. But dropped way down the following day.

It's also great for small indie's who don't want the effort of making and running a website, since IndieDB can be your portal to advertise your game. I've actually found more views, and higher engagement on IndieDB than out game's own website.

It's certainly not something I would ignore as an indie dev. What have you got to loose any way?

[Müsta Klaki]

It's certainly not something I would ignore as an indie dev. What have you got to loose any way?

I put my game on there late yesterday and it's already got 156 views on it.

It's good because no matter what you do, you'll make the front page of somewhere. The engine's page, the news page, the genre page, you'll get somewhere with good visibility, though for how long it's usually only a day on the front page.

So my advice to anyone would be to create bullshit news and purposefully delay it. Sounds stupid, but if you can get your game on the front page every few days... do it. I'm too far in development to really put out news of the game's development.

[Zogthor]

I appreciate all the great feedback and experience you guys have offered! We will be using IndieDB a little differently and experiment with some of the strategies that you have offered.

Another question, it sounds like you guys have gotten a lot of reach from it, but how well did you do in terms of engagement? Did you see watcher count go up with more posts from articles/screenshots? Did you have calls to action on your game's page that received measurable attention?

[Müsta Klaki]

Well my game has been up for like 24 hours and it now has 252 views and 5 watchers, no comments but don't expect any (people rarely go out of their way to say nice things about anything).

Today alone I got those 5 watchers and 135 of those views. That was after my article was on the home page this morning, it had screenshots and a teaser/synopsis.

So... it seems to be working well. A couple months of this and I'd have built a nice following.

[TwistedJenius]

@Zogthor
I can tell you that watcher count can sometimes go up with a surprising level of ease, simply by posting new content to the site (of course I think the quality of the content and of the game itself, almost certainly plays a role with that). 

I haven't really experimented much with calls to action. 

[Müsta Klaki]

Just an update, game has been on IndieDB for two days, now have 450+ views.

This website is seriously cool.

[Brent]

IndieDB is absolutely worth doing as indie devs. Getting an article posted by them drives a decent amount of views and their community is pretty awesome. We have had Grimoire up there for a few months now and its been pretty great.

One thing to keep in mind is that when submitting news articles it can take around 6 hours to get approved for their main page so try and time your submissions about 6 hours before you would like them to go up.

For an example of the kind of views you can expect we submitted this article last night and it was on the front page when we woke up. As of a few minutes ago we are up 100 views on our gameplay trailer and the article itself has about 800 views.

Hope this helps!

[Neeko]

Just an update, game has been on IndieDB for two days, now have 450+ views.

This website is seriously cool.

Yep, put my game up and already at 4 watches and 700 views after just a few days. The front page exposure for posting new items is great.

[wizered67]

Totally agree with what everyone has said. IndieDB was really useful for getting a lot of views, specifically with front page news articles. It was really shocking as a new developer when I went from getting just a couple of views to getting hundreds of views. I don't necessarily think IndieDB is the perfect tool for Indie marketing, but it's so easy to use you would be crazy not to.

[Müsta Klaki]

Just an update, game has been on IndieDB for two days, now have 450+ views.

This website is seriously cool.

Yep, put my game up and already at 4 watches and 700 views after just a few days. The front page exposure for posting new items is great.

I'll be honest, I don't really like many indie games, but IndieDB is making me find a lot of cool shit. I'm following like 5 games right now.

[Zarkonnen]

At the request of a bunch of people, I made a more in-depth post about IndieDB which I here reproduce in its entirety:

Several people have asked me for advice on how to use IndieDB to promote your game, so I thought I'd put it all in one place. I'm not a marketing expert, but I'd like to think my game does fairly well, so may this be of use to you.

Ranking and Measuring

First off, you have to pretty much ignore your game's ranking. It's calculated on the basis of the day's visits alone, which means that a single popular article can propel a midlist game to the top. For example, my game is usually in the 300-400 range of ranking, but recently made it to #4 on the basis of a popular dev blog.

Instead of looking at the ranking, look at your game's number of watchers, which I think is a better proxy for your game's success. Also, don't worry if people don't comment very often - they just don't on IndieDB.

HTML

IndieDB uses a slightly wonky mutant version of HTML with auto-paragraphs and some special tags like center and some limits like a whitelist of iframes. Its visual editor is OK, but will mess up any handmade HTML you insert. So in general, when editing a profile or news post, either do everything in the visual editor or everything in the raw HTML. Note that you can absolutely insert custom CSS into your HTML!

Profile

The profile info for your game is the first thing people see, so obviously pick a good banner image. As mentioned above, you can do custom CSS, which means that if you wish, you can make your profile stand out quite a bit, eg like Mount & Blade Warband.

News Stories

Post lots of news stories, one every few days. You can also do features, behind-the-scenes, dev logs, whatever. The number one thing that matters is that they must have lots of pictures. IndieDB staff go through news entries and decide whether a story is shown in the list on the IndieDB frontpage or not. Frontpage articles get many many more visitors than "Archived" ones. And in my hard-earned experience, the one thing that the staff wants is lots of pretty pictures.

Speaking of pictures, IndieDB wants you to choose a massive (1024x768) thumbnail for each story. This thumbnail inevitably gets scaled down to a dinky 120x90 for the listing. In fact, I have found nowhere on the site where it's actually being used at a high resolution. This means your thumbnail needs to look good at 120x90, not 1024x768. I've been known to just give up and scale up small images.

Pictures and Videos

You can also post pictures and videos of your game, and of course you should. These each go into a separate (uncurated) feed on the site. This means it's a good idea to post pictures in groups of about four for extra visibility. On the other hand, don't dump twenty near-identical pictures at the same time, as it will not endear you to the community.