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[Dinomaniak]

At what point in the game development should one go social ? When the game is moving ? when the demo can be out ? pre-alpha ?
By going social - I mean - start blogging, start spreading the game on websites, facebook, etc ?

Please feel free to give all the advice you desire no matter how long it is and share your experiences.

[hydroxy]

I'd say it totally depends on the type of game you are making. Although something I can say for sure is that some of the most successful games I've noticed have lots of transparency in their development and great PR strategies e.g. Minecraft, Vlambeer, etc... The risks are minimal.

At least for myself I can say that if I see the journey that a developer takes I become more invested in the project. This is likely because I am also a developer myself as well. Not sure how it translates to the non-dev public.

Another benefit is that you are not developing within your little bubble. When you go public, people have the opportunity to give you feedback, be it good or bad. This is no doubt a great thing, as if you are willing to listen it'll help you make a better finished product.

I've not released anything myself though, so I can't say anything based on experience just yet but I'd say its pretty solid advice from spectating on the indie scene for about 5 years now.

[Kenney]

Hugely depends on the scope of the game. If you're creating a small, casual game for mobile - wait until the game is done. If you're creating a game that will have a retail release (or costs money to buy), then it might be a better idea to gather a crowd before the release. It's been a trend for sandbox, RTS, simulation and strategy games to release alpha versions, more so with crowdfunding.

[LuisAnton]

I've created a few casual games for mobiles (see my signature, that kind). For my next game I certainly plan to go social as soon as I have a playable prototype. I can't afford marketing, and my social networks are not that big, so a devlog may help getting a bit of exposure and feedback before the game is released.

[stilghar]

I would say as soon as you have something playable that you are happy to show. I wouldn't go out just wiht a couple of ideas and some concept art. One of the fears people have are clones, one could think that keeping your game secret could help prevent this. Wrong! You'll end up with a game that nobody knows and therefore nobody will play/buy. Moreover, the more you spread the word about it the more protected you are. You could still get clones but people will know they are clones. Just my 2 cents.

[oodavid]

Talk to everyone about it all the time!

[BishopGames]

The sooner the better, in my opinion. The indie market is becoming more and more populated and you might have a dope game but the game will never sell if it's not out there, known to the public.

Set up your social media, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc. and post regularly (try to post interesting content, at least once a week). People like to follow a cool project, they like to see how the game evolves, so let them in, ask for their opinions, try to engage a conversation with them and they will be hooked and will share/talk about your game!

[oodavid]

A good exercise in seeing how effective not only "being social" but "being regularly social" is to take a look at the devlogs.

View the devlogs, sorted by number of views and you will notice that the more posts, the more views. The quality of the game also helps, but I think telling the story of your development is a great reason for people to focus on you!

[Latis_GameJunkies]

Brand new to the forum but I think I can add a couple of coppers to the convo:

Go social as early as possible. As soon as you have something you can show people, make a devblog about it, post it to as many forums as you possibly can and link to your page. As soon as you have some artwork for the game, create a simple landing page (you can make your own if you have time or just use some simple tool like Wix or Unbounce).

I represent an agency in South Korea (Latis Global Communications) and we work with indie game studios on localizaton, marketing, CPI, etc. The biggest frustration I face in marketing these games for them is that they have no social presence when they come to us a month before launch. No Twitter followers, no blog, no Facebook. We have to start it all from scratch a month before they launch and social channels evolve over time, not over night.

Put the effort in now so you have the audience when it comes time to get serious.

[Zogthor]

Release early and release often! Share your concept art, share your characters, share your story! If you can get excited fans to follow you through development, you'll have the word of mouth you'll need to help share your game as it gets closer to completion. One of the key things you'll need to do is have consistency.

The biggest frustration I face in marketing these games for them is that they have no social presence when they come to us a month before launch. No Twitter followers, no blog, no Facebook. We have to start it all from scratch a month before they launch and social channels evolve over time, not over night.

Put the effort in now so you have the audience when it comes time to get serious.

I have marketing friends that ran into similar issues. One of them even had a case where the developers had bought likes and followers (not through advertisement but through sites like Fiverr) and had a lot of fans but no engagement or activity because most of them weren't even interested in the game and were most likely from click farms. It was an uphill struggle for her to fix but eventually they started gaining traction.

[Muz]

Marketing is a marathon, not a sprint.

Blog and update on Facebook as early as possible. Get out why you're doing what you do. Stealth is not so good.

Build a minimum beautiful product. Release to alpha testers when it's fun for you to play. Don't bother getting ALL the features out yet. It should be about 20% done, but that 20% is the features that people get really excited about.

Also this is why you start advertising yourself early - you want feedback. You'll know what features people love or hate. You shouldn't design for yourself... you want to design for people similar to yourself. i.e. instead of building for 'me', you target '25-35 year olds who grew up with a SNES'. Often you'll need a sample size larger than 1 to make sure you've nailed your target, even if your target is yourself.

Release a demo when you've finalized the gameplay and are doing the boring stuff like building levels and content.

[bdsowers]

Once you have something to talk about, start talking. 

I generally wait until I'm committed to a project and have a couple nice screenshots to show off. I go through too many failed prototypes & unfulfilling side projects to babble about *everything* I spin up. But once there's some meat there, get on it - marketing takes time.

[oldblood]

A lot of great responses to this thread. I'm a long time lurker who never really did the social/devlog approach. The last game I worked on was a family game, went up on Steam late this summer and was a total critical mess.

Daunting to start from scratch here but biting that bullet. Axing the family games. Hitting the drawing board to make whatever the fuck game I want to make. Setup twitter account. Setup TIG account. Plan on setting up elsewhere as well. Once I sort through my mountain of notes, Im sure a devlog will surface in the near future...

So Im going to take the "social from day one" approach and see how that pans out.

[Uncle Scotty]

I've never had a commercial success, but I have released quite a few mobile games "unsuccessfully" so take my advice with care... I generally agree that you should start promoting your games as soon as possible, but do be carefully about who you tell about your game and how. You want to avoid getting 1-star reviews soon after release, which could pretty much sink your project immediately. With my current game, Uncle Scotty's Arcade At The End Of The Universe (AATEOTU), I'm trying to focus on getting 5-star reviews from specific people before I market the game to the mass public or review sites. This means spreading word to friends and family first (who have unfortunately been far less reliable than I was hoping at giving me reviews), and then to other developers. Other developers tend to be eager to give 5-stars because they both understand what you are going through, and they are often looking for you to give them a good review in return for giving you one. It seems to me that if you can build up a solid base of good reviews early, then later reviews are more likely to be influenced subconsciously by seeing the existing good reviews, and therefore more likely to give you more good reviews as well. It is good to be able to give other developers some good feedback on their games together with a good review, so you don't just look like you are begging for exposure online.

Also, make sure you use the power of Twitter hashtags. I didn't know about the #GameDev hashtag when I first started, but it helps get your messages retweeted by bots who have thousands of followers. Also check out this article for some further social media tips: http://fireside.gamejolt.com/post/increasing-your-games-presence-in-the-online-community-vrkmrdvq

Speaking of going social and promoting your game, please check out AATEOTU if you get a chance, and leave a review if you like it! Thanks a ton and good luck! 
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.AnachronicDesigns.AATEOTU

[joe_eyemobi]

I agree with most of the other devs - it's a good idea to start as soon as possible.  It does seem like a huge pain in the butt in the beginning, but after a while it just becomes a habit and not a big problem.  If you just do posts to twitter, FB, reddit etc regularly say at least once a week it's not that big an investment of time anyway.  The more fans you can pick up along the way, the better!

[Sik]

Stupid question, but is once a week truly enough? I suppose that if you can guarantee always doing something on a specific day of the week you could build up expectations (followers will know to explicitly look for you when that time of the week comes), but otherwise I'm given the impression you need to be more regularly, maybe even daily, and make sure to reply back as soon as possible (at the very least within the same day) when a follower asks something. This is even moreso true for Twitter since your messages are pretty much guaranteed to get lost in the sea of tweets (I know, don't follow so many people, but how many users don't do that?) so only a few people will see them. (I heard some clients let you give it some tweets and make them post at specific times, so that may be worth looking into to help focus all the effort into a single moment)

Also I know this is a week old post but:

Release a demo when you've finalized the gameplay and are doing the boring stuff like building levels and content.

I wouldn't argue those are the boring parts though... (especially when for many genres those are the very things that define the fine details of the gameplay)

[StrayCatRock]

Stupid question, but is once a week truly enough? I suppose that if you can guarantee always doing something on a specific day of the week you could build up expectations (followers will know to explicitly look for you when that time of the week comes), but otherwise I'm given the impression you need to be more regularly, maybe even daily, and make sure to reply back as soon as possible (at the very least within the same day) when a follower asks something. This is even moreso true for Twitter since your messages are pretty much guaranteed to get lost in the sea of tweets (I know, don't follow so many people, but how many users don't do that?) so only a few people will see them. (I heard some clients let you give it some tweets and make them post at specific times, so that may be worth looking into to help focus all the effort into a single moment)

I personally think that at a small-scale (assuming we're starting from being "nobody"), posting weekly would be counterproductive as you won't get into the "flow" and conventions of your chosen social media (don't do the same things on facebook/twitter/instagram/pinterest/etc.)

Now for some general thoughts....

Regarding Twitter, there are different strategies. You could avoid the noise ratio and choose quieter moments. A dirty example trick  would be the #indiedevhour where you could fake to be late/early to the party (don't do that everyweek or it will be obvious  so you'll show up more easily in the hashtag when people check in before/after the event. If you take #screenshotsaturday, you'll notice people are posting the whole week.

The aim of the game is to be up in the hastags listings so early birds are at advantage because they can post before people start working and checking twitter in the morning. Sundays and holidays are good too.

As a general rule of thumb, try to attach a picture to your post because by default the hastags listings begin with a set of photos (getting there will give you the est visibility). If no pics, a video is good too as it gives more visibility in the listing rather than plain text.

As you can avoid the noise ratio, you can also embrace it and that's where twitter is useful for 0$ marketing to reach new audiences ("the blue ocean" as Nintendo called it). The trick is to be aware of pop culture and things going around (outside the gaming sphere)which are spoken about at the moment. Some examples:

=>The recent photoshoot of Kim Kardashian when you have a "breakout" clone game:
#kardashian We haven't broken the internet yet but we surely can break bricks! #gaming URL+VIDEO

=>Justin Bieber skateboard's fail if you're OlliOlli dev:
We would gladly offer OlliOlli to #bieber to improve his skateboard skills #gaming URL+VIDEO

=>Elections when you're the dev of Democracy3:
#ukelections Why going out to vote when you can change your country's fate from your bedroom? URL+VIDEO

And of course, you can casually engage with people like you would do in a party or on a forum. Also, before tweeting, think twice as what you'll write will be on your page and be seen by potential followers so your content should match your best side of personnality. "Content Rules" as they say (I have yet to read that book  )

In conclusion: using twitter like a newsletter just to make a weekly formal announcement would be a waste of opportunity. I'm personnaly not aiming at attracting followers, just to have some fun with a tool which can be useful when needed (the "Jab, Jab, Right Hook" of Gary VaynerChuck).

[ElVaquero]

I'm still massively figuring this out myself but I'd say the best time to start is when you can demonstrate your game's hook or central mechanic in a GIF or short YouTube video. Nothing gets the point across easier, or makes people more excited than a 5-10 second snippet of something unique.

And once you start posting, keep it up at least once a week! It can be super hard to keep up if you're in full-time development. Writing posts/updates and creating media for different sections all at once and then posting them at different times might be a good way to stay regular.

[autumnspark]

Me and my team just started releasing videos and screens the other day, and I have to say it feels weird. I'm constantly refreshing reddit and looking at twitter. It makes me feel bad, and I don't like that. I think it might be wise to not stress over going social too much, stressing over every notification and comment. I'm still getting used to it...

[bdsowers]

Me and my team just started releasing videos and screens the other day, and I have to say it feels weird. I'm constantly refreshing reddit and looking at twitter. It makes me feel bad, and I don't like that. I think it might be wise to not stress over going social too much, stressing over every notification and comment. I'm still getting used to it...

It's a hard balance to hit. I tried allotting a certain portion of my day to social/promotional activities, but I found that time rapidly ballooned. Now I focus on my development tasks and target social things as down time crops up. I leave about one day a week to make it a priority, the other 6 days it's a background task (but still a task - I try to be social every day).