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[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i'm not sure it's useful unless they also leave comments / reasons why they downvoted it. it doesn't provide much information otherwise, besides 'some percent of people don't like it for unknown reasons'

[Haga]

i'm not sure it's useful unless they also leave comments / reasons why they downvoted it. it doesn't provide much information otherwise, besides 'some percent of people don't like it for unknown reasons'

If I want useful, specific feedback from peers I come here.  Greenlight is crowdsourced feedback, the great equalizer.  The madness and wisdom of the mob!

Actually, as a real test, we have a Kickstarter campaign up that we launched simultaneously.  Of the 15,000 people who have seen our game via Greenlight, 63% have voted it "Worthy of Steam", for a total of 9,450 people; only around ninety have ponied up $5 for our game.  One percent!

[Oskuro]

Yeah, that's probably the best point of Kickstarter or similar services, people actually have to put money into supporting a project.

Opinions are cheap. If you have no stakes in what you are supporting, there is no pressure or involvement. That's also why you get people simply trolling by downvoting things out of spite or just for laughs.

 

[Twitch]

if your game is worth playing then it will get noticed, otherwise no one is going to care

get some beta testing done and if people say good things about it it might get some attention

[GeoffW]

make a good game
don't make a cash grab
make the best game that you can

Make a game you can easily get people excited about without communicating much information.

To begin with, most people will decide whether or not to try your game based on one or maybe two of the following:

• the title
• the first sentence of your product description
• a single screenshot
• the first fifteen seconds of your trailer video
• a tweet

And if you're lucky:

• the first paragraph of a review
• what their friends are saying about it

Think about what those things are going to be, if you can't come up with something good your concept isn't ready.

[Maud'Dib Atreides]

i've never seen a minecraft trailer video :\

then again i cant even remember how i started minecraft..

[GeoffW]

i've never seen a minecraft trailer video :\

True, but there are thousands of videos fans have made playing Minecraft.

To be honest I don't really understand what made Minecraft so successful, apart from the momentum effect - 'loads of my friends are playing Minecraft, I guess I'd better check it out so I don't get left out of conversations!'.  This effect is real but it could apply to any game, it doesn't depend on any property of Minecraft in particular.

(personally, I enjoyed Dwarf Fortress a lot more)

[Maud'Dib Atreides]

i see what you mean

but

there had to be events leading up to your friends' playing of minecraft...


..

1. notch made minecraft

2.  ? ? ? (Magic Spells and Incantations)

3. your friends and other people are playing minecraft and making videos of it

yeah i think thats^ the best we're gonna get in terms of a sequential chart to explain the magic behind indie game advertising

since most people attribute the known unknowns and existing unexplainable phenomenon to the word magic

then step 2 is then, logically, magic

notch is a sorcerer

[TylerYork]

Haga has the best answer so far. It's one part beautiful game, one part actually fun game, and one part luck.

You can improve your odds though with some targeted community building as you develop your game. I wrote a long, in-depth blog post on this called "How to get your first 1000 players" (http://blog.betable.com/how-to-get-your-first-1000-players/), but if you don't want to read it then here's the cliffnotes:

1) Figure out your "early adopter" target market for your game. Is it a strategy game? You want hardcore strategy gamers.
2) Go find those players. They have forums, sub-forums of larger sites, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
3) When you find them, go hat-in-hand with your alpha game and ask for feedback. If you're building a game that's beautiful, fun, and a little different, someone should be willing to help.
4) Build a community around those initial people. Treat them like kings. They are both valuable marketing and valuable feedback.
5) Start scaling the community through traditional "marketing".

Good luck!

[SpazzTV]

Long time lurker, finally registered to take part in this discussion.

From my relationship with various independent developers, the #1 question is, "How do I get people to play or even notice my game exists?"

This is pretty much why our organization was formed to help facilitate hands-on video reviews to display actual gameplay to target consumers that would otherwise not see a game being played or hesitant on purchase due to an individual not having access to the gameplay.


My advice would be to show as much in-game footage to individuals so that they know how the gameplay is.



http://facebook.com/spazztv
http://twitter.com/spazztv1

[Oskuro]

If I'm not mistaken, Notch's magic spells consisted of posting his progress on forums like this one , getting feedback and generating interest along the way.

In the end, the only thing you can do is put your project out there for everyone to see, and just wait to see what happens.

[Chris Polus]

I have been looking into this problem too, and have been writing a monthly article about getting your game noticed and independent game marketing. You can check out Part 2 here, it has a link to Part 1 at the top

http://blog.jamogames.com/2012/08/marketing-quest-part-2.html

Hey jamogames, your post is quite nice. Good guide for levelling up. One thing gets clear: there's no magic wand you can point at your game. There's no one single thing "do this and everybody will know about your game". It's a mix of maaaany maaaany different things and it's basically a looooooot of work! Only Twitter and Facebook don't do any good. Only IndieDB and regular updates on the blog doesn't do any good. You have to pair things. Generate interest from somewhere, speak and conferences, meet people, socialize, participate in discussions, blog, talk about games, be controversial. I have yet to learn a lot as well, we do a lot, and still our "popularity" if I can even call it that is only slowly growing. I think I have yet to discover some places where people get interested in our game. We have some interesting content I'd say, but still lack people coming. So you see, it's not obvious, it's not one thing, it's a lot of things, in the right balance, and a lot of work Good luck, keep at it, get better, succeed.