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[PompiPompi]

Don't assume smart people are good at everything just because they are smart.

[speeder]

Also bobbyric, some people don't have the time to do that.

Currently I am using 60% of my time in marketing, and only 40% making the game itself. And I am working 12 hours daily.

Yet I am seeing little results, like I said people don't even read my posts in the devlogs forum.

I guess that is because I decided to make a game I wanted, not the game the market wants, that is the unfortunate truth, if you want to get your game popular, you have to do one of those:

A: Be already popular and use your past popularity (Edmund McMillen for example, have a string of success)

B: Have pixel art graphics (like, the post mentioned here and some others, where the game does not even exist, but you show pretty pixel art and people fall in love with it).

C: Have a wierd game (cactus stuff, Blueberry Garden, etc...)

D: Make another generic FPS (take a look in the IOTY award on IndieDB, most of the games there are generic FPS).


In my case, for A: This is my first game I am pushing around.
B: I am not an artist, and no artist wanted to help (since I had no obvious past games).
C: My mind is too logical and serious to pull wierd stuff (I actually hate blueberry garden, I think it is one of the most idiotic things ever, I have no idea on how it won IGF... I might be sounding like Super Joe, but I agree with lots of stuff he say, if you disregard his aggressive tone, what he is saying IS true).
D: Meh...

[bobbyric]

Speeder I definetely feel your pain, our trailer climbed up to 17,000 combined views across youtube, gametrailers, etc.. and we were getting quite a bit of news exposure while I was marketing the game, then once I stopped all that exposure very quickly trailed off

Right now I'm 40% game development, 60% day job, and 0 percent marketing because we're so close to release.

Definetely it's difficult to do everything, but all you can do is continue to do the best to your abilities and try to figure out what your priorities are.

A: Be already popular and use your past popularity (Edmund McMillen for example, have a string of success)

Yeah take takes time and effort and experience, you just have to keep working.

B: Have pixel art graphics (like, the post mentioned here and some others, where the game does not even exist, but you show pretty pixel art and people fall in love with it).

Hah I know, right!?  The indie scene is in love with the retro pixel 1980's artwork.  I've spent my life savings on the artwork for my game, and while people love the animations, it definetely seems like my own threads are not nearly as popular as games with pixel retro graphics.

Yet I was contacted by casual places like Big Fish Games the second they saw my trailer...  I did build my game for mass appeal.  So the "masses" are interested, but indie game devs, not so much.

But again it comes down to market...  A friend of mine recently invested his own life savings into an independent film and I kept telling him "You need to have a target market" but said his target market was "myself".  Now he has an expensive movie nobody wants to watch and doesn't have much to show for what he just spent his life savings on.  Bad move.

D: Make another generic FPS (take a look in the IOTY award on IndieDB, most of the games there are generic FPS).

Strangely enough this thread is the first time I've heard of IndieDB.  But looking at the site, I don't see why people seem so concerened about it.

I mean, if people just want the game to catch the attention of their peers...  That's fine.  But if you lots of people to play your game, you have to think outside the indie box.

[ANtY]

make your own forum and work hard to get it active.

Some tips about that?

[bobbyric]

which part making a forum or getting it active?  forums will not only help you stay motivated, but they will also help give you a good idea of your game's internet activity.  My trailer went up 3,000 views after being posted on a brazillian site, but zero of those people converted to forum posters, because they aren't really my target market (being an english game)

there's some free forum softwares like phpbb, i use vbulletin but that cost me money

As you promote your game people will come to your boards for various reasons, most of mine came to comment on the demo.

I released both our demo and trailer at the same time which helped us get our first forum users.  Of course most of the feedback right now is "Awesome!  But uh, please fix this, this and this

[Melly]

I believe a large part of it is indeed luck.

Sometimes you're lucky that your game is picked up by the right news outlet/blog/magazine, which millions of readers. And those millions of readers are roughly in your game's target demographic. All of a sudden you're an overnight hit. Sometimes you're just somehow lucky that people in general took enough interest to spread the word about your game everywhere, turning it viral.

There's also finding your audience. Different places have people who like different things. Your game may not gather much attention here in TIGS, but maybe somewhere else you'll get a hundred replies of interested individuals, if not much more, depending. People aren't that willing to go out of their way to find something they'd like, when they barely know it's there. Sometimes you have to find them.

Then we have previous fame and prestige, like some independent developers with a well-known name. That one isn't very useful to take in consideration here if you have none, besides the fact that you should persevere so you'll have a better chance of becoming a well-known figure eventually.

Then there's the first impression. The awe-inspiring screenshots, the trailer that blows everyone away, and so on. If you don't have good-looking shots yet, maybe it's better to focus on design artwork. Marketing drones for large publishers love to blatantly lie to customers with early game trailers, because they want to impress people, and sometimes the game itself is far too early in development to satisfy their needs. This is not something I recommend doing though.

In the end it may be a better idea to not reveal much about the game until you have something that can impress people.

Having a quality product is needed, yes, because very rarely does a shitty game become popular, unless there's something else involved (like a completely ridiculous and viral marketing campaign, like Stalin vs Martians, and even that game didn't seem to prosper much past the initial curiosity of people because it was so broken, though I haven't followed it closely).

Trying to be creative is key. If your marketing is more unique than the average, there's probably a better chance it'll be noticed, regardless of the game you're marketing.

These are just my untested beliefs, so please take them with a mountain of salt.

[bobbyric]

You make your own luck.

any dev that thinks "well my game just wasn't lucky, but theirs was" is a weak cop out.  they were smarter, either in the way it was designed so it caught on or got the right person intersted. you make your own luck, bottom line.

[jrk]

D: Make another generic FPS (take a look in the IOTY award on IndieDB, most of the games there are generic FPS).

Well, it's because IndieDB is ModDB with a few indie devs in between. And the ModDB people joined the community because they like/make mods for ... mainly FPS titles. So it's no wonder that their favorite genre gets the most votes.

[Evan Balster]

A great way to do community-building is to let your players get (or at least feel) involved in the development of the game somehow.  Unless the game disinterests them completely, the development is (often) a wondrous puzzle-box that they would be fascinated to have any interaction with.

It's also a great way to *get* feedback.  I have a forum, and though it's inactive now since the game is down, there are a fair number of registered users who have discussed ideas and issues extensively in "wish list" and "feeback / bugs" sections.  (In my case, the forum also serves to let users share ingame creations, which is a large part of my project.)

On the news and social networking front, responding to interview requests when you get them and possibly doing press releases after you've gotten some attention are a good idea.  (My game is free and... unusual, which might explain my own little bits of luck with this)

Really, it's a shame that the "marketing your game" articles haven't been mentioned yet.


Also, PompiPompi: you're absolutely right.  I'm disgusted to say it as I hate the 'art' of marketing, but perceived value and quality are everything.  That's why they give you special cloth to clean your television screen and sunglasses; the appearance of fragility implies fine craftsmanship.  That's why pieces of media release crytpic information at a slow rate; the appearance of mystery implies valuable information.

In Jungian psychology, a critical period of falling in love involves the man projecting his 'Anima'--a prototype of the ideal female--onto his lover (and vice versa) until he comes to "truly" love her and accepts any shortcomings she has.

[speeder]

Cellulose but how you got people to use the forum in first place?

I've made a forum, but it has 3 users... People don't join because the forum is empty, but the forum is empty because noone join... :/

[mirosurabu]

If that's really the case, then do the following: make some content exclusive to registered members and then ask everyone outside to join in if they want more info.

[speeder]

Actually, that is my business plan (ie: the game is free, if you register you get exclusive access to some areas of the site).

But even the free forum had noone joining.

[Zaphos]

You make your own luck.

any dev that thinks "well my game just wasn't lucky, but theirs was" is a weak cop out.  they were smarter, either in the way it was designed so it caught on or got the right person intersted. you make your own luck, bottom line.

No one can predict everything, especially not if a game takes a while to make.  I agree it would be cop out to completely blame luck, but at the same time you can't discount the unpredictability of success.  I think part of "making luck" is just trying a lot of things, and paying attention to what catches on ...

Also, @speeder -- I think it might be especially hard to get people to pay attention to a breakout-based game; it seems like a kind of glutted genre ...

[speeder]

It is more like a hated genre :/

I mean, there are other genres with faaaaar more games, even more simialr games... While making my game I tried to find all games of the paddle genre, and don't found many (although I did found several of them being similar).

[Zaphos]

Well, there's a fair amount I think -- wiki lists ~30 on its breakout clone article, and it's not a complete list.  True though, there are '-clone' genres that probably have a lot more and still find an audience ...


edit: I guess with the really heavily duplicated genres, there's sort of an audience built up that's hungry for more of that genre.  So maybe it's actually not glutted enough for that?  It does not seem to be in a sweet spot of glut.

[bateleur]

Releasing new games in established genres is fine, but you don't get viral buzz in the same way as with more radically innovative stuff.

I like breakout games (at least in theory - haven't been any really good ones since BreakQuest in my view), but I can't imagine ever linking to one on FaceBook or anything like that.

[Konidias]

Your game also has to be really good. By that, I mean it needs to be something a large amount of people actually want to play.

All the advertising in the world won't get people to buy your game if the game is just not that good. You ask "what am I doing wrong with advertising?" and I answer "your game is not good enough to begin with".

It's harsh, but in most cases it's true. Even professional games with million dollar advertising budgets can get dismal sales just because the game itself is a pile of garbage.

[speeder]

I hope you just replied to the original poster while not reading the topic and is not talking about my game

[ANtY]

Your game also has to be really good. By that, I mean it needs to be something a large amount of people actually want to play.

All the advertising in the world won't get people to buy your game if the game is just not that good. You ask "what am I doing wrong with advertising?" and I answer "your game is not good enough to begin with".

It's harsh, but in most cases it's true. Even professional games with million dollar advertising budgets can get dismal sales just because the game itself is a pile of garbage.

I really didn't ask that question

[speeder]

But Greiv, wishful thinking don't really work

Luck DOES have lots of influence, but obviously it won't help if the game is crap or you make no effort.