JOLLY WORLD UPDATE!If you are an indie game developer who's lacking marketing budget and is struggling to build momentum, I will be sharing something that will help you hopefully kick start your game:
How to create your community and keep it engaged!In this specific case we are using Discordhttps://discord.gg/7ZWxBam9HxOur game is a sandbox game with an editor that players can use to build and publish levels. We are now in open beta, so we don't want just yet to get a big in-flow of players. For now we just need enough to make things work and help us move the product to a stable ready for release state
https://jollyworld.app/The problem with sandbox games is that to make them work you really need an engaged and loyal community not only short term to spot bugs and help with the features, but also long term to create content and keep other users engaged.
So what are we doing?Connect players to your main community: We've set up a discord channel and connected the logging in the game to it. This way if you want to create a level in the sandbox editor and needed some help you could just drop by the server and ask your questions without any friction. This has double edged efficacy because not only does it help the user on their quest to interact with the game, but also helps the community feel fresh and active as there is always an influx of new users coming in as the game's popularity keeps growing.
Keeping players engaged: Now that you are slowly getting new players on your discord every now and then is critical that you keep them coming and interacting not only with the game but with yourself and with each other! To achieve this YOU and your team have to be ready to spend time talking to the them, understanding their needs and getting their feedback.
Remember at this stage these players are your core community
the early adopters and the most important users you will ever have. They are the ones most likely to remain loyal for years to come and will take you to the finish line.
So how do we keep the early adopters engaged?
1-Talk to them often and honestly: This is the most important point of all... like I said before these are your most valuable players and they deserve a lot of respect so be cool, be real, get to know them and connect with them.
2-Making them part of the development process: Talk to them ask for their advice, for feature ideas and once you implement them in the game they will be glad to play those new features that they themselves came up with and will continue giving you more ideas. This serves as Q-A and also as another tool for community building.
3-Reward engagement in the community: Taking and implementing feedback can only get you so far, that's why we've implemented in our server an EXP bot. You can achieve something like this in any other community and in many different ways.
4-Keep the In-game content coming regularly: If you are building a sandbox game, at this stage you will need to be creating levels and content yourself on a regular basis. Remember most users will not engage with your editor, they just want to play the user generated content and have a good time. So you need to have something playable for those that are starting to flow in and also you need to test live the new features you and your community have been busy brainstorming!
This is a major and critical task, so reach out to your creative friends and family for help, watch YouTube videos for inspiration and play similar games. Keep the releases often and consistent.
Something I've found out is that because you are part of the development team you have advanced knowledge and can find easy ways to create fun experiences that might be difficult for new users to build. Take advantage of this and create short but impressive, good looking and fun levels to play, basically you do more with less effort!
5-Keep the Off-game content fresh: Off-Game content are posts like this one I'm doing here, or tutorials in the community, memes, images, guides, videos, etc. They help you gain another perspective of your game as you have to rationalize what you are doing. They could serve as a marketing tool and help you bringing new players in, since you will be reaching out to other communities. Also Off-Game content helps in the long term build your game brand.
I hope this has been a helpful update everyone!