That is the subject. How to tell everybody about my new game and make it … at least a bit famous before the release?
I have a WIP where I show my progress, but almost nobody comments it. Russian Unity forum is almost dead at all. I also tell about the game in my Twitter account, show videos on YouTube. I don’t use Facebook, but it seems I have to.
Maybe I should tell about it in Facebook, but I don’t think it will help.
I see there are lots of posts about marketing, and yes, I’m very bad at it, too. I’m a developer, I don’t know how to do marketing and advertise my game.
I also saw a post about game forums where it’s possible to tell about the game. So, if I may be banned there, I don’t even want to waste my time on telling about the game there.
Could anyone suggest me something useful?
Later on I want to create another post with a vote about buying the game (advice to make it free, paid, or free with adv and turning adv off for money etc), but I will do that when the game is ready.
I think nobody is commenting on it because it’s not a unique game. I’ve seen 3 others this week with the same mechanics. (Though one actually took it a step further and made it a bit different.)
It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just not new or exciting. Everyone has already played that game.
To answer your question, WIP threads (here and other places) are a good start. Having a Facebook page or Twitter account with updates will help get people outside of the gamedev community as well.
And of course the are many other similar games, like Angry Birds, or MineCraft, or something else. But I hope my game will be attractive to players, because I really try to make it beautiful, with good music, nice art, many levels…
I am a developer too, and marketing is not my strength either. However I can tell you what did work for us: Pick a forum about the platform, and ask for beta testers, give them a beta they can download and try out, update that beta as frequently as possible. This way users will start coming back to see how you progress and stick around. If you don’t get engagement in that specific forum, try a different one.
goldbug, thanks for the link, 172 pages is pretty cool, it seems you make a good game.
But russian auditory is not the main one, I’m afraid. They are not ready to pay almost at all, they have used to cracking games, but I would like to sell my game.
Could anyone help me to find games with the same game play as mine? It’s difficult to do only by games’ names, but maybe you have seen them before and know their names.
goldbug, btw, 4pda doesn’t contain a similar forum tree (development) for iOS (like yours for Android). I would like to choose iOS as my primary platform.
The better your game is the less marketing you have to do. If you’re pushing out PR releases and none of the sites are running with it then it’s a good sign that your game isn’t that appealing. At that point you either kick the marketing into gear to make a mediocre game sound better than it is or you go back to the drawing board and make your game better…
Good games find an audience. If your game is not finding an audience then you’re either making a mediocre game or your internet service has been discontinued.
Of course mediocre games flourish all the time (Candy Crush etc), with great marketing campaigns, but who wants to advise a person how to market a game like that.
Make a good game… the marketing aspect will solve itself if you are truly making something worthwhile.
Very good advice, really, without any irony! And that’s exactly what I want to do. No I don’t think about money, I think about my game and make every effort to make it good, beautiful and interesting.
But unfortunately nobody comments my WIP and I have only opinion of about 3-5 people who likes my game, but maybe other 100K or 1M people will not like it
I just clicked on all 3 of your sig links and none of them immediately showed me a concise vision of “whatever” I’m supposed to be interested in about you or your game.
I do believe that indie game devs making great games can gain an audience without the interference of a marketing team, but c’mon, you have to make a little effort yourself
Yeah, and that’s what I’m making Of course, I don’t have enough exp with that, but I’m trying to learn - I have created a Facebook page for my publisher name LaBee games. I try to tell about my progress in the current game.
As for the links, I tell about the progress in my main Twitter account. But I want to tell about the ready game in my LaBee games account, because I don’t want to tweet intermediate results there.
The very first thing people should see when they go to your website/ forum should be a quick description of your game and preferably some visuals if you have them. Within 30 seconds I should have an idea of what your game is about.
Leave Twitter, facebook and blog as tools for people to follow you, not as first point of contact.
When I click on your blog link, I am immediately presented with a black and white huge wall of text. You might want to think about making it more exciting by adding pictures of your game, youtube videos, a professional colorful game theme, just make it more inviting.
You might also want to consider making a forum, for example here http://www.freeforums.org/, so that your fans can interact with each other and with you. But you have to give them a reason to go there and stick around, so I still recommend that you publish betas of your game as frequently as possible.
Keep in mind you are trying to attract gamers, not game developers. Talking about unity, C#, xna and other developer tools are just going to scare gamers away. Instead, if you make a feature, make a video demonstrating the feature and make a beta so that people can try the feature.
goldbug, thanks a lot, really good words! Trying to comment:
The idea of my blog was exactly to tell about everything in my life, not only game dev. I wanted to create another blog for LaBee games (my publisher name), but got rid of this idea. I want to create a site for it, but can’t spend money on hosting for a while. So I will do that a bit later.
The first thing I have done after your advice is organized my signature and split it into two parts: my contacts (to let people know something about me and my life) and LaBee games contacts (to let them know about games progress).
Absolutely agree, I really want my own site for LaBee games, but I can’t do that know. Maybe later. So now I just have to attract users with Twitter and YouTube only.
My idea was to tell about the progress in my Twitter and YouTube channel, but tell about the releases in LaBee games Twitter and channel. But maybe I was wrong, and will try to fix that soon - will make a good video with the current gameplay and post it in my publisher’s contacts.
Thanks for the idea, will try to pay some time to fix the errors I have made.
Update your thread and put your BEST images first.
Mark your game finished and move on to the next one.
Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Lack of feedback IS feedback - maybe your game is uninteresting, unattractive, or unfun. Right now, you’re in the ‘failing’ part of fail fast. The good news is now you can learn and try again. If you put your game out there, maybe it’s time to call it finished, and move on to the next one - building on what you’ve learned.
Thanks Gigi, another good advice! But not fully My comments:
Yeah! Why didn’t I think about than?.. Really don’t know Will do that asap!
No. I did that some time ago when I got tired of this game and decided to start another one (and I did, I have dome some functional in another game). But then I decided to finish this game. And it is NOT finished yet. I have lots of ideas and I want to complete them and to have a really finished game.
Guys, please wait for some new updates! I have thought about your useful advice and have made some decisions after that. I will update this topic and my WIP just soon.
Guys, please see some updates in my WIP. I have taken into account all of you comments and have made some changes. Now people can play my current beta v 0.85!
I haven’t made my twitter and youtube channels beautiful, yet, I’m tired to death. But will do my best later!
It looks good, but IMHO, you should consider other forums, Unity forum is full of game developers, and if you want to make it “at least a bit famous before the release” you need gamers. I would try either XDA or 4pda (or both).
I know there is a lot of piracy in Russia, but our russians fans did help us a lot in the first weeks, even if most money comes from the US, your russian fans could help you get a better rating in google play, and once they are engaged with you, know you through interaction on the site and learn that you are just another russian like them making an effort, they are much less prone to pirate your game. They know there are not very many games coming out of Russia and not very many with Russian language (probably because of this piracy issue), so they are very supportive when they see one.
Yes, there is a lot of piracy in russia, but I have only good things to say about our fans in 4pda and vk. The vast majority are good people willing to help if given a chance.
Your words make sense, but which XDA do you mean? I could find a few sites with this prefix.
As for 4pda - I visit it in the Android devices section, but I didn’t find an iOS development forum there. Don’t want to be banned, so I will try to ask the admins about that.
Yes, I will! The game becomes more and more beautiful, starting from a rather plaint and boring UI it has become more interesting and good looking. I’m planning to change some graphics content, maybe add more music and sounds, maybe particles.
As for the gameplay, I want to include 100 levels in the game. All of them are auto-generated, not created by me, so even I don’t know the solution, and it would be rather challenging to finish all the 100 levels. If the game is a success, I may add more and more levels.
As for your opinion - it’s ok, because all the tastes are different. You think it’s boring, some others think it’s interesting.
But I wanted to make exactly this type of game. Gameplay is basic? Well, I hope you don’t think the stars should be blown or should shoot each other, throw grenades with much blood Graphics are basic? It’s a 2d game, I don’t want to make 3d stars or buttons there, or make some useless effects which may make the players annoyed.
