how to let others know that your game exist is really a problem

News & General Discussion
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I bet you all experienced the situation that spending couple of weeks or months developing your game, with a lot of hard work and suffer,finally you finish it and submit it to the App Store. As you did spent lots of time and thought on it, you wanna get paid for your hard working,so you price it $0.99.And waiting the huge download came,cause you believe your works are really fantastic.
But the fact is the download is bare, they don’t even know your game. Your game is like a drop in the sea.
I bet many developer facing this challenge especially indie game developer.
Actually I have two games in the App Store.One is free ,and one is $0.99.But the paid to download game do not get a satisfy income.I do believe it is really a good works. It’s simple,cute,funny,and additive.
Any suggestion for the marketing?

PS: Below is my game’s link
Maze Flee (free): https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/maze-flee/id916408604?mt=8
iCrash ($0.99) : https://itunes.apple.com/app/iCrash/id955253284?mt=8

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Well aware of this. Here are two threads from todays front page. There are plenty from the next page, and so on.

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Your screen shots are very mediocre. Your English descriptions are poor. A Google search reveals on iCrash reveals nothing. A search on Maze Flee reveals a bunch of blank pages about your game. Your blog has two posts on it. Your not on twiter, youtube or face book. Your not active on this forum, or any other location I can find on the internet.

If I can’t find your game with a dedicated search, no stranger on the internet is going to find it. You have to do something other then just make your game available. With your current marketing level your chance of success is zero.

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Thanks for your reply.I think you pointed out my problems. I must take an active part in promoting my games.
My descriptions are poor is because I’m not a native English speaker. Improving!

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I face similar situation. Get some advice from others that we should beta test and fine tune the game before release. Getting real feedback from beta testers are very important. As from our (developers) point of view, we may think our game is good. But indeed, end users may not like it in different aspect.

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Beta testing and user feedback are very important true. But it goes way beyond this. The simple explanation is the market is flooded. Your game may be exceptional. Your game may be junk. It is kind of irrelevant. Because for every game you make there are already many hundreds of thousands of games out there and many more hundreds and possibly thousands being released daily.

You have to realize just how important that is. If you were the only one making games you’d be rich even if you only made junk. If you were one of 1,000 people making games you would still be able to make some good money. But you are one of 100,000 or maybe 1 out of half a million perhaps even more… who are making games.

Because of this your game (even if exceptional) will be buried unless you work very hard putting as much time and money as you can into marketing your game. And as more and more people do this it just puts everything back the same way again because there is only so much time and money you can spend on marketing and the places being used for marketing are being spammed with marketing for games in the same manner.

For now though you can probably still make a difference by putting as much time and money as possible into marketing. It won’t always be that way for reasons described above.

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party klaxon

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I think that is near imposible make a really fantastic game in a couple of weeks inclusive a couple of months. About other things, yes, exist thousands of games, almost regular or bad games, the important question is not how you can make that the people know your game, the important is if your game is good and people like play it, if this happens you have not make much for sale or distribute it.

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There is no logic to this. It may seem logical and people have stated it over and over again about making a great game people like to play. But who is going to play it, how will they find out about it to play it if you consider it not important for people to know about your game?

If you are saying you have no interest in making money or in other people playing your game then yes it is not important for other people to know about your game.

However, it seems like, for whatever reason, nearly every person making even their first game is doing so to make money. I am not sure if anyone is actually making games just for the fun of doing it? Probably so I would guess but the majority want to get downloads for ad views, IAP or sales.

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That’s why finding a niche is so important. Making the same games everyone else is making is no way to make a living. There’s a reason “buy low, sell high” is a popular phrase. Do the opposite of what everyone else is doing, and you may find yourself in a happy place. Otherwise you’re panning for gold in the same part of the stream everybody else is. Cater to a game niche that is severely underrepresented and hardly anyone targets? Guess where you’ll find the gold.

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I agree completely. The games I am developing are for a niche and I have no expectations of the first making any money at all. And I expect the second would be only a little and so on. Not even sure I will even try to make money from them at least the first. I am making the game because it is something I want to play and have not been able to find. And because I just enjoy developing for fun. I make money at my job. That is what it is for! Lol But I will probably give the biz a whirl because I have always been entrepreneurial and had businesses multiple times. I see it all as a game really. But I also see so many people posting here who seem to be so focused on making money from their games. So I try to explain to them what they are up against. In time it is quite possible there will be little space even in the niches as people accidentally stumble upon them.

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LOL. GOG said my game was too niche for them. Go figure.

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Well, really in this moment very few people pay inclusive us$0.99 for a game that they not know, then my recomendation in a comercial game dev project is first make your game free to play in a pre-sale season and try get good opinions and reviews of your game, then if you have success sale the game, you have many options to make this, forums, apps stores, paid adds, etc., not exist magic ways to make known your game.

Personally i am making two type of games, survivor and fps games for adults that i will be try make commercial games, and complety free animalist games for kids, possibly some developers not need money and make 100% free games, for me really make games is fun and no matter if have commercial success, i survive as web developer and cg artist.

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Well I’ve been making games for so long now the only reason I still do it is to make money. When I first started out it was fun and a “dream job” but eventually you do it because that’s what you do. A lot of people don’t like to hear that. They think it means selling out. No, it means you do what you love and eventually that becomes a job, if you let it.

I’m pretty much decided that this game I just recently released will be my last one, and I’m off to greener pastures. The game is making money and will continue to do so (if my last 4 games are any indication) for the next 2-3 years, leaving me with the ability to explore other options.

It’s my firm belief and observation that finding a niche and becoming a leader in that niche has far greater chance of success than following the other leaders.

Making games is a dream job to a lot of people. I can say at 45 years old having been in the game industry for half of my life that yes, it can be a fun job. It most certainly can be. But when I start wondering if I want to be 50, 55, 60 years old still staring at a computer monitor all day, missing time with friends and family because I have to finish an update, having no great social life because making a solid, round-the-clock living with games requires a lot of work (a lot), and generally being indoors all day, I start thinking no… no I will not want that to be my life. And that’s why the time is now for me to gracefully make an exit.

I never wanted a “corporate” life. I worked in that for years, first doing computer graphics for a textile company and then at AAA game studios, and then I left to go totally independent. Right before I left, I was made lead on a game, and after two weeks of that I stepped down. It just wasn’t me to claw my way up the ladder of the games industry and become a corporate cog in the wheel. So I left. And I’ve been happy and making a (really good) living with my own super niche games ever since. I work out of my house. I drive a nice car. I live in a nice neighborhood. I eat well. My family is taken care of. It’s been nice.

This is an indie forum mainly, and most of the people getting into games these days are looking to make a go on their own. I encourage anyone wanting to get into this business to do what they like, by all means. Live your dream. It can pay off if you really put the work in. But ask yourself, if you’re not in the corporate sector of game development, at a larger studio, is there any advancement plan? Can you move up any ladders? Will you open your own studio and become a corporate leader, or are you solely interested in being a maverick and doing it on your own? That’s what I did. That’s who I am. But be aware that down the line, at some point, if you are a lone-star indie developer, there is no advancement beyond simply making and selling the next game, and you might find yourself in my position. You might find yourself lost.

I know how to make games (and web sites) and sell them. I’m good at it. I’ve been doing it for a long time. But here’s what happens when you do something for so long. I have to admit that I feel sort of lost and even sometimes trapped when I wonder what else I can do. I know how to paint and write and make music and sing and blah blah blah but I do not know how to make a living with those things. I haven’t put in the time to learn much of anything else (career-wise) besides game development, and now I am feeling pressure. A pressure as I look forward in my life and wonder what I’m going to do. Whatever it is, it’s not going to be easy, but I must do it. I suppose the same could be said of any other job, but I don’t know for sure since this is the job I’ve made my life with.

I realized this morning that part of the reason I might sometimes seem “mean” to some newer developers here is because of how cynical I can be sometimes. I asked myself why that was, and I realized that I might just be trying to help set up a “gauntlet” if you will, a barrier of entry that says hell yes you can be successful in this field, but do you really want it bad enough to make that happen? Are you willing to go the distance to make it reality? I guess I just want to caution people in some way that it’s not all roses. It’s a job, like anything else, and if you want to make a living at that job you need to be ready to give it your all. Not half-way. Not just hoping for the best. If it’s a hobby then hey, awesome, but as you, @GarBenjamin have pointed out, a lot of people here seem to be after the money. After the success. And that is who I am talking to.

Anyway I’ve rambled long enough. Basically…

Do what everyone else isn’t doing. That’s one path to success, and it’s been the one I’ve followed. And here I am about to go do it again. Erk.

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Binding of issac was completed in only 3 months, so you dont have to spend forever on a game.

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An awesome post that I would quadruple like if I could.

I hear you and understand what you are saying. I was always very independent too. Always wanting to do my own thing. So I got into business between jobs and other times while working a job. I never wanted to climb the corporate ladder and actually never did although I ended up in a great role at a great company. I was an independent IT Consultant for several years at one point doing my own thing, getting clients and projects, doing the development work, project management, billing them and so forth. Anyway, I am just sharing this to say I understand what you are saying.

Unlike you, I always ended up doing it for a while and eventually accepting a job offer. It is kind of strange really. Like I know people who have tried very hard to get a good job in IT and found it very hard. Yet what I found is that my wanting to do my own thing and being successful at it I had companies continually trying to hire me. I don’t see it as selling out either in any way.

Currently, my job in IT has me as the Senior Software Developer working from home (literally in my living room most of the time) about 99% of the time. I do work with a team coordinating via instant messenger, phone, email and screencasts over a secure tunnel but even many of them are spread around… in other states even. It took a while for me to figure out this is what I really wanted. Just to be free in the sense that I can work from my home. Because that actually means I can work from anywhere. Take a trip and work in the hotel during the day, explore in the evening. Whatever. A lot becomes possible when you don’t need to go to an office (or worse a cubicle) every day. It took me about a decade to achieve this goal. But it is worth it.

For me games I see as something I will dabble with now and possibly build up into a supplemental retirement income one day down the road. Just extra money and something to do when I eventually retire.

But anyway, you are right. In every business venture I went into it was a lot of work. A LOT of work to be successful. And that is a big reason why I post the things I do too. People need to hear about the WHOLE story. And while I have not started a successful Indy Game Biz yet I see it as just another business venture. As such I know it will be very much like the ones I do have experience in. Lots of hard work. Spending no more than 40% of my time doing the parts I love to do and no less than 60% of my time doing things I enjoy less or outright hate doing but they need to be done anyway. lol Like you said, it is just the way it is. It is a business.

I think a lot of people don’t actually look at this as a business. I think they only see it as some kind of magical thing. Like they make one game maybe two and they retire to some remote island. LOL!

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There’s always someone who wins the lottery. Thinking that you’ll be that someone, though, that’s a different story altogether.

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Very true. And I think the reason why people come into games thinking this is because you rarely see articles on all of the people working it as a business, what they spend their time doing and so forth. Basically only the lottery winners are covered. When the main stuff people read is about the few who make a game and earn a HUGE sum of money I can see why so many come in, make a game, make no to very little money and are confused wondering “what happened?”

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What a great post @Ony !

I am in the completely different end. Just starting my game development career. Finishing my master thesis now, but have been working at different company’s on smaller titles to get some experience/CV while doing so.
So as a new developer i am all excited.
One of the things i like about the game development business, especially in my area with a lot of indie dev’s, is that you often work at one place on one project and then move on to new things! (Financial not very stable lol).

But i do wonder if this is something i want to do the rest of my life. For now of cause! I love it. But in 25 years? Not so sure. Guess i just have to see. One thing i figured out though is that i don’t want to do it as a hobby, even though it pays rather bad compared to other IT positions. As a hobby you often just don’t have the time to get proper work done and really dig into a project in my opinion. Working on a game for a few hours each week just keeps you out of flow with the project.

If people are doing game development as a hobby i think they should expect nothing, and only do it for fun, not profit. Ive seen local indie company’s creating mobile games with an actual (small) budget behind and with quality artists and coders (working full time) and still fail because they did not have enough money or man power for PR. Its hard, people are only going to let them self down if they are in it for any kind of profit.

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Thanks for your sharing. I really like the cartoon-style illustration and it helps a lot.I’m gonna email Apple to apply featured game. Probably failed,but at least I should try. Time to contact the game news editor as well.Just as it says,“distribute your game every where”.