Having released my first game two days ago, I realized that there’s a whole giant world out there called “Marketing”, which is way out of my depth. That’s not to say I expected to make a big hit or anything, but it feels like working on the game was a whole lot easier than marketing it.
Anyways, my game is more of a puzzle/arcade style, it’s not a big pretty game, but from what I’ve been told by people who have played it that it has somewhat of an addictive factor. I tried twitter (Just got active now which does not help not having many followers), word of mouth, and plugging it in on forums here and there. I was reading that it’s a good idea to submit your game for review sites, what are your opinions on that? Is it even worth it for a first game? Will it even be taken seriously?
I’m wondering about this because time is an issue and I was wondering if I should actually make the effort to promote it or just move on to the next game.
I see you’ve learnt the lesson of: “If you build it, they will come” isn’t true for apps/games…
As long as you didn’t spend years of your life on this game, then take it as a lesson learnt.
The key to becoming successful in this business (unless you’re just pure lucky), is to get these sort of things in order well before the release of your game.
The best time to start marking is as soon as it’s outside of the basic prototype stages where there’s finally something visually appealing to consumers, no consumer wants to see a single blocky cube shoot spheres out LOL.
Now to get reviewers, some do it for free (the little guys) trying to make something on Youtube will generally do free stuff so they can get viewers and content… The bigger guys only do it if either A) - They really love what you made, you got money, or the consumers demand it.
Twitter can really work if you stay active and engage with potential consumers, you just gotta to find your balance between fun and play, be taken seriously and show the consumers what your products are truly about, don’t post stupid things like “Look at my grass texture”, tweet stuff that can captivate audiences and to leave a lasting impression.
To be fair, I never really had a plan or was expecting anything in return, I do this for fun and was taking it day by day, I’m just asking the question because it’s a learning experience and it’s the next step I guess.
The game itself was developed in about a month, but I had the initial idea about a year ago, well a variation of it at least, it was one of my old prototypes that I had abandoned. 3 Months ago I found myself with more time to spare, so I pulled out a lot of my old prototypes and this was the one I tweaked, developed, and released.
Based on your advice, you say I should share more progress on my next title before it comes out? Hopefully by then I have more twitter followers and I’m more active socially. Thank you for the tip.
The way I see it, if your game is a small and addictive one, it has a higher than normal potential for taking advantage of something happening after release. Don’t forget flappy bird sat in the app store for months or years (can’t remember which) before someone famous picked it up and thought it was fun. For a game like yours, I would say the ageing factor is negligible, and it’s success primarily depends on how many well-connected people you can get to play it.
The only right answer to what you should do, is do everything you can, and more. The number one rule is: don’t tell yourself no, let other people tell you no. If I were you, I’d say the best bet is to try to get a youtuber to pick it up. There must be thousands of them out there so you won’t be short of candidates. If someone doesn’t like it, ask them why, fix it and keep calling whoever you can find.
I think anyone who expects to see any return on the time/effort investment should go through the drugery of attempting to market a game as much as possible (any time) during development - even if the consensus is you might be late to the party.
I suggest this because if a dev puts effort into marketing NOW even if it is after game completion, for the next game the developer will have some hands-on experience and knowledge with marketing. Even bad or failed marketing experience should result in a better marketing attack plan for game #2.
Although Id also suggest not spending 1 dime on marketing/advertising in this situation, already released 1st game with limited visual appeal .
If we as indie developers consider marketing as another important (ongoing) iterative task in the development of a game (like character controller or asset iteration) it could result in a better mindset/approach - rather than thinking of it as a completely separate thing to do after development is complete or near the end of development.
