I was looking at applications for some grants and many ask for a website associated with your project.
That got me wondering if I should bother. It will take some time and energy which is always in short supply.
Besides being able to point potential granters to the website, do you guys think it’s worth the effort? The website won’t do any good unless it gets traffic. Driving traffic to a website sounds like a big rabbit hole to me.
At least two people have found my project via google search and then they saw some devlogs I had here or other dev forums. In that case, maybe going to an official website has some benefit? But people searching specifically for a game as niche as mine would find it anyhow - and its a game with zero direct competition so I think if they wanna play it they are going to.
It’s not a game that would ever sell millions of copies but I’d like to at least have the eyes of certain demographic, and then they just need some place to land and get more info. I guess the steam coming soon page solves that problem? No reason for an external website?
The main reason to have a website is to make yourself look more professional and provide contact info. With very few exceptions, developer sites are not for gamers, they’re for press/business.
I donno if its worthwhile or not for your specific case. I’d try to guess how much time I would spend on grant stuff and if its more than twice as long as it’ll take you to get a site up, it might be worth.
That said if people are searching for your specific niche directly through google (and there’s no competition) it might actually be worth for driving traffic. You could even use adwords for promo.
The proper and efficient way to do it if you aren’t a multinational corporation with bottomless wallet is to create one website with devblog, contact page, gallery, etc and when you finish and release a game, just open a page in it for the game. Easy, small amount of time, you only need to put some text in it which you will probably write anyway for the various stores you release in (steam, app store, play, etc). You can even make a template so when the next small game will be released, you don’t have to think how it should look just fill in the text and the images / videos.
Well, I spent considerable amount of time as a web developer back in the day, so I’m doing it for myself and have a private friend who will design something more sensible over time. So I have no idea about the contractor scene in the US, sorry.
But, they say good things about Squarespace (it is not an endorsement, I have zero first hand experience!), may worth to investigate.
That looks nice and simple. And it appears to be dirt cheap even though they make it a pain to find the actual price. For a domain it’s $20/year with first year free. That’s nothing…
*correction - they are charging 12-20 dollars per month. domain is additional.
If you’re more adventurous, you can use a hosted wordpress and buy some nice theme for it. But you know, that’s a bit more inconvenient than an out of the box editor like this, but more powerful as well. So it is really up to you how much time you want to invest. I ended up buying the domains from Google Domains and having a hosting on Bluehost (wordpress host) and doing the theming myself (I have graphics design skills on par with a half-blind monkey with one hand, so I will need my friend to draw up something, but I am lucky to have the expertise to break up her PSDs into wordpress theme)
So now I have a better idea how I can make a website and how much time/money it might involve. I still have to think carefully about if I should though…
It’s a game that has no competition and probably never would. It’s a game that can be played infinitely (a simulator) and people who do get into it will probably keep playing it for a long time. It is a game that is easily extensible, so adding some extra maps and game types every so often could help keep money trickling in, assuming an initial audience is captured.
Initially a website may help lend credibility, presumably in the eyes of potential grantors, it may help people searching for specifics to find the game… beyond that what does the website accomplish? And would it be more discoverable than the steam store page anyway?
And if I did a poor job with the website maybe that could be worse than only having a steam page. I try to limit breadth of stuff I got to do so that I can keep a minimum of quality… this could cut into that and I don’t know if it provides any benefit.
Yeah, it is valuable as a portfolio-site. It probably won’t drive your sales, you can’t compete with the stores anyway without considerable marketing budget. But if someone looks you up and takes a look at your site, your blog, they should see your portfolio, they may buy a game or hire you if you’ll be open for that later on.
One option would be to autodeploy a Wordpress instance over at vultr.com. Last I had one, it was like $5 a month for hosting, slap a premade theme on it or get one of those freeform template builders for Wordpress and you’re good. Don’t have to share the server with a 100 other people this way like on popular Wordpress specific hosting services.
It can take anywhere from 2 to 5 days to learn all the basics though, like hooking up domain to point to your newly hosted Wordpress instance on Vultr so it’s up to you to decide if it’s worth it.
Squarespace seems to be popular and decent if you want a quick and hassle free experience, but you have to pay more for it.
As for if you need one in the first place, I think it can contribute to your discoverability and legitimacy. One good way to leverage it would be to build a mailing list. Mailing lists continue to be one of the most powerful marketing tools available to indies today and they’re evergreen from project to project. And to ask people to subscribe to your mailing list, you do need a webpage of some sort. It won’t bring any immediate returns, however. More a long-term thing, part of community building.
Some great advice here, but yes, any serious project should have a website or “base of operations”, and make it look as pro as possible. We all here know you, like your work, and want you to progress. Hosting is cheap, set something up, use a pre-made wordpress template/theme, and just modify it to your needs.
Guys I just wanted to update this thread because in the past two days I went through with making a website. I used Squarespace and am really happy with it.
One, it’s dead easy to use.
Two, you can make any design you want quite easily. I don’t feel restricted in any way.
Three, it has simple integration with Google business. Since my primary purpose of a website is creating legitimacy in grantors eyes, having it tie together easily with a business email is nice.
For the domain and service it’s about $200 a year, plus they give you a free year of Google business account which is about $70 value.
All in all I’m pretty happy. Only took two days and I think the website looks nice.
Here’s a link to it. I haven’t tested it on mobile yet because I hate phones: LANDNAV (landnavgame.com)
Yep, that is a very good reason to have a website.
Not bad overall, well done. Looks quite well suited to the subject matter.
One thing I’d suggest is reviewing the size and format of your images. Some of them took ages to load, and my internet connection here is fairly reasonable.
In case it’s useful to you: I just had a poke. Some images on there are JPGs of fairly reasonable size, but at least one is a PNG that’s 2+ mb. I couldn’t easily access the ones which took ages to load, but I’d guess they’re in the latter category.
I checked it on my phone, looks fine (Android, default browser) except for one minor issue, which was “About The Game - Quick Glance” bullet points start like 2/3 of the way across the screen (in portrait orientation), so the text for them is squished to the right. But my phone’s old (S5), it’s probably fine on a larger screen with more dpi. Congrats on the website
I haven’t noticed this thread before. But yes, you did well put tin a website up.
And you put more content to it, than just single page text.
Is worth to mention, that users searching for keyword in search engine, will be finding your website. And accidentally, that may bring extra customers to you. These doesn’t have to be primary user based target audience. With steam, you are mostly limited to steam keyword and gamers user base. Then searching for keywords online, gives higher chance someone to land on yur web page.
Plus, you answer some basics questions in FAQ.
Also, remember, that website is much easier to keep updated, rather than tracking various posts across an Internet, where you may have posted. Having link to main website, from main posts online, can save you tons of effort. People can see a progress and additional content.
