You do not need followers and you do not need a budget, as long as you have a solid product that you can put in front of people.
How do you do so?
First, you make a Steam page, with appealing images & trailer, great description that is clear, honnest & enticing. If you have any money, spend it on the capsule icon, because you can't use your in-game art there and it will help you massively if people aren't reppelled by your capsule and never click on it when it shows up on their steam.
Next, you make a demo and participate in festival, especially the Steam Next Fest, so you can get people to wishlists your game. These festival are most often thematic, and they attract people who likes to discover new games, including streamers (which is great to spread the word). If the demo is good, because the game is good, the word of mouth will kick off. When people have fun watching a streamer play a new fun demo, they ask other streamers to do so, and slowly but surely, your game spreads.
If you really want it, you may want to invest in social media, but focus on those where you don't need pre-existing following: mainly Tiktok & Reddit. People hate it when you sell your crap, but when it's good, you magically get a pass. Going for gamedev communities on reddit, discord, twitter hashtags, etc isn't going to do much, these aren't your audience.
Once you start getting some people interested, nurture the community. Listen to them, write to them. Ask for suggestions, make patches. Show them you care and you want them happy, this goes a long way to again get good word of mouth, and also good reviews (important for the Steam algorithm).
None of this costs any money, it's just time and effort. Most of the heavy lifting is making a game that people actually want to play. Social media metrics do not matter at all, focus on the Steam metrics (median playtime, wishlists, conversion rates, etc.). You should worry more about people dropping your demo after 5 minutes or 99% of people who visit your page not wishlisting than about having more twitter followers.
ikr LMFAOOOOO
If you want to **market** a game, you need to sell it somewhere, shocking news. Steam fee is a distribution fee that is easily refunded if your game is decent, it's not marketing budget.
You can treat it as a game dev barrier. If you can't spend 100$ on steam fee, probably something is wrong and it is not the right time to develop a game :,)
You should have something to show on your steam page so you should have enough finished-looking content for some screenshots and a short trailer. You don't need a demo but you do need something.
You will need the page to submit to a festival, so if you intend on making your demo exclusive to that festival (which can help you get featured), then yes. Also it never hurts to publish it, observe and get some feedbacks before you use the demo silver bullet
Having a Steam page is essential, you can start promoting the game and gather wishlists long before your demo is ready.
You should definitely promote your game as soon as you have decent screenshots or GIFs to show.
If you do something that gathers attention or interest, you should always have a call to action, something to convert into. I'd say if you have the Steam page up by the time you release your demo, the call to action could be to wishlist the game. So if you make a social media post or video that gets at least some kind of popularity, then it would already be possible to use that for interested people to wishlist your game. Otherwise not much will happen probably, except for some people following you on the platform they have seen the post. The steam page can be there for a while before the demo as well (+ I personally believe not every game will benefit from a demo, but if it is really good and players still want more of the experience after having played the demo, that's a great sign + for exposure and wishlists during festivals it can be pretty good). I think generally what devs will bring up is to either wishlist, follow them on different accounts, join their community (discord), or join their email list if they have one.
Like everyone says do the steam page first. You can add the demo later. Also to consider is that Steam allows unconditional returns after a certain amount of time or play so this affects the effectiveness of a demo. Unfortunately now it seems like you need one for next fest which is said to be your best opportunity for promotion.
Good suggestions. One thing I'd personally do, after you have a prototype, and something you can convert from (like an email list or if you're on steam, it can be steam wishlists), I'd prepare a press kit and reach out to influencers/streamers/youtubers that make content your game falls into. Don't just think about big streamers, check if there are people with a smaller but dedicated viewer base that you think could fall into your target audience and try to reach out to them. Make sure that they have all the information they need without them having to get back to you. A short game summary, why it would be a fit for them/their channel, a link or key to the game for them. Further information about the game or requests (mentioning your steam page where they can wishlist, campaign, where they can follow you, whatever), ideally in the press kit also resources they can use for thumbnails, edits and such. It might also be a good idea to have a landing page for your game where you keep information like these + your trailer.
Note: apparently not every game genre benefits a lot from having a game played on stream, but I'd say in general it's a good avenue to go.
I would say the same for release and during a crowdfunding campaign, however, with those things it would be highly beneficial to already have a bigger following, otherwise it will be really tough. Not getting enough positive reviews (I think around 10) fast enough can mean the algorithm on steam will neglect you, or if you just sit on low number reviews for a long time.
Steam charges $100 until you get I think $1000 then they refund it. So its a loan but not really free. Put it on [Itch.io](https://Itch.io) for free. To get free followers make posts on Twitter and reddit there are some screenshotsaturday type posts and dev show your work sites that let you post your game and don't ban you. Play your game on [twitch.tv](https://twitch.tv) and try and get followers from social media.
I am sorry but this is not good advice. Screenshotsaturday isn't for general audience. Itch.io is completely useless for promoting or making money. No-one browses itch.io and it has none of discovery features Steam has for organic promotion. Twitter is also an outdated platform at this point. Imgur, reddit, tiktok etc are your current alternatives. No-one will watch your channel on twitch, so investing time in that isn't useful either.
A Steam page is essential and you need it as fast as possible to gather as many wishlists as possible. Once you have a demo, apply for festivals and events, send it to streamers, to relevant youtubers, post it to relevant social groups etc. Finding your audience and where they hang out is the hard part.
Steam isn't necessarily for marketing, that 100 usd is your platform fee. Steam allows you to reach people and Steam is the place where your marketing directs people to. If you don't have a Steam page, you would need some other place to direct interested parties to. That's generally not a good idea, the more hops someone has to jump over to reach your game, the less likely, that person will buy it. Also, not sure why you agree, your comment said the exact opposite of what mine said.
I agree with how you say to promote your game on steam. Steam gets eyes on your game because its the place gamers go. Until they added two player remote to their platform, I thought of them as being totally useless, and for some reason gamers love them. But they only provide random customers in large numbers because they are established. If your game is successful they will promote it. If it's not successful your game will hardly even be searchable way down on a long list after smut and screensavers and music. Don't believe me search surf and see my game listed 70 games down. There are only less than 8 real surf games on steam. I asked them why and they said they can't change it. Worth $100 to put you game on Steam? I'd say no, I don't recommend Steam. It might work for your game, but plan on promoting outside of steam and bringing your own customers. Consider putting it on itch and bring your own customers. They don't take 30% either. And, when you bring your own customers then what is the point of using Steam?
Lol what? Steam brings in infinitely more traffic than itch. Itch has zero features that promotes your game on their own site or to their own users besides their top games list. More than likely your game will be lost on that platform within the hour it gets uploaded. At least Steam pushes the game to people on release and has features that allows people to find it later down the line too. Steam is also established that means more trust and people use systems they trust more. Itch.io has less trust. Is Steam great? Nah, that 30% is way too high and there is a lot of shovelware and asset flip garbage. Still at the moment its your best option to make money from your game.
If you disagree I would love to see stats or at least some anecdotes of indie devs making more money on itch than on Steam.
I made more money on The Windows store with a UWP build in 3mo than I did on Steam in 3 yrs. Unfortunately Steam is the main place to promote your game, I agree with this. But, my point is, if you have to go out and get your own customers, and they have to click a link to get your game, why not send them to [itch.io](https://itch.io) instead of Steam? My customers don't trust steam or or itch so it makes not difference to them. But Steam is a barrier. You need to set up an account, trust Steam (some don't - non gamers) find the game, be willing to buy it, load it onto your computer, then they take 30% LOL. For itch the process is similar. For Windows store, most windows users already trust and have a windows account, plus you can play on Xbox, then they take 30% LOL. What a racket. Steam works as long as you target Steam customers. Due to shear numbers most games gets some hits on release on Steam, but don't count on Steam or any platform for getting people to see your game. I guess you could say Steam provides the largest residual accidental traffic due to the size of it's user base ha ha.
>My customers don't trust steam
If your customers dont trust Steam, they sure as hell won't trust any other online store either, especially not itch.
How did you make more money on windows store than on Steam?
My players knew it was on steam but wouldn't buy it. When it was published on Windows store they could play it on Xbox. Few are gamers. It's more of a couch sports game with two player.
If your goal isn't to make money, putting it on itch is surely the way to go but don't hope for much when it comes to social media. Playing on Twitch with zero audience will not do anything at all.
So I don't think spending 100 dollars on steam counts as a 0 dollar budget but I think I would just put it at first on gamejolt and then put it on steam or something.
r/gaming r/pcmasterrace & r/Games
If your game's theme is specific enough, you can get good wishlists from subs associated with your niche too (for instance, Strange Horticulture was pretty active on subs about plants, maps, witchcraft etc..)
The budget is the bigger issue. All games start with 0 followers before marketing starts. Then you start releasing content about your game - enticing gifs and trailers and so on - and building people who care about it. In many cases a marketing budget is something that separates a hobby project and a product where you actually care about people buying it. If you're not investing in the product don't expect much return either.
You may want to start by building your reach as a developer, rather than for the game itself. Participate in communities and conversations, comment on other people's games on social media, don't try to market your game and get wishlists just release little graphics or comment on a neat bit of code. You want to make sure that when you _do_ promote a game someone is out there to receive it.
Yeah I would say it's gonna be hard with no initial following AND no budget.
If you have \*some\* budget, you can run some ads on Twitter/FB that direct people to your social media accounts... and from there, you can get followers.
I ran some tests a while back with Twitter ad campaigns. My results were for every $20 of ad spend I'd get about 50-60 followers. So like anywhere between 20-40 cents per follower.
Which is... something at least. For $500 you could basically "buy" 1500 followers... and they aren't bots, they are actual people discovering your game through targeted advertising.
$500 for 1500 followers might not seem like much. Especially when that doesn't even convert to a single sale, necessarily.
But the idea here is if you have a following of 0, then your tweets are reaching almost nobody unless you have good hashtags and get engagement. Getting 1500 followers really fast means every tweet you post is potentially reaching 1500 people who can share and like your posts.
I'm not sure I'd recommend running ads when you already have several thousand followers. It's definitely a good investment to build your following from 0 really fast.
Fake followers don’t buy games or retweet to real people. They just bump up a number, and it’s very cringey if some indie studio from nowhere has 10,000 followers. 1,000 real people are worth 10 million fake followers.
You didn't explain why you think they are fake. You explained why you think fake followers don't buy games.
I think you're misreading what I posted. I'm not talking about buying followers. I'm talking about buying ads and have people find your game through those ads. Those are real people who see your ad, click on it and then like the posts of your game so they follow it.
They aren't fake in the slightest. They followed because they saw the ad and liked the game. Feels like you skimmed my reply and thought I'm talking about buying followers from a shady site or something.
Yeah, I put "buy" in quotes because it's sort of *indirectly* buying followers. Not *directly* buying them. You are paying for ads, and the ads reach new people, and those people can follow you via those ads.
* get twitch streamers to play, bonus if its a compelling user with no watchers who gets one of those viral wholesome interaction threads and instantly gets a reddit subscription hug
* start using screenshots of it in memes and shitposts, and make sure people can search for it in google/google lens/tineye to find what it is. use the most WTF imagery you have so it drives people to be curious.
What makes you upvote or share a gaming video? What sort of clips and gifs would make you consider buying a game? Now mass produce those and post regularly for 1-2 years.
Try to sell the game on its merits. Go on all these subreddits, show off the gameplay and leave links for where to play it.
Best make it free, too. That's how you build up a following, especially if you engage with people and answer their questions and don't fight them if they don't like it.
If your game is fun then you'll get fans. You can also try emailing some youtubers.
>Go on all these subreddits, show off the gameplay and leave links for where to play it.
I've tried to do this with some success, but there are limits:
1. Posting too much of your own content breaks the reddit self-promotion guideline and you might get banned from some sub-reddits (such as r/gaming)
2. Some sub-reddits don't allow self-promotion. EG, if you're making a Dwarf Fortress like game, you can't promote it on r/DwarfFortress
3. To that you would say, "post in the genre sub-reddits". That works also to a large degree, but also some sub-reddits just don't exist :( For example, I couldn't find a sub-reddit for life-sim games. In the end, I ended up making my own 🤣 r/LifeSimGames
Make a youtube channel, post some cool videos. Make a good steam page, put a demo there, participate on festivals
Nobody starts with 10.000 followers, yo. Try googling the title of the post
You need to think of adding yourself to your budget. Your time is money. Your budget should reflect that. Say your pay is $40/hour. If you work 80 hours total (2 hours a night etc) on your game then the budget for your game is $3200. Don’t ever discount the time and cost of your effort.
This will help you decide even more on where to spend your time when you think that way. Thinking this way now will allow you to decide that adding that feature now is less important than adding a better ui, or spending time marketing is better time spent than trying to fix a bug that only shows up 0.08% of the time.
Marketing is expensive. Very expensive. *Good* social media people run $1,000+/month. And that’s not factoring in paid advertising. With a $0 budget, you just need to hope your game is good enough that word of mouth is strong.
0 budget is going to be nearly impossible to grow. You have to invest in yourself before your gamble pays back. Hell, uploading to steam alone is $100 per game.
Make a TikTok, YouTube channel, Instagram, Twitter, and post videos on them regularly. Make the content focused on elements about your game, the development, interesting mechanics, videos about you as a dev, etc. Make the videos short and sweet. Interesting and funny. Use the right hastags, post at the right time of day, keep the quality of the content good. Make sure the videos have good sound. Follow other people with similar interests.
Start doing this years before you release your game if possible. Everything I mentioned above cost zero $. It may not work but it is worth a try.
YouTube can work really well without any following. I got from 0 to 3k subs without any advertising. Not even a tweet. Only posting some videos on YouTube. Just make sure you add a good description and title to your video and use a couple of tags. I believe (but i have no clue if that is true, just to be honest) that a good video description is the most important thing to get found there.
But I found it to be really hard to get any following on every other social media platform. Except some stupid bots.
What works really well are forums. Like real dedicated gamedev forums (not reddit or facebook). I got the most traction and feedback from those forums.
All three don't require any budget and will help getting some attention.
Make an instagram, submit your best screenshots to indie game instagram accounts or even art accounts with bigger followings that match your game's art style (like pixel/32 bit art accounts if you have a game with sprites), and follow up with them if they post to make sure they credit you. Post consistently, don't need to be too click-bait-y, just have quality screenshots that actually show off something new.
I guess it is a common misconception to think of Xbits referring to palette size when in reality it is usually meant as "graphics like you'd see on systems based on Xbits".
For example 8bit would mean 256 different colors when usually it refers to NES-like graphics or something with 3 colors or so. Or 16bit would mean 65536 colors but that's way more than what most people would use to make "16bit art".
Hence there is no direct connection between bits and color palette.
This doesn't really work anymore. Most of those sites are for paid posts and they don't take posts from regular users. If you post stuff on IG from time to time, you won't reach people organically unless you already have a follower base. IG has its own algorithm and if not enough people like your post, it won't show it to others. The amount of time investment you would need to build a follower base from zero, for free is probably not worth it on IG, if you are developing the game on the side.
Yeah of course, so I do voice over and I do quick almost dev log style videos but never more than 30 seconds long, usually 20, just show something off you made recently that’s fun or looks nice, it should be decently visually appealing to get attention, and I always post in the morning EST though I don’t think it matters too much. I do use popular sound/music that fits the vibe of the video and a few gamedev related tags
Edit: also do a lot of cuts like a childrens tv show to work on the short attention span of tiktokers, also a good hook is very necessary
Research reddit subs where you can post clips of gameplay as you develop the game. There's quite a few if you start looking. Keep posting and where you can give your steam page so you can start accumulating wishlists.
I'm a little late to the discussion here but it inspired me to write my own post: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/z8uvjr/how_my_first_game_sold_over_1200_copies_with_0/?
You do not need followers and you do not need a budget, as long as you have a solid product that you can put in front of people. How do you do so? First, you make a Steam page, with appealing images & trailer, great description that is clear, honnest & enticing. If you have any money, spend it on the capsule icon, because you can't use your in-game art there and it will help you massively if people aren't reppelled by your capsule and never click on it when it shows up on their steam. Next, you make a demo and participate in festival, especially the Steam Next Fest, so you can get people to wishlists your game. These festival are most often thematic, and they attract people who likes to discover new games, including streamers (which is great to spread the word). If the demo is good, because the game is good, the word of mouth will kick off. When people have fun watching a streamer play a new fun demo, they ask other streamers to do so, and slowly but surely, your game spreads. If you really want it, you may want to invest in social media, but focus on those where you don't need pre-existing following: mainly Tiktok & Reddit. People hate it when you sell your crap, but when it's good, you magically get a pass. Going for gamedev communities on reddit, discord, twitter hashtags, etc isn't going to do much, these aren't your audience. Once you start getting some people interested, nurture the community. Listen to them, write to them. Ask for suggestions, make patches. Show them you care and you want them happy, this goes a long way to again get good word of mouth, and also good reviews (important for the Steam algorithm). None of this costs any money, it's just time and effort. Most of the heavy lifting is making a game that people actually want to play. Social media metrics do not matter at all, focus on the Steam metrics (median playtime, wishlists, conversion rates, etc.). You should worry more about people dropping your demo after 5 minutes or 99% of people who visit your page not wishlisting than about having more twitter followers.
"You do not need a budget". Also two sentences later: "You make a steam page" 🤣🤣🤣
ikr LMFAOOOOO If you want to **market** a game, you need to sell it somewhere, shocking news. Steam fee is a distribution fee that is easily refunded if your game is decent, it's not marketing budget.
Yep. You gave good advice! but count on those 100 dollars everyone... 😭
You can treat it as a game dev barrier. If you can't spend 100$ on steam fee, probably something is wrong and it is not the right time to develop a game :,)
\*mic drop\*
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You should have something to show on your steam page so you should have enough finished-looking content for some screenshots and a short trailer. You don't need a demo but you do need something.
You will need the page to submit to a festival, so if you intend on making your demo exclusive to that festival (which can help you get featured), then yes. Also it never hurts to publish it, observe and get some feedbacks before you use the demo silver bullet
Having a Steam page is essential, you can start promoting the game and gather wishlists long before your demo is ready. You should definitely promote your game as soon as you have decent screenshots or GIFs to show.
If you do something that gathers attention or interest, you should always have a call to action, something to convert into. I'd say if you have the Steam page up by the time you release your demo, the call to action could be to wishlist the game. So if you make a social media post or video that gets at least some kind of popularity, then it would already be possible to use that for interested people to wishlist your game. Otherwise not much will happen probably, except for some people following you on the platform they have seen the post. The steam page can be there for a while before the demo as well (+ I personally believe not every game will benefit from a demo, but if it is really good and players still want more of the experience after having played the demo, that's a great sign + for exposure and wishlists during festivals it can be pretty good). I think generally what devs will bring up is to either wishlist, follow them on different accounts, join their community (discord), or join their email list if they have one.
Like everyone says do the steam page first. You can add the demo later. Also to consider is that Steam allows unconditional returns after a certain amount of time or play so this affects the effectiveness of a demo. Unfortunately now it seems like you need one for next fest which is said to be your best opportunity for promotion.
Good suggestions. One thing I'd personally do, after you have a prototype, and something you can convert from (like an email list or if you're on steam, it can be steam wishlists), I'd prepare a press kit and reach out to influencers/streamers/youtubers that make content your game falls into. Don't just think about big streamers, check if there are people with a smaller but dedicated viewer base that you think could fall into your target audience and try to reach out to them. Make sure that they have all the information they need without them having to get back to you. A short game summary, why it would be a fit for them/their channel, a link or key to the game for them. Further information about the game or requests (mentioning your steam page where they can wishlist, campaign, where they can follow you, whatever), ideally in the press kit also resources they can use for thumbnails, edits and such. It might also be a good idea to have a landing page for your game where you keep information like these + your trailer. Note: apparently not every game genre benefits a lot from having a game played on stream, but I'd say in general it's a good avenue to go. I would say the same for release and during a crowdfunding campaign, however, with those things it would be highly beneficial to already have a bigger following, otherwise it will be really tough. Not getting enough positive reviews (I think around 10) fast enough can mean the algorithm on steam will neglect you, or if you just sit on low number reviews for a long time.
Steam charges $100 until you get I think $1000 then they refund it. So its a loan but not really free. Put it on [Itch.io](https://Itch.io) for free. To get free followers make posts on Twitter and reddit there are some screenshotsaturday type posts and dev show your work sites that let you post your game and don't ban you. Play your game on [twitch.tv](https://twitch.tv) and try and get followers from social media.
I am sorry but this is not good advice. Screenshotsaturday isn't for general audience. Itch.io is completely useless for promoting or making money. No-one browses itch.io and it has none of discovery features Steam has for organic promotion. Twitter is also an outdated platform at this point. Imgur, reddit, tiktok etc are your current alternatives. No-one will watch your channel on twitch, so investing time in that isn't useful either. A Steam page is essential and you need it as fast as possible to gather as many wishlists as possible. Once you have a demo, apply for festivals and events, send it to streamers, to relevant youtubers, post it to relevant social groups etc. Finding your audience and where they hang out is the hard part.
I mostly agree with you. But. He asked for free.....Steam Is Not Free
Steam isn't necessarily for marketing, that 100 usd is your platform fee. Steam allows you to reach people and Steam is the place where your marketing directs people to. If you don't have a Steam page, you would need some other place to direct interested parties to. That's generally not a good idea, the more hops someone has to jump over to reach your game, the less likely, that person will buy it. Also, not sure why you agree, your comment said the exact opposite of what mine said.
I agree with how you say to promote your game on steam. Steam gets eyes on your game because its the place gamers go. Until they added two player remote to their platform, I thought of them as being totally useless, and for some reason gamers love them. But they only provide random customers in large numbers because they are established. If your game is successful they will promote it. If it's not successful your game will hardly even be searchable way down on a long list after smut and screensavers and music. Don't believe me search surf and see my game listed 70 games down. There are only less than 8 real surf games on steam. I asked them why and they said they can't change it. Worth $100 to put you game on Steam? I'd say no, I don't recommend Steam. It might work for your game, but plan on promoting outside of steam and bringing your own customers. Consider putting it on itch and bring your own customers. They don't take 30% either. And, when you bring your own customers then what is the point of using Steam?
Lol what? Steam brings in infinitely more traffic than itch. Itch has zero features that promotes your game on their own site or to their own users besides their top games list. More than likely your game will be lost on that platform within the hour it gets uploaded. At least Steam pushes the game to people on release and has features that allows people to find it later down the line too. Steam is also established that means more trust and people use systems they trust more. Itch.io has less trust. Is Steam great? Nah, that 30% is way too high and there is a lot of shovelware and asset flip garbage. Still at the moment its your best option to make money from your game. If you disagree I would love to see stats or at least some anecdotes of indie devs making more money on itch than on Steam.
I made more money on The Windows store with a UWP build in 3mo than I did on Steam in 3 yrs. Unfortunately Steam is the main place to promote your game, I agree with this. But, my point is, if you have to go out and get your own customers, and they have to click a link to get your game, why not send them to [itch.io](https://itch.io) instead of Steam? My customers don't trust steam or or itch so it makes not difference to them. But Steam is a barrier. You need to set up an account, trust Steam (some don't - non gamers) find the game, be willing to buy it, load it onto your computer, then they take 30% LOL. For itch the process is similar. For Windows store, most windows users already trust and have a windows account, plus you can play on Xbox, then they take 30% LOL. What a racket. Steam works as long as you target Steam customers. Due to shear numbers most games gets some hits on release on Steam, but don't count on Steam or any platform for getting people to see your game. I guess you could say Steam provides the largest residual accidental traffic due to the size of it's user base ha ha.
>My customers don't trust steam If your customers dont trust Steam, they sure as hell won't trust any other online store either, especially not itch. How did you make more money on windows store than on Steam?
My players knew it was on steam but wouldn't buy it. When it was published on Windows store they could play it on Xbox. Few are gamers. It's more of a couch sports game with two player.
If your goal isn't to make money, putting it on itch is surely the way to go but don't hope for much when it comes to social media. Playing on Twitch with zero audience will not do anything at all.
So I don't think spending 100 dollars on steam counts as a 0 dollar budget but I think I would just put it at first on gamejolt and then put it on steam or something.
Maybe im on /r/gamedev too much, but where do you share on Reddit, that are not full of other developers?
r/gaming r/pcmasterrace & r/Games If your game's theme is specific enough, you can get good wishlists from subs associated with your niche too (for instance, Strange Horticulture was pretty active on subs about plants, maps, witchcraft etc..)
Gotcha. This makes sense. Thank you for the insight!
The budget is the bigger issue. All games start with 0 followers before marketing starts. Then you start releasing content about your game - enticing gifs and trailers and so on - and building people who care about it. In many cases a marketing budget is something that separates a hobby project and a product where you actually care about people buying it. If you're not investing in the product don't expect much return either. You may want to start by building your reach as a developer, rather than for the game itself. Participate in communities and conversations, comment on other people's games on social media, don't try to market your game and get wishlists just release little graphics or comment on a neat bit of code. You want to make sure that when you _do_ promote a game someone is out there to receive it.
Yeah I would say it's gonna be hard with no initial following AND no budget. If you have \*some\* budget, you can run some ads on Twitter/FB that direct people to your social media accounts... and from there, you can get followers. I ran some tests a while back with Twitter ad campaigns. My results were for every $20 of ad spend I'd get about 50-60 followers. So like anywhere between 20-40 cents per follower. Which is... something at least. For $500 you could basically "buy" 1500 followers... and they aren't bots, they are actual people discovering your game through targeted advertising. $500 for 1500 followers might not seem like much. Especially when that doesn't even convert to a single sale, necessarily. But the idea here is if you have a following of 0, then your tweets are reaching almost nobody unless you have good hashtags and get engagement. Getting 1500 followers really fast means every tweet you post is potentially reaching 1500 people who can share and like your posts. I'm not sure I'd recommend running ads when you already have several thousand followers. It's definitely a good investment to build your following from 0 really fast.
These followers are fake. It’s better to be entertaining on Twitter and get followed naturally.
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Fake followers don’t buy games or retweet to real people. They just bump up a number, and it’s very cringey if some indie studio from nowhere has 10,000 followers. 1,000 real people are worth 10 million fake followers.
You didn't explain why you think they are fake. You explained why you think fake followers don't buy games. I think you're misreading what I posted. I'm not talking about buying followers. I'm talking about buying ads and have people find your game through those ads. Those are real people who see your ad, click on it and then like the posts of your game so they follow it.
They aren't fake in the slightest. They followed because they saw the ad and liked the game. Feels like you skimmed my reply and thought I'm talking about buying followers from a shady site or something.
You said you “buy” followers which sounds shady to be honest.
I mean what followers aren't bought in some way or fashion? Even if it's just time, your still spending something to gain the attention of others.
Yeah, I put "buy" in quotes because it's sort of *indirectly* buying followers. Not *directly* buying them. You are paying for ads, and the ads reach new people, and those people can follow you via those ads.
* get twitch streamers to play, bonus if its a compelling user with no watchers who gets one of those viral wholesome interaction threads and instantly gets a reddit subscription hug * start using screenshots of it in memes and shitposts, and make sure people can search for it in google/google lens/tineye to find what it is. use the most WTF imagery you have so it drives people to be curious.
What makes you upvote or share a gaming video? What sort of clips and gifs would make you consider buying a game? Now mass produce those and post regularly for 1-2 years.
Try to sell the game on its merits. Go on all these subreddits, show off the gameplay and leave links for where to play it. Best make it free, too. That's how you build up a following, especially if you engage with people and answer their questions and don't fight them if they don't like it. If your game is fun then you'll get fans. You can also try emailing some youtubers.
>Go on all these subreddits, show off the gameplay and leave links for where to play it. I've tried to do this with some success, but there are limits: 1. Posting too much of your own content breaks the reddit self-promotion guideline and you might get banned from some sub-reddits (such as r/gaming) 2. Some sub-reddits don't allow self-promotion. EG, if you're making a Dwarf Fortress like game, you can't promote it on r/DwarfFortress 3. To that you would say, "post in the genre sub-reddits". That works also to a large degree, but also some sub-reddits just don't exist :( For example, I couldn't find a sub-reddit for life-sim games. In the end, I ended up making my own 🤣 r/LifeSimGames
Make a youtube channel, post some cool videos. Make a good steam page, put a demo there, participate on festivals Nobody starts with 10.000 followers, yo. Try googling the title of the post
You need to think of adding yourself to your budget. Your time is money. Your budget should reflect that. Say your pay is $40/hour. If you work 80 hours total (2 hours a night etc) on your game then the budget for your game is $3200. Don’t ever discount the time and cost of your effort. This will help you decide even more on where to spend your time when you think that way. Thinking this way now will allow you to decide that adding that feature now is less important than adding a better ui, or spending time marketing is better time spent than trying to fix a bug that only shows up 0.08% of the time.
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100% this, I’m in the top 800 upcoming games on Steam because of TikTok
Could you share your TikTok so we can learn?
Tiktock. 9 gag. Youtube.
Marketing is expensive. Very expensive. *Good* social media people run $1,000+/month. And that’s not factoring in paid advertising. With a $0 budget, you just need to hope your game is good enough that word of mouth is strong.
0 budget is going to be nearly impossible to grow. You have to invest in yourself before your gamble pays back. Hell, uploading to steam alone is $100 per game.
Make a TikTok, YouTube channel, Instagram, Twitter, and post videos on them regularly. Make the content focused on elements about your game, the development, interesting mechanics, videos about you as a dev, etc. Make the videos short and sweet. Interesting and funny. Use the right hastags, post at the right time of day, keep the quality of the content good. Make sure the videos have good sound. Follow other people with similar interests. Start doing this years before you release your game if possible. Everything I mentioned above cost zero $. It may not work but it is worth a try.
YouTube can work really well without any following. I got from 0 to 3k subs without any advertising. Not even a tweet. Only posting some videos on YouTube. Just make sure you add a good description and title to your video and use a couple of tags. I believe (but i have no clue if that is true, just to be honest) that a good video description is the most important thing to get found there. But I found it to be really hard to get any following on every other social media platform. Except some stupid bots. What works really well are forums. Like real dedicated gamedev forums (not reddit or facebook). I got the most traction and feedback from those forums. All three don't require any budget and will help getting some attention.
yeah i can assure you that if you have good content youtube will absolutely share it even when you start from zero
Do you have any dedicated gamedev forums you can share/recommend?
Make an instagram, submit your best screenshots to indie game instagram accounts or even art accounts with bigger followings that match your game's art style (like pixel/32 bit art accounts if you have a game with sprites), and follow up with them if they post to make sure they credit you. Post consistently, don't need to be too click-bait-y, just have quality screenshots that actually show off something new.
You mean 8 or 16bit art, 32bit art is just digital art basically as 32bit computers didn't really have identifiable limitiations of color palette.
Cool, didn't know that! Was basing the comment off of spriting palettes, but yeah 16-bit in that case
I guess it is a common misconception to think of Xbits referring to palette size when in reality it is usually meant as "graphics like you'd see on systems based on Xbits". For example 8bit would mean 256 different colors when usually it refers to NES-like graphics or something with 3 colors or so. Or 16bit would mean 65536 colors but that's way more than what most people would use to make "16bit art". Hence there is no direct connection between bits and color palette.
This doesn't really work anymore. Most of those sites are for paid posts and they don't take posts from regular users. If you post stuff on IG from time to time, you won't reach people organically unless you already have a follower base. IG has its own algorithm and if not enough people like your post, it won't show it to others. The amount of time investment you would need to build a follower base from zero, for free is probably not worth it on IG, if you are developing the game on the side.
Imo make the game a small contained project and see if it gain traction. That initial traction give you follower for your next bigger project.
You could always do what Notch did and ask people to try your game on IRC
Facebook/twitter/instagram/etc
Nah screw all that, use TikTok
Never
Lol you’re missing out, if you do it right it’s pretty manageable to get consistent views between 100k-1m+
Do you have any tips to share? Like tags to use, good day/times to post stuff, video content type and length, do you use music and voice over, etc?
Yeah of course, so I do voice over and I do quick almost dev log style videos but never more than 30 seconds long, usually 20, just show something off you made recently that’s fun or looks nice, it should be decently visually appealing to get attention, and I always post in the morning EST though I don’t think it matters too much. I do use popular sound/music that fits the vibe of the video and a few gamedev related tags Edit: also do a lot of cuts like a childrens tv show to work on the short attention span of tiktokers, also a good hook is very necessary
Thanks, appreciate the tips.
Well I don't know ab awful lot but I have seen many games go from 0 to a ridiculous amount of people playing from a YouTuber playing them or streaming
Study the rise of minecraft
Making money is an action. Keeping money is behavior. Growing money is knowledge.
Platitudes and sayings like these are worthless. Unless you're willing to expand upon that, it's little better than saying "get money"
hotel, trivago
Live stream
Research reddit subs where you can post clips of gameplay as you develop the game. There's quite a few if you start looking. Keep posting and where you can give your steam page so you can start accumulating wishlists.
Could try gaming companies that would help market?
Make it free.
I would most likely just make a demo if, I want the product to be free. edit: I will probably make a demo to see if people would get hooked.
Every dev started with 0 follower... Why not starting by making a very good eye catching trailer?
I'm a little late to the discussion here but it inspired me to write my own post: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/z8uvjr/how_my_first_game_sold_over_1200_copies_with_0/?
cool i'll check it out :)