• Breaking News

    Wednesday, September 23, 2020

    Home Unlabelled Custom Multiplayer for Unity

    Custom Multiplayer for Unity

    September 23, 2020

    Custom Multiplayer for Unity

    Custom Multiplayer for Unity

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 02:14 AM PDT

    The Amnesia series is now open source! This includes The Dark Descent, A Machine for Pigs, and all editor code.

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 07:05 AM PDT

    Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs source code released under GPL-3.0 license

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 07:04 AM PDT

    How is this parallax/eye relief effect made? It even increases with the zoom (like real life) (Modern Warfare 2019)

    Posted: 22 Sep 2020 05:03 PM PDT

    From dream to nightmare to free steam release, thoughts about making my first game, and why it cost me 1175 usd in total.

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 04:27 AM PDT

    8 months ago I didn't know unity and had no knowledge of how to code in Csharp, and now I have released my first game on steam. The plan was to make it a lot bigger, and to charge 10-15 usd for it, but the project became too much for me, and I finally took the decision to wrap it up with the gameplay it had, and release it for free. My main issue was that the coding was getting too complex, having to deal with online multiplayer, and that I was mainly making progress by paying another programmer to help me. The project became a bit of a nightmare, and was affecting my mood negatively.

    Link to the game by the way, Calturin and Clone available for free: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1359110/Calturin_and_Clone/

    People say you shouldn't make an online mmo, especially as your first game, but I think you shouldn't make any sort of multiplayer game as your first games. That was definitely a big mistake of mine on this project, and I think I wouldn't have made it if people advising new game devs on reddit and youtube had stressed this more. So unless you are extremely confident in your programming abilities, do not make a multiplayer game, it is a whole new world of difficulty and frustrations.

    Second I probably shouldn't have jumped out into a big project before making more small test projects, and this people do advise generally, but I didn't listen. I think however that if you really want to make something, and it is not multiplayer, just starting on it, or atleast making small parts of it, like learning how to make dialogue and then later implementing it in your game could be good.

    And I think you have to be extremely careful of relying on other people, since once you do that, I think you stop learning so much yourself, and also you can start feeling dependent on other people to be able to finish your project.

    My main goal when starting this project was to finish it, and I have done that now, even though it is a lot less ambitious than when I started out. What I want to do now going forward is to make small projects to get better at unity and programming. So I want to make a small platformer game, with just 1 level and a monster, and then maybe a tetris clone and so on, a lot of small projects before I start with a bigger project, which will definitely be singleplayer.

    Another thing I have learned is that the art is just so insanely important when promoting your game, good art pretty much sells itself. So for my next small games I will try to make the art myself, to hopefully become better at it, and it to be able to at some point make an artstyle that is decent.

    Expenses:

    Total:

    Cost for main programmer that helped me with networking and other difficult stuff: 720 usd

    Cost for trying out other programmers to help me: 100 usd

    Expanding mage sprites: 60 USD

    Cost for the main menu art: 100 usd

    Cost for shield animation: 25 usd

    Cost for various boss sprites art, many unused: 70 usd

    Cost to have it on steam: 100 usd.

    Total cost: 1175 usd

    ​

    If you have any questions about the process, or any feedback about the game, I would very much appreciate to hear it. Thanks for reading.

    submitted by /u/smidivak
    [link] [comments]

    Also we finally are ready to show you the craft! With its help Raccoon can create unique items that will help him achieve his goals, open new locations and ways, or simply make the Raccoon more stylish

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 08:54 AM PDT

    3 years of gamedev in one gif - my game completes an year on Apple Arcade today!

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 08:35 AM PDT

    How to do Facebook Ads for Kickstarter

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 09:49 AM PDT

    How to do Facebook Ads for Kickstarter

    When Dwerve originally approached me to consult with their Kickstarter's Facebook Ads, they were getting between $0.20 and $0.45 Cost-Per-Click and had no idea how to analyze their conversion rate.

    While there wasn't much time to prepare, I was able to quickly reduce the cost-per-click down to an average of 3 pennies, or $0.03. I accomplished this without click-bait copywrite, and instead used Facebook's algorithm to our advantage via best-practices and highly-relevant, compelling copywrite and creatives.

    ​

    Results of our Ad Campaign

    There are a number of parts to this ad system. I won't go into a tutorial-level of detail on how to accomplish certain basics of FB Ads, but you should be able to find those tutorials elsewhere on Google. If you are struggling getting set up with anything in particular, please leave a comment or send me an email at MattOlick3D@Gmail.com ; I am happy to help you move your project forward.

    To get a closer look at what our Kickstarter page looks like, for study purposes, you can visit Dwerve's kickstarter here:

    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/halfhumangames/dwerve-tower-defense-dungeon-crawler-rpg

    ​

    Moving forward, let's do a brief rundown of the funnel:

    1. Facebook Page
    2. The Ad
    3. Redirect URL
    4. Kickstarter Page
    5. Pledge Checkout
    6. Automated Kickstarter Messaging
    7. Survey URL or Value Offer

    The main challenge with Kickstarter is that you cannot place a pixel on the Kickstarter page itself. So you need to work around this by creating your own Redirect Pages at both the beginning and end of the customer's journey.

    Let's go over each part of the system in-depth:

    ​

    ---

    #1 Facebook Page

    ---

    You can either use your product page, or create a secondary page exclusively for Kickstarter advertisements. I do recommend the latter, for the following reason:

    We want people to know this is a Kickstarter, but we want to be subtle. The association with Kickstarter itself can be distasteful to consumers, because they know they are funding development of a product that may not materialize, rather than buying a product outright and receiving it immediately. For this reasoning, it may be more effective to clue viewers in that this is a Kickstarter via the advertiser's page name (such as "Backer Bear", or "Indie Crowdfunded Projects"), rather than putting Kickstarter's brand directly in the ad's creative or main copywrite.

    ​

    ---

    #2.1 Ad Campaign

    ---

    ​

    Graph of the Campaign Structure

    I recommend using the "Conversion Objective" when setting up your campaign in Facebook's Ad Manager. This allows us to track the number of conversions per ad inside the Ad Manager, and Facebook can optimize to serve our ads to find those most likely to convert based upon interests, page likes, and demographic.

    To have access to this campaign objective, however, we need to create and utilize both the "PageView" and "Purchase" standard events on our Facebook Pixel. Go to the Event Manager in the FB Ad Manager, and create those events.

    Another thing you must do, is set the Attribution Window for your pixel to 28 days. Navigate to the Ad Account Settings, click "Edit" under Attribution, and set the Click Window to 28 days.

    Once you have that done and set the campaign objective to "Conversions", we want to utilize some best practices for a broad campaign on Facebook:

    ​

    1. Segment our campaigns by country, continent, or otherwise region
    2. Use "Campaign Budget Optimization", which will automatically invest the budget in the best-performing Ad Sets
    3. Start out with a Campaign Budget of $5 x total number of active ads, plus some extra wiggle room
    4. Use Lowest-Cost Bidding Strategy

    ​

    Let's talk about the Ad Sets next, and best practices here to let Facebook optimize for us:

    ​

    1. Do not specify the Gender. Allow Facebook to weigh genders per Ad Set on it's own. It will do a better job internally than if you manually try to specify.
    2. Segment Ad Sets by age group: 18-24, 24-34, 34-45, etc.
    3. Do not manually specify ad placements or devices. I've always had worse results using manual placements with a broad audience. Facebook optimizes this very well internally, and will spend wisely.
    4. Set the Minimum Ad Spend per Ad Set to $5, to ensure actionable data.

    ​

    Before we move into ads, we still have to set up our Audience Targeting.

    Assuming that you have a mailing-list (if not, you should definitely have one by now, and you want at least 3000 emails), upload your mailing list and turn that into a Custom Audience, and then create a 1% Look-A-Like Audience from that custom audience. Use your 1% Look-A-Like Audience as the Ad Set audience.

    Now add the following interests to your targeting:

    • Kickstarter
    • IndieGoGo
    • Crowdfunding
    • GoFundMe

    IMPORTANT NOTE:

    Use Post-Linked IDs when duplicating your ads between age-group and country segments (There is a drop-down for "Create Ad" when creating an Ad, but you should instead select "Existing Ad"). Post-Linked IDs will retain the comments, likes, and shares between the ads which use the same creative/copywrite.

    Be sure to answer all comments that viewers write on your ads!

    ​

    ---

    #2.2 Ad Creative

    ---

    I do not recommend including the words Kickstarter on the creative, however there are certain creatives where this may make sense -- for instance, creatives where you display a collection of physical rewards (t-shirts, physical box, SNES cartridge, etc.), or even just a poster image of concept art + logo.

    There are a number of different creative formats that are pretty sure-fire ways to express your game, however every game is different so you may have some unique tricks up your personal sleeve. For instance, with Dwerve, we had a nice screenshot with a Zelda-aesthetic along with a massive closed door. A door entails curiosity. This creative worked very well with click-through rates.

    Generally speaking, these creative formats will perform good:

    • Trailer Video
    • Gameplay Video
    • 3-second GIF
    • Poster Image of Logo + Concept Art
    • Display Collection of physical rewards

    ​

    Create an ad for each of these creative types, and duplicate them for each campaign and age group. This will prevent banner-blindness and ad-fatigue, as Facebook will certainly impress your ad campaign to the same person multiple times over the course of your Kickstarter.

    Aim to drive feelings of curiosity, nostalgia, motivation, and social proof in your viewers.

    ​

    ---

    #2.3 Ad Copywrite

    ---

    A good rule of thumb is 6 words or less on the Primary Text above the creative, and 3 words or less on the Headline below the creative. While 6 words might be a tough target to hit, the point is that shorter is always better here. You may want to mask the URL by changing the Display Link text, and add a Description below the Headline.

    The patterns which we found the best results with for each text type was:

    ​

    Page Name -> "Backer Bear"

    Primary Text -> "A beautifully crafted, Zelda-inspired action RPG with Tower-Defense combat"

    Headline -> "Play the demo"

    Display Link -> "KICKSTARTER.COM"

    Description -> "FINAL CHANCE! | VIDEO GAME PROJECTS WE LOVE | Dwerve | An all-new action RPG inspired by the 16-bit era"

    CTA Button -> "Download"

    ​

    Example of our GIF ad

    ---

    #3 Redirect URL

    ---

    When people click your ad, you want to track them via the FB Pixel. Unfortunately, Kickstarter does not allow us to place a pixel on the Kickstarter page itself, so we must work around that by using a Redirect URL. You can either use a service like Pixelme.me, or your own custom branded site & solution.

    For this Redirect URL, use a Pixel script with the standard "PageView" event:

    fbq('track', 'PageView');

    And ensure that the pixel has fully loaded before redirecting, by putting the pixel script inside the HEAD region of your redirect page's DOM. You will also need to change t.async=!0 in the script to t.async=false;

    <head>

    <script>

    // FB pixel here with async false

    </script>

    ​

    <script>

    window.location.replace('https://thelinkgoeshere.com');

    <script>

    </head>

    ---

    #4, #5 Kickstarter Page and Checkout

    ---

    There isn't much to be said here regarding FB Ads, but I intend to write another article that details how to optimize your Kickstarter page for success.

    ​

    ---

    #6 Automated Kickstarter Messaging

    ---

    Kickstarter allows you to separate your messages by individual or by pledge-tier.

    The goal here is to get your backers to click a messenger link that takes them to a URL you control, which contains a Pixel with the "Purchase" standard event, segmented by their purchase value.

    There are a number of ways you can automate the Kickstarter Messaging process. One way I can recommend is using an iMacro, and you can easily have one custom developed for you by a freelancer on Fiverr for less than $50.

    As for the message contents, I recommend either pointing them to a Survey or a Value Offer.

    ---

    An example message we used for a Value Offer:

    ​

    "Hi [BACKER NAME],

    Thank you for backing [GAME NAME], it means the world to us! As a thank you, we wanted to give you one of the rewards early:

    [SURVEY URL]

    We have more cool designs planned, but figured we would send you the first one since it's done because.. why not!

    Thanks for all the support,

    [COMPANY NAME]"

    ---

    And an example message used for a Survey:

    ​

    "Hi [BACKER NAME],

    Thanks for backing our project, it means the world to us!

    We want to make the best game for our backers. You can help us immensely by filling out this super-quick survey:

    [SURVEY URL]

    The survey helps us understand:

    How you heard about us, so we know how to reach and build a strong backer community

    What you like most about our game and what can be improved, because your opinion matters to us

    Just hit the link below - it'll take less than 2 minutes:

    [SURVEY URL]

    Please note that this is not the final fulfillment survey; we will send that your way after the project ends.

    Thanks,

    [COMPANY NAME]"

    ​

    ---

    #7 Survey URL or Value Offer

    ---

    You can segment your Message and therefore the Survey URL by pledge-tier, to capture more accurate ROI and sales data for the ad from the backer.

    A good way to segment the URL without creating a new HTML page for each segment, is to attach a URL parameter with the price-tier.

    So inside the Survey URL, include the following additions to your Pixel script, and replace the value with the appropriate tier value (or a script that pulls it from the URL parameter):

    <html>

    <head>

    ​

    <!-- find t.async=!0; and change it to t.async=false; -->

    <!-- this makes sure the event fires before redirect -->

    <!-- Facebook Pixel Code -->

    <script>

    !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)

    {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?

    n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};

    if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';

    n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=false;

    t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];

    s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',

    'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');

    fbq('init', '000000000000000');

    fbq('track', 'PageView');

    ​

    // track purchase

    var queryString = window.location.search;

    console.log("queryString: " + queryString);

    var urlParams = new URLSearchParams(queryString);

    var tier = urlParams.get('tier');

    console.log("tier: " + tier);

    fbq('track', 'Purchase', { currency: "USD", value: tier });

    </script>

    ​

    <!-- another method people recommend to make sure page is fully loaded -->

    <noscript>

    <img height="1" width="1" style="display:none"

    src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=000000000000000&ev=PageView&noscript=1"/>

    </noscript>

    <!-- End Facebook Pixel Code -->

    ​

    <script>

    // perform redirect

    window.location = 'https://example.com';

    </script>

    </head>

    </html>

    ​

    Some example questions you can include on the Survey:

    • Which device(s) do you back Kickstarter projects from?
    • How did you hear about this project?
    • Very briefly, why did you decide to back this project?
    • Any suggestions on what we can do to improve our product?

    And then include a "Thank you for answering" page.

    ​

    To generate a survey, you can use Typeform.com, which allows you to insert a FB Pixel.

    If you decide to provide a value offer, I suggest leaving some mystery as to what the offer is when describing it in the automated message, which will encourage the backer to open the URL link to find out what special gift they have received. An example Value Offer might be a branded wallpaper desktop background.

    The goal here is to find the ratio of total visitors versus total backers, so we can extrapolate data about how many total backers came from ads. Not every backer will click the URL in the message, so we need to consider this.

    ​

    ---

    #8 Remarketing Ads

    ---

    The previous strategy will procure numerous cold leads for your Kickstarter. Rarely, however, will people convert into a backer on their first visit. The average consumer will be impressed by a brand somewhere between 4 and 7 times before making a purchase decision.

    Given our Pixel's PageVisit event, we can retarget people who clicked the ad. You can create a new Custom Audience from the Webpage Visitors utilizing your Pixel. I recommend atleast 5,000 PageView events before forming a custom audience for remarketing.

    Create a new ad campaign in Ad Manager, duplicate the Ad Sets from your previous campaign, and ensure that the individual ads are using post-linked versions of the previous ads to retain comments, likes, and shares. Change the audience out for the new PageView event Custom Audience.

    We don't want to spam them, so set the Campaign Budget to something more reasonable, like $5 to $10 depending upon the size of the audience. At most, we want to impress to them once every day or other day.

    The best time to retarget them would be when there is some pressure and "fear of missing out", which generally takes effect within the last 9 days of the Kickstarter campaign (single digits remaining).

    ​

    ---

    #9 Analyzing Metrics

    ---

    When a backer visits the original Redirect URL from an ad, the FB Pixel will place a cookie on the user's computer and push an event back to FB with their Facebook ID, the Link ID, and the FB Click ID (as seen in the fbclid=DATABASEHASH parameter on the URL of outbound Facebook links). Then, when this user visits the Survey/Value-Offer URL and that event is pushed back to Facebook, it will match their Facebook ID with the previous click ID & link ID and register a Purchase event for that specific ad they originally clicked or viewed.

    You can view the ROI from an ad in the Ad Manager -- if the column is not there, you can customize your columns in Ad Manager to include the ROI column.

    That being said, only roughly 20% of backers will follow through in clicking the Survey/Value-Offer URL in the automated Kickstarter message. So to truly understand our conversion rate, we need to estimate by getting the ratio of total Survey/Value-Offer URL visitors to the total number of Kickstarter backers. You can find the total number of website visitors via the Event Manager and checking the number of Purchase events. We then multiply the total ad ROI by this ratio.

    ​

    Example calculation:

    1,250 people visited the website (Purchase Events in Event Manager)

    10,000 total backers

    200 events were attributed to ads

    ​

    10,000 / 1,250 = 8

    8 * 200 = 1600 backers came from ads

    ​

    Another way to get a rough estimate of the ROI from Facebook ads is using Time-Series Data from your campaign's Kicktraq analytics and Kickstarter analytics. This is a bit challenging, because other traffic sources (such as publications, youtubers, social media, organic, etc) will be unfortunately undifferentiated alongside your ad traffic. However, later in the campaign during a low-time, you can get a general feel when there are no other types of promotions running. During a two-day period where no other promotion is running, do not run ads, and then on a second day, run your ads at your target budget. Calculate the difference in total daily pledges and project-follower counts. The first day will be your organic traffic from within Kickstarter itself, and the second day will give you a clue on how well ads are performing.

    It is worth noting that roughly 10% to 20% of followers will turn into pledges by the end of a Kickstarter campaign. I would include that estimate in your ROI.

    ​

    ---

    Closing Thoughts

    ---

    If you are struggling getting set up with anything in particular, please leave a comment or send me an email at [MattOlick3D@Gmail.com](mailto:MattOlick3D@Gmail.com) ; I am happy to help you move your project forward.

    To get a closer look at what our Kickstarter page looks like, for study purposes, you can visit Dwerve's kickstarter here:

    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/halfhumangames/dwerve-tower-defense-dungeon-crawler-rpg

    ​

    In a follow-up article, I plan on going into more details of other marketing methods to increase performance of your Kickstarter campaign.

    I hope you find this case study helpful, let me know what you think!

    submitted by /u/Zephir62
    [link] [comments]

    How I Built a Pseudo-3D Racing Game in only 13kb of file size for the js13k game jam

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 08:13 AM PDT

    How is it even possible to hack games that reside on a server?

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 07:16 AM PDT

    To clarify, I'm not asking for a how to or tutorial or anything like that, just a top level overview out of curiosity.

    Some things make sense like aimbots and things that reside on the person's computer.

    I imagine that machine learning can help with things like "Ok, this person has a K/D ratio of .5 and they are sniping everyone on the first shot. Something is fishy."

    But for games like Fall Guys where you see people hover above ground or change their size, how does that work?

    I imagine this is an oversimplification but I would think it would be as simple as ensuring someone's sprite can't travel above a certain velocity or go above a certain altitude.

    However, it's obviously easier said than done so I was just wondering what I'm missing.

    submitted by /u/ToS63
    [link] [comments]

    Free 60+ simple pixelated buttons game.

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 04:24 AM PDT

    I created pixelated buttons. Those are free to use for commercial project also. If you need more icons, just comment and i will add others also.

    https://yusastudios.itch.io/pixelated-buttons

    submitted by /u/luxysaugat
    [link] [comments]

    Voidspeed Outlaw steam page posted 2 weeks ago. Minimal effort/time marketing. Here are wishlists, post etc stats so far

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 08:59 AM PDT

    Voidspeed Outlaw steam page posted 2 weeks ago. Minimal effort/time marketing. Here are wishlists, post etc stats so far

    Voidspeed Outlaw Marketing Stats and what I've done so far

    I always love when other devs share wishlist and other marketing stats. It helps me figure out what is going on with my own stuff much better, what to expect etc. Especially if it's a combo of things like not only showing wishlists but also where they came from directly. So I'm here to return the favor:

    I posted my page for my pseudo-3D racing game Voidspeed Outlaw on steam as coming soon about 2 weeks ago.

    ​

    Voidspeed Outlaw

    Stats so far:

    Altogether 403 wishlists in 17 days.

    Wishlist chart spiky boy

    Page visits wise it's practically all from posts that I've personally made (and a few the artist did), or that a few journalists have posted. Traffic within steam is practically non-existent.

    It's a two-person team currently and neither of us are working on the game full time yet. Which means I'm doing the marketing right now but have extremely limited time resources for it. I've set a specific goal of reaching 2000 wishlists with my work by March-April 2021 and am tracking progress towards that. By then or sometime before that I will try to either up that trend to 5000 myself through paid marketing or find a publisher for that.

    Breakdown of what I did and what result it had:

    Feel free to skip to conclusions if you don't want the step by step break-down.

    5. September

    Posted the steam page.

    Posted two tweets with flashy gifs and steam page links of the game as an announcement of the game. I messed up the first one in the excitement and forgot to add any hashtags. In any case I have an ok twitter following (4400 followers, https://twitter.com/GamesbyMiLu ) and the gifs I use have previously moved quite well. So so did these tweets. The first tweet has amassed so far 135 retweets and 354 likes and 23k impressions.The surprising (to me) part here though is that even at such high visibility numbers and engagement through likes and retweets the number of actual steam page link clicks is still only 123.

    Top tweet stats

    The second tweet did a bit lower at 51 retweets, 121 likes, 8.7k impressions, 41 link clicks.

    (these are stats right now, they were about 60% of that amount the end of the first day).

    If I compare these to steam page visits then I can see about the same amount of visits again from people searching for the game directly on steam (I know the source is still these tweets since I literally only made these 2 tweets and told a couple of friends about the page posting).

    Results: 106 new wishlists

    6. September

    Posted an announcement gif and steam link on the facebook group "Indie Game Promo". Did various smaller things like retweeted my announcements from the previous day etc. The facebook post got 180 likes and 4 shares.

    Results: 41 new wishlists

    7. September

    Posted a small funny gif of editing the trailer on facebook group GameDev Show and Test. This was really more so since I thought it was fun, I wasn't really expecting much or anything here. Posted the same on twitter. Posted another small tweet of "Hey look here's my new game" (4k impressions). Much less direct marketing here.

    https://twitter.com/GamesbyMiLu/status/1302943872520159232/photo/1

    I believe some of the results on this day were from overflow/late comers from the previous 2 days work.

    Results: 34 new wishlists

    8. September

    No marketing action. Didn't even mention the game anywhere. Was too busy programming, but also kind of wanted to see how low it dips if I do nothing.

    Results: 8 new wishlists

    9. September

    I took a bit of time to send out an actual proper press release about the game announcement to www.gamespress.com (check their site on how to do it). It took a bit of time to figure out the formatting and what is going on, but I'd rate this as a very good low bang for your buck action for specific major announcements. Surprisingly/Luckily there are journalists who open these and read them (even for unknown studios and games).

    Gamasutra also automatically reblogs it: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/pressreleases/369785/Retrofuturistic_pseudo3D_racer_Voidspeed_Outlaw_announced_and_trailer_released.php

    I got a couple of small game news sites and places to mention the game directly from this press release already this day. I also sent out a tweet which did ok (6k impressions). Most of the wishlists are probably from the journalist mentions though.

    Results: 25 new wishlists

    10. September

    Got an article from Gamespark japan though from the previous days press release which was great https://www.gamespark.jp/article/2020/09/10/102041.html . A few other smaller articles as well. Results wise I'd say it seems like most of the wishlists this day are from gamespark though. But I'm of course super grateful for every journalist who mentioned it!

    Results: 21 new wishlists.

    11. September

    Actually took a few hours of time to do some marketing sleuthing. I was running out of places to post. Looked for forums for my genre(s), subreddits and facebook groups.

    Reddit wise I found a couple good resources:

    Good place for different genre subreddits: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/wiki/faq#wiki_genres

    Good thread here: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/8zwmio/how_to_post_about_your_game_without_being_flamed/

    I fail at the self promo rule for most subreddits though (I post 100s of comments, very few full posts), so my reach with this account is limited. I ended up finding 1 facebook group though "Retro Indie Pixel Game" and a good subreddit r/indiegaming. Posted in both.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieGaming/comments/iqqvbf/fzero_esque_pseudo_3d_racer_that_im_developing/

    The facebook post amassed 106 likes. Reddit post got 700 upvotes. Seemed like putting in the actual work time paid off. Seems like most probably a bigger chunk of the results were from the reddit post though.

    Results: 63 new wishlists

    12. – 20. September

    Not much direct marketing work. Got super busy with code/other work, not willing to work on a weekend due to work-life balance sanity reasons, etc. I posted random in dev gifs on twitter while I was working a couple days.

    Results: Lowest amount 2 wishlists per day, Highest at 18. Lowest was when no posts for 2 days, highest was when I posted WIP gifs.

    21. September

    Took some actual time again to balance previous week of no action. Found more subreddits to post to (r/indiedev), figured out how to post to imgur, did another facebook post (game maker studio community). The indiedev post got 500 upvotes, game maker community post got 70 likes. Imgur was mostly a dud.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieDev/comments/iwxlw5/currently_developing_a_fzero_and_wipeout_inspired/

    Results: 34 new wishlists.

    ​

    Art break

    Conclusions I've drawn:

    1. Overall a single tweet, facebook or reddit post even if it looks relatively impressive (500 favourites, 120 retweets, 700 upvotes etc) nets less actual action than I'd expect personally.

    This has made me look at the tweets and posts I see at like 5k favourites/likes from other games a bit differently. It's great, but you still even at that level need a bunch of them.

    If I tweet out a solid tweet with a flashy gif then the amount of retweets is approximately comparable to the amount of actual page visits I get – page visits are 1.5x-2x the number of retweets. Half are direct link clicks, the rest are people going on steam and writing in the name of the game directly. This amount is surprising (and a bit lower than I thought) to me.

    Luckily since the gifs usually show a lot of the game already though then a high percentage of these page clicks seem to turn to wishlists directly (about half off the top of my head).

    2. Gathering wishlists is 100% up to me for the foreseeable future.

    I need to keep posting. Steam gives almost no pageviews at all at these scales.

    Maybe this is due to the algorithm also factoring in my previous game (which is showing it's age in sales), or maybe it's just standard by now. I'm still figuring that part out. In any case the days I did basically 0 posting anywhere got added wishlists at maximum 9 (which was probably leftovers from a previous day) and at minimum a super low unsustainable 2.

    3. Luckily though there are relatively low effort places to post and get ok results.

    r/indiegaming, r/indiedev, facebook Indie Game Promo, sending a press release to gamespress.com etc. Most of the time is spent finding these places, not actually posting there, which is also good since if I generate new content to post once found these places can be reused.

    4. I seem to be on track (when comparing to my previous games stats + other stats I have access to) to hit 2000 wishlists by march or april 2021.

    + This is good, because it basically says that the game is worth it to create for me at the current level or resource investment.+ This is especially good because it's only factoring in stuff that I'm doing currently. It's not factoring in possible bigger media interest later, hiring a marketer, compounding interest over time, releasing a demo and a surge of wishlists from youtubers playing it (most of the wishlists for my previous game came from there) etc. Basically there's a big possibility of raising the ceiling here quite well since I haven't really done much yet.+ This is bad though because it's also quite a grind so far. I'm personally generating every single wishlist and page view. While also programming the game, doing art for it etc all this not full time. I'll have to check sustainability a month or two down the line and maybe get a marketer earlier depending on how tired I get and if the trend goes up or down.

    I can do another post a bit down the line on how I made it to the 2000 wishlists are enough for me conclusion, how I'm tracking progress towards that etc.

    (This was mostly copied + edited a bit from where I originally posted it here: http://cydonian.games/development/voidspeed-marketing-stats-1/)

    Hope these stats and conclusions are helpful to you on your own journeys! If you enjoyed the post and like the game itself then please consider wishlisting and following on steam. Much luck to you all with your own games!

    submitted by /u/Kosh_Ascadian
    [link] [comments]

    What is your motivation?

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 02:24 AM PDT

    If you make games, what is your motivation? Deeper than mere income or status, there is always a true intent. Considering the way things are as they are today, everyone is seeking something higher, perhaps even from themselves. It is many games today, which tumble under their owners' or publishers' desire for riches. So, do you?

    submitted by /u/kairature888
    [link] [comments]

    After quick math, is it worth ($$$) making indie games for a living?

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 09:35 AM PDT

    I am a developer working in the video game industry as an employee for almost 20 years. And I'm playing with the idea of indie game development for a while. So, I did a quick math with "realistic" estimations/expectations:

    I wrote a game design document for a small PC game to self-publish on steam and did the breakdown of the tasks and estimated a full-year work to do all the code/art assets/balancing/debugging/marketing materials and publishing.

    If I develop the game and release it on steam for 10USD, and some people like my game and I manage to sell 10K copies, it means 100K gross revenue!

    Then the part where I lose most of that money:

    1. Steam's 30% cut: I have left 70K

    2. VAT/sales tax: I expect to lose here 8.5% (the 8.5% is from this article: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SimonCarless/20200817/368366/Game_refunds__the_hidden_costs_of_getting_to_net_on_Steam.php
      I have left 61.5K

    3. Withholding tax: 30%
      I have left 31.5K

    4. Transaction fees: ~3%... 28.5K left…

    5. Personal income tax in my country 20%

    In the end I would earn around 23% net… or 23K USD, for a year work.
    Of course, If I release a good game and let's say I sell 100K units, I would earn 230K USD net from 1 million USD gross revenue, but I still find this somehow demotivating and super risky.

    Is there anything wrong with my math? Or am I too greedy and should be happy with the 23% net?

    submitted by /u/JaqDraco
    [link] [comments]

    How should I be correctly prioritising my workload as a solo dev?

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 04:37 AM PDT

    I think we've all been there; started a new project, loads of amazing ideas and everything planned out on paper, but you're at the bottom of the mountain looking up to the end goal and not sure what is the best route up that mountain?

    I'm in a position where I'm about half way up that mountain on a current project and keep getting distracted by relatively meaningless stuff - "it'd be cool if I added an effect there" or "the angle of that light isn't quite right"...

    Simply put, how can I, and other solo devs stay focused on meaningful work within a project, and what order should we be focusing on particular aspects of the game?

    submitted by /u/Aurillia01
    [link] [comments]

    Designing a protagonist for a game I’m working on. Which one of them stands out most? And is there anything I could add to improve them?

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 12:00 PM PDT

    I made a free Low Poly Modular Medieval Dungeon Asset Pack. Link in comment

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 11:59 AM PDT

    Working on a new intro animation for Kick Bot, what do you think?

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 11:58 AM PDT

    Pixelated number buttons for level selection menu.

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 11:43 AM PDT

    After pixelated icons, this pack includes number buttons. Perfect for level selection menu. It includes 3 states: Disabled, Idle and pressed. Its free to use for commercial project with/without credit.
    https://yusastudios.itch.io/pixelated-level-buttons

    submitted by /u/luxysaugat
    [link] [comments]

    "Super Smash Box" (concept fan-montage by me)

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 11:00 AM PDT

    Looking for a parralax mapper (Several commission jobs on long-term basis)

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 10:37 AM PDT

    Hello everyone,

    My name is GrimarHorns, I'm developping an adult game on RPG Maker MV. I'm looking for a parralax mapper/pixel artist to make my game's maps. This is a long-term relationship that I want as friendly and professionnal as possible. I worked with a previous artist but he's too swamped on his day job to work with me again.

    I have very simple conditions : - I always pay 100% upfront (even for the first work) to show my trust to the artists I work with. - I always negotiate a bulk discount, I'm going to ask a lot of work from you so according to your prices I might ask for a discount that'll apply for every commission job (Won't apply for the first work tho', again I want a good collaboration). - I'm very friendly and try to be as sympathetic and detailed as possible in my demands. You and I will edit a contract for each commission job, I already have a template you and I will confirm or edit if you think it's necessary. - I don't think I'll impose any deadline whatsoever, and if I did I'd gladly pay extra for the trouble.

    ° You can expect a map every 40ish days in the future, at first, I'm in need for 4-5 maps, so we might have the first 2 months of our collaboration already filled. ° I'm looking for someone asap. ° The only thing I may be asking is reactivity on your socials. I just need to have answers to my messages, it sucks to be ghosted for weeks. ° I really am genuinely nice, I love to chat about anything with the artists I work with. (I currently work with 3, one for CGs, one for spritesheets, one for musics) The artists I commission are with me for over 2 years for most of them and we always had very cool professional vibe. I'm really looking for cool talented people.

    If you're interested, PM me on Discord so we can chat about the details : GrimarHorns#4003 There, send me pictures of your previous works on RPG Maker and what is your hourly rate.

    Thanks a lot for reading me, I hope to see you guys soon.

    • Grimar out.
    submitted by /u/GrimarHorns
    [link] [comments]

    First Combat Prototype. First AI. And finally, First Win! Could this be turned into something fun?

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 10:34 AM PDT

    How Would I Go About Setting Up NDAs?

    Posted: 23 Sep 2020 06:16 AM PDT

    I'm looking to start up a game development studio and I'd like to get people to play test games before launch. How would I go about writing an NDA(Non-Disclose Agreement) for play testers?

    Thanks

    submitted by /u/SquallySubset43
    [link] [comments]
    Read more
    at

    No comments:

    Post a Comment