5 Marketing lessons I learned releasing my first commercial indie game |
- 5 Marketing lessons I learned releasing my first commercial indie game
- A handy guide for pitching publishers from the people over at Chucklefish
- Is it normal to get spammed emails from streamers asking for review copies once the game is published on Steam?
- Double-check agents/scouts when talking about your game //rant
- Joining AAA studio with work experience or good course with good grades?
- Fake game dev studios!
- Smithsonian Open Access -- A Gold Mine For Game Developers
- Game
- How well is WebGL content from Unity working on peoples computers?
- If you enjoy creating sounds for your games, I put together an easy to follow tutorial on how I tackle sound design, specifically a gun shot.
- This is how much money I made from my mobile game and things that I learned along the way.
- Casual Online Games Testing
- Do games that use non-original assets and stuff get places?
- There is almost no difference between fake MLM gurus and some indie dev channels.
- Looking for Feedback? This Game Jam is for You.
- Convert between aviation coordinated to unity coordinates in Quaternions
- How to make a game on an phone
- Looking for successful racing game kickstarters.
- Are this specs good?
- 2d platformer as School project ?
- How Mario Kart Wii's checkpoints are implemented
- Alternatives in Game Dev
| 5 Marketing lessons I learned releasing my first commercial indie game Posted: 14 Jan 2021 04:16 AM PST Ok so the title might not be 100% correct since I'm pressing the release button tomorrow morning, but I have learned so much already that I'd love to share. As most indie devs will know marketing is a big factor in making your game succeed. But avoiding getting buried in that daily release avalanche comes with planning and knowledge. I have learned this the hard way. My wishlist count is horribly low compared to the revered 5K. But hey, my goal with my first title wasn't to earn big bucks, my goal was to release something made from scratch onto Steam. I learned a lot in the process by doing it wrong, so here's what you should do right: - Don't start marketing before you have a place to gather interest. My take on marketing was that I should start doing it as soon as I had something to share. This was only half true. I discovered there are a couple more factors in play: People must be able to register their interest (wishlist/newsletter), a release date should be not too far away, and what you're sharing should actually matter to the audience. I started showing my game when I just had basic physics and collision detection in place, not very interesting for gamers. And while other devs were interested, they had no place to wishlist my game or subscribe. People who did show interest back then probably left later, because these posts were made more than 2 years ago. Make sure your game page/website is in order so your posts won't get attention that you cannot direct the right way. - Plan out a marketing campaign Marketing is not just posting about your game everywhere. Marketing is also finding the right people and places where your info will be appreciated. Plan out time to actually do market research. Find out which games are similar to yours and how people found out about them. Where do those players go to find their gems? Those are the places you need to get your info posted. Also think about the elements of your game and how they could interest others. Physics, artstyle, engine, theme, these are all game elements that could interest others specifically. Write actual content like articles explaining how you did things, and post it where people want to read about that kind stuff. I did this way too little. I just posted a lot of gifs that I thought would be fun on all social media, but this generated very little interest. - Get high quality game page art soon This is one I only learned a few days before launch. I thought showing some game sprites, a title and a background would be enough for the game pages. I couldn't be more wrong. As soon as I uploaded more professional art my Steam page view count doubled. I heard the Steam capsule art is the most important for your page, and now I've seen that this is true. If I would have had this art up from the beginning, I could have probably doubled, maybe tripled the attention the game got. My advice: Get some concept art as soon as you have solidified your game idea and you want to put up a game page. Launch your game page with that awesome art, and getting attention will become much easier. Of course this is something budget related. I myself could spare around 70 bucks for some art, so I spent about 55 for concept art and 15 for a logo. - Run a Discord if you are able to This is one that I actually did do, and it was great. People who join your Discord are basically subscribing to a newletter on steroids. You can update them regularly or even organize games or events to keep them interested. Some will even regularly tell you some ideas or help you with testing, it's awesome. A lot of invaluable input for my game came from Discord members. - If possible, do a demo This doesn't fit all games, but if you could, you should. My demo helped me a lot with finding bugs, improving gameplay and testing concepts. Especially in combination with the Discord server my demo was also a huge help in futher developing the game and reassuring me that I have a stable product. Wether you should have a closed or open demo is up to you. I personally opened up my demo by putting it on Steam, but it didn't really increase attention for my game. I'm going to take it off before release, since I think having both a demo and a full version doesn't help with sales. But that's my own opinion, for which I don't have data to back up. Those were the main things I learned, looking back. Hopefully they help you in some kind of way, or at least give some insight to my experience. [link] [comments]  | ||
| A handy guide for pitching publishers from the people over at Chucklefish Posted: 14 Jan 2021 09:50 AM PST
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| Posted: 14 Jan 2021 12:25 AM PST Might be a silly question since it seems like a normal occurence and I have no base audience, but it's my first release on Steam and I thought I'd ask anyway to verify. I'm more curious if these are bots or scammers masquerading as other channels. While some seem to be active, other channels seem to have been dead for a couple years. I went ahead and followed them just in case one comes online and I can ask. If they turn out to be legitimate people then cool, but naturally I'd hate to give out free keys just for them to be sold elsewhere. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Double-check agents/scouts when talking about your game //rant Posted: 14 Jan 2021 02:25 AM PST I am a smalltimer. And in a small genre of games - adventures. I think the main reason why I am making this post is because I am still a bit angry that I had to butcher my free day for this :) You probably know, there are investment agents out there - they kind of review your game and, upon agreement, they try to get funding for it. Essentially they work for their cut, that you afterwards pay upon recoup. The largest number I heard was 30% [they get you 100k of funding, but take 30k of it; basically you get a nice mark-up to pay in the end]. But 30% is a total BS and I won't mention any names here [especially it seems they're out of business already, hah]
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| Joining AAA studio with work experience or good course with good grades? Posted: 14 Jan 2021 06:22 AM PST Hi, in 2019 I moved from my home country and enrolled in a game development course with the objective of joining the gaming industry as a programmer, this course is at Abertay University, and by what I researched before joining, it was one of the most recognized courses in the industry. So my plan was to finish the course with good grades, a good portfolio and right after join any AAA studio. As we all know, plans never go as planned, especially when you are living under tight lockdown rules. So, a few days ago, I sent my current CV, (very poor, only with the course I'm making and a few uni projects) and I was offered to a position at Miniclip back in my home country. Keeping up with uni wouldn't be a problem, I would probably just not be able to work on my portfolio or get as good grades. My final objective is still the same, join a AAA game studio, my question is, given this dilemma, is it easier to join a good studio with a recognized games course and good grades, or 2 years of experience at Miniclip, a recognized course and average/low grades? Also finishing the course would be difficult from home, everything is done online. Another factor would be leaving all the furniture behind. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 14 Jan 2021 03:38 AM PST Hi! Edit: I think this post created some unnecessary drama, so I just explain that from what we all find out it is just a group of beginners. While procrastinating and sitting on r/gamedev discord I stumbled across some strange stuff. There are at least three fake "game dev studios" advertising recruitment: Dojon studios, Planet blank dev team, and Graybird studio. There are no registered companies or organizations no websites no contracts. When you join their servers quickly you will find out that they don't have an idea of what they are doing. No info on what games they made, what they want to make. They don't understand simple industry terms (you can find some funny stuff). I don't think it's dangerous for anyone. I just don't understand why?! and now I want to know! Are they role-playing game studio? are they kids who want to make a dream game? are they trying to scam someone? is someone getting finessed? What is going on? Please someone tell me? I'm just trying to do some detective work :D Is there a scam to do? What they always try to do is try to recruit 3D artists. Do they want to still peoples models and then sell them in some package? Is that something people do? Again I don't think it's dangerous or evil most likely some kids having fun. I just need to know! [link] [comments]  | ||
| Smithsonian Open Access -- A Gold Mine For Game Developers Posted: 14 Jan 2021 04:22 AM PST
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| Posted: 14 Jan 2021 11:38 AM PST When you guys create a mobile version do you make the changes in your main file or do you guys do it in a copied/seperate project file exclusive for the platform? What's the appropriate way to do this? [link] [comments]  | ||
| How well is WebGL content from Unity working on peoples computers? Posted: 14 Jan 2021 04:29 AM PST Hi, Thanks for reading! [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 14 Jan 2021 12:11 PM PST
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| This is how much money I made from my mobile game and things that I learned along the way. Posted: 14 Jan 2021 12:07 PM PST
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| Posted: 14 Jan 2021 06:07 AM PST Hello! I was wondering if anyone here knows of any companies currently looking for people to volunteer their time for testing/providing feedback for games, I am only looking to do this casually and don't expect any payment, I really just want to build up some of my experience. Specifically it would also have to be an online opportunity. Thank you in advance :) [link] [comments]  | ||
| Do games that use non-original assets and stuff get places? Posted: 14 Jan 2021 11:50 AM PST I'm purely a consumer with a curiosity. I was browsing epic games store's unreal engine category, and saw you could buy a bunch of assets and models and stuff. I was wondering if games with these ever make it far, and if there are any examples? Not talking exclusively about unreal stuff, keep in mind. [link] [comments]  | ||
| There is almost no difference between fake MLM gurus and some indie dev channels. Posted: 14 Jan 2021 11:49 AM PST
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| Looking for Feedback? This Game Jam is for You. Posted: 14 Jan 2021 11:35 AM PST
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| Convert between aviation coordinated to unity coordinates in Quaternions Posted: 14 Jan 2021 11:28 AM PST I'm working on this problem of mirroring a plane rotation into unity coordinates. I'm receiving the plane rotation in quaternions but as you can see from the image, Aviation uses different rotation. How can I convert that to unity quaternion? Thank you [link] [comments]  | ||
| How to make a game on an phone Posted: 14 Jan 2021 11:15 AM PST I want to make game on phone because i always wanted to do that and now i think its time sk what apps to use to make an game on phone and is it possible? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Looking for successful racing game kickstarters. Posted: 14 Jan 2021 11:03 AM PST I'm doing some research currently on whether or not I'd like to do the kickstarter route for an arcade racing projects. I'm trying to build a network I can reach out to for advice and feedback during the project, and so I want to find some successfully backed projects. I could really use the help from the community on this one. Thank you! [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 14 Jan 2021 10:44 AM PST So, i'm trying to get into game development but my pc can't handle it, so i wanted do do a upgrade, but i'm not sure if the parts that i selected are good, so before i buy things that wont serve for anything, i wanted to make sure they're ok. i'm going to maintain my 120gb ssd ( for the os and other stuff) My 1tb hd (for heavier stuff) my 600w power supply, and my case. and i'm thinking of buying a Ryzen 5 1600, a gigabyte ga-a320m-s2h (My old one isn't am4), one 2666mhz 8gb ram stick (i will upgrade to 2 in the future) and a radeon rx 550 with 4gb of gddr5 (also temporary as the cpu doesn't have integrated grafics) do you think it's up to the task? Please tell me. [link] [comments]  | ||
| 2d platformer as School project ? Posted: 14 Jan 2021 10:43 AM PST I have a 6 Mont long school project and thought I should try to develop a fairly simple 2d platformer for Smartphones. I'm a beginner to programming and wanted to ask if this is achieveable in this time period. Thanks [link] [comments]  | ||
| How Mario Kart Wii's checkpoints are implemented Posted: 14 Jan 2021 10:37 AM PST
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| Posted: 14 Jan 2021 10:32 AM PST Sorry if I'm not asking the question properly. I know of the well known applications like Unity, Unreal, Blender, Maya, and Houdini in game dev. What are some of the other applications out there, that aren't as recognized in game development? I've just recently heard of Vue and a few World Creators. Is there anything else out there that is gaining ground? [link] [comments]  |
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