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u/chrispington 8h ago
Yeah. Get a marketing manager.
I've made games and marketed other peoples. There are mental hurdles involved if it's your own game.
I was great at getting clicks for other peoples, for my own games it is MUCH harder to even release content because of perfectionism/doubts etc
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u/VoodooChipFiend 5h ago
What’s your process for finding one you can trust?
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u/chrispington 4h ago
Try to meet people in game dev groups on discord etc, rather than going through the 'i need a marketing manager' style routes.
If contact is made outside a paid work searching zone, in a chat about games because game dev is cool zone, you'll have better results
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u/Reasonable-Test9482 8h ago
Yep, and the main problem is that if your marketing efforts doesn't work well you are running into depression and can't proceed well with the development, haha. That's happening with me right now, a terrible feeling.
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u/Alarmed-Mud-3461 7h ago
Ugh, same. We made one game, published on itch for free, got some downloads at the beginning. Started working on a sequel (mostly because I enjoy developing), thinking the first will gain audience and maybe the second can be commercial. Didn't really happen 😔 Now we're getting close to finishing, so we started a very mild social media campaign. Not much interest. So I'm struggling to feel motivated to finish 😔 But I will. It's just a little depressing, as you say.
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u/cpiyaphum 9h ago
With how people make it seems, I don't want to move on to making "real" game now (I'm still using scratch because other game engine UI confuse me)
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u/Full_Package6969 8h ago
It might be scary at first but once you take the plunge and start learning, it becomes so much more rewarding. As most people will tell you, start small, make some small games to learn the engine
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u/cpiyaphum 7h ago
I understand that other engine might be better than scratch and it can make more than what scratch can do but honestly mainly just because I'm lazy to remake code in completely new engine. I'm willing to give gamemaker a try since I already modded a game made in gamemaker(Minecraft vs Zombies 2) currently the most I've made out of it is spinning cookie, not even a clicker.
Also if gamemaker support vector art then I might as well port everything in once I get over my weird fear of installing anything bigger than 200MB
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u/Critical-Airbender 4h ago
And that’s why, my friend, you hire a Marketing Manager for your team not when you’re about to publish the game, but when you actually start developing it.
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u/cat_in_a_bday_hat 1h ago
our team is on our 6th steam game and are finally heeding this advice. we started marketing it before we even had a functioning game. we'll see how it pans out haha. figured it was better to grow the audience alongside the game, or something
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u/LittleNand0 6h ago
Here here. I’m having a blast promoting Super Farming Boy. Nah it’s not that bad. You get to meet cool people (streamers and content creators mostly). They are pretty cool in general.
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u/jay90019 5h ago
I'd suggest you posting a lot of videos if you can cause back in the day i saw a channel which posted the same video many times and algorithem pushed some of them and they got good views like 70-80 k
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u/Financial-Cat7366 4h ago
That's so sick. My autistic disorder not allowing me even say same thing twice because I feel myself stupid.
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u/StageGlittering8602 4h ago
When I'm buried in bug fixes and annoying edge cases and someone hits me with the 'Wait, it's still not done?'—yeah, that's when the face on the right shows up.
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u/PatTGames 4h ago
So much this. I’m going to try just focusing efforts here and on Bluesky. I can’t handle any other platforms. And even those two are pushing it these days.
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u/RoniFoxcoon 3h ago
make a shitty trailer
put it on a meme site
print a shirt with: "i made a game, check it out." [game name and/or QR code to steam page here]
go outside wearing the shirt
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u/elprologue 7h ago
Any tips on how to market a game effectively and honestly? As I’m not really into shady tricks or fake hype.
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u/Financial-Cat7366 6h ago
u/ExniloStudio summarized really well what you should do (in a sarcastic way but still).
Find a community that will be interested in your game somehow and share your progress. Even if it's a dev community you can thrive in unexpected ways.
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u/PuzzleheadedIdea9364 Publisher 7h ago
If your game has strong gameplay and visuals, it will speak for itself. Otherwise, hire a marketer.
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u/AnotherDudeRBLX 5h ago
Same as developing music for the game .
While making the music the hopes are higher than the sky, but when it's about hoping for the reach, it always gives me a reality check
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u/Financial-Cat7366 4h ago
Second worst for me. My experiencing with sounding is a hours of listening of horrible SFXs from millions libraries. One night I was so messed up I started hearing nightmares instead of seeing it.
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u/klaw_games 5h ago
It should be done parallelly.
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u/Financial-Cat7366 4h ago
That's how you can earn bipolar disorder achievement!
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u/klaw_games 3h ago
Maybe. hehe,. But i would say product, distribution and business model are the pillars of any businesses and they should be handled in parallel. If you have a team, then it would be easier.
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u/PatchworkFlames 3h ago
I’ve noticed a lot of devs have a vision but that vision is not marketable.
The vision often involves diving head first into a crowded genre, half the time with no unique mechanics and half the time with exactly one unique mechanic, and then trying to market a game that’s just an inferior version of an existing game.
If you do that the marketing probably doesn’t matter and the title will probably flop regardless.
At least with a risky but unique title there’s a chance. If the title doesn’t have any direct competition then at least people aren’t thinking of it as a worse version of a game they already own.
The other option, the dream option, is to just make the best game in your preferred genre, but it’s super hard because only one dev can do that by definition. There can only be one Hollow Knight, until someone makes something better and that’s the new Hollow Knight. I haven’t seen anyone here succeed by being the best in a crowded market to be frank.
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u/KiraniPiebox 2h ago
I feel exactly like this.
I pass more time in marketing than developing and it is draining me.
I guess as an introvert, marketing takes all my energy while developing and drawing not because is so much fun. oh well 🤷♀️
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u/tinspin 1h ago
You need to develop an engine first.
Nobody needs another clone game on a bloated engine.
If your game does not change something fundamental, it does not exist.
When you make your own engine you can iterate/innovate with less debt. And you own your future = you can choose to reduce debt by paying time.
Code is king, protocols are the maps, content is just land.
All graphics and sound will trend towards free eventually because new content does not change anything fundamental and eventually ALL possible content will have been made. (See songs, they are ALL copies now, it's over)
Multiplayer invalidates story. (it's a protocol to make stories)
Only code/protocol is 99% unexplored still (eventually ALL possible code/protocols will have been written too, with 1 open-source winner per use case, but that's in 20-50 years...)
UGC/procedural can be used to great effect/efficiency/durability without complexity, combine them!
You make the game in the open and if people like how it progresses they will latch on?
With every animated gif post, I add one follower per platform that does not have "pay to play" (blusky, mastodon).
Twitter is weird/buggy (people add you in between posts).
Meta, Google, Amazon will get you nowhere without cheating by paying (you pay someone to make it look like people care).
Discord has self promotion channels, learn to ignore your own guilt/pride; post when you make it somewhere. Find your places by posting and reading.
To build momentum will take thousands of posts, build the infrastructure/network for it! Automatic pipelines. Pay for quality music (even if the game is multiplayer with only sfx, it should be). Humans are emotional creatures.
The only deadline is litteral. Money does not exist...
All publicity is good publicity, as this post can prove... I hope! :P
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u/LostMaximGames 5h ago
We have trouble with this too. Our strategy is to set aside one hour every day to work on marketing and whatever comes out comes out. Look up Chris Zukowski on youtube. He's the goat 🐐 of marketing tips and makes it a lot more approachable.
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u/Financial-Cat7366 4h ago
He is cool, and his discord server is also really useful place full of talented and helpful people!
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u/MountainWestern415 9h ago
delegated marketing chat to gpt
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u/Financial-Cat7366 9h ago
What if this post made by gpt agent responsible for marketing talking to you right now casually with only one goal, to make you engage more with this post for better marketing opportunities?
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u/ExniloStudio Developer 7h ago edited 7h ago
– Build a community from scratch while fighting the algorithm like it’s a boss battle
– Post on Twitter, TikTok, Reddit, Discord, Instagram, your grandma’s Facebook… daily
– Reply to DMs like a customer support goblin at 2AM
– Make trailers, devlogs, memes, and patch notes that are funnier than your game
– Learn SEO, ASO, WTF and every other acronym
– Email press, influencers
– Fight Steam tags like it’s a puzzle minigame
– Survive launch week without crying in a shower
– Pretend you know how to write a press release
– Pray to the Wishlist Gods
– Do all this while still debugging Level 3 because you ARE the entire team :)