Growth Tips for a game developer?
Hey everyone
I've got a game on Steam that makes just about enough to live on at the moment, I've got a small loyal following of a 1500ish people on reddit, and additionally a patreon making around $75 per month from really loyal fans. The game is still in Early Access pending release probably within the next year but thus far has sold around 17000 copies in it's lifetime.
I don't have money for a big fancy marketing budget but thus far have found a bit of graft through the internet being just as valuable, the main goal is getting as many people who would be interested to the store page as it's digital sales and steam could handle the footfall be it 100 or 100k visitors.
My question is, and this extends beyond fellow game devs, can any of you think of any ideas at all that one might achieve getting more attention for a game, drawing more people in, through the internet or beyond?
Any ideas no matter how out of the box are valuable, I'm willing to try everything (ethical) I can to keep growing.
Cheers
The more specific you can be about the game, the easier it'll be to give advice. Otherwise you'll get general advice that might or might not apply to you.
Here's my general advice:
Figure out how you're getting your current customers. Is it through another game's fans (ie. People who like that game also like your game?) Is it via posts on that subreddit? Is it via Steam lists?)
Take what you figured out in step 1, and figure out how you can 2x, 10x, and 100x it.
Example scenario: people who like X game all seem to love your game.
2x: go to game forums for that game, and figure out ways to promote your game. Maybe make small posts about it and track how many customers you get via each channel
10x: find every blogger, streamer, and whoever has access to fans for that game, then ask for an article about your game
100x: purchase ads targeted to players of that game, get to a positive ROI on your ads, then dump a ton of money into it. Twitch ads, YouTube ads, etc
Hey YJ,
Thank you for the advice, it's the 2x and 10x level are where I'm at currently, I have somewhat of an issue finding games completely like mine as it's USP is being quite different to other stuff, I have reached out to all modern (last year) streamers and youtubers playing the games mine gets compared to though. But I haven't done it so much lately.
Your 2x 10x and 100x plans are awesome though and is definitely very helpful advice.
The game itself is called 'Warsim: The Realm of Aslona' and can be seen here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/659540/Warsim_The_Realm_of_Aslona/?beta=0
I have noticed mild successes from a mix of posting and discussing it on various reddit forums while being careful to not be spammy and to be posting stuff that's relevant to the subs. By writing articles about interesting aspects of the game on Medium and then sharing those around, and by getting coverage by decent sized youtubers and streamers.
Combined these semi-regular spikes make up for the majority of the games income but over the year tend to level it out at a fairly liveable level.
The game has 96% positive from over 200 reviews and I plan to address the criticisms found in the remaining 4% as a few of them are reasonable and could definitely be addressed during development.
I do not want to engage in DLC and have released more than 100 updates for the game during it's early access lifecycle which has earned me a very nice reputation with the little community.
Thanks for your time!
Care to share a link to the game?
Hi Nick, absolutely the game is called 'Warsim: The Realm of Aslona' and can be seen here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/659540/Warsim_The_Realm_of_Aslona/?beta=0
I haven't tried this myself, but I am noticing more people coding their game on twitch streams and some of them become quite popular. People absolutely love GIFs on Twitter, if you have a Twitter there are weekly hashtags like #screenshotsaturday that people follow to discover new games. You could also post GIFs on Imgur, I think those sometimes go viral as well. Of course take all my advice with a grain of salt, I have never released a game that is as successful as what you are describing BUT I do follow a lot of indie game developers. Another thing I've seen that can go viral is game developers posting funny bugs in their game. I once posted a bug in my bowling game where bowling pins started spawning and exploding all over the screen. These kinds of funny things can get a lot of retweets, and people love to see that game developers make mistakes and are human/relatable.
Hey Nprimak,
Thanks for sharing those ideas!
Coding on stream is a great idea and GIFs definitely work better than static images, it's harder with Warsim as it's primarily text based so the best I've got are static screens but I'm always looking for new ways to make it work and show off the content.
Great idea about sharing bugs, I've had my fair share of funny ones so I'll definitely keep that idea noted.
Much appreciated!
I think with indie game marketing trial and error and trying all you can is definitely the best way :)
Cheers
All the Best
Thank you! :)
This comment was deleted 6 years ago
Hey thanks for the comment, so I've been told previously that my best bet is to move on and make more games and use it as momentum but I have promised a number of features for Warsim and won't be happy until the game is complete with what I have promised. I am able to somewhat sustain myself during this development so It's not a problem and it allows me to continue to deliver an ever improving game and stronger community.
I do in the future want to work on a graphical game instead of Ascii which has for sure limited my reach a bit, but I'll do it once I've delivered what I've promised to my current community, I'd never want to be the kind of dev that would quickly rush a project and betray the early access support.
I am definitely interested in ways to improve the reach with my current game though as I've seen first hand that these little instances of guerilla marketing do work and cause little revenue jumps.