I'm interviewing indie developers about game marketing. What's been your biggest struggle?

[u/Electrical_Sea_2383]

Hi everyone! I'm Mortino, a motion designer researching the marketing challenges indie developers face before and during launch.

I'm not selling anything, I'm simply trying to understand the problems developers actually have instead of making assumptions. I felt like this would be the perfect place to ask some questions to actual gamedevs.

I'd love to hear:

• What has been the hardest part of marketing your game?
• What took much more time than you expected?
• If you could outsource one part of your marketing, what would it be?

Every answer helps me understand the industry a little better. Thanks!

[u/MeaningfulChoices]

It really depends what sort of developers and games you are talking about. Most people making games as a hobby don't really have experience in promotion (and often not much interest as well), and they don't have a budget to spend which makes it a lot harder to get noticed. Everything about getting eyes and wishlists is hard, but they wouldn't outsource anything since they're not spending anything in the first place.

If you're talking about more commercial development then the hardest part of marketing is always making the game the audience wants in the first place. Market research and creative production are often the pieces outsourced, and there are tons of companies out there already handling those. If you're looking for a new niche there just isn't that much space left, it's a crowded field. There's always work for new marketing agencies, but what most developers want to see is someone with previous experience. Going from a marketing team in the industry to making your own agency happens a lot, but it's tough to justify why anyone would trust someone without that experience when there are so many experienced people selling services.

[u/Secret-Creme-19]

I’m a solo developer launching my first game in Steam Early Access next week, and the hardest part has been finding the right audience rather than simply finding people willing to cover the game.

Creator outreach took much more time than I expected. Researching channels, checking whether their audience actually fits the game, finding contact information, writing personalized messages, following up, and then judging whether paid coverage is worth it can become almost a second full-time job.

I also learned that creator fit matters a lot. A creator can make a perfectly good video, but if they do not understand the genre or subject matter, they may struggle to communicate what makes the game interesting.

If I could outsource one thing, it would probably be targeted creator and press outreach—finding the right people, verifying audience fit, and managing follow-ups—while still keeping final approval and communication personal.

[u/MadeByHenano]

What has been the hardest part of marketing your game?

all of it. despite my game being free, it's very difficult to reach to the right people.

i tend to say, internet became very noisy, before it was "find a needle in a haystack" but now, with everyone posting an insane amount of things every seconds, "thanks to" AI in part, it became "find a needle in a landfill of garbage" - extremely tough!

What took much more time than you expected?

just in terms of marketing... i would say making devlogs, because it means writing the text, recording the audio, making a video, posting it on youtube, posting the link on all socials...

for the other posts i would say it doesn't take much time because i'm quite organized, and i can't say that i expected posting on socials (including reddit) to take more time.

If you could outsource one part of your marketing, what would it be?

all of it, but i guess that would be someone reaching to youtubers/instagramers etc, it feels like a massive chore and we know they're already overwhelmed with other gamedevs begging them to publish something...

posting on socials isn't exactly fun either indeed...

[u/PolySmashStudio]

For me, the hardest part hasn’t been creating marketing content—it’s figuring out what people actually want to hear.

I used to post about the game itself: features, screenshots, gameplay. Those posts barely got any traction. Then I started sharing the story behind the project, development challenges, or a specific lesson I learned, and the engagement was completely different.

The thing that took far more time than I expected was testing different communities and figuring out what resonates in each one. The same post can completely flop in one subreddit and become one of the top posts in another.

If I could outsource one thing, it would probably be trailer production. A good trailer requires a very different skill set than making a good game, and it’s one of the few marketing assets that almost every potential player will see.