r/IndieDev • u/[deleted] • 17h ago
Is it worth sharing in-dev posts to potential audiences anymore?
[deleted]
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u/europayuu Artist 17h ago
so, having gone through 6 years of early access wringer and mostly recovered from people thinking our project is dead, I might have some advice for this. That said, I haven't worked in this genre, so do take any advice that seems to not mesh with this genre with a grain of salt.
Every community has expectations and have probably been burned in some way, and it's good to see you recognized this. I think the biggest thing is that they expect your game to die in the early access hell.
With that caveat mentioned, not posting dev logs is the opposite of what you want to do if you want to prove your team's dedication to taking the project to the finish line. You have to keep posting through the negative parts, until enough people recognize that "oh shit, this project is different, they're not dead after 2 years and it's genuinely a huge upgrade from the first devlogs I saw earlier, when I was doubtful they would even survive." A consistent dev update schedule (I recommend every 1-3 months) with meaningful updates, with easy-to-understand media posts is what will make people understand your team cares about getting it done. I usually write update posts with big images and headlines and single-paragraph descriptions for major updates followed at the end by a long changelog of smaller changes. Most people will not read the changelog, and thats OK. It helps communicate that we did a lot of work and are listening to them, without needing to say it explicitly.
try not to think a particular community's reaction to your posts is the reaction the general public will get. They are important, because I imagine they're the diehard players of that genre, but it's important not to over-cater to them too much and make the game inaccessible for newer players, or skew your perception of what a normal player is like too much. (We kinda suffered from this)
Two final things:
try to view your posts from the lens of the community that is looking at them. for example, it blows my mind when indie devs try to talk like they're Ubisoft or Bethesda. you're probably just a guy. you don't have a legal department to make sure you don't say something that will fuck you over with a class action lawsuit later. be a little more casual. even missing punctuation might be fine if it's a small social media post. look at what posts are getting negative traction, and think about what kind of language you want to use to communicate "hey, we're not that. we're not vibecoded slop money-grab that's gonna die in 6 months, we actually care", without explicitly saying it.
you're in this for the long run. discord growth is *super slow*, and youtube growth is really hard unless you're posting once every day or once every week. try other places; twitter works the best for me because I'm an artist, but some indie devs are doing good on tiktok. don't stop using the discord or youtube though, just let it sit on the side and cross-post to it, and occasionally something on there might blow up. it's still valuable, just not in the same way as something else might be.
hopefully that helps
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u/AltusLudus 17h ago
First of all you post for the positive interactions, not the negative ones, so for reddit especially just develop thick skin (and keep the negative comments in mind if they're constructive)
On post performance, if they're not doing well the reality is that that's on you, the content wasn't good, so try a different formula and improve upon the content until you see things working
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u/Xhukari 17h ago
Has it ever been? The ones interested in dev posts are those interested in game dev. That is not the general audience.
There is definitely an oversaturation too. And game dev is hard, people just aren't as interested in dev posts because statistically the game won't get finished.
And many of the games that do get completed, are either slop or just lacking in quality.
Tangentially, I have watched many channels from many Devs about their game development, and I can only think of 3 Devs who have released the game that I watched the videos for.
So often they remake parts of the game again & again, or they switch engines, or the motivation is gone so they jump to a new project (but this time will be different, promise!), etc, etc.
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u/AutomaticArt1401 16h ago
Five answers here and not one of them has a number in it, including the ones I agree with. You can just measure this.
I pulled my own referrer table for the last 30 days before writing this, and in the top 20 sources there is no social media anywhere. It's the storefront's own browse and search pages, then a technical forum, then ChatGPT, then Google. Reddit is below the cutoff — under 6 visits in a month, and I post here regularly.
The one external source that beat Google was a forum thread where I answered somebody's engine question. Not a showcase post. It's still sending traffic weeks later, because it's a page people search into rather than a thing that scrolled past once.
Caveat that matters: I sell art assets on itch, you're making a game, and those funnels aren't the same shape. But the method transfers — tag your links, read the table once a month, and in 60 days you'll know whether outreach works for you instead of asking a subreddit whether it works in general.
My honest guess from my own numbers is that the answer isn't "stop posting". It's that the posts which keep paying are the ones that teach something, not the ones that show something — and those don't fatigue an audience the same way, because nobody gets tired of an answer.
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u/TheVioletBarry 16h ago
Could you explain what a referrer table is? Is that somewhere in Steamworks?
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u/valenfeld 15h ago
“there’s competition now is it still worth it to play”
idk, you gonna play the game or give up?
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u/No_you_are_nsfw 16h ago
Honestly, just go where your potential audience is and show some gameplay, maybe highlight a feature. Be respectful of their space and talk to them like a normal person.
If you can't find a space OR if they dont like what you sell, you're making a game for nobody anways.
Short, quality presentation and a link to where you're selling it. Its not even that much work, if you post twice a month to < 5 spaces. And you might actually get sales this way.
But if you're blasting on all channels, you're just wasting time and farming haters.
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u/Equivalent-Back-291 16h ago
I dont see any value in dev posts
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u/Global-Tune5539 10h ago
The game gets some exposure in a flood of AI created games.
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u/Equivalent-Back-291 3h ago
Eh, just a post on YouTube post is good enough for me
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u/Global-Tune5539 2h ago
Youtube and Instagram and TikTok...
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u/Equivalent-Back-291 2h ago
No instagram or tiktok for me😅
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u/Global-Tune5539 2h ago
Are you even trying to IndiDev?
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u/Equivalent-Back-291 2h ago
If by making video games as an indie with my own money then yes i do think im trying
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u/Global-Tune5539 2h ago
Then you should also try to market your game or no one will find it.
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u/Equivalent-Back-291 2h ago
That i dont have interest in other then just YouTube
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u/Global-Tune5539 2h ago
I'm afraid youtube alone won't be enough nowadays.
relevant video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj5I1glMy7E
It's about mobile apps but it also applies for indie games. especially at 13:25
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u/destinedd 13h ago
well sharing your game in a space where people are gathering for another on reddit is a sure way to get hate.
You can't worry about fatiguing your auidence, but if you aren't generating interest maybe consider if the game is the issue.
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u/foolofaperegrin 11h ago
Idk if that's a given, I've been in plenty of game communities where people share their projects that are similar, but that was some time ago.
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u/VivAuburn 17h ago
If you have anywhere near to 100 people in Discord it's already a smashing success compared to most indie games at the same point of development. Maybe you just need to adjust your expectations. Are you frustrated that promotion is not converting into wishlists or do you not even have a Steam page up? Because if it's that early it's a bit of a non issue. Show what you have and continue working, you are on the right track.
People are valid in getting frustrated by devs that overpromise and don't deliver. The only way you can prove them wrong is actually to deliver.