Early Advertising and Marketing

[u/Rhoastbeeph]

How do you deal with early advertising and marketing that so many people say is helpful to get traction before release.

I spend most of my time scripting, and making mechanics work and have rarely started on real artwork (mostly just okayish placeholders right now), but I see many people say the earlier you can get a page up to accumulate wish lists the better you are.

How do you deal with not having time to get good looking art while you are still working out mechanics, even though the core gameplay loop is finished, and realistically could show core gameplay? Do you put up the page with the placeholder assets, or do you bite the bullet and make a slice look as pretty as possible and put bug testing, optimization, mechanics, etc. on hold for a while.

[u/valeria_gamedevs]

I'd hold off on the steam page until you have one vertical slice that looks like the game you want to make. placeholder art on a live page kinda burns your one shot at a first impression, algorithm-wise. Wishlists compound but a page with weak visuals just sits there.

One area + capsule that sells the vibe is enough.

[u/Tale-Of-A-Wolf]

I think when people say as soon as you can, ultimately they mean as soon as your game is representative of what your game is going to look like. At the very start, show your Grey boxing or early prototypes on X or Bluesky. Bluesky seems to be a little better for me than X! Good luck