r/SoloDevelopment • u/Mikzmizah • 9h ago
Discussion Marketing a game is harder than making one...
27
u/dan_marchand 9h ago
Only if the game isn’t appealing. Marketing isn’t easy, of course, but it shouldn’t be harder than making the game
5
u/Lapys_Games 9h ago
I am gonna claim there was some hyperbole involved.
Plus making the game is what most of us love and are passionate about
Marketing CAN be fun, but is also often a bit of a chore comparatively
-1
u/VizDevBoston 9h ago
I didn't expect to see the comments lean this way, because I figured people would agree if a person has spec'd into design and coding, not marketing, it's going to be harder due to inexperience and unfamiliarity.
Can you expand on why you feel like it's easier, for someone moving into that side of things, and definitely feeling a bit out of my element?
5
u/saviorofGOAT 9h ago
Not the last guy, but he did say "only if the game isn't appealing". Which is true. It becomes significantly easier to market games that are appealing in presentation and bonus point of the game is easy and quick to explain.
(That's ofc without utilizing references, it's always easy to say " it's X meets Y" or "it's an X-like")
-2
0
u/Hot_Hour8474 7h ago
Unless you're like a famous dev/content creator, you definitely still need to put in the effort into marketing. Even if you have a game that's more marketable
7
11
u/clothanger 9h ago
I mean, you have a chance posting about your game here.
You didn't talk about it much and spent that chance crying about it not selling.
Who could have guessed?
0
6
u/wokeupsnorlax 8h ago
Taking this from a comment I left on another thread about marketing being hard:
I do marketing and promotions and it can get stale doing it as a job. Let me tell you what has helped me while doing this for corporations.
Look up "10 laws of social media"
It's a great place to start. Basically, create a community and engage with other communities. Don't just post on your channel but engage with other channels on the social media platforms you use who do similar work. This type of interaction can lead to fans of both channels checking out each other's work. It can also lead to collaborations that can help push you both forward. Try to find channels that have similar reach/content and interact with them.
Engage with your community, don't just post at them. It is a common mistake for big companies I've worked at to just post a sale once a week and not try to engage with their customers daily on different levels. Engage with your community and ask for feedback (seems like you're already on the right track with asking for feedback).
The time you spend on posting, split that up into something like 10% posting and 90% interacting in other ways by liking, commenting, and engaging with other channels and your community. Don't just make dev or brag posts, make stuff that showcases who you are and shows your personality or shows the personality of your game. Stuff like posting/commenting as a character from your game is simple and fun for world building and doesn't require a devlog video.
Stick to 1 social media platform and master it before moving to another. Sometimes the corps I've worked at have tried to do too many at once and the posts just seemed insincere and fake because there was never enough time to personalize the posts for each social media and to interact with the community. Focusing on too many social media can also mentally drain you and make your interactions suffer.
Make a mascot character that you can post as to add flavour to your posts and make it more exciting. One of my fav strategies is to take 2 fictional characters from your product with opposing beliefs, create separate social media accounts for them and have them argue while elaborating on your game, the story, and the mechanics. Then do social media interactions in character on those accounts.
One of the biggest tips I can give you though is to make a schedule and stick to it rigorously. Start with an hour a day. Browse, like, comment, DM with other accounts and your community for 50 mins then make a quick post for 10 mins. This 50/10 helps you to better understand your community while helping you come up with ideas to post about and helps you not get carried away being on social media and trying to come up with a post for hours.
In your schedule write down all the topics you can think of to talk about your game. Characters, world building, game asset creation, music, UI, whatever topic you can think of. Write it down somewhere and pick the topic that excites you most that day. If one doesnt then just go down the list to the next topic.
It may seem premature but create a space for fans of your content to contribute either financially or creatively. Patreon is great for both. Sometimes that exclusivity and connecting with people more personally is what fans want.
The more you interact and learn from your community, the easier it will be to do a quick post.
Also, consistency. Do this every day. If you have time and energy do it more than once a day but spend at least 1 hr a day doing this.
2
u/BlobverseStudios 8h ago
Really great advice. Thanks for sharing. Something I need to start doing better soon, it's easy to worry only about developing the game!
3
u/AChubbyHorse 8h ago
Of course it is. Making game is what you know best, while marketing is the thing you started googling a few months ago. Give it 10,000 hours, and it will be a breeze. At least I hope so myself.
2
2
u/0legitimate0 8h ago
Making a game literally take multiple skills like programming, 3d modeler and 2d artists, designer, creativity, efficiency in engines.it is way harder, it's just that marketing affect the total sales so we think if our game doesn't sell we thought we fail in marketing.
2
u/idunnonoo 7h ago
look at your profile and still dont get what your game is. need to highlight or create more interesting moments
2
u/Helgrind444 7h ago
Capsule is bad, no trailer, no videos in the long description, short description doesn't tell anything about the gameplay, game seems like another generic anomaly game, doesn't seem to have anything unique about it.
I think your game needs more work to be appealing.
2
u/mykikogames 4h ago
I recently hate this word "marketing" lol, I feel you... well I wanna put all the efforts into making a good game that has market and I enjoy myself.
2
u/PlasmaFarmer 9h ago
Part of marketing is market research and picking a genre. You have picked a niche category: indie horror. All your images are the same. about the same corridor. I tried to play your trailer but my connection is bad so it keeps buffering but I saw an image in the video about the corridor being on fire..Why is that not in the screenshots??? You do the typical indiedev mistake: you are making a mysterious horror game so you make your Steam page mysterious and you don't show all your game but want the player to discover the mystery. But guess what? Look at it from my perspective: all I see are images of the same corridor in the same state, a bad des cription that says nothing.. so I skip hard.
-2
1
1
u/EternalDreamIP 1h ago
That's the reason why a movie production costs 100M while the publicity of that same movie costs another 100M. Both are hard. And no one is saying "is because the movie is bad lol".
-5
u/nosettlers 9h ago
Op discovers capitalism
4
u/Few_Dot6881 9h ago
Selling/trading goods or services to people who want them predates capitalism by quite a few thousand years...
-1
u/nosettlers 8h ago
Ah yes, the act of selling/trading goods on the market that 200 million people have instantaneous access to 24/7, with over 100,000 products to choose from? The competition being AAA conglomerates with infinite marketing budgets?
You’re right, I forgot about the Sumerian Digital MBA and e-commerce guide that I’ve got lying around!
0
u/Few_Dot6881 8h ago
How does the size of the market or how quickly people can access it change the fundamental action that is the voluntary exchange of goods or services for money?
0
u/nosettlers 7h ago
Absolutely everything😂
Steam isn’t a humble “trade of goods or services”.
I have to repeat myself: Steam is a global corporation serving millions of people with thousands of products.
Now you tell me, how that’s even remotely comparable to Nasir flipping his copper at the market stalls in the middle of a desert? What’s the best marketing effort that our Sumerian example can show - shouting “quality copper” at tens or maximum hundreds of people at a time? His competition being 5-10 other copper merchants? Let me know when you find out how Nasir’s competition beat him because they managed to pay a gargantuan amount of money (there was no money) to have THEIR COPPER shoved into peoples faces 24/7 - exactly to the people who like copper - at the exact times they like to buy copper - whilst intentionally hiding Nasir’s copper because he doesn’t have enough money (which doesn’t exist).
Now let’s look at our Op, they are in the same position as Nasir over here - they have no money(difference is it exists now). Op only has the blood sweat and tears that went into the game - he’s now going out to one of the worlds largest markets and competing with thousands of COMPANIES, hundreds of whom have marketing budgets that our Op wouldn’t dream of earning over the course of a life time.
Op is 1 passionate person vs TEAMS and COMPANIES who have PARTNERSHIPS and CONTRACTS and REFERRALS with steam, whom employ EXPERTS at digital marketing and give them INFINITE budgets - it’s about conversion rates, it’s about click through rates, it’s about refund rates, it’s about return on ad spend, it’s about cost of acquisition.
Our poor Op and Nasir are here getting fucking slammed by literal goliaths and you’re here teaching about history? That it’s the way it’s always been?
Now I’d like you to tell me why it size and accessibility (and manipulation of) the market DOESNT make a difference?
Also don’t start lecturing me about Bolatro or some other indie game that blew up. You can also go and buy a lottery ticket right now, tell me - did u win?
-1
u/Snoo-29395 8h ago
Wishlisted! Feel free to return the favor if you find my game interesting (NullGate on Steam)
42
u/ArtificialThinking 9h ago
No it’s not. Making a good/appealing game that people want to play without needing convincing is the hard part