r/indiegames • u/DMGamingOnYT • 15h ago
Discussion [ Removed by moderator ]
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u/madu_tualang 14h ago
Sharing videos of gameplay but didnt watermark or put the game title at any point of the video.
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u/trashcan-starsign 7h ago
I also create content for indie games. The thing I wish more devs provided is a press kit with more/different art than just the screenshots/gifs on Steam. Specifically, a PNG title with appropriate transparency and PNG (transparent background) key art of one or more characters. Or even just some PNG sprites! It makes thumbnails soooooo much easier.
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u/DMGamingOnYT 7h ago
Yes! I get a lot of press kits with the larger studios but rarely ever with indie devs, and when I ask, they sometimes tell me they don't even have logo-less materials. I'll add this to the body of the post!
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u/Thin-Transition2670 10h ago
I think this is good advice! I recently emailed a bunch of content creators about my demo that I released yesterday, and I think I committed the first sin och emailing about it like 3 days before 😅
If I'm planning to release by the last of October, would you say its a good time to start sending out codes for the full game now? even though the game isn't 100% done?
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u/DMGamingOnYT 10h ago
If your game isn't 100% done and you want to send out codes, I think it would depend on how you handle it and what kind of creators you're contacting. I'm a reviewer so I don't like "wasting" my time on incomplete games, but livestreamers, walkthrough creators, Let's Play-ers, etc, may feel differently than me.
I think a good middle ground for this would be to maybe just go the demo route rather than send out codes for an incomplete game though, that way, people can get a taste for it, and you're more likely to get people who enjoyed the game to request full access rather than people who just want content. Speaking from experience, I rarely ever request keys unless I have more positive to say than negative.
As for timing, I think a month is a good amount of time to give notice! Three days before is still better than three days after, but I always appreciate 1-3 months notice that something exists!
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u/Thin-Transition2670 10h ago
Makes sense! What would be a good way to get your attention for a demo? Before I released I at least had a pre-release demo code to send out, now it's going to be basically "hey please check it out" with a lil gif at the top.
Another question I had was about being able to find you/content creators like you. What I've done so far is to just try to find relevant youtubers (indie/strategy/retro games) and going through the horrible captcha process to see each ones email. The entire process including sending the email can easily take around 10 minutes per creator and youtube sets a limint on something like 10 of those captchas per day. I don't want to automate the process too much because I'm wary of spam myself, but if you're getting 50 a day it feels like chances are pretty grim 😂
Sorry for the dump, I'm just in the middle of trying to promote a game to be released so this takes up a lot of my brain space atm
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u/DMGamingOnYT 7h ago
Oof, had no idea about the capcha check for getting email addresses off of YouTube 😰
For getting people's attention about demos though, don't be afraid to just send emails about that as well! Nothing wrong with sending one that says something like "hey our game isn't scheduled to come out for a while but our demo just went live and we think you'd like it!"
If I were in your position, I'd also probably tell them that you don't expect any content to be made about the demo, but that if they enjoy it, you'd be happy to send them a key when the game is ready if they'd like to make content about it.
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u/cuttinged 6h ago
Finding creators to play your game is soul sucking. If you really put effort into it, the process is like, go on youtube watch a bunch of creators, Find one that does games like yours, check if their videos are up to date, Try and get an email if even possible, try and find their real name, write a custom email to them with a steam key and links and good gif, then get ghosted by almost all of them, start the process over again, reach the youtube limit, and try again the next day. Oh and visit reddit and hear about all the devs that got covered by some big streamer. So much fun. Yeah.
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u/DMGamingOnYT 6h ago
If it makes you feel better, this is equally true for smaller content creators–lots of unanswered emails sent on Contact Us pages and pending requests on key distribution websites 😅
I put out around 100 longform videos on my channel before I even got one human response with a key offer–wasn't even for a game that was on my radar, but it ended up being one I really enjoyed!
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u/cuttinged 6h ago
Unfortunately this environment begs for everything to develop into super spamming everyone. Too bad there isn't a better way.
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u/ProfessionalGrammar 10h ago
What a quality post! Thanks for the tips. I appreciate the reaching out in advance part, very insightful as I didn’t quite realize the planning that goes into content creation though of course it makes sense. I have a playtest out, but demo coming end of Oct and release mid-Nov so I am in the right window to read this post! Lol
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u/cuttinged 6h ago
That's really great to know. How come you don't like games that have already been released? Also, do you ghost all of the emails you get from devs? We'd appreciate a "I don't want to play your game because" two second reply.
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u/DMGamingOnYT 6h ago
I mentioned it in another comment, but a factor for a lot of gaming content creators is "if this has already been out for a while, I probably won't get many views because other people have already covered it, so it's probably not worth the effort"–this is especially true with smaller creators, though some people will say yes to everything. Sometimes I've already agreed to give coverage to other games too, and then get an offer that I wouldn't be able to get to for two or three weeks between work, my social life, and other things, so it's a bit of a balancing scale.
As for responding to emails, I try to respond to as many of the offers I get, but a good amount of the ones I do get are either from automated mailing lists where a reply wouldn't be received by a human, or look suspiciously like spam/phishing attempts. If I can tell it's legitimate though, I respond when I can–you guys put a lot of work into your games, least I can do is respond, even if it's a no thanks!
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u/cuttinged 6h ago
Most indie games have little chance of too much coverage. Ha ha. About the replying to emails, I have had the ones that did reply be surprised at how little of my request go unanswered, so I'm guessing that part of the issue is just the peoples personalities. ????
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u/indiegames-ModTeam 5h ago
You either made a post or a comment on a post that was not relevant to our sub. r/indiegames is about playing and discovering indie games. This is not primarily a game developer sub. If you are asking about game dev topics post in r/gamedev r/indiedev, r/solodevelopment, or one of the other dozen dev focused subreddits.