Most of the games I’ve made so far haven’t had more than 10 players. Do you have any suggestions?
Publishing a game is only part of a long and arduous journey for any independent developer. If nobody knows you exist, your game will hardly be seen.
Content marketing is a discipline in itself, full of nuances and details that, unfortunately, you as an independent developer will need to study on your own. Before creating anything, you need to know your target audience and understand the best ways to get that audience interested in what you do and why they should choose your game and not another.
Good luck with your studies.
Maybe devlogs. Most successful indie games gather fans while the game is in development by social media presence, Reddit posts, events, YouTube and a Discord. This means you would have a good player base and testers by the time the game is ready to launch. If you’re game is already published, you can try reddit and discord but you’re game actually still needs a heart as @MRCVTRZ said.
I learned some time ago that, if you don’t want or like to make devlogs and so on stuff. You could run ads for your game after it’s ready. Honestly i seen that work. Though it depends on ya style and configuration.
Yes, advertising is the most basic part of the process of promoting your product, but as someone who has been through this stage a few times, here’s some advice: Don’t start by spending more than you can afford on your dream project if you don’t have a stable source of income right now. Especially if you’re an independent developer who doesn’t have much experience yet. This can do two things: First, it can destroy your morale and kill all your desire to create, and believe me, that’s a terrible place to be. Second, it can put you in a situation of financial insecurity very quickly. That’s an even worse place to be.
There are many free ways for you to get your projects seen. Create a devlog, make videos, create a website, post on social media… Regardless of what you do, it’s important to be consistent and understand the details of each tool and how to reach the right people using them.
Study, learn, try, fail, start over, and keep creating, but always responsibly.
These days, running ads for your game doesn’t need for you have large greens. But rather 5-10$, i myself spent around that and gotten around 500 installs plus tons of views.
If someone does have a bit more fetti let’s say 50-100$. They could run the ad for long time while giving low CTR and get slow installs while having their ads run for long time.
Though idk depends on what kinda folk you are and what you aiming for.
This is not true at all. You need to create first. Practicing and becoming a better developer IS marketing. Yes, you also will eventually want to take steps to put your work in front of more eyes, but you don’t do that before creating something. Ideally, the two processes happen simultaneously, with each one contributing to the other (in other words, there is a cycle of creation, sharing, getting feedback, allowing you the flexibility to adjust your direction during development)
People think marketing is restricted to advertising, but it is not… there are many other aspects to marketing. In fact, the word literally references “bringing to market” your product. On that note… @Eray have you only posted your game on gd.games? If so, you should really put them up somewhere else too, at the very least on itch.io which is super easy and gives you the added benefit of designing your own page (another marketing skill). Itch isn’t a huge market but I’m sure it is bigger than gd.games. This is a part of marketing, simply bringing your game to various markets.
Some of your games do have more than 10 plays. But overall, they are fairly simplistic games, which is totally OK! However, think of it from the player’s perspective. Would you click on your games? You have some nice interface juice in-game, but your cover art are not so great. The best one is for Cubic Tag and guess what, you got the most plays on that. Making a good cover picture that not only looks nice but also gives potential players an idea of what the game is about, is essential. For the vast majority of passers-by, that one picture is the main thing that they will judge and make a decision on whether to click or not. Think of it like you’re trying to sell a tomato… which situation do you think will do best: a well-organized farmstand with lots of color and delicious looking produce, or just the single tomato sitting on an empty table? It is the same exact item, but (for better or worse) the presentation of the first scenario makes it much more likely to sell.
Now I don’t say any of this to discount the “find your audience” advice, but that can be developed alongside making and and releasing games. You just don’t sit down and think “what is my audience” before making anything at all. First off, just try to make something that you would play. If you don’t like your own game, there will be no passion in it and the market will respond accordingly. Keep sharing it with people and over time, once you have something concrete and have found a few people that enjoy it, start to think about how to reach more people like that. Sometimes this is literally just framing your game in the right way. For example if you have a game with deep strategy/rpg/roguelike elements, but you describe it as “casual”, then many people who might like your game will just think “meh, it’s casual so probably not what I’m looking for.”
This is not true at all. You need to create first. Practicing and becoming a better developer IS marketing. Yes, you also will eventually want to take steps to put your work in front of more eyes, but you don’t do that before creating something.
I could have phrased this part better by saying that before releasing a product, you need to decide who you want to buy it.
Yes, you absolutely need to create concrete things; that’s part of the creative and learning process. But the context here is the promotion of something that’s already finished. You can’t just go around releasing your games anywhere; that’s shooting in the dark and will drain your energy very quickly, bringing more frustration than results. If you want results, you need to take smart, informed actions.
If you don’t have experience yet or are doing this only as a hobby, that’s a different story. But I’m considering that we’re talking about building a career in this market, and for that, you need to do things the way the market expects; otherwise, you’ll be just another independent developer swallowed up by the system.
I get that to some extent, but I don’t think it applies here. This is someone just starting out who has made a couple of small games. There’s little purpose in planning market entries and advertising campaigns at this level. Analyzing consumer trends is for AAA studios, and they frequently dump boatloads of money into this type of thinking only to end up with a failed product, resulting in studio shutdown, firing everyone, and pulling products out of stores.
You don’t need to decide who will buy something before releasing. If you have a ready-made product and discover that some group of people would probably really like it but aren’t being exposed to it, then you can take steps to increase your exposure to those people. It doesn’t matter what stage of development your game is at. Players don’t care if you finished the project 5 years ago, they care if it looks like fun today
Both contexts are valid; neither of us is wrong. What you say applies very well to someone at the beginning of their career, who doesn’t aspire to enter the professional market or who creates games as a hobby, but the context of my statement is broader and can apply to any situation, not just large studios.
Is creating something and then trying to sell it a valid strategy? Yes. If you have plenty of time and resources and don’t depend on them to survive. If your bills keep coming every month and you intend to follow this path to pay them, you’ll need a better strategy than that.
And again, I don’t know the OP’s age, their life context, or their ultimate goals. My suggestions take the context of the professional market and are generic on purpose because that’s the experience I’ve had.