Why You Can't Wishlist my Game on Steam [yet]
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- Опубліковано 27 чер 2024
- Heya Pals!
Here's the first of my new series of vlogs for Insignia covering late Feb -March. I hope you like the format!
P.S. If you think I'm crazy and just want to throw a wishlist at me anyway, let me know in the comments and I'll set up a page lol
Music: Helynt - Mario & Chill 2 - [Gamechops.com]
Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
0:40 - Why my Game isn't on Steam
4:02 - About Marketability and Game Identity
10:05 - What I worked on in Feb-March
13:08 - Developing VFX Particles for Abilities
20:48 - The Rest of My Month
24:01 - The Project Pathway to Steam and Release
27:28 - Outro
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This video features clips from my stream. Catch it live: Mon, Tues, Thurs and Fri 1-6pm GMT+7.
Twitch: / adamcyounis
Twitter: / adamcyounis
Discord: / discord
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Download assets and games from the stream at uppon-hill.itch.io/
Later, pals! - Наука та технологія
No worries Adam. We know that as soon as this hits Steam, a heck load of people are going to wishlist asap.
You have very valid points, but I'd like you to try to keep in mind that you're a perfecionist so that these same points will not bite you in the future. I think the amount of people asking how to wishlist your game should also be an indicator that it's in the marketable territory. It makes sense to try to get a better idea of how/what you want to sell before putting it out there, but that will probably be a tough challenge to do alone considering how involved you're with Insignia.
About the old stuff circulating, I don't quite agree though. Perspective on these things tend to shift after the game gets published and I feel older material usually gets looked fondly as "look how far they come". Of course I understand your hesitation given your past experiences. It's a risk worth considering, but your game looks like it's past the point where that would be likely to happen.
Love your plan to get it all the way there though. And it's very reasonable given all the worries you pointed out, so I'm certain going with it should really pay off. I'm really looking forward for it!
I hope you find it encouraging that people want to wishlist it, regardless ❤🎉
I really appreciate that you’ve highlighted this point! I’m going through the same thing with my game Mythoh right now. I don’t think people understand just how crucial this aspect of marketing is.
I like how thoughtful and reflective you plan your roadmap!
Adam, all the systems you are creating like Retrobox and Scene Graph are super impressive! Amazing work, excited to see more from Insignia!
I came here for tutorials and stayed for your game. I don't need steam to know I want to play your game but I can understand why people use Wishlists to remember to buy a game
Every developer says that the earlier you create Steam store page - the better. You need at least 10000 wishlist for your game to be somewhat successful. And usually it takes a long time (1 year+) to even get close to that number. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Loved the video man, hope you post more of these.
looking forward to when you do make it available to wish list! good luck on this part!
Mr. Adam,
You could give me ZERO warning and I'd have supported this game. You are the most grounded InDeveloper I've seen on UA-cam, aside from GMTK as you show every step. Unlike GMTK, you go well beyond in terms of structure and demonstrate skills that would have taken the rest of us years to discover. I wish your game the very best and will be among the first to wishlist when available.
loved the focus on insignia - keep it up adam, you're doing incredible work!
I been waiting for your games.. The little I know is in partly because of your great videos and would like to support your dreams as well.
Yea, that leaves compromise you came up with is actually really cool.
It's fun following along with you.
You're smart to focus on these things. Whenever you make it available, you'll become trending which will give you a limited opportunity to get broad appeal. Make it count.
For the leaf particles to not look like poison, maybe try adding a soft border to each sprite of the animation.
Hi Adam nice to hear your thougts about your processes and your perspective on your way as indie dev. Really love it!
this game is gonna be sooo dope my man. Super awesome to see passionate artists and game designers working so hard, I'm really excited and will definitely be playing this a lot when it comes out :)
Def like the insignia vlogs, keep it up Adam :)👍
You think too much mate! Business is about being bold start a steam page already! The game looks great.
4:30 i think its an emotional attachment to your game. THAT in itself should be a large selling point and is the same selling point of similar games like owlboy. People bought owlboy because it was this art piece game that was lovingly made, not because you fly around, even though that is the main mechanic of the game its not the selling point. Your passion, artistic ability and audience is the largest selling point so far and people want to wishlist for that reason alone.
People bought owlboy because it got great press from a well known artist. It's one of the best looking games since metal slug. It's very stupid to take fringe outside cases as a take for your own sucess.
You know what sells games now. Good marketing. That includes indie games.
Amazing work!!
Game seriously looking dope. It’s great to see everything coming together
You have a lot of knowledge! Unbelievable what you need to do to make a game..... great! I will buy it :)
I’m glad you’ve started to do more devlogs! I used to watch your streams when I was getting home from work at 11pm US time, but I changed jobs and that became my bedtime so I haven’t been able to watch. Ive missed hearing you talk about Insignia and your dev process.
Definitely the single game I am most excited about . Do you , we are here waiting :)
I like the idea of particles evolving into leaves, and when I imagined what I expected it to look like, I imagined the green flame particles rotating and and having a billowing quality to them, eventually dissipating into very small, well-defined leaves which continue tumbling in a rotational pattern like they’re caught in a circular gust of wind trailing where the effect started. Many of the leaf particles would shrink and disappear, but a handful would persist and gently tumble down to really sell the fact that the effect is made up of physical leaves that linger and not just fleeting clouds of gas or flame.
Not sure how useful that description is, and I can only imagine the amount of effort it would take to implement, but I really liked the image your idea inspired in my mind, so I thought I’d try to articulate it in case it gives you any new ideas to try. Cheers!
Insightful and you have piqued my interest.
That new cover art in the thumbnail is beautiful
Thanks a lot for the video Adam! Have you decided how much the game will cost when it fully comes out?
As somebody who's done all this and released a game through Steam: You should list it anyway! Here's why:
You're already promoting the game via this channel and your stream, and you should utilize that. Your main goal as an indie releasing on Steam is collect wishlists, that's what most of your marketing is *for*. I'm not going to say everything you're doing here and on Twitch is wasted, far from it, you've obviously built a great community of dedicated fans who are going to buy the game anyway, but it is a little bit of a lost opportunity to not collect those wishlists, especially from more-casual viewers who might only one watch one or two videos then move on.
I think you're overestimating the downsides a little bit. If your capsule art and store page and trailer do not do a good job of selling your product, you know what? That's okay! If somebody sees that marketing material and they decide not to wishlist, they probably *won't even remember* they saw it if they come across it again later. You can always change things up as you get closer to release!
The thing about Steam is basically, the more wishlists the better, and it doesn't matter *that* much when you collect those wishlists. You just don't want to launch without a lot of them if you can help it, because having a big burst of sales at launch is what gets you on the front page. Just my two cents--I totally get your reasoning and I have the tendency to think the exact same way you are, but I think it's legitimately better business to get something decent up now even if it's not your final marketing material.
The only exception would be if you prefer to work with a publisher. In that case it would depend on the individual publisher you partnered with, and it might make sense to let them handle it for you.
it does look like he is hoping to go with a publisher.
I wish you all the luck in the world. You don't know it but for almost 4 years you have been my greatest pixelart teacher. You would be proud of me ;D . Thank you.
Adam, I'm going to buy Insignia when you finish. I like the art and animation. The whole feel that the art lends to the game. The fighting mechanics you give the protagonist,can't think of his name, are really cool. Im so happy you gave him a down stab, such an underrated attack. I'll buy it as long as you finish it in 2 years, and get on to making your next big game.
I've respect for what you do. How hard you work. You introduced me to animation in a way that was intuitive enough for me to get the big picture, now I'm working on my own 2d rpg style sprite, learning to program mostly Godot for now, but along side I'll be picking up python. Just for fun. I do want to make games, but for now it's just fun. My main focus is concept art.
Thank you for every thing, your engagement and desire to share and help, learn and grow beyond difficulties.
There's not one video of yours I haven't watched, and they're all great, some I've watched 2 or 5 times. And work along.
Yeah. Big inspiration. Thank you.
As someone with 10 years of software marketing experience, the one thing I can tell you is to not overthink this too much. Insignia is very much your passion project, your baby, and it's going to be very easy to scrutinize every word and every letter, chasing perfection until you drive yourself crazy. Most people aren't reading a game description, most people aren't watching every single video and looking at every single screenshot. Your messaging needs to be compelling, yes, and your highlights need to be engaging, sure, but you have about 15-30 seconds to capture someone's interest before they decide whether they're buying your game or not. Focus on pulling them in and let the gameplay itself engage and retain them. Your product will take off by (a) being a good game that people want to talk about and (b) people talking about it and others listening.
Agree 100%
6 yrs of development with no end in sight. Isn't this scope creep?
@@iSgapettiI've noticed this too, but I don't think it's scope creep.
He's just a huge perfectionist, and works alone. He doesn't have a team, or someone of "equal (or more) authority" on the project, who could tell him to just let go.
I've seen this tendency in some of his videos, when he works on miniscule details.
And in the broader picture, it's the same. It took Adam multiple years to really settle on an art style, which I find kinda frightening, since I'm working solo on a game as well. He even has a background in art, for Christ's sake. (Maybe that's his disadvantage lol)
Not to sound harsh. His work is amazing, as well as his educational content. But I'd say, perfectionism is like his ultimate Achilles' heel.
great vid adam
yeah, just set up the damn Steam page lol.
This!
Stop overthinking and just set up a damn page lol. It's not that hard. At some point he has to put this out there or else it'll just drown in a sea of games that are releasing every single day.
Hi Adam! Great video as always. Let me ask you something, that "union" node in your shader graph is something you've made or is it something new available in a specific unity version? I've wanted something like that for a long time but never found and even now it doesn't show up in my shader graph
something I made myself. Basically you step the "top" node so it's just a white block, then subtract that from the "bottom" node, then clamp the result to contain the the hole you just made in the bottom image, then just re-add the original contents of "top" to fill the hole. this will essentially stack the two images without blending.
@@AdamCYounis Oh thank you so much Adam, works like a charm!
This game is gonna be massive and nice!
Dude, chain mail is looking great. It's a game(mostly). It looks fun. I hope your team wins
Adam, I am your big fan. You made me begin my pixel art journey. In 1 month, I worked 3 hours every day but I am not good at all. Is it okay? Am I slow?
New Video 🎉
you will be surprised how many ppl might forget about your game if it not tracked in their wish list, your launch might go unnoticed by many if it not in their wish list. I could be wrong but that is the way I see it.
Hey Adam! Thank you for the video! Will the game be available on Mac OS?)
Sure, I shipped the demo to mac, so there's no reason why not.
The ensign system looks amazing! One thought, did you consider calling them “insignia”?
I am really love your channel, insignia have a great potintel as a indie game, i also want to make a undertale/deltarune fangaem named laterend, your tutoirels help me to prove my pixel art, thank you for your Amazing UA-cam tutoirels
What program are you using at minute 13:08?
what are you use editor for create the character pixel?
I use Aseprite :)
Gotta say I still think you're overthinking this. You should have a steam page.
but i waaanaaa nowwww
Just kidding, keep working on it Adam!
Hey Adam, I know you’re not doing as many tutorials nowadays. But if you decide to do one, it would be great to see your process of producing a mock-up for a game idea in pixel art.
I'm not sure about the name Ensign, as its spelled the same as the junior naval officer rank.
It is always really weird seeing the game I work on show up in the background of random videos.
Bad take bro. I say this as a full time dev, you are shooting yourself in the foot by using passion instead of intelligence. The passion is mostly good for game dev but bad for business. Some people are smart enough to build a community and do decent. But it takes another step forward to build it into something sustainable for a life time.
Many people don't listen and have to learn the hardway. But at the end of the day its your game and the world works on money and it funds the stuff we are passionate about.
"Build a Team", are you sure you want to do that step and not doing this on your own merits? 🙄I mean, sharing "the merits" with more people will overcomplicate things and the control you have on the project, but surely may alleviate a ton of stress so that you can focus on more technical things. If you do so, make sure you really trust these people with your life. I say this because I saw this happening in the past with indies that trusted a few individuals to oversee publication and other chores that aren't too "developy" wise, and the real creator ended fighting against these to keep the rights for his project. It would be sad that they end doing this to you because it's a very common practice done against 1-man-army devs. Just I'm worried a bit, so please be careful on that step.
I'm going to wishlist it in a heartbeat whenever you put the game on your storefront ✌
I'm extremely protective over the project that I've built. If I do build a team, I'll be making the absolute best effort I can to ensure that they share my vision and would never take advantage of me or the project. I haven't met anyone I trust yet, outside of professional composers who I would outsource the sound to.
With the bigger talk of ai recently have you ever though about adding it to your game to potentially take it to the next level? having 1 on 1 chats with the character and building a friendship or advice? having the character unlock things by talking to them? idk these are just thoughts. amazing progress btw, its beautiful
You are a testament to overthinking Adam, good art comes from people who trust themselves and know how to relax completely. Everything else that you are describing just naturally is birthed from that and when someone is trying too hard and thinking too hard about something it really shows and people hate it and thats why so many indie developers fail.
You are a good example of what I have to constantly remind myself not to become. I can tell you really want to have the bulk of your sucess and your identity to be based around being an Indie Dev and for people to go crazy and throw accolades at your game Insignia. However you are trapped in the youtube bubble where you have gotten used to catering to your 180k subscribers who are contributing a large portion of your income so you know that if you dont keep making youtube content then you will lose that income source. So you have tried to cleverly switch gears to incorporate your indie game into content that will draw in viewers for your channel, win win right? No not at all, I would say most people come to your channel to learn about pixel art, thats who you are, look at your profile picture even, when you see it youre like yeah this is a guy thats going to teach me pixel art so let me go ahead and subscribe to him because I know hes going to keep making pixel art niche content. Instead look how were sitting here overthinking with you about your indie game. Im sorry man but your loyal subscribers are not helping you with your direction because theyre just supporting you because they like you but because of that you dont have anyone to tell you hay man, this is a pixel art channel, thats what you built it as and thats what it should stay as, not everyone wants to watch your devlogs because your channel is not a Unity tutorial channel or a gamedev blogging channel. If you really need all of this to keep yourself motivated, give it its own space to exist in because youre going in so many different directions that its entirely unobvious to any new viewers what it is that you even do or what they should expect from you and youre basically not giving 100% to any one thing and instead youre trying to be a jack of all trades which as we know historically just results in everything that the person makes being mediocore.
why would you put a pepe in the thumbnail that'S cringe
You dont know what youre making because you are an artist before you are a storyteller, so the art was straightforward for you, no problem, but when it came to giving meaning to the art you fell short because you couldnt really flesh out a world that feels alive and cohesive because youre realizing now that doing so isnt just all about cohesive art, the game needs to be fun, it needs to have intricate lore, it needs to make sense by its own rules, im sorry to say that if you dont put the game down and just open notepad and start writing down the story for the game as if it was a book then youre never going to really get the sucess from this game that you are seeking. I also feel like you are betting so hard on this game being suceccsful simply because you have been working on it for so long, but have you considered that the game might just outright flop no matter what? That no matter how much thinking you do, you put the game out there, it does terrible, only gets a small following, barely makes any money and destroys your heart and soul? Because you have to prepare for that reality because it is very likely to happen, thats when you learn from the experience and try again with a new game that maybe itself will be the hit sensation that youre looking for. Dont put too much importance on insignia, just release it to the people and let them feel about it how they feel about it, maybe they start coming up with correlations that dont even actually exist in the game but you just go along with it anyways, its impossible to predict the future so being a man of action is whats going to get you where you want to be, Fortis Fortuna Adiuvat, fortune favors the bold.
Hi, thanks for your detailed feedback. I'm sorry you don't think I'm walking the right path as a game designer, artist, content creator... I have to say most of your comment, while directed very personally to me, didn't really resonate. I'll try and communicate more clearly about my journey in future videos to avoid the impression that I've just been drifting around making art for a game I haven't written the story for. In fact the full plot was written way back in 2017, and hasn't suffered any major edits in the time since. I also haven't been art-driven in my workflow in a number of years, instead focusing on systems development and prototyping first since 2020. Viewers of my daily twitch stream can attest to this, and they seem to enjoy watching me make the game, even if the audience is much smaller than my UA-cam viewership.
Reflecting further, I think even the most experienced creators tackling large enough projects will inevitably find themselves asking whether they know what they're doing and whether they know how to finish their project. And I think audiences will inevitably have a lesser and separate impression of the process, no matter how hard the artist tries to convey it. So, in light of this, I try to not let comments like yours sway me, and I ask that you trust my integrity as a person to be honest with myself and with my audience about my progress.
Thanks again for your comment, and I hope you find what you're looking for in your own game dev journey.
@@AdamCYounis If what I said didnt resonate with you then you wouldnt have written such an indepth and elaborate response to me so i dont know what was the point in saying that. Nevertheless I appreciate you responding back to give your insights into what you personally feel like is going on in your mind and in your life which only you would know. My feedback was based off of being a longtime viewer of your channel for years now despite never subscribing to you since I dont subscribe to anyone and just look up information as I need it rather than relying on the algorithm. You may feel as though what Im saying doesnt apply to you and maybe if you knew what I was involved with you would find my opinions to carry a bit more weight but either way I can tell you that you are indeed suffering from a lack of scope which is an unusual problem for an indie developer. However in other areas of how you are presenting yourself to the public from a proffesional point of view is very inconsistent and not nearly as cohesive as it could be. My main point was that you are essentially putting your eggs in many baskets, which as a genral rule in life is the way to go, that being why you feel confident in doing so. However if you truly want Insignia to be the success that you dreamt it would be, you will need to put all of your eggs into the Insignia basket. Youre talking about releasing your game on Steam, where it will be lost in a sea of millions of other developers both much worse than you and much better than you. Your presentation for the game should be more than unique and interesting, it should be Iconic and should set the standard for furture developers and if it doesnt do that then it wasnt objectively succesful since any amount of attention or money from a game can be considered a success by our modern ages set of low standards.
If you want to write the story out like a book, just write a book. Games are their own medium and require their own processes to achieve. I think one of the places Adam obviously shines is in how he adapts his workflow to what’s working and what isn’t. Maybe that’s something you only pick up if you actually put in the effort to make a game though (:
@@jackturpitt4275 I didnt come here to list my personal accolades as a game developer in order to provide supporting weight behind my opinions because I know that if you knew who I was and what I personally helped to create you would take what I have to say alot deeper. So I choose to just keep my point as light and simple as possible and if the advice I give helps to get you or anyone else into alighnment with success then thats good but if not thats also fine.
Your game is called 'Insignia' and the definition of insignia is "a distinguishing badge or emblem of military rank, office, or membership of an organization." and I dont see how that concept is worked into your game at all.
Believe in Jesus, you and your family will be saved.