Marketing is NOT Why Most Indie Games Fail
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- Опубліковано 12 бер 2024
- The website I'm using to research games is games-stats.com
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Most polite way of saying " You're game is just not good enough " I've seen
I guess. if "youre not marketable compared to Hollow Knight" is the lesson to take away from this I guess we should all quit gamedev.
@@raze2012_ That's a very pessimistic take to arrive at from this video. The take away is clearly "improve your game and strive to make it look as good as your inspirations," not "just give up loser."
@@raze2012_ I think you're missing the point. Hollow Knight made $200M dollars. If your GOAL is to make that much money, then you're correct, that's your quality competition. But if say your goal is to make $100K, then you need to look up games that made that much and use that level of quality as a benchmark to aim for. This video is not saying you can't find success, but by making a game of a certain quality, then you're significantly more likely to hit your goal
@@lucidstationThe very beginning of the video said "you need to compare to the best game in your genre". I'm sure the best in all but the most niche under-served niches have games that made $100m. That's why they are "the best". Not simply "very good". I've seen a lot of "very good" games end up making a few thousand dollars, but I wouldn't say they were less than a millionth as good as "the best". That's just how market forces work.
And it's a magnitude of scale. Even if I made a perfect hollow knight clone, I wouldn't make $200m. So you don't look up what makes $100k if you wanna make 100k, you look up what makes 1m and pray you hit 1% of the audience. Can you make a million dollar game with your team? I guess that's up to your talent and how they are paid to figure out.
@@SkylerFoxx-GameDev I'm sure most games "strive to look as good as their inspiration". Strive isn't everything.
"Most aspiring indie devs only have a very consumer level knowledge of their genre" - that one hit hard 😅
I imagine most devs who are not yet devs or are starting out as devs will be passionate consumers. So it makes sense. Gamers aren't very good at expresing why they like or especially hate a game. You gotta be in the right dev circle and figure out the nuances of the genre, the small decisions a designer makes that can make or break the feel of a game.
Never be ashamed of being a novice. We gotta start somewhere.
It's a good comment - makes you think
Guilty as charged! ✋️
For anyone involved in gaming communities this also applies. Gamers love telling devs how to improve their game, how to "balance" it, what should be done etc. Being involved in the new unreal tournament community was frustrating circular discussions of topics the general community had been discussing for the better part of two decades. A lot of gamedev is likely a continuation of this.
I was a beta tester for Stardocks Galactic Civilizations 3. There was an instance on the beta forums, where people started arguing about a very late game tech one civ had that some people said was game breaking and others said wouldn't matter. The main post about the tech exploded, having hundreds of replies in a beta that didnt really include very many active people, in just two days. Finally the owner of stardock chimed in with a post that basically said "You guys realize you have spent two days arguing about a small feature that 99% of the people who purchase this game will never even see, right?" That has kind of stuck with me ever since then as a great example of how we as gamers can look at a game and get hung up on things that we think are important, and demand the developers fix/change, when in all reality it has basically no bearing on how well a game will sell or how popular it will be.
Sometimes lucky things happen that will gain traction for your game without any marketing. For example I have been developing a simulation game called Coffee Shop Simulator for almost 2 years and I only had about a little over 300 wishlists. Recently a game called Supermarket Simulator launched and it became very successfully due to low price and high streamer interest. The part that did benefit me in this situation was the fact that my game also featured in the "products similar to this" page of Supermarket Simulator. Since the launch of that game I gained over 1.2k wishlists within a week without doing anything extra.
Congrats! Hope the trend continues
amazing!
You could say you chose a niche that was due for interest, and you reaped the rewards of that.
...and how many sales though? Wishlists mean nothing.
Supermarket Simulator is somethin very odd. As a youtuber I had watched a 10+ episode series from a youtuber of my size to try understand why that game as so much appeal to the viewers while all the gameplay showed is the same repetitive tasks.
I have also noticed that my series about "Turmoil" somewhat got some raving fans that watch every episode in full while the gameplay loop of turmoil is always the same. A lot of the time people surprise me.
I've seen it called curb appeal, like selling a house. Some games have such a good premise, great style, or interesting hook that you're already looking before they've done any marketing.
That's a great term!
It's that classic "elevator pitch" from film & TV. If people's eyes don't light up after 5-10sec, then either 1- your idea doesn't have the spark, or 2- you aren't pitching to the right people. If you can't explain your own game in under 10sec, then you have a bigger problem.
If the screenshots, the banner art or the trailers dont show anything unique or interesting of course it will flop. Games survive based on intrigue.
Isn't that also the "one unique thing"?
@@Yora21 Related, not identical. Unique thing, aka unique selling proposition (USP), is/are those key elements that make you stand out in the genre. Curb appeal usually does include that, but also elements that aren't unique, but which you might do well.
Like having checkpoints in a Metroidvania isn't unique. But having screenshots on those checkpoints means you're doing it better than others. Make sense?
I took an advertising class and one of the first things we learned is that the best form of advertising is having a good product.
Good is subjective, especially when it comes to games, movies, music, art etc.
A common story I think about when considering marketing is Slay the Spire. It launched with no marketing and only made 1000 sales in the first year, before it was picked up by a popular streamer / influencer. After that other streamers picked it up and it rocketed to one of the most popular roguelikes in the genre and launched the deckbuilding subgenre as a recognisable property.
Marketing does matter, but so does the quality of the game. I read endless post mortems about indie devs who complain about not becoming a hit on steam, only to review their game to discover the most boring, by-the-numbers, uninspired slop. It's like they lack complete self-awareness and understanding of what they are competing with and why their game is actually bad.
Great video with fantastic insights. You've earned my sub and I look forward to your future videos.
I feel hyperfocusing on factors like this is indeed a road to uninspired , by the numbers slop. It may make money but I doubt it'll truly resonate with your buyers.
@@raze2012_ and players can feel and see that. Truly passionate devs that love their games and want to develop the best product possible will be infinitely more marketable than someone who just wants to flip games or use them as a platform for their youtube channel.
Slay the Spire falls into that same category as Among Us and Vampire Survivors. It was a very early game in the genre and was IMO a no-contest best-in-genre for multiple years.
It's the first to market effect. I'd bet a slightly worse game could have had the same success if it had came out first.
Are you sure about that? There's a sea of low effort slop on steam that sells well.@@richardrothkugel8131
genre defining indie tbh
Great video!
The concept/hook is indeed the most important part to making a successful game (depending on what success means to you)
All the marketing tips are simply multipliers on that base number, a game with a compelling concept is so much easier to market.
huh, that actually made it make a lot more sense to me.
Marketing is a multiplicative buff applied to the base game.
REALLY good marketing can make even a terrible game go boom(The Day Before).
I guess another multiplier so to speak would be "what people want but don't realize they want thing" that Minecraft did.
But why should I listen to you, a successful indie game developer who doesn't hide his name or his numbers, when I can listen to the anonymous guy who posts every single day in /r/gamedev who makes it sound utterly impossible to plan for success and execute on that plan? Maybe I'll find out after I make Tetris and make Pong. In all seriousness you're underappreciated for what you do. It's just a breath of fresh air to see an indie dev who does the right things intentionally and actually talks about it. So many stumbled into success and so many others just quietly make their millions and never talk about it. Then there's the ones who aren't even real game devs, they just show up to all the events and get speaking fees...
hahaha there are certainly no shortage of doom and gloomers offering advice. Thank you for the kind words :). Cheers!
lmaoooo
my gamedev journey: how I made Pong and no money
Don't listen to this video's waffles because you can make a successful 2D Platformers with the help of my-definitely-not-overpriced courses! 101% success guaranteed, no refund.
Because that anonymous guy - just like you, probably - does not have few million dollars of a budget available on hand.
Which, believe it or not, makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE between knowing what to do to reach a goal, and being actually able to reach that goal.
Meanwhile, good luck being able to "compete on every level" when you have a budget that's 1-5% of Eastshade studio's one. Or cannot even access the games-stats in your region.
Honestly, I feel like this advice is gold for industries outside of gaming as well. One that comes to mind is writers. The advice is always "just write" but without knowing the market you are writing into you will likely end up with a flop that goes nowhere.
Most commercial writers who have successfully published say the same, actually. Similar deal in TV & film when deciding what ideas to pursue to pilot/pitch. You need to gauge the market, since both preferences and minimum expectations change over time, even in "stable" genres.
Most writing communities I’ve been in also share the same problem of “Lol it’s all marketing” instead of actually encouraging others to improve their craft.
I mean, his message here is the message behind "the customer is always right", which is misinterpreted as being a customer service related thing, when it's not.
"Just write" seems like good 101 type advice that needs refining at later stages. That is, once you figure out the types of things you can write, what of that subset is marketable? A variation I've heard is "just write what you know" with the implication that you're writing about yourself but that assumes there is something particularly interesting about you. Taken to the extreme this sort of advice leads to stories where all of the characters are basically the author and everybody speaks in the same voice.
I think a good question to ask yourself is if you would buy your game yourself and at what price.
Or if you'd actually really want to play it in the first place.
Some people like to get high on their farts so much they'll convince themselves perceived effort means higher price.
@@perfectlyroundcircle Some devs have more fun making a game then playing it. Especially in the high skill cap games. Whenever someone says "the devs don't play their own game", they assume the devs are in the same skill bracket as they are. They usually aren't.
Dwarf Fortress and the Adams brothers are an interesting case study. its one of those rare cases where the skills required to play the game are largely aligned with the skills needed to design/make it; yet Tarn's attitude toward development is largely governed by the amount of external forces in the process. His attitude and idea about the game has remained the same; but hes noticeably more stressed now that KitFox is in the mix, and how his work on Classic is the bottleneck for Steam Edition.
@@freelancerthe2561 I would definitely say that devs should play games more often in general. Not necessarily their own games, but they need to understand better the mindset of a player and what makes a game great/fun. This trend of developers not being gamers is not good, because they tend to create boring games a lot of the times.
@@perfectlyroundcircle part of why people like Gabe Newell is that he is a gamer and he knows when things in games aren't good, because he plays them.
I mean, the things you're discussing are basically marketing. Making a product that's "easy to sell" is part of marketing, and market research falls under that umbrella too. BUT!!!! Im very thankfull for encouraging indies to do their marketing and market analysis. Us indies need voices like yours! Great insight! And while video is easy to watch, it's also super informative!
Thanks for the feedback! And thanks for watching! I'm glad you found it informative! The market analysis part is certainly a marketing thing. I'd say the product quality part is a production problem, not a marketing problem. For instance if your game looks ugly, hiring an excellent marketing person will not help you fix that. Hiring an excellent production artist might though. And I do think for most indies its the production related skills that are the bottleneck, not any lack of know-how on the marketing front, or even lack of market research. But at least market research will help folks know where the quality benchmark actually is, so they can have the right expectations.
Let me introduce you to Product Design & Management. Those are actually the people who will either make it or kill it 😅
I think the problem is that game developers often have an idealistic view that you make your game first, and then market it. But marketing need to be there from the start.
(But hay. With a fail faster approach, you can still do fast development circles to see if some of your ideas seem viable and then do the market research to see if they also have a market viability. Just remember, your little demo should be as dirt cheep to develop as possible if you do go that route. You are experimenting, and quality has a quality of it own in that case. Then at least it will feel you started out with a game idea and not with market research to guide you what to make.)
Knowing what quality you need to reach (which a significant amount of this video was focused on) is not a marketing issue.
Marketing is 1. Putting a product in view, and 2. Making sure it's a good view.
If your production is bad, there's only so much polish you can do. Most indies put barely any polish on games with barely any effort. If you doubt me, look at the worst sellers on Steam (literally 10,000s of games that you would never play).
I agree, apart from the positive comments. What actionable advice is there in this video? Half of it is marketing advice, which is supposedly not the problem, and the other half is completely abstract "make your game better". Duh?
An adjunct point, via the quote I've probably posted more often than any other, nearly a decade old now, from a talk given by Tynan Sylvester, creator/lead dev of RimWorld:
"The markets people know about are saturated, because people know about them. A big piece of advice I'd give is: look at the market and try to figure out where the _under-served parts_ are. [my emphasis] What kinds of games do players want but can't get? Entering an already-saturated genre is a recipe for death. I think I could make a decent military shooter FPS, but I'd make like no money off it even if it was objectively fun, because that market is utterly saturated by big hyper-polished AAA releases. [note - this is from 2015/6] RimWorld was really deliberately targeted at a market that had a need that wasn't filled. I know there are other markets like that. _So the real first challenge might not be making the game at all._ [my emphasis] It's very carefully and deeply inspecting and understanding the market to see where the need is."
100%. Make the kind of games you want to play, that aren't being made. If you make a "me too" game you're doomed from the start imo.
@@0lionheart My example will be silly, but that's exactly the reason I've decided to make my own game. I play lots of eroges and hentai games in general, but one thing I've found to be severely under-served are yuri games, that is, games about lesbian intercourse. Also, most games with a female protagonist in these genres are either too rapey or it's a reverse harem sort of game. You don't see at all female protagonist picking up other girls in these games all that often. So, I said: "I'll do it one myself."
Don't care if it's gonna be popular, and I plan to make it free as well since it is just a pet project of mine, not something I'm looking for regarding profit, but it's definitely a game I wanna play, on an under-served genre.
@@Bronze_Age_Sea_Person It's not silly, I'm sure you're not the only person to wants this. Good luck!
The only thing I'd add is that if you're making a commercial quality game, you should consider monetizing it somehow, even if it's just a dollar or two, and even if you pledge giving all your _profits_ away to a thematically appropriate charity. I'm a big proponent of people getting paid for their time. Work is work even when you're the one choosing to do it and that deserves compensation.
So: Guess and get lucky.
@@richardbrooks5899 Please clarify.
I think farming sims are the best example of this. There are so many games in that genre where you can look at 5 seconds of a trailer (or often just 1 screenshot) and that's enough to conclude that it is exactly like every other farming game except with stiffer controls and a more generic art style. I'm not saying every game needs to reinvent the wheel, but if you don't do anything unique from the other games, and you don't do anything better than the other games, then I have no reason to bother
I feel this is true for every game genre not just farming sims. Gaming became very stale in the last couple of years.
"I'm not saying every game needs to reinvent the wheel, [but every game needs to invent *something*]"
Sorry i couldn’t hear what you were saying because of your music, so my game failed.
I've seen people complaining that selling a game successfully is down to luck. It's cool to see someone saying otherwise. I guess that luck might factor in, but I believe the effort and decisions made by the developers play a much bigger role. Having control over the outcome feels more empowering and motivating, instead of everything being down to some luck you might get or not.
Luck is a bigger factor than portrayed here. Some things are out of your control and some things can be made up for with money (tho, most people don't have that kinda money to burn lol)
Luck is a big factor still. We are hearing from someone that put in the work and experienced decent luck.
@@loopuleasaIf you call beginning a project with industry experience, extensive market research and spending several years on making a game people want to play, working on it full time, during all this - working on the promotion of the game yourself and hiring a pr company... If you call this luck, then sure. I myself see this as experienced people putting in deliberate effort towards a specific goal, and having resources to do so.
@@tinalava68it's the same in the restaurant business. you need SKILL AND LUCK. You need both. Luck alone is not enough, but you do need it. Veritasium has a good video on luck vs success if you want to be educated on how reality works.
@@tinalava68 You can have all the talent and research in the world and you might just launch at a bad time, next to a huge behemoth, Or just be screwed by algorithms beyond your control.
Your ads may be well made but not actually reach your audience. Your PR might resonate with people who will proceed to not wishlist nor buy your game. You might even get screwed by Valve itself depending on vague rulings that mean your game never actually gets to the store because some employee has a bias or a bad day. God help you if you hit that pain point and you realize how Valve can truly be to people behind the scenes.
There's plenty of good luck as well, but Ignoring luck as a factor and just saying "well make a good game" can blow up in your face for reasons beyond your control. That's life, as Captain Picard would say
Lots of gamers are sort of arrogant - "It does not appleal to ME, so it appealing to lots of other people has to have explanation that does nothing with quality of game. Hmm, marketing..." and also "It appeals to me, why does it appeal to only small group of people? My taste is impeccable, so there needs to be rational explanation. Hmm, marketing..."
Its just narcissistic. "I'm so awesome and awesomeness is key to success!" In their head their life is an exciting video game with the story arc of the underdog.
Main reason I don't really interact with the gaming community anymore. Talking about games just isn't fun anymore
@@wourydiallo1445hate to break it to you, but this isn't a phenomenon limited to gamers, it's universal. Everybody thinks they're above average, and half of them are wrong. A lot of people think they're outliers of excellence, and basically all of them are wrong.
@@LibertyMonk you're right but the gaming community was where I saw it the most. I kinda got sick of it as I was being older cuz I felt like everyone was like that
@@LibertyMonk Appealing to the crowd isn't a sign of excellence. Millions of people like Despacito, those who appreciate Chopin are few. That doesn't mean Despacito is way better than Chopin.
But yes, when you want to sell something, obviously appealing to the crowd is key.
2:00 I've seen people say games like Celeste and Hollow Knight are hidden gems or under appreciated.
haha
For casuals who only play AAA games they may look like hidden gems ;-)
But objectively speaking - of course they are not!
Which is funny. When I finally made the switch to pc gaming, I saw Hollow Knight advertised a lot. I simply chose to ignore it, since it was in a genre I wasn't interested in. I did finally take the plunge, and I don't regret it.
Under appreciated to the vast 8 billion population on the planet Earth is probably what they mean.
Ask a random guy on the street about Celeste and there's realistically only a 0.5% chance they're passionate about it.
Which is still pretty dang high; that's an estimated 40 million people.
When you make 1 million, you are sad because you could have make 2 millions, but if you make 2 millions you are sad because you want to make 4 millions... And that explain why living is hell in the US...
I think this entire argument rests heavily on there being a strong correlation between game quality and revenue, and through that website I can confirm that games I consider "hidden gems" are indeed underperformers. Dodgeball Academia was a great sports RPG, both Freedom Planets are the best action platformers I've ever played and Chicory is the best Zelda I've ever played, with story/music that rivals Undertale. The only "hidden gem" I saw claw its way out of relative obscurity was CrossCode.
"Marketing" for indies is weird because it largely comes down to youtubers making content, which has complex variables like the algorithm, social media shareability, genre saturation and whatnot. Some games overshadow the entire indie scene because every game design channel will cover them. Genres like 2D platformers are so saturated in the eyes of the public that you need a crazy art style like Pizza Tower to demand attention, while the niche genre of level makers is monopolized by Mario Maker because creators have negative incentive to branch out.
I think there's an interesting discussion surrounding what makes games "attention-grabbing" or "shareable" or "mainstream" or what makes a fertile subgenre like "Megaman-likes", where fans still look for new titles despite the broader apathy towards 2D platformers. There are definitely games that have all the ingredients of a "higher bracket" yet failed to reach that audience, and I think recommendation algorithms have a much bigger indirect impact on that than people realize.
"Nah, your game just sucks. Just make a deckbuilding roguelite. Platformers and action games with a focus on level design are objectively bad, procedurally generated skinner boxes are the way of the future."
Agreed that the argument that there's no hidden gems is absolutely absurd. I've played some amazing games on Steam, far better than some runaway successes, and I was the first reviewer after it was sitting there for 6 months.
That's wild! What game!?
Yeah one of the issues with UA-cam marketing is it’s partly dependent on the game having gameplay that’s going to be entertaining to an audience. Like I love turn based RPGs and farming games but recognize that the gameplay is actually really boring to watch so those games don’t typically get picked up by the UA-camrs that are doing it for entertainment and generally stay in the niche sphere of UA-camrs who review those types of games. On the other hand games like Lethal Company and FNAF that don’t appeal to me from a gameplay perspective blew up on UA-cam because watching people play them was entertaining.
@@Dave-rd6sp maybe your standards just aren’t that high? jokes aside, I have certainly played games before that I thought deserved way more attention, but a (not brand new obviously) game even with just decent quality that doesn’t at least have it’s fair share of fans is pretty much unheard of for me.
one if the most overlooked issues i see is "how do i make something i care about successful?" as in, what do you do, if you just dont enjoy "marketable games"? nearly all of the biggest hits are just so unfun in my opinion, indie or not. people are giving such vague solutions like "just make good game" but i think the real answer to maximizing rate of success is to consistently open yourself up to feedback and earn early fans. most peoples creative vision of a great game just cant get as many peoples attention as undertale or stardew valley.
This is 100% true. I like to think of this methodology as "match and surpass." Match the quality and features, and then surpass the reference with your own unique features and ideas. Bit of a strange comparison, but MANY companies have tried their hand at creating a Roblox competitor...and all except for Fortnite (so far) have failed. Unsurprisingly it all comes down to the fact that none of their products were able to match Roblox in terms of features and abilities. At the end of the day...who really wants to play the inferior game?
The number of companies willing to put out retrosuperannuated products is too great. Though, in this case 1 is too many: the advantage of releasing later is being able to identify and improve upon your competition's faults, and to throw that away is asinine.
Note that free to play with in App purchases are not taken into account on game stats. They mark all of them as $0 of sales and as a failure for that reason. This makes some categories like multiplayer and coop which heavily use those features look disproportionately like they will be failures.
Hi! This is the developer of games-stats. Thanks for the great video! It's nice to see how indie developers use our services and get results. You have clearly shown the use of filters and tags, we hope it will be useful to many.
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@@eastshadestudios8335 It's good to hear! If you have any ideas, we will always be glad to hear them.
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Is this site working? I've tried several times since this video and all i get is a 'Site not reached' page.
I love this conversation 😻
Since I started my indie project I have convinced myself of a couple of things: I will know if I have made a good product, and if I make a good product it will (somewhat) sell itself. Great video, a nice break from everyone screaming promotion promotion. I had some revenue goals in mind, and now I know the tools to use to see what I need to shoot for. Thanks!
Gotta be careful with the "just make a good game" mindset. I do think it's really important but it's gotta be a good game that fits the platform e.g. Steam and has a sizeable market, and it has to be REALLY good, which may be beyond some people's technical abilities, artistic skills, and/or budget! Marketing is then a multiplier on top of this as a great game launched into a void won't sell itself (I realised you sensibly said "somewhat".)
@@JakeBirkett tags, title and thumbnail are perhaps the most important for catching eyes, when browsing i tend to skim over things that don't look remarkable or relevant to me.
It’s not just about making a good game, but a _marketable_ game. You can make the best chess simulator ever, but that doesn’t mean there’s a huge market for it.
"I will know if I have made a good product" wasn't the entire point that we don't and we can't evaluate our own ability and the quality of our own work and when it fails we rationalize it by blaming marketing?
If your pure purpose of making game is money, this video is right for you.
If you have other purpose than just money, then don't watch this video. Make game you'd like to play.
I'd much rather play a game someone made because they wanted to play it rather than a game someone made for money
@@CrazyRiverOtter well yeah, Devs gotta becareful tho, their "taste" need to be refined so its not like narcissist.
This is great video and at the same time i want to say that many of indie games that I played are great at art, but very bad on technical level and usability. Many of indie platformers don't have proper jump system and I always stuck on some levels there. Many indie FPS shooters are good in shooting mechanics, but are bad in level design. I didn't see failed project that has everything in solid shape, I see mainly that failed projects has only one thing good and it's never gameplay.
I've seen games with good gameplay bu rough graphics that hold it back. Especially in genres where you need to tech some nuanced or deep mechanics. It can be REALLY fun once you get it, but the game does no favors helping you really get it. That's what many cult classics have in common; great gameplay but clunky execution in one or more other areas.
Boy, that last part sure describes indie tactical shooters right now. They nail weapon customisation and character controllers, but AI & level + encounter design are like a 90's NovaLogic game..
This describes the farming simulator/cozy game sector of gaming so well- cute art, really bad game design.
@@raze2012_ This is my feeling about the entire Mount and Blade series. Conceptually the medieval sanbox-rts-rpg build your own fiefdom game is perfect for me. But by god I wish it was made by a studio that was more competent. But since they are the only game in town I guess I'll accept the disaster graphics, repetitive gameplay and lack of depth because at the core it is still the perfect game for me.
Great video! It’s so cool and insightful to see videos by an indie dev about topics like this. I never would have known so much about indie game marketing. Keep up the great work. Going back to watch your witch rpg dev logs now
So cool to see you doing vids sharing you experience that goes beyond your Dev logs. It's great to be getting so much interesting content from you.
The tragedy of art in general is that there will always be more passionate creative people than an audience can sustain. Any creative marketplace is oversaturated with competition. Doesn't matter if it's creative wrighting, painting, music, dancing, film, online influencer, ect. Every great creative success, will inspire a thousand others to fail in their footsteps....
Meanwhile 99% of the time you see copycat products that fail to replicate production value, features or success of what they intend to imitate.
As someone who also has a passive interest in selling tabletop games this also absolutely applies! Thank you so much for this video 😊
Honestly when I saw the title and thumbnail I thought "Hmm... not sure about that, but I'm curious to hear his take" and yeah, I get your distinction between "marketing" and "marketable," it definitely makes sense. I'd still probably say that qualifies as "marketing", but I get the point you're making. Throwing a lot of money into ads and marketing for a game that doesn't present well visually won't get you far. It's one of the reasons why I think one of the biggest lies spread throughout the gaming community is the narrative that "graphics don't matter." They 100% do, *everything* about a game matters.
yeah but what I saw recently as making a horror game in unreal with 4k textures mostly is that it doesnt mattet much mote succesful games are done with less graphic quality not the game quality but it was a dumb idea to make it so realistic by me 😂
Well, graphics matter in a general audience setting. In niche audiences, graphics matter less. Visuals do remain important: readable UI, the like. However, relying on niche communities doesn't always work out given small numbers and accessibility.
@@arcanep realistic games are not uncommon. Its easy to make them in unreal, especially with ton of free assets available in marketplace. Stylized games, if the art is good - will always catch your eye more. There are many realisticly lit and looking games, especially those made in unreal. They all look similiar and its hard to make something to stand out in that bracket. Its possible, just hard to do. Wish you best
Graphics not mattering is often about using bledding edge techniques. You do not have to have raytraced realistic graphics if you have strong well executed art style. Using great engine is pointless if your assets are mess.
PUBG, many millitary shooters, Among us, Vampire Survivors didn't have great graphics and looked worse that many projects, but they succedd.
This is an awesomely informative video! This gives me a great starting point and understanding of how I can market my current and future games, I thank you for that .
As my marketing chief said - "if you have a turd, no amount of good pr and marketing will make it not a turd"
Looking at mainstream media, you can't sell turds but I think manure is in high demand right now.
I played your game through on my channel and enjoyed every minute of it. And your marketing was on point and what the game was like. What I see with some game devs is they start marketing the game before they have any idea of what final game is going to be like. They don't have a product, they have an idea. I'd rather see a trailer which has the final game play and wait for it, than see yet another trailer of a game "in process" where the final game looks nothing or acts nothing like that trailer. Or so help me, teasers.
And you're correct. Most don't do market research. They have "I want this, b/c I'm a fan of this!" So right now in the horse game community we have 7 to 8 horse simulation racing games going and the only one that might succeed is the Ranch of Rivershine but you BETTER love horse sims. Because it is the same thing as every other horse sim lacking a story or anything meaningful that attracts players to say... Star Shine Legacy (and it's child Star Stable Online.) But it feels like none of the devs looked at other horse games from the past or what is in development right now. They just want to make a horse game.
His marketing is on point with this video too, very clever ;)
You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar!
I've been struggling with marketing a lot lately and you opened my eyes to something that now looks so evident. This video is a genuine gem.
I can now take a whole new direction with my current project. Thanks a bunch
Dude, this is amazing knowledge. Market research is something almost no one talks about, but its so insanely important. Definitely going to check out game-stats!!!
That's the first sensible take I've seen on indie game marketing. Thanks for instilling some measure of rationality (and professionalism) in the debate.
Undertale looks bad but has amazing music, which is why it started selling. Music sells games, don't sleep on sound
Undertale had a brand and a kickstarter as well. Toby didn't just one day spin some yarn and suddenly blow up. He's spent decades making music, even for modding projects. he had a small following before he ever started making the game.
Honestly, if you have the time/passion, you can get a decent audience by making fanart. I'm a bit too bitter with how the modding scene (aka "fanart" for programmers) works to do it, but it's worth considering if you are making a similar game one day.
Art is subjective... To you it looks bad, to other people it looks good, also beyond the music there is also the gameplay and the story, and how all the elements mix together, also Toby already had a following when Undertale was released.
@@raze2012_ Having a following is like a cheat code for indie dev. You could crap on a plate and if you have a large following, it will sell. And if you make something good your chance of success is very high. Look at GMTK and his magnet game. If that game was being made by some obscure indie dev with no following no one would care about it.
Undertale started selling because Toby got a free fandom from working on homestuck.
I'm working on a 3d parkour platformer with 2 friends in our spare time. We're mainly making the game for ourselves but I decided to spend a day looking into other games on the stats website you suggested. It's actually really helped with motivation! Of course, gotta do more research, but so far it seems we're clearly NOT in the low-range end of things. Currently in the mid-range but the high-range seems attainable with enough time. I'm talking about level of polish and visuals.
We'll keep striving for more because it's really a passion project and we wanna make something that we're proud of!
No guarantees but this has been a really nice motivation booster and its really great to hear advice from someone with experience!
A lot of games that sell well in the primary genres I play (female oriented visual novels and cozy farming sims) are free, but they make an impressive amount of money by having artbooks, sound tracks, offsite 18+ DLC patches, merch, Koffi's and other ways to donate. Their marketing is telling the bloggers in the community that they exist, the rest of their traffic is from "games we think you'd like", "similar to games you've played", and the search bar on steam. They tag their games accurately, so they're easy to discover by typing in relevant words.
Not a game dev, but those are my tips as a gamer. Most influential one up there is telling bloggers you exist. I guarantee for every category your game may fall into there is a dedicated base salivating in the corner, waiting for the bloggers to add to the database of related games. If your game is fairly generic, find a way to squeeze in at least one niche aspect, so you are guaranteed to have a handful of people test it out with enthusiasm.
I think Mario Maker's monopoly of the "level creation" genre is an interesting case because it's not actually a great creator experience. Nintendo is horrible at community/online features, leading to players wading through garbage and creators being frustrated that their levels get no plays or get randomly deleted.
And yet, content creators are motivated to stay on that game because nothing else will ever get as many views as Mario. That creates a large group of people who don't actually like the game, they just like watching it. It also means that by using Mario Maker as a standard for this genre means you have a very low bar for a creator experience, resulting in many UGC games repeating its mistakes, and since nothing else will replace it the genre will remain stagnant.
This is why there's a lot of hidden gems in the maker game category, many of which have tight controls and better, easy to use, and more powerful level editors than Mario Maker. It's frustrating seeing video after video about Mario Maker wishlists, while indie games that have the features on those wishlists are completely ignored.
There's even been Mario fan games with big communities that completely vanished when they changed nothing but swapping out Mario for a unique character sprite.
Kid named Geometry Dash:
Thank you!!
I think your perspective is correct, and I added links and insights to my own to-do.
If you have more quality nuggets like this video, highly loaded with concrete analytic workflows, please share.
..also: I appreciate that you share the workflow of making the analysis, and not just the result that you arrived at.
tbh marketing done wrong would just make ppl hate it instead, like you know the social media site that already having bloated of ads, ppl first reaction seeing any sort of ads is block it immediate or ad-block it.
In all my years this is the best and most helpful video I've seen on the topic with practical advice and a very honest way of figuring out "here's how to know if your game is good enough for what you want". Thank you so much for making this
Hooray! Warms my heart to hear! Thanks for the kind words and good luck on your project!
Super helpful information for making my first commercial game. Thank you! I’ll be diving into game-stats TODAY
Use it to your advantage! Let us know what we can improve and what features to implement.
With love to the developers! The Games-stats team
This is the best video I've seen on this topic - really informative, thank you for that!
Thanks for this video, it's really nice to hear an alternative to 'it's all about the marketing'. I find art, music, writing and the more creative side of development easy and though I love coding I am very slow at it. Therefore I chose the hidden object genre for my first game since it showcases all my art and is relatively simple when it comes to code. I am aiming to match or exceed Hidden Folks in quality as I fell that if I can do that my game will be a moderate success at least.
The reason 90% of indie-games fail is because - 90% of indie games are really bad. They're not fun, they're not well made, and they're not interesting.
Some historically super successful games can sit with
Love this take and really cool to hear someone of your skill level and experience set us all straight. I learned alot from this vid and I really appreciate you taking the time to educate us mortals...
Great video! I can agree that the quality if the product that patters the most. I didn't do any marketing for my game and it get discovered by Steam. People are finding it organically and social media posts, online magazines posting about it, UA-camrs playing it, having physical presentations on meetups all contribute very little compared to how it's discovered via just Steam alone. Also it had lots of refunds after release, but a few months of patching and updating resulted in basically zero refunds and positive reviews. I also see that huge updates with small sales give a boost to the numbers and I feel success directly correlates to the quality of the game.
Good video. Very good insight.
I hope you can make more of these.
This is encouraging. Thank you
Personally my game is a success if I finish it and I'm happy with it. If it makes money and other people like it? That's just a bonus, not necessarily the expectation.
That's the answer to your lightning in a bottle.
That's beautiful! I am speaking to folks who want to make money from indie dev. I personally do this full-time and I'd like to keep doing it so it's important for me and my company to compete at the highest levels. We pour our hearts into our games. So much so that we will have nothing to eat if they don't make us some money.
@@eastshadestudios8335 Of course. The world isn't ideal like that where we can't work towards our dreams unburdened. It is ironic though. Money may make the world go round, but it will never make the world more fulfilling. The greatest successes in art are often the ones the least financially motivated.
Awesome video!
Thank you for sharing all this knowledge! 🐸✨
I think you tweeted something about this a few years ago and how indie dev is not inherently "risky" or a "crapshoot" if you just fairly judge your product with other successes in its category and that stuck with me massively in the past few years. Thank you for making a larger video on the topic, I think it's SUPER useful!
I seem to remember hearing somewhere that; "You have about 30 seconds, more or less, to catch a potential buyers attention with your trailer. After that, it's all up to chance."
Now I don't know if I heard that somewhere, or if that quote is even worded by me accurately; But it seems to make sense.
30 seconds? You must be kidding. I think it's more like 3-5 seconds - which are too often wasted on displaying logos.
@@Martinit0,
Sadly, that may be true. But it sure don't make it any better.
Man, I really like the background music, lol.
Great stuff. Started out as research and ended up breaking me thanks to finding all these new games just in time for the steam sale :)
That's the kind of video that I needed to see, thanks for that ;)
It will most likely influence my way to market my games.
Purely listening to you speak is inspiring for some reason
Well good thing i plan on putting my game out for free and i don't want to make money making games
And that's a beautiful thing! Happy deving my friend!
what a high value video, thank you for taking the time!
Amazing video! I work with UX and these topics are amazing to cover.
My mantra is that the best, highest quality peogram in CS is borderline useless if nobody likes/feels comfortable USING the rnd product.
On that note though, are you able to turn down the music to about 70-80% of what it is currently lol. It was incredibly distracting to me
Great video but please tone down the music a bit (or a lot). It's quite loud and annoying.
Fr i can barely hear him speak 😂
A lot, please! 🙏
Watching it on my phone on 40% volume and had no issues hearing him clearly.
Thank you for the feedback! Sorry about the music volume. I really thought it was low enough but the comments prove otherwise. Devastating mistake on my part!
@@eastshadestudios8335the music volume never bothered me. Going back after seeing this comment it could be turned down a bit but I don’t think it is too bad as is
people complain on reddit that their 8bits pixel art plataformer aobut anxiety made in godot over the last 12 years only made 100$ in sells...
when in fact I'm surprised that it made so much...
Lol yeah. Why don't people like my pretentious downer game that doesn't play well? I don't get it. Average gamedev reddit post.
Couldn't agree more, it's a bit similar to how people on UA-cam complain about their videos not going viral because the algorithm didn't bless them for some reason, rather than having the self awareness that maybe their video wasn't as interesting as they thought.
Fantastic video. Target customer analysis and market research are incredibly important skills to develop.
Gameplay is everything. If the fundamental mechanisms are a boring re-hash of other games then the finished product will be a boring re-hash of other games, no matter how much you tart up the graphics
I've heard most of this advice, but the way it's presented in this video, it's... uplifting. Heartwarming. The "you can do it" oozes off the script. Thank you!
Subscribed - seems like you're doing what I'm trying to do on youtube but 100x better xD awesome work.
After watching this video I used the tool to study games similar to another one I was considering starting, and found out that there was no market for it. Thanks you saved me months or years already lol!
daaaaaaaaayum.... you didn't need to tell it like it is.
basically, the question is - can you compete at the highest level? for the vast majority of people in ANY field or endeavor, the answer is NO.
I don't know why I am watching this. I'm never gonna develop a game
My Prof suggested I play Eastshade for reference for my student capstone project last year, that is how you got my purchase. My project was also deemed one of the best in the program by the university faculty so thanks for the solid information and insight.
While I find the video informative, I think the title is a bit misleading. Maybe we have a different definition of marketing, for me market research, making your game marketable is a part of marketing.
Very important video as it restores the belief in game quality having a monetary return. It would help if there where clear markers for quality, instead of it being intuitively known.
Although compared to the Hollywood screenplay system the lowest bar is having used the right font and layout easiest achieved with using FinalDraft or CeltX. For the gamedev that could translate to using Unity or Unreal, but I hope gamedev wont become that stale.
Intuitive judging for screenplays is done by by professional readers among others working in that system, but they can often also be hired to give feedback on a screenplay, so you know how good it is and for some extra coaching hours they tell you what they think could be better. Is such a service available for gamedev? Could gamedev's stand their game being criticized and even paid for the privilege? I feel quality isn't really that much of an issue with gamedev's, but I might be wrong. I do see the opposite trend in that gamejams are very popular and they cater to the fun of creating a game without the long and hard work of polishing it until it shines.
Long hard work aiming for quality can't every be a guaranty for success in a creative endeavor, but it can sure give you an edge over the competition who didn't invest as much.
I kinda expected clickbait but this was a really helpful perspective (and actionable). Thanks for sharing, please make more videos like this!
This is a great little video, and I'm suddenly very excited to go do some research. I'm making a horror game, and I'm sure the data on that is fascinating.
Great points communicated succinctly. Is this UA-cam?
It would be an interesting exercise to find some examples that are exceptions; a list of games that underperformed their potential even with competitive presentation, quality. I wonder if you might actually find more examples of such exceptions in the AAA space.
There are plenty of concise voices on youtube, you've just got to find them.
Massive YES! I can't tell you how often I hear this BS of "many hidden gems". Almost as much if not more often than I hear the "make 10 small games" BS. The GAME is what matters. 💯
Great video, glad someone is talking about this stuff
I agree with this video, I myself study advertising and marketing, but I have never seen a successful game that had no advertising at all, but only a page on steam. Many good games already have a decent amount of advertising outside of the Steam.
There's reputation. For example Coffee Stain Studio did two previous games that built up their reputation so when Satisfactory came out people kind of knew what to expect.
A similar thing happens with music. There are tons of struggling indie artists who blame the industry, blame the platform, blame the audience, etc. Meanwhile, they're making music no one wants, and they think it's pearls before swine.
You're right it does feel very freeing. The fact that there aren't any games on steam that are of the same quality as the top sellers but aren't performing well, means that if we simply make a game that can compete with the top of the bracket, we can get to the top of the bracket. And if the only barrier is quality, then the only thing left to do is work. No point in hesitating.
This is a really hopeful message with some actionable advice on market research. I'd love to know what you think about when is best to start the efforts? For those of us wary of showing our work in progress. Thank you for the great video!!
You can never predict how well a new product will do, not even big firms can. Just follow your heart and be very critical of yourself, and hope for the best.
Hi! I wanted to give you an update regarding my comment from a few days ago. I started to try something in Godot, and all I've got so far is basic movement and some textures. And I agree with most things you said about marketing, people don't fathom the amount of things you are supposed to do (coming from a management student). And it's not only related to research...
I love the way that this video is also actually marketing for the dev/studio and upcoming game :) Nothing like saying everyone should make the best product they can, to also imply you are making the best product you can! (i don't mean this in a snarky way, it makes sense!)
I didn't truly understand what it meant to pick a good tag/genre, even after reading and watching countless advice pieces on this exact topic.
I wish I knew this before publishing. Thank you!
No point picking a "good" tag in a genre you don't understand, nor care about. If you want to offer your talent regardless of the game itself you make way more consistent money being in the industry.
I'll never make a Boomer Shooter, but I've been paid to work on FPS's before, so I technically have the talent for that.
It's more like, UNDERSTAND your tag/genre correctly.
@@R3GARnator 💯
My first game sold like 100 dolars and to be honest it was well deserved in some aspects, i made a really poor marketing plan and maybe the capsule of the game wasn't ideal, as an artist i couldn'r change the gameplay, but i don't blame it, the game play was simple and nice, but when i see the whole cake i notice that the 100 bucks was what i deserved.
Interesting and thought-provoking video. And you can do so many things right and still kill a good game with some poor decisions.
In particular, this video made me think of this really cute indie Chinese puzzle game called Bright bird (came out in 2020). It's gorgeously drawn (seriously, one of the most beautiful games I've ever seen), it's atmospheric, the puzzles are smart, fun and imaginative, it's got a very intriguing story (with multiple endings from what I've heard), it's very cheap for the hours and hours of content... and it's been largely forgotten, with only 16 reviews since January 2023. By revenue, it's ranked 976th on the game-stats Steam puzzle list, making about $140,000 - if you look at how the sales went over time, it saw quite a bit of success at launch and then quickly plummeted. It was an obvious underperformance given all the work and heart that clearly went into the game.
So why did it "fail"?
If you look at the reviews, a few people complained about clunky controls, which IMO were fine but whatever - but the bigger issue is, the game never really reached much of the English-speaking audience, and it's easy to see why. It's only playable in English and Chinese, which is already a fail for a game that's rich with story and limiting your audience by not-investing in translating to more languages. Worse, whoever did the English translations didn't put enough effort into it - sometimes, the phrasing was kind of awkward, and occasionally, the text would not fit into the "text bubbles" of the characters and you'd lose the last word or three of the text. The game's title with Chinese characters (pictograms, letters) in it probably didn't help matters either. Then you have the fact that some puzzles could apparently become bugged, and there was no way to reset the puzzles as far as I could tell - so, if you were *really* unlucky, you could lose your entire gameplay if you ran into one of those bugs. For a final bad decision, at the beginning of the game, the landscape is lightly obscured by a fog - which has clear story reasons and the fog disappears later on, but it diminishes the beautiful graphics that really shine through in remaining 90+% of the gameplay, and if Steam has a "free-return policy" of 2 hours, starting in foggy settings probably wasn't smart...
It's a damn shame - I honestly think with just a bit more effort, the game could have been so much more successful. Instead, it faded into obscurity.
Similar situation with the game Virgo Vs the Zodiac. One of the coolest games I own on steam, unique combat systems, beautiful art, music, story, everything is so charming, I genuinely believe this game could be the viral type that every youtuber plays at least once. But the devs just say it came out at the wrong time or something.
Looking at both of these games the problem is pretty obvious - neither of them clearly convey what they're about or present an immediate hook to grab potential audiences. Bright Bird gives no indication about it's objective, story, themes or mechanics beyond being a side scrolling puzzle game. All it shows us is that it has a very pretty and distinctive art style, but there's already a glut of side scrolling puzzle games that look beautiful.
Virgo Vs the Zodiac is better, since I actually walk away with some idea of what the premise and mechanics involve, but it's still not good. The stakes and motivation behind the narrative aren't conveyed, and while 'dethrone the zodiacs' is a pretty cool premise, it doesn't mean much if we have no sense of what their siginificance is or how they fit into the world. While the game looks pretty, Indie JRPGs are another genre where there's a lot of games with attractive, distinctive aesthetics. It isn't enough to stand out. Finally they've chosen review quotes that make the game seem more generic, rather than hyping it up or praising it's distinctiveness.
Love this video. Best tip I've heard in many years making games. Definitely saved to my gamedev playlist
The game that this video reminds me of is Manor Lords. It started with a simple trailer that showed off just enough of what the premise of the game would be and the very high attention to detail and quality.
It then snowballed into one of the most wishlisted games of all time on Steam and the dev now has a publisher and releases a trickle of content in the form of screenshots and trailers (but sparingly).
The product's apparent quality is what got people hyped and excited and then marketing did the rest.
I saw someone playing manor lords, the quality was so high it stuck with me ever since, not my type of game so probably not a buy but everything in that games visual was so appealing and flawless, simple things like building roads looked amazing
I just started to seriously consider getting into game development. I have to learn a lot of basics and then some before I can even start to consider making a product I feel is worth selling, but this video is perfectly timed regardless. It’s reassuring to think that if I ever do get to the point of selling, success won’t just be down to blind luck.
Thanks for watching! Glad you liked the video and it left you reassured!
This kind of helps but also not very much. I'm making an Ocarina of Time style adventure game(but with cats) but what I've found is that its a hard genre to put a tag to. I'm getting roguelites, terraria and all sorts of other very different games popping up in my searches(but maybe thats my own fault for choosing this style of game)
I also looked at JRPG(the genre I'm thinking of doing next) and the amount of rpgmaker games with default graphics that have made way more money than they deserve is shocking.
I saw other peoples videos about how marketing didnt help them at all and I think you hit the nail on the head with that because if I saw their advertisement I would not click the link because their game did not look high enough quality to make me want to play it.
Makes me wonder about the quality of my own graphics.......
Genre is generally in the eye of the customer. So maybe show your game (or your design) to various types of players and ask what they would classify it as.
@@mandisaw Thats a pretty good idea
Adventure Game. And the guy is right. Probably the game is just not that good / polished / unique / interesting / beautiful /
@@harm991I was not commenting on my game not getting wishlists. I was commenting on comparing my game against others in the same genre. If I use the tag adventure then I am seeing red dead redemption, terraria and other games that are nothing like my game. adventure is to broad but nothing else describes it
@@grindalfgames "my game is special!!!"
Stray is a 2022 adventure game
It was really motivational thank you!
Great video! Pretty much applied to all industries when you think about it, everything is marketed basically the same! Well put talking points!
I've had a game which couldn't pick up any traction until I signed with a publisher, at which point I got featured in different publications, covered by influencers with the exact same marketing material I was using prior, and directly contributed to its success. Sometimes marketing makes or breaks your game, point blank.
Hey that'd be a great case study for me! Can you share the game?
I suspect the correct formulation of the thesis is not that marketing doesnt matter. Its that marketing only has a chance to matter if what you make is already great. And most indy games are just not particularly great.
Could do without the super load music 🤕
Yeah agree. Felt really hard to hear the narration for a lot of the video.
Some interesting tags:
- Moddable: 48% >$100k, 26% >$1M
- Games Workshop: 58% > $100K, 36% >$1M
Hey mate,
Nice video, thank you for putting this out!
little feedback: in some sections music was a tad too loud and had trouble hearing your words clearly.
Otherwise extremely solid 👌