Hi Chris, great talk, I learned a lot. As someone who is making an auto battler, it's great to know the genre isn't saturated yet. A question on the steam page. When should I set a release date for it? Do I launch my page with or without a release date? Should I set a release date once I get the 7000 wishlists? Can I change my release date and would you advice this if you're short the 7000 wishlist goal?
Hey Chris, thank for sharing your knowledge together with CodeMonkey! I found it all very insightful but at the same time I fall in the category of working on a larger project as my first game. More specifically I'm creating a JRPG called Monster Haven (most of my stuff is on Twitter for now, it's done moderately well there). While I'm happy with how the game is shaping up personally I'm now a little worried that I'm wasting my time as I have zero audience on Steam thus far. What would you suggest me or other people in a similar situation do? Should I scrap working on the whole JRPG'ish story and focus first on just releasing say an auto battler? So I at least already have a starting audience after which I can continue on the main game?
@@MonsterHavenDev I think you’re falling into the exact trap Chris is talking about. I found you quite easily on twitter, but I don’t see your steampage? I found a Reddit post from 3 years ago, so you’ve been working on this for a while, but you don’t have a steam page? How are you going to get a following on Steam without a steampage? As Chris said, you aren’t going to get much following on twitter. If you want to make money off the game, your next Steam should be building a Steam page and linking to it from twitter and everywhere else you have. You spent quite a lot of time and I can tel you already have some screenshots for the game, so making it shouldn’t be that difficult. Hope it makes sense? PS: If you don’t plan to make it a commercial project, then just keep working on it as is and enjoy the process.
Good publishers can help with a lot more than just wishlists, they can help with Localization, Porting, they have contacts with Press, Streamers, they can get you in contact with Xbox/PS/Switch for events and special deals, etc. You might be able to get to 50k wishlists by yourself but might not have enough time (or contacts) to make the rest of that happen. Or you might simply need funding to finish your game. But yes definitely avoid a bad publisher that will just "post about your game" in return for 70%.
The calculus is if you can make more money with the publisher's help at that point vs on your own. Maybe they will cost you $100,000 or more but if they pay for themselves and more then it could be worth it, such as by localizing your game to new markets or porting it to new consoles, they could net you far more than they cost at the end of the day.
Just to clarify. You don't need to get 50K to get a publisher. When you sign with a publisher they often say "Our target is to launch your game when you get 30k-50K wishlists"
@@testitestmann8819 Yes, but it's content that doesn't exist anywhere else on the internet (unlike game development, which has millions of tutorials and videos). Additionally, it includes a lot of great data analysis work accumulated over the years, making it totally worth it.
Chris is amazing. But I also want to say that Hugo is the best. I mean the questions that he asked, it was almost like I was lucky enough to have a direct conversation with Chris. This entire video is so genuinely informative that it would take someone months to gather this knowledge by themselves. Thank you so much Hugo and Chris.
I don't know how did 52 minutes finished so quickly , it was like a fun smooth movie. Really great and informative video , thanks Code Monkey for this collab 💝. I am looking forward to these Collab videos , as courses are just too expensive for me to buy even after discounts.
Watching this video, it is so nice to know that i do everything right, lol) I told the team, like "First, we're gonna do a couple of simple ideas in a couple of months to kick this whole thing off and we're gonna market it through Steam festivals and apply to indie-centric youtubers/streamers" etc. Still, really nice to have some more nuanced insight into the whole process.
If you realease an early access game I 100% expect regular updates. Not necesarily code, but some sort of activity on the steam page. This is not a 'weird' position. This is the deal. You get money early to finish the product, I get to participate in the process on some level.
Chris was more referring to the people that demand non-stop daily updates. Expecting the game to be finished is absolutely a valid expectation, but there are people that say "dead game" even if the last update was less than a week ago, I know I've received those comments myself despite updating my own Early Access games every 1-2 weeks.
This is probably the most helpful video on this topic on this site. Chris's earnest and authoritative tone definitely helped me temper my expectations as an indie dev working on my first game. I'm gonna keep working on my 3D platformer but I'm definitely gonna scale it down and follow his marketing advice!
Chris! What a fantastic pairing of two of my favorite game dev informers. Thanks for the great video, actual useable and applicable knowledge is so helpful.
I watched this video on 1.5x by accident and there is so much info in here that I feel like I hooked up a USB cable to Data from ST:TNG. Very awesome vid, lots of good suggestions, some of which I'm going to try right now. Cheers
Thanks, I'm glad you appreciate that! This was a relatively complicated edit because I really wanted to show on screen everything we were talking about
I think Chris has some good insights into marketing your game on Steam. Although, the part about it being impossible to be successful with your first game isn’t true. I think you should make the game you’re most passionate about but make sure your scope is within your timeline. Passion is key to finishing a project, no matter the size. My first game took 5 years to make and it was very successful.
It's not strictly impossible, it's just extremely difficult. You need to be either extremely talented or lucky or both. I made 40 games before I managed to make minimum wage. Congrats on your success!
@@CodeMonkeyUnityWere those commercially quality games or just prototype demos? From my observation, most games that don’t make it were never polished enough and fully completed, but I know it’s hard to make money from games. It’s a crystal ball, but I think the more stuff you can do to increase your chances, obviously the better. It’s a tough business that’s for sure. 😅
All true and good advices from Chris. I am just starting out with 3D in Blender and i want to make some maps for Assetto Corsa game. So the maps are kinda like my first games which will teach me the basics, maybe later i will make my own game, but right now, i'm not ready for that.
Following Chris techniques has led my game Sky Harvest to bag front page of steam for a whole week which led to an exclusive IGN Interview. This guy realllly knows what he is doing and he is soo good at it. 🙏
Amazing how many points align intuitevely with mine... all makes sense. I am on my first game and I only think of it as a graduation game - no money needed now, just a proof of work and a foundation to keep building on. Amazing video guys, you help the community a lot.
Thank you very much for this valuable insight! I am close to release my game Cursed Dungeon Raider in hard mode on Steam and thanks to you guys, now I know what I have to do to make my marketing, my whole presentation better. Really appreciated!
Hugo, thank you so much for making this video. I learned so much from Chris right here, and the things he said make a lot of sense. This video is a goldmine.
I always learn a lot from listening to Chris' talks. He is one of the few people teaching game marketing that is not constantly shilling his course but actually teaches valuable info without a paywall.
About puzzles and platformers. Unless you're big into these genres, chances are that you've played only the best of the best they have to offer. We're talking games that took multiple years and multiple people to develop, and even more years the developers had to spend prior studying the genre to avoid pitfalls you'd likely never know about unless you're familiar with that particular iceberg.
Ive been hovering around the game dev community a little bit lately... I'm trying to get ready to make my first game as a hobby project and an academic exercise. That said... my dream project is basically an rpg haha. So... what i take away from this is I might want to tinker in the world of game dev a little before committing to a bigger project like what I have in mind now.
This is a great video! Thank you for putting it together🔥 I love Splattercat's channel! Most of the indie games I buy come from watching him. He's been doing this for a long while.
no no no, wrong mindset. Don't see similar games as competition. Contact them, befriend them, cross-promote and make a steam bundle together. Big opportunity.
I've been taking most advices from Chris except the "hire someone to make the thumbnail" bit... At least for my first game on steam. I just want to walk through the whole process by myself at least once and wouldn't wanna miss out on that. I guess whatever traffic I can get from my self-made store assets is what the game deserves
Hey Code Monkey, QUESTION! So from 30:00 to 38:00 where yall talk about what genres indie devs should make and suggest Horror games, did yall mean that your FIRST game can be ever can be a horror game like a mascot horror game?
The "order" doesn't really matter, it can be your first game or your 10th game. For example in my case he has almost convinced me to give horror a try even though it's not my favorite genre, so if I try that with my next game then it will be my 10th game.
@@CodeMonkeyUnity Ah ok ty so much for answering, as the steam marketer said the three genres (like horror) indies should start with instead of their dream game but the thing is my dream game is a horror game, a mascot horrror game if you will! So it ok that my first game is technically my dream game?!
the best thing to do is find some streamers to play your games, gift it to them, i duno it's hard to market games for sure. i've seen so many good games not get noticed this year. The Last Medic needs more attention. that game is the best thing since Celeste for me.
I don't have a dream game -- my first Steam game was a roguelite FPS. My next game will be an open world first person RPG -- I considered a dollhouse life simulator, but that would have been much, much harder to make really work and be good quality. The RPG I can definitely finish. (Of course, life sims are so few the audience is chomping at the bit to have more than one game available, if you can make a good one.)
Great content! A lot of Early Access games fall into the stigma created by big studios with 'Pre-Orders'. Very tricky step to take and agree that version 1.0 > all. Game development takes time, if you want early support - it gets hard :/
Definitely sign up for his free newsletter! And if you don't have money but you do have time then go read his entire blog archive, there's weekly posts going all the way back to 2015. If you take the time to read all of that you will gain a massive amount of knowledge!
I was confused about what he said about early access. my understanding is that an early access release is not like your actual launch. when a game exits early access, then it is as if it just released, e.g. it does show up on "Popular Upcoming", “New & Trending”, etc. a game in early access cannot show up under "Popular Upcoming" until 1.0 is about to release. and the wishlist emails should still go out when 1.0 releases. so wishlists shouldn't really matter going into early access. am I missing something?
No, your Early Access launch is your launch. You only get a second launch on 1.0 if you are very successful in Early Access. If your EA release is not successful then you won't get a boost at all at 1.0 If you don't gather wishlists before EA then EA launch won't be successful and likely nothing will happen on 1.0; unless you somehow find massive success during EA but it's really hard to come back from a bad launch
@@CodeMonkeyUnity hey thanks, but that's essentially just a repetition of what's been said in the video. the thing is I'd like to understand the logic behind this. the official documentation state that a game transitioning out of EA is being treated the same as a title releasing fully for the first time. provided that they are not lying to us, how is gathering wishlists before EA really required? can you not also gather wishlists during EA? also, I have read Chris' blog post "ESTIMATING EARLY ACCESS SUCCESS" and am rather skeptical of the methodology. he filtered for games that performed extremely poorly during EA and then confirmed that they also did poorly when having their full release. I mean... yes, of course they would, right? but does that really have anything to do with EA? I reckon games that receive less than 10 reviews during their entire EA period are likely games of inexperienced indies that either a) hardly do any marketing or b) are perhaps not interesting / poorly made. so weren't those games destined to not gain much traction with their 1.0 releases, entirely unrelated of having gone through EA or not? isn't it quite possible that the issue here is not that it's "really hard to come back from a bad EA launch", but that those people just didn't really do marketing during EA?
I think it just harder to do marketing during EA. When the game is unreleased, you can build excitement, but when you ask to add to wishlist a game that was in EA for some time, but hasn't got much of reviews/hype, people are going to think that it is just not interesting and worth adding to wishlist. Because again, people treat Early Access as an actual release. If a person opens a Steam page and see very unfinished game with low review count or high negative count, they are going to assume that it's a bad game and they won't care about EA part
I've always had good experiences with Early Access so far with on eexception. Maybe because I develop RPGs but the feedback from players has so often been helpful for fine-tuning. It also had a big advantage for the release. But nowadays people are so critical on steam that you really need an Early Access with a lot of polish. With our last title, Dead Age 2, we were initially on Mixed (45%) and had to work our way up to 76% with lots of updates. Coder got a burnout because of this hard time and I had gotten sick because of the pressure situation. (better now ;-)) Just one example of what negative things can happen. But now that you've experienced it, you know what souls like horror awaits you, so EA is fitting if you make it through. ;-)
the audience for horror games is not the same audience for Inscryption, Inscryption along with Slay The Spire kicked off the love for card based games, mainly deckbuiliding roguelikes. Inscryption isnt just another horror game, its a genre defining game so you shouldn't just compare to that and say what about this
I think it can be worth while spending a good amount of time on a game. It needs to feel fulfilling for you, otherwise it won’t carry the soul needs to make something other people are going to enjoy too. You can keep at it if you keep the passion fuelled :)
Right, the part which said "people use their game designer brains and there must be this system and that system...just make the horror game! just make it scary!". This is something I wanted to convey to people, but somehow it's super hard to tell them. I kinda understood why people started with platformers. It's because there are abundance of free tutorials on platformers. I don't know real origin, but even me started with 2D platformer for my first game. What I want people to understand is that game development sometimes could be about experimenting which Code Monkey seems to love. Sometimes it's about storytelling, sending messages, or making an artwork. You people should start asking yourselves what do you want to do in game development. For me it's just storytelling because I love working on world building. As for you, well just ask yourselves.
Look at Chilla's Art. Their horror games are not that complicated, but they have some sort of a story. Their graphics style is also very unique. Like PS1 style graphics.
Thanks for this collab. I actually followed your tutorial for the Steam Page. I have a question : I've been working about 1 year and a half on a city builder type of game (1st game). It's not my dream game. I'll probably need another 6 to 12 months to finish it. Would you recommend I pause it to build a couple faster games, or finish that one first ?
I would question if you really truly need 6-12 months more. If you're building it for 1 year I'm guessing you already have quite a lot working. If you're getting lots of traction and lots of positive feedback, then perhaps sure keep working on it for 6-12 months more. But if not, if no one seems to be engaging with the game then I would analyze the game and cut it down to the absolute essentials and get a finished game done in 1 month. Just take what you have, add a Main Menu, End Screen, some progression, and you have a completed game.
For me I've hired capsule artists from Fiverr. There's tons of people and it's definitely worth it to go with someone that charges a couple hundred dollars as opposed to just 20 bucks. A great capsule really is worth a ton
🎮 Get Chris' Masterclasses! Ending SOON! cmonkey.co/howtomarketagame
This site is blocked due to a possible security threat lol
Hi This is Chris, thanks for watching. Let me know if you have any questions. I will answer them here.
Hi Chris, great talk, I learned a lot.
As someone who is making an auto battler, it's great to know the genre isn't saturated yet.
A question on the steam page. When should I set a release date for it?
Do I launch my page with or without a release date?
Should I set a release date once I get the 7000 wishlists?
Can I change my release date and would you advice this if you're short the 7000 wishlist goal?
Thanks for sharing all your knowledge Chris!
Hey Chris, thank for sharing your knowledge together with CodeMonkey!
I found it all very insightful but at the same time I fall in the category of working on a larger project as my first game.
More specifically I'm creating a JRPG called Monster Haven (most of my stuff is on Twitter for now, it's done moderately well there). While I'm happy with how the game is shaping up personally I'm now a little worried that I'm wasting my time as I have zero audience on Steam thus far.
What would you suggest me or other people in a similar situation do? Should I scrap working on the whole JRPG'ish story and focus first on just releasing say an auto battler? So I at least already have a starting audience after which I can continue on the main game?
@@MonsterHavenDev I think you’re falling into the exact trap Chris is talking about.
I found you quite easily on twitter, but I don’t see your steampage?
I found a Reddit post from 3 years ago, so you’ve been working on this for a while, but you don’t have a steam page?
How are you going to get a following on Steam without a steampage?
As Chris said, you aren’t going to get much following on twitter.
If you want to make money off the game, your next Steam should be building a Steam page and linking to it from twitter and everywhere else you have.
You spent quite a lot of time and I can tel you already have some screenshots for the game, so making it shouldn’t be that difficult.
Hope it makes sense?
PS: If you don’t plan to make it a commercial project, then just keep working on it as is and enjoy the process.
Very informative - thanks buddy.
Imagine a publisher requiring 50k wishlists to sign a deal, surely getting there alone would mean you don't need a publisher anymore
Good publishers can help with a lot more than just wishlists, they can help with Localization, Porting, they have contacts with Press, Streamers, they can get you in contact with Xbox/PS/Switch for events and special deals, etc.
You might be able to get to 50k wishlists by yourself but might not have enough time (or contacts) to make the rest of that happen. Or you might simply need funding to finish your game.
But yes definitely avoid a bad publisher that will just "post about your game" in return for 70%.
The calculus is if you can make more money with the publisher's help at that point vs on your own. Maybe they will cost you $100,000 or more but if they pay for themselves and more then it could be worth it, such as by localizing your game to new markets or porting it to new consoles, they could net you far more than they cost at the end of the day.
@@CodeMonkeyUnity But you can hire people to help you with the launch instead at that point.
Just to clarify. You don't need to get 50K to get a publisher. When you sign with a publisher they often say "Our target is to launch your game when you get 30k-50K wishlists"
@@spiderspyy yeah, and some publishers are essentially just like that, but they also have the power of their own brand to market your game even more
Chris is awesome, he's one of those rare people who actually know what they are talking about and are not just trying to sell you some scam course
@@edupe6185 you just steal my words :)
@@edupe6185 lmfao, do you think thomas brush is selling a scam course?
@edupe6185 Lol oh god not him. Doesn't he charge over $500 for a game dev course 😂
Chris is also selling a 500$ course here.
@@testitestmann8819 Yes, but it's content that doesn't exist anywhere else on the internet (unlike game development, which has millions of tutorials and videos). Additionally, it includes a lot of great data analysis work accumulated over the years, making it totally worth it.
Chris is amazing. But I also want to say that Hugo is the best. I mean the questions that he asked, it was almost like I was lucky enough to have a direct conversation with Chris. This entire video is so genuinely informative that it would take someone months to gather this knowledge by themselves. Thank you so much Hugo and Chris.
Thanks! Yeah I tried my best to come up with questions that I thought people would want to know
Can anyone send me hugo links
I don't know how did 52 minutes finished so quickly , it was like a fun smooth movie. Really great and informative video , thanks Code Monkey for this collab 💝. I am looking forward to these Collab videos , as courses are just too expensive for me to buy even after discounts.
Great having his teaching updated since most of his video was a bit old. I like his teaching because he always very positive, so I like positiviness.
It's great to see a collab like this on the channel. I've been a fan of Chris' talks for a while now, really insightful!
Watching this video, it is so nice to know that i do everything right, lol) I told the team, like "First, we're gonna do a couple of simple ideas in a couple of months to kick this whole thing off and we're gonna market it through Steam festivals and apply to indie-centric youtubers/streamers" etc. Still, really nice to have some more nuanced insight into the whole process.
This guy is a treasure. Great knowledge, great personality.
If you realease an early access game I 100% expect regular updates. Not necesarily code, but some sort of activity on the steam page. This is not a 'weird' position. This is the deal. You get money early to finish the product, I get to participate in the process on some level.
Chris was more referring to the people that demand non-stop daily updates. Expecting the game to be finished is absolutely a valid expectation, but there are people that say "dead game" even if the last update was less than a week ago, I know I've received those comments myself despite updating my own Early Access games every 1-2 weeks.
This is probably the most helpful video on this topic on this site.
Chris's earnest and authoritative tone definitely helped me temper my expectations as an indie dev working on my first game. I'm gonna keep working on my 3D platformer but I'm definitely gonna scale it down and follow his marketing advice!
With those questions you asked, it shows you did your homework for this interview ! This was a very informative and knowledgeable interview.
Chris! What a fantastic pairing of two of my favorite game dev informers. Thanks for the great video, actual useable and applicable knowledge is so helpful.
recently bought his course! he's amazing thanks for this video!
Nice! I hope it helps you find success with BUMBI!
It's such a good course.. I'm going through it now.
@@CodeMonkeyUnity Thank you :)!
@@samyam haha he said don't make platformers khhhh
I watched this video on 1.5x by accident and there is so much info in here that I feel like I hooked up a USB cable to Data from ST:TNG. Very awesome vid, lots of good suggestions, some of which I'm going to try right now. Cheers
Thank you for all the added content like the steam pages of the games being discussed. Very well made video!
Thanks, I'm glad you appreciate that! This was a relatively complicated edit because I really wanted to show on screen everything we were talking about
Awesome interview thank you! I've seen a lot of Chris's talks but every time I learn something new or get reminded of something I had forgotten
Wow! Loving his way of explaining things using gestics
dude, just cuz of the content and length, here it comes my like!!! tnkssssss dude. u the best!
Oh my, what a great interview. Congrats to Hugo and Chris. I learned a ton and will start reading Chris blog
I'm going to do my best to follow your advice, and I will start documenting my progress!
Best of luck in your game dev journey!
I think Chris has some good insights into marketing your game on Steam. Although, the part about it being impossible to be successful with your first game isn’t true. I think you should make the game you’re most passionate about but make sure your scope is within your timeline. Passion is key to finishing a project, no matter the size. My first game took 5 years to make and it was very successful.
It's not strictly impossible, it's just extremely difficult. You need to be either extremely talented or lucky or both. I made 40 games before I managed to make minimum wage.
Congrats on your success!
@@CodeMonkeyUnityWere those commercially quality games or just prototype demos? From my observation, most games that don’t make it were never polished enough and fully completed, but I know it’s hard to make money from games. It’s a crystal ball, but I think the more stuff you can do to increase your chances, obviously the better. It’s a tough business that’s for sure. 😅
All true and good advices from Chris. I am just starting out with 3D in Blender and i want to make some maps for Assetto Corsa game. So the maps are kinda like my first games which will teach me the basics, maybe later i will make my own game, but right now, i'm not ready for that.
Nice! Modding is always a great way to get started in game dev!
What an amazing person Chris is! Thank for this great talk!❤
Following Chris techniques has led my game Sky Harvest to bag front page of steam for a whole week which led to an exclusive IGN Interview. This guy realllly knows what he is doing and he is soo good at it. 🙏
That's awesome!!
That's awesome! Congrats!
Chris setup lights in that way, so i thought he was made in UE5
Lol 😂
He looks like Gman from Alyx
Hahah fun comment!
Amazing how many points align intuitevely with mine... all makes sense. I am on my first game and I only think of it as a graduation game - no money needed now, just a proof of work and a foundation to keep building on. Amazing video guys, you help the community a lot.
Thank you very much for this valuable insight! I am close to release my game Cursed Dungeon Raider in hard mode on Steam and thanks to you guys, now I know what I have to do to make my marketing, my whole presentation better.
Really appreciated!
Hugo, thank you so much for making this video. I learned so much from Chris right here, and the things he said make a lot of sense. This video is a goldmine.
I stumbled across Chris' videos for the first time yesterday and binged all of them. So it was awesome to see this pop up in my notifications!!!! 🤣🤣🤣
I always learn a lot from listening to Chris' talks. He is one of the few people teaching game marketing that is not constantly shilling his course but actually teaches valuable info without a paywall.
Thanks for sharing! I am a little overwhelmed in where to start.
We're all in this together!
About puzzles and platformers. Unless you're big into these genres, chances are that you've played only the best of the best they have to offer. We're talking games that took multiple years and multiple people to develop, and even more years the developers had to spend prior studying the genre to avoid pitfalls you'd likely never know about unless you're familiar with that particular iceberg.
isn't that basically every genre at this point?
So cool to see you both in one video
Thank you for the quality and free content
Ive been hovering around the game dev community a little bit lately... I'm trying to get ready to make my first game as a hobby project and an academic exercise.
That said... my dream project is basically an rpg haha. So... what i take away from this is I might want to tinker in the world of game dev a little before committing to a bigger project like what I have in mind now.
This is a great video! Thank you for putting it together🔥
I love Splattercat's channel! Most of the indie games I buy come from watching him. He's been doing this for a long while.
oh dat is awesome gonna learn it later (now having fun first weeks of coding transporting) smashing around objects in Unity and UE so fun.
thankyou so much to you both for this video
Thanks Hugo for this video. It's one of the most useful one I've seen so far about this topic. 😀
Thank You for this information 😁💯👍🏻
This is really valuable.
Thanks a lot for this content.
There is a lot of material here. working on my first game, I'm taking lots of notes :)
This was great! Thank you for all of this amazing information.
Cris is the coolest indie game marketing teacher
Thanks for all the info, Tim Roth
Listen guys. PLEASE, DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS ADVICE...if you also make strategy and Tycoon games and have a release date close to one of mine😅
heh best of luck with the release!
no no no, wrong mindset. Don't see similar games as competition. Contact them, befriend them, cross-promote and make a steam bundle together. Big opportunity.
Amazing interview!! Definitely will get the course!
This video is almost like a treasure given by those gentlemen, thanks a lot
One of the best videos i saw on game marketing
Damn. This was a joy to listen to this guy
I've been taking most advices from Chris except the "hire someone to make the thumbnail" bit... At least for my first game on steam. I just want to walk through the whole process by myself at least once and wouldn't wanna miss out on that. I guess whatever traffic I can get from my self-made store assets is what the game deserves
Great video! I love Chris' insight. He's got such fantastic advice!
Best colab in indie games!
Fun story,I connect those two 🎉
Haha! Nice :)
GOATED! TY man, epic content
I had CaseOh play my game and that single 10 minute bit on his stream was the best marketing that happened to me in 3 years of gamedev
Chris is awesome, thanks for sharing!
Great interview, thank you very much
Hey Code Monkey, QUESTION! So from 30:00 to 38:00 where yall talk about what genres indie devs should make and suggest Horror games, did yall mean that your FIRST game can be ever can be a horror game like a mascot horror game?
The "order" doesn't really matter, it can be your first game or your 10th game.
For example in my case he has almost convinced me to give horror a try even though it's not my favorite genre, so if I try that with my next game then it will be my 10th game.
@@CodeMonkeyUnity Ah ok ty so much for answering, as the steam marketer said the three genres (like horror) indies should start with instead of their dream game but the thing is my dream game is a horror game, a mascot horrror game if you will! So it ok that my first game is technically my dream game?!
Sure, if your dream game is a horror game then go for it!
@@CodeMonkeyUnity AWESOME! Thanks for the feedback! I know now what I must do!
A long video, but packed with good stuff!
This is gold, i actually watch this twice.
Chris Zukowski has THE BEST GDC talks
Amazing interview ... thank you !!!
the best thing to do is find some streamers to play your games, gift it to them, i duno it's hard to market games for sure. i've seen so many good games not get noticed this year. The Last Medic needs more attention. that game is the best thing since Celeste for me.
Two of the best men in gamedev.
This is gold, thanks!!
Fantastic video. These tips are gold.
You are putting out really valuable stuff on the internet. Thanks for all the work you do monkey :)
I don't have a dream game -- my first Steam game was a roguelite FPS. My next game will be an open world first person RPG -- I considered a dollhouse life simulator, but that would have been much, much harder to make really work and be good quality. The RPG I can definitely finish.
(Of course, life sims are so few the audience is chomping at the bit to have more than one game available, if you can make a good one.)
Great content! A lot of Early Access games fall into the stigma created by big studios with 'Pre-Orders'. Very tricky step to take and agree that version 1.0 > all. Game development takes time, if you want early support - it gets hard :/
This was great! Wish I had the means to get the course, but this was already so informative!
Definitely sign up for his free newsletter! And if you don't have money but you do have time then go read his entire blog archive, there's weekly posts going all the way back to 2015. If you take the time to read all of that you will gain a massive amount of knowledge!
Great information, thanks!
42:19 I hope this happens to me 😂
Thank you guys so much for this helpful video! I‘ve learned a lot! Chris is a master! 🙌🏻👏🏼
I was confused about what he said about early access.
my understanding is that an early access release is not like your actual launch.
when a game exits early access, then it is as if it just released, e.g. it does show up on "Popular Upcoming", “New & Trending”, etc.
a game in early access cannot show up under "Popular Upcoming" until 1.0 is about to release.
and the wishlist emails should still go out when 1.0 releases.
so wishlists shouldn't really matter going into early access.
am I missing something?
No, your Early Access launch is your launch. You only get a second launch on 1.0 if you are very successful in Early Access.
If your EA release is not successful then you won't get a boost at all at 1.0
If you don't gather wishlists before EA then EA launch won't be successful and likely nothing will happen on 1.0; unless you somehow find massive success during EA but it's really hard to come back from a bad launch
@@CodeMonkeyUnity hey thanks, but that's essentially just a repetition of what's been said in the video.
the thing is I'd like to understand the logic behind this.
the official documentation state that a game transitioning out of EA is being treated the same as a title releasing fully for the first time.
provided that they are not lying to us, how is gathering wishlists before EA really required?
can you not also gather wishlists during EA?
also, I have read Chris' blog post "ESTIMATING EARLY ACCESS SUCCESS" and am rather skeptical of the methodology.
he filtered for games that performed extremely poorly during EA and then confirmed that they also did poorly when having their full release.
I mean... yes, of course they would, right? but does that really have anything to do with EA?
I reckon games that receive less than 10 reviews during their entire EA period are likely games of inexperienced indies that either
a) hardly do any marketing or
b) are perhaps not interesting / poorly made.
so weren't those games destined to not gain much traction with their 1.0 releases, entirely unrelated of having gone through EA or not?
isn't it quite possible that the issue here is not that it's "really hard to come back from a bad EA launch", but that those people just didn't really do marketing during EA?
I think it just harder to do marketing during EA. When the game is unreleased, you can build excitement, but when you ask to add to wishlist a game that was in EA for some time, but hasn't got much of reviews/hype, people are going to think that it is just not interesting and worth adding to wishlist. Because again, people treat Early Access as an actual release. If a person opens a Steam page and see very unfinished game with low review count or high negative count, they are going to assume that it's a bad game and they won't care about EA part
love this... I need to do all this for my game
This guy seems like he knows his stuff BTW, thank you Code Monkey for having him on!
Chris got some good camera lighting right there, very sweet.
love the interview, good knowledge..
but this is basiically the meme of devs being introvert and marketing being extroverts :D
Chris is the best!!!
ChrisZ keeping us Tucson devs on the map!
520 represent!
I've always had good experiences with Early Access so far with on eexception. Maybe because I develop RPGs but the feedback from players has so often been helpful for fine-tuning. It also had a big advantage for the release. But nowadays people are so critical on steam that you really need an Early Access with a lot of polish. With our last title, Dead Age 2, we were initially on Mixed (45%) and had to work our way up to 76% with lots of updates. Coder got a burnout because of this hard time and I had gotten sick because of the pressure situation. (better now ;-)) Just one example of what negative things can happen. But now that you've experienced it, you know what souls like horror awaits you, so EA is fitting if you make it through. ;-)
great talk, great informations, got tons of ideas, thanks guys
thank you, you the best as always🎉🎉🎉
38:00 What about Inscyrption that’s a horror game with card game and rouge light elements.
the audience for horror games is not the same audience for Inscryption, Inscryption along with Slay The Spire kicked off the love for card based games, mainly deckbuiliding roguelikes. Inscryption isnt just another horror game, its a genre defining game so you shouldn't just compare to that and say what about this
This is absolutely gold 🤯
Really cool video!
Thank you!
I learned a lot from Chris’ free course and it‘s nice to see my fav Dev UA-camr collaborate with him 👀👾💪🏻 Awesome video
I think it can be worth while spending a good amount of time on a game. It needs to feel fulfilling for you, otherwise it won’t carry the soul needs to make something other people are going to enjoy too. You can keep at it if you keep the passion fuelled :)
what a great video, it's simple enough for a non marketing person to understand
Right, the part which said "people use their game designer brains and there must be this system and that system...just make the horror game! just make it scary!". This is something I wanted to convey to people, but somehow it's super hard to tell them.
I kinda understood why people started with platformers. It's because there are abundance of free tutorials on platformers. I don't know real origin, but even me started with 2D platformer for my first game.
What I want people to understand is that game development sometimes could be about experimenting which Code Monkey seems to love. Sometimes it's about storytelling, sending messages, or making an artwork. You people should start asking yourselves what do you want to do in game development. For me it's just storytelling because I love working on world building. As for you, well just ask yourselves.
Great video!
Look at Chilla's Art. Their horror games are not that complicated, but they have some sort of a story. Their graphics style is also very unique. Like PS1 style graphics.
I'd love to see the stats of what genres do best in Early Access. Perhaps some genres, benefit more from Early Access.
Thanks for this collab. I actually followed your tutorial for the Steam Page.
I have a question : I've been working about 1 year and a half on a city builder type of game (1st game). It's not my dream game. I'll probably need another 6 to 12 months to finish it. Would you recommend I pause it to build a couple faster games, or finish that one first ?
I would question if you really truly need 6-12 months more. If you're building it for 1 year I'm guessing you already have quite a lot working.
If you're getting lots of traction and lots of positive feedback, then perhaps sure keep working on it for 6-12 months more.
But if not, if no one seems to be engaging with the game then I would analyze the game and cut it down to the absolute essentials and get a finished game done in 1 month. Just take what you have, add a Main Menu, End Screen, some progression, and you have a completed game.
I realized last week making a really good thumb nail is HARD! I spent half a day on it, how do we find illustrators?
For me I've hired capsule artists from Fiverr. There's tons of people and it's definitely worth it to go with someone that charges a couple hundred dollars as opposed to just 20 bucks. A great capsule really is worth a ton
Chris looks epic with that lighting
Thanks for making your windows? with a black frame so that I can see the subtitles clearly!
Chris has really improved his lighting, I call this look "God of Analytics"
amazing content, as ever