Hey! "Gearshifters" developer here. I just wanted to say thanks for the video. I appreciate the coverage and it even brought me a few extra wishlists. I can't talk about any details of what you've discussed but here are a few thoughts... (see replies because longer comment didn't stick)
- It's a nostalgic, niche game, and I knew it was risky. So, I made sure that the project had several objectives not related to profitability to also measure success by. All of these were met and push things forward for the next game. HAVE A LONGER-TERM PLAN AND SET OBJECTIVES OTHER THAN "MAKE MONEY IMMEDIATELY".
- Bad/good/great game is subjective to an extent. Some people think Gearshifters sucks; some love it. Same with most games. And that's ok. It's the balance of opinion that matters. DON'T WORRY IF A FEW PEOPLE HATE YOUR GAME.
- I agree that a good game won't sell itself, especially these days. Unless you manage to be one of the few outliers, you've just got to tick ALL the boxes, starting with a marketable concept. DO YOUR MARKET RESEARCH BEFORE YOU START. Cheers!
Hey! Thanks for watching the video, I'm glad it brought some attention to the game. Lots of great points, having objectives not related to profitability is an excellent one. I really hope the game ends up having a nice sales tail over the years, thanks!
I simply had to stop the video and research this game as it looks so fun and extreme. You could make a video series covering games that didn't do well in their releases and find out why. Very good and informative, hope it continues. good luck!
By all means do more of them. I believe also that by doing them there's a chance that maybe any one of these games you cover may turn their luck around, so who knows? maybe it could bring benefits to even the developers themselves.
For a long time, my biggest interest was "how to make a good game" which now shifted to "how to SELL a good game". And right on time you also started focusing less on games themselves and more on marketing. Perfect timing! :)
@@gamerfortynine no, you can still make a good game, but you need good marketing first and foremost or your game wont sell. a "money game" doesnt necessarily mean it will have good marketing, but it will have lots of micro-transactions. good marketing is still more important than making a good game, because making a good game shouldnt be so hard that it overtakes everything else.
omgeez i feel like this was made due to a comment i made on the last video about marketing lol love it! whether or not thats the case, thanks for making such good content!
Love your videos on this. I'm trying to get the wishlist count up for my own game and yes, being a good game alone doesn't cut it. If nobody sees it, it doesn't matter how good your game is.
💬 "a good game sells itself"... does it? Can you make it with zero marketing? 🌍 Get my Complete Courses! ✅ unitycodemonkey.com/courses 🔴 RELATED VIDEOS 🔴 The MOST IMPORTANT Skill to be a Successful Game Developer ruclips.net/video/E6-FQwCECes/видео.html My Game Dev Journey (40+ Games! | mIRC to Flash to Steam) ruclips.net/video/0zscPf_U1VY/видео.html
12:44 actually you're not only didn't say anything negative about the game, but also I think you kinda advertised it which helps its developer to sell more. Who knows, maybe by watching this video someone will buy it.
Thanks for the awesome video! It provides great insight on how to go about marketing and what to expect at launch. Regarding creating a steam page when is it generally a good time? Currently I'm working on a game that I feel is too early as I'm still testing out mechanics and level ideas, and the visuals are not showcase worthy. I'd like your insight on this to plan things out better.
You need to have some decent visuals, not final but decent, don't publish that page if all you have is programmer art. However you can try to start gathering a following on Twitter/Imgur/Reddit when all you have is programmer art to show off the unique designs of your game. But yeah get some basic decent visuals done asap
I wonder if there are any statistics on how many different games you have sold before, impacting the number of your current game sales. I’d assume your audience grows bigger bit by bit over time as a game designer. But it scares me not finding any audience despite putting lot’s of effort into marketing.
I’m putting out a demo for my first game in Februari, and videos like these are really helpful, but also make me a bit nervous regarding the future.
Yup growing an audience over several games is an excellent way to help your future games do better. Whenever I launch my next game I'm going to post about it on my other game's pages, so quite a lot of people will hear about it thanks to having those games published previously.
The sales of your new game are mostly unrelated to the success of your previous games, if the new game is unrelated to your previous game-genres. This is because a track record is some form of marketing, and marketing is an overrated crutch that doesn't really work in general (as long as you don't understand the mechanism of marketing effects (and most people don't), it is effectively pointless). You can even be called Peter Molineux and tank your next game. But if you have established yourself in a genre, say puzzle, then your next puzzler will profit from your previous work (like in John Blow's case).
I can't tell you enough how relevant this is to me atm. I started a Devlog RUclips channel at the beginning of December, uploaded a number of videos now, and I'm really struggling to get any views. I've started an instagram page, a tiktok page. Maybe I should begin using tweeter? I feel the game isn't ready yet to put it up on steam yet. Should I just keep grinding until starting the steam page?
Yes definitely make some gifs and post them on Twitter. RUclips is very tricky to learn so definitely take some time to study how to make a proper thumbnail/title/editing, look at other devlogs for ideas. If you absolutely cannot get any traction no matter how much you post on any of those places, then maybe that's a clue that your idea isn't as compelling as you think it is.
I think it would be great as a short series. Very interesting topic, but I reckon the themes will be very similar so after 5 or so videos might become a bit repetitive
I've also heard "a good game will find it's audience", which could be true IF you market it. So same thing here, a good game kind of sells itself only IF it's marketed. So marketing, im referring to all the usual social media stuff, press coverage, and running paid ads. If anything, hopefully a good game with pay for its paid ads. I'm talking profit after all the advertising expenses. So if one does all of that, then really a game is not necessarily selling itself. However, as we all know, one normally don't release a game without coverage or marketing and expect it to sell well on it's own. Cheers!
It's easy for a great uniqe game to sell itself. It's just hard to make one. We should not blame the lack of marketing for the lack of success. And no, a bad game won't profit from marketing. This is only true for AAA companies with a big budget who can afford good marketing. And they have only one shot per game.
10:00 yeah that make sense. in that case there was a great game abaut space and shooting called hotdog storm even if the name dont make any sense and don't cover the game Idea it don't change the idea that it's great
meanwhile you have Super Auto Pets, a game where the only animation are Animal Emojis whacking each other with headbutts....and it's doing fantastic! and thats not an insult, I play that game! (ok it is F2P so it follows different rules in terms of profitability)
Good video! One quick question. Does it matter what reviews you get? So do the reviews have to be positive for the steam algorithm to push ur game? Or does it not matter as long as they're reviews?
i think reviews do matter but no one is going to take troll reviews seriously unless theyre a dunce. if someone didnt play the game and just said it stinks for no reason, then who cares? no one will listen to that person.
The total number is the main thing that matters, even if you get 5 positive and 5 negative reviews, you still get a massive boost from reaching 10 total reviews. But then of course if players see a game with mixed they might see your game but not buy it, so try as hard as you can to keep that score above 70%
@@CodeMonkeyUnity They went for a low price point and lots of choices. Makes it a good stream game to show off skill or different way to win. I have not played but trying to figure out why it did so well also.
a single streamer that plays these types of games could of easily 5x their sales too, which isn't something you talked about. i do believe the price really did hurt the game sales though. target farming sales is honestly the best way to get your foot in the door imo. that or a give the streamer a early version to play so that a bunch of people can see it a few days to a week before your game launches.
Depends heavily on the streamer, for my own example, Markiplier played one of my games, Blueprint Tycoon, the video got over 1 mil views but the sales bump was relatively minor, something like 200 copies I think. It was a nice bump but not life changing.
@@CodeMonkeyUnity that is very interesting. he also played prison architect and the active players went from ~3.5k to ~12k during that same month (he played that a day later, after he played blueprint tycoon). i doubt that's all from him playing but it's certainly noticeable. i can't see actual sales so active player count is all i really got to go by. also likely that a lot of people already had the game, so this comparison isn't telling the whole truth. what happened nov/oct 2017 for blueprint tycoon? seems like a crazy high spike in active users.
But this game don't look to: -be above few hours long, -have much replay-abilities, -be difficult (skill based) arcade, -have some interesting twist in top down racing genre, -have interesting story, -have complexity or advance progression with many important chooses Also kind look kind mobile game and at end of it they want 25$ or 20$ Is not good-game, at best is ok-game with some issues
@@MaruskaStarshaya But once the game goes big, there needs to be a website so nobody can create a fake one, At least a wiki includes all the information about the game, I don't know if it's even necessary but I saw a couple of games having their own wiki.
Like any business, you need some luck on your side. The right people need to play your game at the right time. Streamers and youtubers are a huge influence. If a popular streamer picks up your game, then it's more or less guaranteed to succeed. If noone gives your game a look, then no matter how good your game is, noone will play it. For every Valheim or Minecraft, you have a Project Nomads or Battle Realms too. Games that are truly amazing but never managed to get out of the obscurity they were born in. If you are a large company, promoting your game is important. If you are too small for that, you NEED the luck for someone influential to like your game enough to do it for you. Sadly, bad games with promotion sell better than good games that noone knows. So if you ask me does a good game sell itself, the answer is that being good certainly helps with mouth to mouth, but that only works when you get lucky enough that enough people pick it up in the first place. And in todays market, there's no guarantee for that.
That's the biggest lie in business though. A lot of games aren't accidentally picked up by a popular streamer. The guy or girl in question most likely got paid to play the game. Other games might be played by other RUclipsrs because an original video with people playing the game did well. Great example of this is GOAT Simulator. Arguably a game that isn't even very good at all. It's more of a gag game. And not good. Minecraft didn't become a success through 'luck'. I played Project Nomads in the past and loved it. But that game very much is a niche market game. Minecraft is about the most casual audience friendly game you could make. The difference between the two has nothing to do with luck.
Hey Code Monkey, I started working with animations for an survival game, as you told i made layers for different weapons and noticed that all layers run parallely. If I am running Piston layers animations than also other animation contiously run. So I wanna ask does it is efficient? I didnt think running such 30 40 layers animations is good ! Or should I use Sub state machine(which is messy) or blend trees? Thxs for all the good content👍
If the weight of the layer is at 0 then it shouldn't be "running" so it shouldn't cause issues. Alternatively you could just have one extra layer and on that layer you would have a Blend Tree and inside it would have all the individual animations for each weapon. Not sure which would be the best approach
I have a question. Should all 2d game built by tilemap, or by putting individual foreground, background etc. I want to accomplish much better quality for my game. Any advice?
It's been a while since I used the built in Tilemap but I think it creates a new game object for each tile, doesn't it? If so then it's identical to placing them manually yourself. Just make sure all tiles are on the same texture so you can render everything in a single draw call
I'm still having problems getting the mouse pointer position to follow a sprite you control,I know its easy to get a sprite to follow the mouse pointer but not the other way round.
@@CodeMonkeyUnity I've got a grappling hook on my player 2D. Works fine with the mouse it gets the input.mouse position.simple, but I want to use an Xbox controller to move a sprite to were you want the grappling hook to go.I have no problems with the Xbox controller code, it's just getting the setting the mouse position from the the sprite position.
Would proper marketing have pushed more copies of this game? Sure. It's true for most games, regardless if they are good or not. This game you picked, it's not really a good game, it's a well executed one, if it were a house it would be a well structured house with a geen-purple roof. Some people will move in just because its sound structure and they particularly like green-purple roofs. But not many, and clearly not for that price. A good game *could* sell itself, given the right ammount of stars allign. It has a chance, small as it may be, there are examples of this happening out there. Just as there are many examples of highly marketed games doing fk all. Investing in your game marketing just gives it more avenues to show it's stuff. If we really knew what an objectivley good game is, we would all be making them. But that's just like saying there is an objectivley good piece of chocolate cake, but all we really mean is that it should have a unique taste and most people should like it.
Do you have any tips for marketing mobile games? :/ Everyone is focusing on PC games and Steam Wishlisting when talking about marketing. It's a good video though! ^^
Mobile is a whole different beast and it's not something I'm familiar with so I really don't know what are the best practices there. Visibility is even harder so I don't know if there's an equivalent to wishlists to gather pre-launch hype.
For the project I'm working I think I have the optiset problem I'm not able to know how many people the area but Many time wean I tell what is the game I'm trying to create the area people that is exciting Unlike this project my dasn't demo or any other playble content and this time The don't have steam page ECT The have few unique mekanics and the alose showcase the progress of my game in discord and on my RUclips channel However like said this game is still working progress and I don't expect to relese any time soon. Since I'm Solo developer and try to make fps multiplayer game on my own only with comunty and document tourials ECt. If have to say the problem with my and my project, it's the fact that I'm work alone and try to make big scope game's and not that I don't have users that wants to expirense my game. The reason I work alone is because I don't have found any way to get enough money 💰 for hier shomene I don't have any friend that is interesting in game development ECT. Also don't have eny system that people able to make the content and sherd wean even if the want to. So I ended up work alon
That game probably just earned a whole bunch of players, and... i bet you expected that... and to be fair, that does look like a game worth giving the exposure to, nice move dude.
Here we go again. You basically mentioned the main problem with the game, and that is not the marketing. The game doesn't have anything uniqe, is overpriced, plus it is only single player. Looking good, and making something stand out are two different things. A game doesn't even have to look good to stand out. Marketing is only relevant for AAA budgets who rely on polishing a turd for a week until the illusion wears off. It's the best next game ever for a week and then nobody talks about it. Just follow the logical chain of what marketing actually does: Brings initial mass of eyballs, then it either propagates by word of mouth/streamers etc. or it dies off. 1. if it propagates by worth of mouth etc., then you already have success even without marketing as long as you have some initial audience, and you will always have few hundred people without having serious investment in marketing. The marketing will help to reduce the detonation time. But the game will explode either way in its niche. 2. If it dies off, then you will end up pumping more ressources/money into marketing to keep the game alive. Pointless. Just ask yourself the other way round. Do you actually find a game as unique and attractive as Stardew Valley for example, that no one plays? No, you won't. Because a great uniqe game will sell itself. Simply because the mechanism in 1. applies.
@@sFde46 that is a fare point too. But mechanics that haven’t been seen before usually do better because they are original. As you said, unique mechanics won’t always make people enjoy your game, but alot of people prefer playing unique, original games to a remake of an already fun game.
One thing for steam: You can have up to 5 visibility rounds, as far as I understand it the game will be visible like a new release again, is that a good way to grow your audience?
Those used to be excellent but have been nerfed significantly. They don't give you as much exposure as release, you pretty much only reach people who already have the game and people who have wishlisted it, it doesn't reach new players who have never heard about you. It's primarily meant for promoting big updates but yes can indeed lead to higher sales if the update is good and players go back to play the game.
The counterfactual to that is 'can a bad or mediocre game succeed with great marketing?' I don't even need to look that up to know it can =D edit: marketing or license/recognition ;-)
Make a video "Should I try to make game that I think is good, but no one will see it?". My brother don't have enough faith into indie development and it will help him to be more brave. Please
If your goal is making it as a hobby or as a learning experience then sure go ahead and make whatever you want regardless of niche. But if you want to make it as a business, then you need to ask yourself if there's a market for your game,
why not try jams? People will play your game and make reviews, they are always excited to play them. I've got a lot of joy receiving feedbacks and know people enjoyed playing it.
I gotta disagree with you here, this game looks like every game in 2022 should, as long as it's going for basic graphics and could honestly be a free mobile game with ads. Instead it's a 20€ PC game. It gives me vibes of the free online webbased games, i don't think it's terrible, but I don't think console and pc gamers want something that feels, looks and behaves like a mobile game.
agree. Sometimes great games are not great it terms of gameplay and sometimes target platform were chosen wrongly. And if this game have been ported even on PS4 I thing they did spend some money on marketing, it's just it didn't work.
According to Elon Musk, He doesn't advertise Tesla yet it's incredibly popular. Once word get's out and it lives up to reputation then the customer or fan essentially becomes the advertiser.
And yet, I have to strongly disagree. Show me the games that were truly undisputed gems but never sold decent numbers? They literally do not exist. Most developers do not even understand how their games are very much a niche game to begin with, yet for some reason expect to sell 100k copies or more. Not every good game concept is a best-selling concept, obviously. And not every 'best-seller' can be predicted, think Flappy Bird or even something like GOAT Simulator, that isn't even necessarily a good game. The GearShifter game is a perfect example of how it is simply priced way too high for what it is. And you're probably a bit too impressed by its visuals (which aren't bad, just saying it's mostly cosmetic stuff you're raving about as 'good'). It screams arcade indie game. But it doesn't blow away either. In 2021 / 2022 we probably shouldn't expect less than those visuals or it becomes a problem. The game also does look about as generic as it gets. Not necessarily $19.99 or god forbid $25.00 worth. I severely doubt that game has actually sold 1000 copies (on Steam). 500 copies sold is more likely, maybe less. It's not unheard of for these types of games getting a fairly high amount of reviews compared to the actual sales. I do not wish such failure on anyone, but it is false to suggest making a Steam page early is the key to higher chance of success. That's just false on multiple levels. More exposure is good, but there's no guarantee getting more people to wishlist your games. Most game pages on Steam without much of a released game get pretty much no promotion. And this doesn't seem like the type of game that would need Early Access (not to mention how that doesn't increase sales nor exposure necessarily). I think we're _not_ actually talking about a great game here, but more so 'just decent'. It's probably very middle-of-the-road. With a big bunch of marketing thrown in, this game might have done a lot better in terms of absolute sales. But at what cost remains to be seen. In reality, it is very hard to make a best-seller game. Did any popular RUclipsr showcase this game? Probably not. I think the developer probably posted the trailer on various forums to get 30k views. I doubt they spend money to promote on RUclips. Funnily enough, your video about this game might increase its sales! :) But the high price point _definitely_ in a turn off. Indie developers too often think their game is worth $19.99 or even $29.99, when the value just isn't there.
It sounds like your definition of a good game is a top 0.001% game like Stardew Valley, in those cases where a game is so good and so unique that it drives tons of word of mouth then yes in those super rare special cases can get by with 0 marketing. However what I'm talking about here is the top 5% of games, they are great games, very well made, but without marketing they will not find success. Based on the trailer and the reviews this game is definitely at least on the top 10% of games, that is very good but it absolutely does not sell itself.
@@CodeMonkeyUnity I don't think I am saying that at all. I think the high price point alone puts it in rather unpredictable territory. This matters far more than how a game looks solid on the surface. Keep in mind I don't think this game looks bad. I just don't see how it is a spectacular gem that is deserving of selling thousands or even tens of thousands of copies. I don't want to come across as annoying, but I think GearShifters is pretty much a mediocre game. How much replayability is in there for $19.99-$25.00? Multiplayer? Online leaderboards? How much content is there to make it worth it? All sorts of questions that go beyond the cosmetic that weren't answered. And I don't think 20 odd reviews that are positive mean the game is great. We see games on Steam with thousands of positive reviews, yet which are still barely above mediocre. Sounds harsh, but it is true.
@@PHeMoX The whole point of the video is to answer the question "do you need to do marketing or is just making a good game enough to sell it?" I'm not saying this game the best game of all time and should have sold 100k copies. I'm saying this game is good and with good marketing it would have sold 5k-10k instead of 1k. So just based on the quality of the game itself, it did not sell itself, it would have sold better with some marketing.
I think there is confusion on what a "good game" is. The games you show as examples may look good and work well but are they good art? Because at the end of the day that's what a game is, interactive art. Are they original fresh and exciting? Or are they good in the way you like a kids drawing.
@@CodeMonkeyUnity Oh I believe you, that just goes to show how different people have different opinions on what good means. I think you set the bar really low and this way the saying about selling itself becomes meaningless.
"Not good enough to sell itself"... yes, no golden rules. 'Good' includes everything. Marketing, timing, prices.... Just a player's impression of 'fun...?' when playing is not enough to describe "Goodness" of the game.
thats the thing noone can give you one cause if they did it would be succesful this happens, good game is not at all guaranteed to succeed, but if given a innitial audience, it can easily become popular thanks to it being a good game
@@klusimo4543 Good marketing can sell things that do not even exist, or simply polished tu rds. This has been proven time and again. If this genius failed game did exist you would expect at least a niche audience to know about it.
Titanfall 2, Project Nomads, XIII (the original, not the shitty remake), Battle Realms. And i'm sure there's a lot more that i don't know. All of these games were amazing for their time but bombed hard because nobody knew them. Except Titanfall which decided to release right in the week between Battlefield and Call of Duty.
@@des757 The game in this video is not fundamentally different from retro spaceship arcades. Titanfall2 had massive marketing first of all and second this is no genius game, novel vehicles in an otherwise uninspired fps. Also it did not fail at all, what a bad example.
First of all this game has a publisher, so I thing they had a plans related to marketing, maybe they wanted first to get organic purchases and only then put money on advertising. Secondly : weird platform choice - this game more fits mobile, rather than PC or even consoles. Thirdly : audience - who is this game for? I can't clearly describe it's user so it's hard to make a good marketing tactics - therefore it got few likes on twitter and lastly: price ... a really price for bottom AAA-game, not ht indie one, I had bought some AAA-titles eve cheaper than this. The visual is great but does gameplay is that cool so you really want to spend $25?
I think I understand the purpose of the video, but in my opinion the video completely fails to get the point across. Let me explain : Your example might not be as relevant as you think. It all depends on what "good game" means. When I hear "good games sell themselves", I tend to agree but I imagine much much better games than the one you showed. And I'm not saying it's bad, it's just relatively not good enough to "sell itself". If you really wanted to make a point, you should have shown another shmup game which seems much less good than this one and that sold better despite this. I believe this wouldn't be easy to find, indeed, despite the qualities of Gearshifters, I'm not surprised at all by its "flop" and I don't think better communication would have helped that much, especially since they actually did some communication, it's not like they did nothing at all. I think many games can do fine with that amount of communication. In the end, I think the game is simply not good enough to "sell itself", especially because of its genre, and the hook issue you mentioned.
...but basically you need a whole advertising department to sell an indie game, or a lot of luck if you don't start with a lot of fame or a huge following.
Pricing is high and genre is very niche. That works heavily against them. It honestly looks like a decent mobile game. I can see why this wouldn't be appealing to a PC playerbase at that price. I'm starting question your definition of a "good game" or what that metric means to you. A "good game" doesn't necessarily mean built well or pretty. These help, but if you don't have proper pricing and an enticing hook it doesn't matter what the game is(especially with refunds).
Proper pricing falls under the "sell your game" category not the "good game" part. I did mention pricing as one of the reasons why it flopped. The game looks good and the reviews are positive, it is definitely better than 90% of Steam releases, that's my definition of a good game.
To be honest, the game looks like a mobiile game, which I think it hurted a lot. Also the gifs and videos of the gameplay doesn't look too interesting. Not to mention that the genre itself (shump) it's kinda niche these days.
I think a good game doesn't sell itself, simply because there are so many good games, but a great one, such as Valheim, Astroneer or Phasmophobia does. Marketing always helps of course, but I believe if the game is honestly great it's not necessary, as long as you get a decently sized playerbase at launch.
You only get a decently sized playerbase at launch if people know your game though. YOu always need luck, just being a good game doesn't suffice. For every Valheim you get, there 5 Battle Realms or Project Nomads, who absolutely deserved the success but simply noone knew about them. Valheim was lucky because streamers created a huge hype around it when it first launched. Phasmophobia made some deals with youtubers. Look at Among Us. It was out for almost 3 years with absolutely noone playing it and it was considered a huge flop, untill a few streamers played it, then youtubers played it, then it became such a huge hype that not only could they suddenly afford updates with new content, but they're working on a full sequel now too. Because they got lucky. Just being a good game alone doesn't sell a game
I would shift it to "A great game might sell itself". Yeah, there are great games that did find success with almost no marketing but as a developer, you can't rely on that since it's just way too risky and random. The only way not to die from hunger is to a) be very lucky b) do marketing
Lol Astroneer is extremely poorly designed game. I can't imagine who pays to repeat the same getting resources - digging to core shit for like 8 times with litteraly no variation except the color of the planet.
Factorio would be great to case study. People behind it created whole cult of playerbase, they know their game is one in a billion, so it rarely gets any discounts and when it does they are so tiny, like 10%. And still a lot of people buy it and never regret.
@@kkrup5395 That kind of gameplay is a genre in and of itself. Just because YOU don't like it doesn't make it a extremely poor designed game. Also, if you think you can do better then do it. Don't shit on successful games that others have made it makes you look like a dick.
Really depends on the specifics of the contract and what the publisher brings to the table. There are publishers that take a cut and don't do anything, and there are others that do a ton of work and definitely help a game succeed.
Hey! "Gearshifters" developer here.
I just wanted to say thanks for the video. I appreciate the coverage and it even brought me a few extra wishlists.
I can't talk about any details of what you've discussed but here are a few thoughts... (see replies because longer comment didn't stick)
- As you alluded to, going onto console platforms and releasing boxed versions makes a difference. INDIES SHOULD DO MULTIPLATFORM IF THEY CAN.
- It's a nostalgic, niche game, and I knew it was risky. So, I made sure that the project had several objectives not related to profitability to also measure success by. All of these were met and push things forward for the next game. HAVE A LONGER-TERM PLAN AND SET OBJECTIVES OTHER THAN "MAKE MONEY IMMEDIATELY".
- Bad/good/great game is subjective to an extent. Some people think Gearshifters sucks; some love it. Same with most games. And that's ok. It's the balance of opinion that matters. DON'T WORRY IF A FEW PEOPLE HATE YOUR GAME.
- I agree that a good game won't sell itself, especially these days. Unless you manage to be one of the few outliers, you've just got to tick ALL the boxes, starting with a marketable concept. DO YOUR MARKET RESEARCH BEFORE YOU START.
Cheers!
Hey! Thanks for watching the video, I'm glad it brought some attention to the game.
Lots of great points, having objectives not related to profitability is an excellent one.
I really hope the game ends up having a nice sales tail over the years, thanks!
The price might have been the biggest turn-off factor.
And the fact that it looks boring as hell.
Funny, the price is now 20 instead of 30 and they are putting a 25% discount. You can now buy it for 15$. It seems they saw the video.
I simply had to stop the video and research this game as it looks so fun and extreme. You could make a video series covering games that didn't do well in their releases and find out why. Very good and informative, hope it continues. good luck!
By all means do more of them. I believe also that by doing them there's a chance that maybe any one of these games you cover may turn their luck around, so who knows? maybe it could bring benefits to even the developers themselves.
For a long time, my biggest interest was "how to make a good game" which now shifted to "how to SELL a good game". And right on time you also started focusing less on games themselves and more on marketing. Perfect timing! :)
@@gamerfortynine no, you can still make a good game, but you need good marketing first and foremost or your game wont sell. a "money game" doesnt necessarily mean it will have good marketing, but it will have lots of micro-transactions. good marketing is still more important than making a good game, because making a good game shouldnt be so hard that it overtakes everything else.
here is a person working for game publishing for 10 years who said: I will pay more attention to making a good game. lol
@@qin6409 I don't get it. publishers don't make games.
@@Sputterbugz that’s why publisher start making games, same situation like Netflix, they used to rent CD only, but they start making movies too
Thanks for the the video! Really made me think of things I didn't even know that were important. You should keep doing these!
Awesome video. Please do more of these, it's good to see case studies.
I really like that you actually went through a example. I am sure the dev themself will highly appreciate this video as well.
omgeez i feel like this was made due to a comment i made on the last video about marketing lol love it! whether or not thats the case, thanks for making such good content!
Awesome tips, I will be releasing my game this year and this is a helpful guide thank you for sharing your expert advice.
Love your videos on this. I'm trying to get the wishlist count up for my own game and yes, being a good game alone doesn't cut it. If nobody sees it, it doesn't matter how good your game is.
💬 "a good game sells itself"... does it? Can you make it with zero marketing?
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Could you do a similar video discussing ad supported games?
do i have to master animation to join your course?
Very valuable information for game developers! Can't stress it hard enough
Great advise. I need to start sooner on advertising than I thought.
Very good points and super informative data points!
Thank you Code Monkey . completed your course on Unity features. It was amazing.
I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thanks!
12:44 actually you're not only didn't say anything negative about the game, but also I think you kinda advertised it which helps its developer to sell more.
Who knows, maybe by watching this video someone will buy it.
I didn't know about this game, and guess what is in my steam cart right now ^^
Great video, please make more marketing videos!
Great video!
Very helpful Video! Thank you
Excellent review of the advertising.
Getting free promotions by Code Monkey?
Marketing amateurs: *Heavy Breathing
Keep doing good work code monkey
I am learning a lot from your videos 👍
Realy Nice video! Thank you! you ara aswome!
Even though it selling well at first but people will forget about it
That's one of benefits of marketing
I really like this marketing videos please make more
Thanks for the awesome video! It provides great insight on how to go about marketing and what to expect at launch.
Regarding creating a steam page when is it generally a good time? Currently I'm working on a game that I feel is too early as I'm still testing out mechanics and level ideas, and the visuals are not showcase worthy.
I'd like your insight on this to plan things out better.
You need to have some decent visuals, not final but decent, don't publish that page if all you have is programmer art.
However you can try to start gathering a following on Twitter/Imgur/Reddit when all you have is programmer art to show off the unique designs of your game.
But yeah get some basic decent visuals done asap
@@CodeMonkeyUnity thanks for your insight! That's gonna help me plan things out much better - for one thing I gotta get on social media asap!
Awesome !
My games getting close tot he point where i can show some stuff of and make my steam page so this stuff is so well timed for me. Thank you!!
Best of luck to you! But I'd focus more on making the game the absolute best you can, instead of worrying about a Steam page now.
@@PHeMoX I can do both. I have enough time in the day.
I wonder if there are any statistics on how many different games you have sold before, impacting the number of your current game sales. I’d assume your audience grows bigger bit by bit over time as a game designer. But it scares me not finding any audience despite putting lot’s of effort into marketing.
I’m putting out a demo for my first game in Februari, and videos like these are really helpful, but also make me a bit nervous regarding the future.
Yup growing an audience over several games is an excellent way to help your future games do better. Whenever I launch my next game I'm going to post about it on my other game's pages, so quite a lot of people will hear about it thanks to having those games published previously.
@@CodeMonkeyUnity Good to know. Thank you for your reply.
The sales of your new game are mostly unrelated to the success of your previous games, if the new game is unrelated to your previous game-genres. This is because a track record is some form of marketing, and marketing is an overrated crutch that doesn't really work in general (as long as you don't understand the mechanism of marketing effects (and most people don't), it is effectively pointless). You can even be called Peter Molineux and tank your next game. But if you have established yourself in a genre, say puzzle, then your next puzzler will profit from your previous work (like in John Blow's case).
thank you!
I can't tell you enough how relevant this is to me atm. I started a Devlog RUclips channel at the beginning of December, uploaded a number of videos now, and I'm really struggling to get any views. I've started an instagram page, a tiktok page. Maybe I should begin using tweeter? I feel the game isn't ready yet to put it up on steam yet. Should I just keep grinding until starting the steam page?
Yes definitely make some gifs and post them on Twitter. RUclips is very tricky to learn so definitely take some time to study how to make a proper thumbnail/title/editing, look at other devlogs for ideas.
If you absolutely cannot get any traction no matter how much you post on any of those places, then maybe that's a clue that your idea isn't as compelling as you think it is.
The Right Game at the Right Time for the Right Price will do alright.
I think it would be great as a short series. Very interesting topic, but I reckon the themes will be very similar so after 5 or so videos might become a bit repetitive
I've also heard "a good game will find it's audience", which could be true IF you market it. So same thing here, a good game kind of sells itself only IF it's marketed. So marketing, im referring to all the usual social media stuff, press coverage, and running paid ads. If anything, hopefully a good game with pay for its paid ads. I'm talking profit after all the advertising expenses. So if one does all of that, then really a game is not necessarily selling itself. However, as we all know, one normally don't release a game without coverage or marketing and expect it to sell well on it's own. Cheers!
Marketing can be so hard though
I agree that it's hard for a good game to sell itself.
It's a lot easier for a bad game with good marketing had good sales.
Unfortunately.
It's easy for a great uniqe game to sell itself. It's just hard to make one. We should not blame the lack of marketing for the lack of success. And no, a bad game won't profit from marketing. This is only true for AAA companies with a big budget who can afford good marketing. And they have only one shot per game.
10:00 yeah that make sense. in that case there was a great game abaut space and shooting called hotdog storm even if the name dont make any sense and don't cover the game Idea it don't change the idea that it's great
meanwhile you have Super Auto Pets, a game where the only animation are Animal Emojis whacking each other with headbutts....and it's doing fantastic! and thats not an insult, I play that game!
(ok it is F2P so it follows different rules in terms of profitability)
please make a video on unity hub 3 (tip: to get to it, go to preferences->Advanced->Channel->Beta)
Good video!
One quick question. Does it matter what reviews you get? So do the reviews have to be positive for the steam algorithm to push ur game? Or does it not matter as long as they're reviews?
primery goal: everyone knows you. secondary goal: everyone talks about you, third goal: have fanboys: 4th goal: positive reviews
Positive reviews do help with the algorithm. Tbh for a first game getting 30-100 reviews on launch is a success
@@urielseuthes7484 id switch around 3 and 4 but yeah
i think reviews do matter but no one is going to take troll reviews seriously unless theyre a dunce. if someone didnt play the game and just said it stinks for no reason, then who cares? no one will listen to that person.
The total number is the main thing that matters, even if you get 5 positive and 5 negative reviews, you still get a massive boost from reaching 10 total reviews.
But then of course if players see a game with mixed they might see your game but not buy it, so try as hard as you can to keep that score above 70%
Hey CodeMonkey, could you do a video about "Vampire Survivors".
Could maybe be interesting to see how to make it or why it was soo succesfull
I've been hearing a lot about that game but haven't properly looked at it yet, they definitely seem to be doing something right
@@CodeMonkeyUnity They went for a low price point and lots of choices. Makes it a good stream game to show off skill or different way to win. I have not played but trying to figure out why it did so well also.
a single streamer that plays these types of games could of easily 5x their sales too, which isn't something you talked about. i do believe the price really did hurt the game sales though. target farming sales is honestly the best way to get your foot in the door imo. that or a give the streamer a early version to play so that a bunch of people can see it a few days to a week before your game launches.
Depends heavily on the streamer, for my own example, Markiplier played one of my games, Blueprint Tycoon, the video got over 1 mil views but the sales bump was relatively minor, something like 200 copies I think. It was a nice bump but not life changing.
@@CodeMonkeyUnity that's true, a RUclipsr playing a game is just not enough, it has to actually get viral.
@@CodeMonkeyUnity
that is very interesting.
he also played prison architect and the active players went from ~3.5k to ~12k during that same month (he played that a day later, after he played blueprint tycoon).
i doubt that's all from him playing but it's certainly noticeable. i can't see actual sales so active player count is all i really got to go by. also likely that a lot of people already had the game, so this comparison isn't telling the whole truth.
what happened nov/oct 2017 for blueprint tycoon? seems like a crazy high spike in active users.
$0.99 on the app stores and this game would do really well probably. $25 for an indie arcade game? That's a huge stretch.
As a beginner the biggest problem I face is to complete the game I always have great ideas but I'm never able to complete them ;(
Ideas are a dime a dozen. The ability to complete something is what makes someone stand out
@@AngersFiction yes that's a fact
But this game don't look to:
-be above few hours long,
-have much replay-abilities,
-be difficult (skill based) arcade,
-have some interesting twist in top down racing genre,
-have interesting story,
-have complexity or advance progression with many important chooses
Also kind look kind mobile game and at end of it they want 25$ or 20$
Is not good-game, at best is ok-game with some issues
You are the best tutorial RUclipsr I have a new idea of tutorial what about how to make among us tasks or among us random choice imposter crewmate
Remind me of a old game (Demonstars)
Video idea: Should you make a website for your game?
it sounds like : should I buy my own office to make a games?
Nope.
@@MaruskaStarshaya But once the game goes big, there needs to be a website so nobody can create a fake one, At least a wiki includes all the information about the game, I don't know if it's even necessary but I saw a couple of games having their own wiki.
Like any business, you need some luck on your side. The right people need to play your game at the right time. Streamers and youtubers are a huge influence. If a popular streamer picks up your game, then it's more or less guaranteed to succeed. If noone gives your game a look, then no matter how good your game is, noone will play it. For every Valheim or Minecraft, you have a Project Nomads or Battle Realms too. Games that are truly amazing but never managed to get out of the obscurity they were born in.
If you are a large company, promoting your game is important. If you are too small for that, you NEED the luck for someone influential to like your game enough to do it for you.
Sadly, bad games with promotion sell better than good games that noone knows.
So if you ask me does a good game sell itself, the answer is that being good certainly helps with mouth to mouth, but that only works when you get lucky enough that enough people pick it up in the first place. And in todays market, there's no guarantee for that.
That's the biggest lie in business though. A lot of games aren't accidentally picked up by a popular streamer. The guy or girl in question most likely got paid to play the game. Other games might be played by other RUclipsrs because an original video with people playing the game did well. Great example of this is GOAT Simulator. Arguably a game that isn't even very good at all. It's more of a gag game. And not good. Minecraft didn't become a success through 'luck'. I played Project Nomads in the past and loved it. But that game very much is a niche market game. Minecraft is about the most casual audience friendly game you could make. The difference between the two has nothing to do with luck.
Hey Code Monkey,
I started working with animations for an survival game, as you told i made layers for different weapons and noticed that all layers run parallely. If I am running Piston layers animations than also other animation contiously run. So I wanna ask does it is efficient? I didnt think running such 30 40 layers animations is good ! Or should I use Sub state machine(which is messy) or blend trees?
Thxs for all the good content👍
If the weight of the layer is at 0 then it shouldn't be "running" so it shouldn't cause issues.
Alternatively you could just have one extra layer and on that layer you would have a Blend Tree and inside it would have all the individual animations for each weapon. Not sure which would be the best approach
@@CodeMonkeyUnity Thxs I will try the blend tree method, I think it would be good enough!
I have a question. Should all 2d game built by tilemap, or by putting individual foreground, background etc. I want to accomplish much better quality for my game. Any advice?
It's been a while since I used the built in Tilemap but I think it creates a new game object for each tile, doesn't it? If so then it's identical to placing them manually yourself.
Just make sure all tiles are on the same texture so you can render everything in a single draw call
I'm still having problems getting the mouse pointer position to follow a sprite you control,I know its easy to get a sprite to follow the mouse pointer but not the other way round.
You want to forcefully move the user's mouse? That usually requires some low level Win32 access, what are you trying to do?
@@CodeMonkeyUnity I've got a grappling hook on my player 2D. Works fine with the mouse it gets the input.mouse position.simple, but I want to use an Xbox controller to move a sprite to were you want the grappling hook to go.I have no problems with the Xbox controller code, it's just getting the setting the mouse position from the the sprite position.
Would proper marketing have pushed more copies of this game? Sure. It's true for most games, regardless if they are good or not. This game you picked, it's not really a good game, it's a well executed one, if it were a house it would be a well structured house with a geen-purple roof. Some people will move in just because its sound structure and they particularly like green-purple roofs. But not many, and clearly not for that price.
A good game *could* sell itself, given the right ammount of stars allign. It has a chance, small as it may be, there are examples of this happening out there. Just as there are many examples of highly marketed games doing fk all. Investing in your game marketing just gives it more avenues to show it's stuff.
If we really knew what an objectivley good game is, we would all be making them. But that's just like saying there is an objectivley good piece of chocolate cake, but all we really mean is that it should have a unique taste and most people should like it.
Are you done making tutorials on YT? Especially the RTS series that was abandoned a year ago?
RTS series? I never started an RTS series, I only made a single standalone RTS video. It's a topic I'd like to cover more but not sure when
Do you have any tips for marketing mobile games? :/ Everyone is focusing on PC games and Steam Wishlisting when talking about marketing. It's a good video though! ^^
Mobile is a whole different beast and it's not something I'm familiar with so I really don't know what are the best practices there. Visibility is even harder so I don't know if there's an equivalent to wishlists to gather pre-launch hype.
For the project I'm working I think I have the optiset problem
I'm not able to know how many people the area but Many time wean I tell what is the game I'm trying to create the area people that is exciting
Unlike this project my dasn't demo or any other playble content and this time
The don't have steam page ECT
The have few unique mekanics and the alose showcase the progress of my game in discord and on my RUclips channel
However like said this game is still working progress and I don't expect to relese any time soon.
Since I'm Solo developer and try to make fps multiplayer game on my own only with comunty and document tourials ECt.
If have to say the problem with my and my project,
it's the fact that I'm work alone and try to make big scope game's and not that I don't have users that wants to expirense my game.
The reason I work alone is because I don't have found any way to get enough money 💰 for hier shomene I don't have any friend that is interesting in game development ECT. Also don't have eny system that people able to make the content and sherd wean even if the want to.
So I ended up work alon
That game probably just earned a whole bunch of players, and... i bet you expected that... and to be fair, that does look like a game worth giving the exposure to, nice move dude.
Here we go again. You basically mentioned the main problem with the game, and that is not the marketing. The game doesn't have anything uniqe, is overpriced, plus it is only single player. Looking good, and making something stand out are two different things. A game doesn't even have to look good to stand out.
Marketing is only relevant for AAA budgets who rely on polishing a turd for a week until the illusion wears off. It's the best next game ever for a week and then nobody talks about it. Just follow the logical chain of what marketing actually does: Brings initial mass of eyballs, then it either propagates by word of mouth/streamers etc. or it dies off.
1. if it propagates by worth of mouth etc., then you already have success even without marketing as long as you have some initial audience, and you will always have few hundred people without having serious investment in marketing. The marketing will help to reduce the detonation time. But the game will explode either way in its niche.
2. If it dies off, then you will end up pumping more ressources/money into marketing to keep the game alive. Pointless.
Just ask yourself the other way round. Do you actually find a game as unique and attractive as Stardew Valley for example, that no one plays? No, you won't. Because a great uniqe game will sell itself. Simply because the mechanism in 1. applies.
Hey bro make a video about python.can we use it in any game engine ar not pls make a video
Unfortunately, no matter how good a game is developed and how much time you put into it, it isn’t guaranteed to succeed.
But how do you know that is a good game?
@@NAME494 If your game has unique mechanics and an enjoyable concept it would draw in more people as it wouldn’t have been seen before.
@@swoooshi. a unique mechanics could also mean it's a niche game, that random people are turned off by it.
@@sFde46 that is a fare point too. But mechanics that haven’t been seen before usually do better because they are original. As you said, unique mechanics won’t always make people enjoy your game, but alot of people prefer playing unique, original games to a remake of an already fun game.
please, tell us all where to find your amazing game that didn't succeed
This is a good game i like it woow ..soo beautiful
One thing for steam: You can have up to 5 visibility rounds, as far as I understand it the game will be visible like a new release again, is that a good way to grow your audience?
Those used to be excellent but have been nerfed significantly.
They don't give you as much exposure as release, you pretty much only reach people who already have the game and people who have wishlisted it, it doesn't reach new players who have never heard about you.
It's primarily meant for promoting big updates but yes can indeed lead to higher sales if the update is good and players go back to play the game.
@@CodeMonkeyUnity So if I really want a second chance I make the release invisible and make a new one basically
For sure nope it doesn't
What’s the name of this pixel dungeon shooter?
It's shown on the previous video, I think it's called Arkos
The Game look rly right. His big PLUS is that YOU know took over his marketing xD
Can we get answers of what is the right thing to do? Not just what to avoid... thanks!
Check out the other video, I mentioned several things you can do to start marketing your game ruclips.net/video/E6-FQwCECes/видео.html
@@CodeMonkeyUnity Ah thanks
The counterfactual to that is 'can a bad or mediocre game succeed with great marketing?' I don't even need to look that up to know it can =D
edit: marketing or license/recognition ;-)
Yup excellent marketing can definitely sell a mediocre game
So GOOD game is not enough. You need to make great game =0)
Make a video "Should I try to make game that I think is good, but no one will see it?". My brother don't have enough faith into indie development and it will help him to be more brave. Please
If your goal is making it as a hobby or as a learning experience then sure go ahead and make whatever you want regardless of niche.
But if you want to make it as a business, then you need to ask yourself if there's a market for your game,
why not try jams? People will play your game and make reviews, they are always excited to play them. I've got a lot of joy receiving feedbacks and know people enjoyed playing it.
I gotta disagree with you here, this game looks like every game in 2022 should, as long as it's going for basic graphics and could honestly be a free mobile game with ads. Instead it's a 20€ PC game. It gives me vibes of the free online webbased games, i don't think it's terrible, but I don't think console and pc gamers want something that feels, looks and behaves like a mobile game.
This exactly
agree. Sometimes great games are not great it terms of gameplay and sometimes target platform were chosen wrongly. And if this game have been ported even on PS4 I thing they did spend some money on marketing, it's just it didn't work.
According to Elon Musk, He doesn't advertise Tesla yet it's incredibly popular. Once word get's out and it lives up to reputation then the customer or fan essentially becomes the advertiser.
Would have highly considered buying this at $5. But at $25 its a instant reject because it looks like another top down arcade shooter.
You forgot about regional prices and discounts. $25 is NOT the median price they've earned per copie sold. I would say around $15.
Yup that's a good point, the gross can change massively depending on if the majority of buyers are US or China.
And yet, I have to strongly disagree. Show me the games that were truly undisputed gems but never sold decent numbers? They literally do not exist. Most developers do not even understand how their games are very much a niche game to begin with, yet for some reason expect to sell 100k copies or more. Not every good game concept is a best-selling concept, obviously. And not every 'best-seller' can be predicted, think Flappy Bird or even something like GOAT Simulator, that isn't even necessarily a good game. The GearShifter game is a perfect example of how it is simply priced way too high for what it is. And you're probably a bit too impressed by its visuals (which aren't bad, just saying it's mostly cosmetic stuff you're raving about as 'good'). It screams arcade indie game. But it doesn't blow away either. In 2021 / 2022 we probably shouldn't expect less than those visuals or it becomes a problem. The game also does look about as generic as it gets. Not necessarily $19.99 or god forbid $25.00 worth. I severely doubt that game has actually sold 1000 copies (on Steam). 500 copies sold is more likely, maybe less. It's not unheard of for these types of games getting a fairly high amount of reviews compared to the actual sales. I do not wish such failure on anyone, but it is false to suggest making a Steam page early is the key to higher chance of success. That's just false on multiple levels. More exposure is good, but there's no guarantee getting more people to wishlist your games. Most game pages on Steam without much of a released game get pretty much no promotion. And this doesn't seem like the type of game that would need Early Access (not to mention how that doesn't increase sales nor exposure necessarily).
I think we're _not_ actually talking about a great game here, but more so 'just decent'. It's probably very middle-of-the-road. With a big bunch of marketing thrown in, this game might have done a lot better in terms of absolute sales. But at what cost remains to be seen. In reality, it is very hard to make a best-seller game. Did any popular RUclipsr showcase this game? Probably not. I think the developer probably posted the trailer on various forums to get 30k views. I doubt they spend money to promote on RUclips. Funnily enough, your video about this game might increase its sales! :) But the high price point _definitely_ in a turn off. Indie developers too often think their game is worth $19.99 or even $29.99, when the value just isn't there.
It sounds like your definition of a good game is a top 0.001% game like Stardew Valley, in those cases where a game is so good and so unique that it drives tons of word of mouth then yes in those super rare special cases can get by with 0 marketing.
However what I'm talking about here is the top 5% of games, they are great games, very well made, but without marketing they will not find success.
Based on the trailer and the reviews this game is definitely at least on the top 10% of games, that is very good but it absolutely does not sell itself.
@@CodeMonkeyUnity I don't think I am saying that at all. I think the high price point alone puts it in rather unpredictable territory. This matters far more than how a game looks solid on the surface. Keep in mind I don't think this game looks bad. I just don't see how it is a spectacular gem that is deserving of selling thousands or even tens of thousands of copies. I don't want to come across as annoying, but I think GearShifters is pretty much a mediocre game. How much replayability is in there for $19.99-$25.00? Multiplayer? Online leaderboards? How much content is there to make it worth it? All sorts of questions that go beyond the cosmetic that weren't answered. And I don't think 20 odd reviews that are positive mean the game is great. We see games on Steam with thousands of positive reviews, yet which are still barely above mediocre. Sounds harsh, but it is true.
@@PHeMoX The whole point of the video is to answer the question "do you need to do marketing or is just making a good game enough to sell it?"
I'm not saying this game the best game of all time and should have sold 100k copies. I'm saying this game is good and with good marketing it would have sold 5k-10k instead of 1k.
So just based on the quality of the game itself, it did not sell itself, it would have sold better with some marketing.
I think there is confusion on what a "good game" is. The games you show as examples may look good and work well but are they good art? Because at the end of the day that's what a game is, interactive art. Are they original fresh and exciting? Or are they good in the way you like a kids drawing.
This game is in the top 10% of games, that makes it an objectively good game, feel free to browse the Steam new releases list if you don't believe me.
@@CodeMonkeyUnity Oh I believe you, that just goes to show how different people have different opinions on what good means. I think you set the bar really low and this way the saying about selling itself becomes meaningless.
The game would have sold pretty good on mobile.
my impression of it was the same
"Not good enough to sell itself"... yes, no golden rules.
'Good' includes everything. Marketing, timing, prices.... Just a player's impression of 'fun...?' when playing is not enough to describe "Goodness" of the game.
This has been discussed so many times, alright then, where is this genius game breaking all expectations that sadly did not sell? I am waiting guys
thats the thing noone can give you one cause if they did it would be succesful
this happens, good game is not at all guaranteed to succeed, but if given a innitial audience, it can easily become popular thanks to it being a good game
@@klusimo4543 Good marketing can sell things that do not even exist, or simply polished tu rds. This has been proven time and again.
If this genius failed game did exist you would expect at least a niche audience to know about it.
Titanfall 2, Project Nomads, XIII (the original, not the shitty remake), Battle Realms. And i'm sure there's a lot more that i don't know. All of these games were amazing for their time but bombed hard because nobody knew them. Except Titanfall which decided to release right in the week between Battlefield and Call of Duty.
@@metagen77 Titanfall 2? Critically acclaimed and poorly marketed into Battlefield and CoD releases. Also this game in Codemonkey's video?
@@des757 The game in this video is not fundamentally different from retro spaceship arcades. Titanfall2 had massive marketing first of all and second this is no genius game, novel vehicles in an otherwise uninspired fps. Also it did not fail at all, what a bad example.
First of all this game has a publisher, so I thing they had a plans related to marketing, maybe they wanted first to get organic purchases and only then put money on advertising.
Secondly : weird platform choice - this game more fits mobile, rather than PC or even consoles.
Thirdly : audience - who is this game for? I can't clearly describe it's user so it's hard to make a good marketing tactics - therefore it got few likes on twitter
and lastly: price ... a really price for bottom AAA-game, not ht indie one, I had bought some AAA-titles eve cheaper than this. The visual is great but does gameplay is that cool so you really want to spend $25?
This game looks awesome shame it wasnt a success
I think I understand the purpose of the video, but in my opinion the video completely fails to get the point across. Let me explain :
Your example might not be as relevant as you think. It all depends on what "good game" means. When I hear "good games sell themselves", I tend to agree but I imagine much much better games than the one you showed. And I'm not saying it's bad, it's just relatively not good enough to "sell itself".
If you really wanted to make a point, you should have shown another shmup game which seems much less good than this one and that sold better despite this. I believe this wouldn't be easy to find, indeed, despite the qualities of Gearshifters, I'm not surprised at all by its "flop" and I don't think better communication would have helped that much, especially since they actually did some communication, it's not like they did nothing at all. I think many games can do fine with that amount of communication. In the end, I think the game is simply not good enough to "sell itself", especially because of its genre, and the hook issue you mentioned.
also the platform were chosen wrongly
...but basically you need a whole advertising department to sell an indie game, or a lot of luck if you don't start with a lot of fame or a huge following.
Spec Ops : The Line; Battlerite; CrossCode; Spellbreak; Trash Sailors; Dandara; Darwin Project, and many more.
The answer is, unfortunately, no.
No, you need a little bit of luck and you need to advertise your game correctly
Anthem was advertised as hell - the results we all know 🤣
@@MaruskaStarshaya Guess they didnt have the luck then
Pricing is high and genre is very niche. That works heavily against them. It honestly looks like a decent mobile game. I can see why this wouldn't be appealing to a PC playerbase at that price. I'm starting question your definition of a "good game" or what that metric means to you. A "good game" doesn't necessarily mean built well or pretty. These help, but if you don't have proper pricing and an enticing hook it doesn't matter what the game is(especially with refunds).
Proper pricing falls under the "sell your game" category not the "good game" part. I did mention pricing as one of the reasons why it flopped.
The game looks good and the reviews are positive, it is definitely better than 90% of Steam releases, that's my definition of a good game.
I pretty sure these type of games do much better on consoles. PC is not their targeted platform.
Yeah probably, would be great to have some stats but sadly there's no public review count on consoles so no way to get a rough estimate
20k views, and no likes? 🧐
Let it mine be first 😅
All I know is if you make a game for gain money, you won't.
Games outperform movies these days in terms of dollars
To be honest, the game looks like a mobiile game, which I think it hurted a lot. Also the gifs and videos of the gameplay doesn't look too interesting. Not to mention that the genre itself (shump) it's kinda niche these days.
The game is too pricey for what it provides.
You could end the video right there. :)
I think a good game doesn't sell itself, simply because there are so many good games, but a great one, such as Valheim, Astroneer or Phasmophobia does. Marketing always helps of course, but I believe if the game is honestly great it's not necessary, as long as you get a decently sized playerbase at launch.
You only get a decently sized playerbase at launch if people know your game though. YOu always need luck, just being a good game doesn't suffice. For every Valheim you get, there 5 Battle Realms or Project Nomads, who absolutely deserved the success but simply noone knew about them.
Valheim was lucky because streamers created a huge hype around it when it first launched. Phasmophobia made some deals with youtubers. Look at Among Us. It was out for almost 3 years with absolutely noone playing it and it was considered a huge flop, untill a few streamers played it, then youtubers played it, then it became such a huge hype that not only could they suddenly afford updates with new content, but they're working on a full sequel now too. Because they got lucky.
Just being a good game alone doesn't sell a game
I would shift it to "A great game might sell itself". Yeah, there are great games that did find success with almost no marketing but as a developer, you can't rely on that since it's just way too risky and random. The only way not to die from hunger is to a) be very lucky b) do marketing
Lol Astroneer is extremely poorly designed game. I can't imagine who pays to repeat the same getting resources - digging to core shit for like 8 times with litteraly no variation except the color of the planet.
Factorio would be great to case study. People behind it created whole cult of playerbase, they know their game is one in a billion, so it rarely gets any discounts and when it does they are so tiny, like 10%. And still a lot of people buy it and never regret.
@@kkrup5395 That kind of gameplay is a genre in and of itself. Just because YOU don't like it doesn't make it a extremely poor designed game. Also, if you think you can do better then do it. Don't shit on successful games that others have made it makes you look like a dick.
It's soo hard for indie developers , it may be better to try and find a publisher?
Really depends on the specifics of the contract and what the publisher brings to the table. There are publishers that take a cut and don't do anything, and there are others that do a ton of work and definitely help a game succeed.
I made the likes a perfect 69 anyone who's ruins it is a monster
Edit no some ppl ruined it
What if I am a communist ?
1000th veiwer and the 100th like