This video is incredibly underrated and answered more of my questions than watching numerous GDC talks. Thank you for your incredible and detailed description too.
This was a super educational GUIDE on how to get things done... it's not just tips, but a guide .. people pay a lot of money for info like this .. THANK YOU !
Reddit is very tricky because it's a text-based website. The title is everything. Most of the post that are upvoted needs a storyline attached to it. "Me after quitting my job and losing my home", "The first game I started in middle school" The title says everything. Because of this Reddit is not a good place to market. Rarely does these post directly lead to any sales. They're not focused on liking the product, but rather the creator (which is fine, but the opposite of what steam/itch cares about)
Super helpful information for an area that seems pretty daunting. Would definitely be interested in a separate video around contacting youtubers and creators.
@@AuroDev Oh I didn't realise I was 3 years late 😅 - Perfect, I'll go check that out. Your videos have helped me so much, especially the Steam setup stuff. Big fan 💚🐢
really helpful video thanks a lot. I do develop my indie game right now as a solo dev. I'm also okay to spend 1-2k dollars which should be okay that's why I'm looking for ways to spend 20-50-100 bucks on tools which help me to reach more players than spending all in one thing
Great video, most videos don't say anything at all on what to do, it's just explaining how there's an audience, what is an audience, what is marketing, what are charts, why do teeth don't regenerate and everything but what to do, this was really helpful, keep it up, I'm sure you'll be huge someday!
This sounds promising, I'm gonna try all the recommended ones and do my best..my 1st game was an absolute fail on android because of marketing. I'm running out of time but I think I still have enough time to do a steam game, thank you for all the info.
Kiitos hyödyllisestä videosta! Niinkuin kaikista muistakin videoista! Paljon hyödyllistä tietoa jollekin joka haaveilee soolona pelien tekemisestä! Ja aina hienoa nähdä suomalaisen onnistuvan : D
Huge thanks. I'm one of these people who "have a brilliant game, but aside from a twitter post with 2 likes they didn't do any marketing". I got so desperate that I actually started considering mailing a game publisher.
Hope the video was useful! :) Publishers can be a great help with marketing if you really don't want to do it yourself and you are confident in the publisher's capabilities.
@@AuroDev Yeah, I think it's a great idea. I was thinking about mailing tinyBuild or Devolver digital for quite a long time now, and trying marketing by myself only convinced me even more. Trying to provoke interest in people who don't give a shit about you seems like a nightmare to me. I'll try contacting let's players and doing some PR on twitter for now, but publishers is still a priority for me. Anyways, huge thanks for taking your time. Have a nice day! :3
thank you very much for the advice, very useful. we try everything to emerge but in the end the important thing is the commitment, better if spent in the right direction :D See you soon!
Great advice, it all aligns with the successes and failures I've found with marketing my own game, as well as advice I've heard from professional marketers. I think this is a really helpful video for anyone getting started and I wish I had seen it much earlier in development because then I might not have had to learn some of these lessons the hard way.
That was a good video with some nice advices, thanks ;) I'm at the point at which there is enough content in my game to share it online (30% of the game is done) but was stuck with the whole marketing part, I didn't grew with marketers so it's kinda hard to figure out what you gotta do. I've been thinking for a while about giving some keys to youtubers & streamers and I'm gonna do it once I'm done with my steam page. I think the main problem might be that I'm not well organized. To challenge myself, I will come back on this comment in exactly 1 year (if I can physically do that, obviously) and we will see how it went !
Marketing a game is a big challenge, especially when you are going at it solo. As with other challenging things, it's usually best to just take one step and after that think how to take the next step. Best of luck with your game!
@@joaco. Well, I slowed down a lot due to health problems so I didn't focus on marketing. Thought I plan to release a big trailer soon and focus more on the marketing. During this year I talked to a few youtubers & streamers with big accounts. They are interested but I wouldn't bet all on that. I think I will now start posting a lot on tiktok as you can reach a lot of people quite fast when the algorithm decides it's time. Also, the game is now ~50% done, I'm trying to give it the best quality possible and I reworked on some gameplay elements that seemed not that good earlier.
Hi Auro, thanks for this video, even if it's just about your personal experience it's useful to have at least one criterium to decide how to try and move in the marketing field. One question about contacting youtubers and streamers: do you write your messages already including Steam keys or do you first ask around who wants to try your game? I would go with the second option because spreading keys randomly doesn't seem safe, I was just wondering if these people actually answer back to a first contact, I imagine they get LOTS of similar messages...
I think sending the key right away is better because some creators won't bother sending an email back to you even if they might be willing to give the game a try. Maybe some keys will end up being resold, but I don't think it's a big amount and the potential upside is much bigger.
My main concern was exactly that creators may be receiving lots of similar messages and so (as you say) won't bother writing you back unless you have a VERY appealing offer... on the other hand, as much as I believe in my game, I don't think the risk for key reselling is THAT high in my case 😀 Thanks once again!
Hi. Thanks for sharing your experience! I'm at the stage where I need to seriously ramp up marketing (which I have been doing all along as well), so this helped me be sure I'm spending my time where I should be!
I have a feeling that TikTok is the next big frontier for game marketing. Very little saturation relative to other platforms and it seems MUCH easier to "go viral" with TikTok's algorithm
I think you're on to something! I have also wondered about TikTok since it seems that any video could go viral there, regardless of who made it. Haven't had the chance to try it, but I agree that there could be great potential in it!
But with the attention spam being reduced by TikTok's algorithm maybe the users forget 20 seconds later about what they saw and you get lost in Tiktok's ocean
Thanks for sharing! Do you think it's best to find many youtubers and streamers who have in the 1000s of subscribers and follwers. Or did you find more popular ones?
I think it's best to target all channels regardless of size (well maybe not the smallest ones) if you think your game would fit their channel content. It's always better to have more channels to target.
Oh, that's cool to hear! I completely missed when ZiggyD was streaming it. Spotting videos about your game on RUclips is easy, but twitch not so much. But ZiggyD was actually the reason chrono.gg approached me so I figured he must have played the game at some point :)
WOW this is the exact method we used to produce our game in 2017. We had much worse numbers than you did last year, but times change for sure. Our Newsletter did great and our number one source of new purchases? RUclips! influencers on RUclips did more for our games than anything else!
Very interesting ! I've also looked at tumblr. Seems very hard to use. Celeste developers seems to have some success there. And some game reviewer like alpha beta gamer. But yeah, made a few posts and... nothing !
Hi Auro! Just a quick question. Is there a limit on sending free steam keys for RUclipsrs for promoting our game?. If so how many FREE keys you normally giveaway during the launch day for RUclipsrs to try your game.? Thanks!
There isn't any specific limit. You request the keys from Steam and they can either accept or decline the request. But I don't think you will have any issues with this. IIRC I sent a key to around 60+ youtubers on launch, but you can definitely do much more (and it's probably good to send more).
@@AuroDev Thanks for the Video again. Watched all of your videos on your channel. If possible share us some procedures for COLLECTING the email address and adding it to an excel file. Like formats and stuff like that.! And methods of sending those emails like Mailchimp or using our personal gmail id's to make it more effective without spaming them. Thanks again. Stay safe! :D ~JannerBros
@@JannerBros Sure, maybe I could talk a bit about that when I do it again with my next game! I recommend sending the emails manually so there's less chance of ending up in spam folder.
Also me waving pom poms in the background cheering for mortal Glory by being the one non bot that retweets Mortal Glory posts: Not Recommend (I'm doing my best though)
One thing I'm surprised you didn't mention is the importance (or lack thereof) of operating a dedicated website for your game and/or company. Every serious indie dev seems have a website, including yourself, but the cost of domain names and web hosting can be quite steep. Your thoughts?
Ah yea, good note - I could have talked about that too in the video. I have a website, but I'm not pushing any traffic to it so it remains quite invisible. The reason I don't push any traffic to it is that I rather use my Steam page as the CTA, not the website. My thought process behind that basically boils down to "less clicks". By linking the Steam page, it's less clicks to buy/wishlist the game when compared to linking my own webpage. The more clicks there are between the end result, the higher the likelihood a customer will drop out before the end result. I'm sure someone might have a different opinion, but that's my thinking process and that's why I don't think my website has had any actual effect on my game.
A .com domain is around $10 / year and hosting can be had for less than $100 / year if you just want an official company site. If you want to send heavy traffic to the site, etc. then yeah you’d need a dedicated server, VPS or similar, but otherwise I think its very cheap.
@@el_manu_el_ I guess I meant expensive compared to all of the free options Auro proposed in the video. I already have a personal website and I'm not paying much more than that. It's worth noting that I also mentioned having a unique website for each game and the prices you quoted can add up once you begin making your third or fourth game.
@@raidev_ This video was focused on what kind of marketing I did for my game before release. Back then I didn't have a RUclips channel yet. But yes, having an active RUclips channel can be a great source of marketing!
Did you mean if the games can be discounted at any time you want? There are some rules for that, but generally, yeah, you can choose the discount% and the exact dates when your game is discounted.
The best way to find these RUclipsrs is to just manually browse who is playing new indie games regularly. Alternatively you could use creator contacting services like Woovit or Keymailer.
@@revelations7289 I did the majority of work manually myself and then on top of that I used 1 month of Woovit premium, which I think was worth the money. I also tried Keymailer and Indieboost, but they weren't that effective for me. I actually have a video on this subject with some additional details: ruclips.net/video/ukw_vTFjSDo/видео.html
Do youtubers ever ask you for money? I heard some Streamers will ask for like 10k+ USD to play your game. It's way too much when you're on a zero budget.
This video is incredibly underrated and answered more of my questions than watching numerous GDC talks. Thank you for your incredible and detailed description too.
Awesome! Really happy to hear you got a lot out of it :)
100%
A guy called "Notch" had a blog on tumblr about some indie game he made.
This was a super educational GUIDE on how to get things done... it's not just tips, but a guide .. people pay a lot of money for info like this .. THANK YOU !
You're welcome! :)
Reddit is very tricky because it's a text-based website. The title is everything. Most of the post that are upvoted needs a storyline attached to it. "Me after quitting my job and losing my home", "The first game I started in middle school" The title says everything.
Because of this Reddit is not a good place to market. Rarely does these post directly lead to any sales. They're not focused on liking the product, but rather the creator (which is fine, but the opposite of what steam/itch cares about)
That's a good point. I have also noticed that the posts that emphasize emotions or have a story will more likely rise to the top.
Me: Really tired of people saying 'smash that subscribe button'
AuroDev: 'Lovingly caress that subscribe button'
Me: Ok not that tired after all
Super helpful information for an area that seems pretty daunting. Would definitely be interested in a separate video around contacting youtubers and creators.
You're in luck! I actually already have a separate video about that on the channel.
@@AuroDev Oh I didn't realise I was 3 years late 😅 - Perfect, I'll go check that out. Your videos have helped me so much, especially the Steam setup stuff. Big fan 💚🐢
really helpful video thanks a lot. I do develop my indie game right now as a solo dev. I'm also okay to spend 1-2k dollars which should be okay that's why I'm looking for ways to spend 20-50-100 bucks on tools which help me to reach more players than spending all in one thing
Very informative mate!! I saved this vid for later for certain suggestions, that I'll need it in the future
Happy to hear it was helpful! :)
Great video, most videos don't say anything at all on what to do, it's just explaining how there's an audience, what is an audience, what is marketing, what are charts, why do teeth don't regenerate and everything but what to do, this was really helpful, keep it up, I'm sure you'll be huge someday!
Thanks, happy to hear the video was helpful! :)
Great video with valuable information. You seem to be a smart guy, thank you for sharing your experience with us, it's appreciated.
Thanks! Happy to share my experiences! :)
This sounds promising, I'm gonna try all the recommended ones and do my best..my 1st game was an absolute fail on android because of marketing. I'm running out of time but I think I still have enough time to do a steam game, thank you for all the info.
Best of luck with the project!
Super informative! More videos like this!
This is so informative, this type of insight is priceless.. 🎖️
Great to hear! :)
Kiitos hyödyllisestä videosta!
Niinkuin kaikista muistakin videoista! Paljon hyödyllistä tietoa jollekin joka haaveilee soolona pelien tekemisestä! Ja aina hienoa nähdä suomalaisen onnistuvan : D
Eipä kestä! Mukava kuulla, että video(i)sta oli hyötyä :)
Huge thanks. I'm one of these people who "have a brilliant game, but aside from a twitter post with 2 likes they didn't do any marketing". I got so desperate that I actually started considering mailing a game publisher.
Hope the video was useful! :) Publishers can be a great help with marketing if you really don't want to do it yourself and you are confident in the publisher's capabilities.
@@AuroDev Yeah, I think it's a great idea. I was thinking about mailing tinyBuild or Devolver digital for quite a long time now, and trying marketing by myself only convinced me even more. Trying to provoke interest in people who don't give a shit about you seems like a nightmare to me. I'll try contacting let's players and doing some PR on twitter for now, but publishers is still a priority for me.
Anyways, huge thanks for taking your time. Have a nice day! :3
this came in my fav playlist. Awesome Content.
Thanks for all the tips! Really helps me get wishlists before releasing my first game! Thanks a lot 👍🏽
Great to hear! :)
Thanks mate...such a very helpful vid!
Great to hear! :)
Another useful video! Thank you 🙏
This was awesome, thank you very much!!!!
I have found that commenting useful things in other people's videos
is also a way to promote yourself
That can be a good way to get noticed for sure!
Thanks for sharing your experience!! Greetings from Argentina!!!
This Information is so Valubale, Thank you so much
Nice layout in the description.
Thank you #Auro, that's what I was looking for. Keep it up
Thanks! Happy to hear that :)
He sounds like Stephen Hawking's voice synthesizer
I'll take that as a compliment! :D
I was just about to say that...he definitely sounds like AI. I guess its just the accent
Really great advice, thanks!
This is cool ! I love your content man, keep it up :)
Thanks! Happy to hear you like it! :)
thank you very much for the advice, very useful. we try everything to emerge but in the end the important thing is the commitment, better if spent in the right direction :D See you soon!
True that! :)
Oh, I never though of Imgur as a "social media", I should try it. Thanks for the tip !
Great advice, it all aligns with the successes and failures I've found with marketing my own game, as well as advice I've heard from professional marketers. I think this is a really helpful video for anyone getting started and I wish I had seen it much earlier in development because then I might not have had to learn some of these lessons the hard way.
Thank you for this! I really need help with marketing.
Happy to share! Best of luck with marketing your own game :)
Great advice and also matches 100% my (limited) personal experience in marketing an indie game
Completely agree!
Thank you again Auro, awesome tips!
Thank you for this great value content!
That was a good video with some nice advices, thanks ;)
I'm at the point at which there is enough content in my game to share it online (30% of the game is done) but was stuck with the whole marketing part, I didn't grew with marketers so it's kinda hard to figure out what you gotta do. I've been thinking for a while about giving some keys to youtubers & streamers and I'm gonna do it once I'm done with my steam page. I think the main problem might be that I'm not well organized.
To challenge myself, I will come back on this comment in exactly 1 year (if I can physically do that, obviously) and we will see how it went !
Marketing a game is a big challenge, especially when you are going at it solo. As with other challenging things, it's usually best to just take one step and after that think how to take the next step. Best of luck with your game!
How is it going?
@@joaco. Well, I slowed down a lot due to health problems so I didn't focus on marketing. Thought I plan to release a big trailer soon and focus more on the marketing.
During this year I talked to a few youtubers & streamers with big accounts. They are interested but I wouldn't bet all on that.
I think I will now start posting a lot on tiktok as you can reach a lot of people quite fast when the algorithm decides it's time.
Also, the game is now ~50% done, I'm trying to give it the best quality possible and I reworked on some gameplay elements that seemed not that good earlier.
@@misterrider19 good luck with your game, hope things are going better for you healthwise!
At the beginning I was kind of annoyed by his accent, but now I chuckle every time I hear "indieh developer"
Hah, good to hear there was a positive spin on that :D I didn't even realize I pronounced it funny!
@@AuroDev I think you have a very relaxing and friendly demeanor! 🙂👏
This was great. Thank you for the insight on how to move forward with marketing. I have started on Imgur today finally from watching this.
Happy to hear it was helpful! :)
Hi Auro, thanks for this video, even if it's just about your personal experience it's useful to have at least one criterium to decide how to try and move in the marketing field.
One question about contacting youtubers and streamers: do you write your messages already including Steam keys or do you first ask around who wants to try your game?
I would go with the second option because spreading keys randomly doesn't seem safe, I was just wondering if these people actually answer back to a first contact, I imagine they get LOTS of similar messages...
I think sending the key right away is better because some creators won't bother sending an email back to you even if they might be willing to give the game a try. Maybe some keys will end up being resold, but I don't think it's a big amount and the potential upside is much bigger.
My main concern was exactly that creators may be receiving lots of similar messages and so (as you say) won't bother writing you back unless you have a VERY appealing offer... on the other hand, as much as I believe in my game, I don't think the risk for key reselling is THAT high in my case 😀 Thanks once again!
Hi. Thanks for sharing your experience! I'm at the stage where I need to seriously ramp up marketing (which I have been doing all along as well), so this helped me be sure I'm spending my time where I should be!
Happy to hear it was helpful! :)
Thanks for sharing. Very cool.
I have a feeling that TikTok is the next big frontier for game marketing. Very little saturation relative to other platforms and it seems MUCH easier to "go viral" with TikTok's algorithm
I think you're on to something! I have also wondered about TikTok since it seems that any video could go viral there, regardless of who made it. Haven't had the chance to try it, but I agree that there could be great potential in it!
But with the attention spam being reduced by TikTok's algorithm maybe the users forget 20 seconds later about what they saw and you get lost in Tiktok's ocean
Very helpful!
Great vid and advice!!
Thanks! :)
Don't ever do paid ads even if you have the money.
I Lovingly caressed the subscribe button ;-)
60$ and sold 130$k? That is insane congratulations my man
Thanks :)
And hours of research and marketing too. 😁
Honestly I liked the video after listening for 30 seconds because his voice is sooooo cool....glad I listened to the end too☺️
Oh wow, thank you! :)
Thanks for sharing! Do you think it's best to find many youtubers and streamers who have in the 1000s of subscribers and follwers. Or did you find more popular ones?
I think it's best to target all channels regardless of size (well maybe not the smallest ones) if you think your game would fit their channel content. It's always better to have more channels to target.
Can confirm, I found Mortal Glory through watching ZiggyD play it on stream
Oh, that's cool to hear! I completely missed when ZiggyD was streaming it. Spotting videos about your game on RUclips is easy, but twitch not so much. But ZiggyD was actually the reason chrono.gg approached me so I figured he must have played the game at some point :)
@@AuroDev Yeah! He's a real sweet guy, I really love his content and he made the game look like so much fun, so I bought it the next day.
@@SaoirseDotCom Oh, happy to hear that! I haven't seen his content before, but I guess I'll have to do that now :)
thanks for this
WOW this is the exact method we used to produce our game in 2017. We had much worse numbers than you did last year, but times change for sure. Our Newsletter did great and our number one source of new purchases? RUclips! influencers on RUclips did more for our games than anything else!
Very interesting to hear! I also feel like my game's story would have been very different if it wasn't for RUclips & Twitch.
Thank you and congrats
Thanks! :)
Very interesting ! I've also looked at tumblr. Seems very hard to use. Celeste developers seems to have some success there. And some game reviewer like alpha beta gamer. But yeah, made a few posts and... nothing !
Hi Auro! Just a quick question. Is there a limit on sending free steam keys for RUclipsrs for promoting our game?. If so how many FREE keys you normally giveaway during the launch day for RUclipsrs to try your game.? Thanks!
There isn't any specific limit. You request the keys from Steam and they can either accept or decline the request. But I don't think you will have any issues with this. IIRC I sent a key to around 60+ youtubers on launch, but you can definitely do much more (and it's probably good to send more).
@@AuroDev Thanks for the Video again. Watched all of your videos on your channel. If possible share us some procedures for COLLECTING the email address and adding it to an excel file. Like formats and stuff like that.! And methods of sending those emails like Mailchimp or using our personal gmail id's to make it more effective without spaming them. Thanks again. Stay safe! :D ~JannerBros
@@JannerBros Sure, maybe I could talk a bit about that when I do it again with my next game! I recommend sending the emails manually so there's less chance of ending up in spam folder.
300th like. Will let you know after I save $300 to get the game out in the first place (+$60)
Nice video 👍🏻👌🏻
Thanks! :)
Also me waving pom poms in the background cheering for mortal Glory by being the one non bot that retweets Mortal Glory posts: Not Recommend
(I'm doing my best though)
Haha, I really appreciate it though! :D
Is it still worth sending keys to youtubers/streamers 1 year after the game launch?
It might be worth the try. If the creator hasn't played the game before and it fits well on their channel, there's always a chance.
Great!
One thing I'm surprised you didn't mention is the importance (or lack thereof) of operating a dedicated website for your game and/or company. Every serious indie dev seems have a website, including yourself, but the cost of domain names and web hosting can be quite steep. Your thoughts?
Ah yea, good note - I could have talked about that too in the video. I have a website, but I'm not pushing any traffic to it so it remains quite invisible. The reason I don't push any traffic to it is that I rather use my Steam page as the CTA, not the website. My thought process behind that basically boils down to "less clicks". By linking the Steam page, it's less clicks to buy/wishlist the game when compared to linking my own webpage. The more clicks there are between the end result, the higher the likelihood a customer will drop out before the end result. I'm sure someone might have a different opinion, but that's my thinking process and that's why I don't think my website has had any actual effect on my game.
A .com domain is around $10 / year and hosting can be had for less than $100 / year if you just want an official company site. If you want to send heavy traffic to the site, etc. then yeah you’d need a dedicated server, VPS or similar, but otherwise I think its very cheap.
@@el_manu_el_ I guess I meant expensive compared to all of the free options Auro proposed in the video. I already have a personal website and I'm not paying much more than that. It's worth noting that I also mentioned having a unique website for each game and the prices you quoted can add up once you begin making your third or fourth game.
my game is on steam, called "His Journey" if you want you can go wishlist it ;)
Thanks!
You're welcome! :)
Thank you
im surprised you didn't mention having a youtube channel
I didn't have a RUclips channel back then :)
@@AuroDev when you uploaded the video?
@@raidev_ This video was focused on what kind of marketing I did for my game before release. Back then I didn't have a RUclips channel yet. But yes, having an active RUclips channel can be a great source of marketing!
when you say Indie i hear INDIA
Close enough :D
Hey i have a doubt
Is steam discounts can be modified as our wish any time?
Did you mean if the games can be discounted at any time you want? There are some rules for that, but generally, yeah, you can choose the discount% and the exact dates when your game is discounted.
@@AuroDev oh ok 👍
Hi, I want to promote my game. Do you know what RUclipsrs I could contact that would be interested in playing a new indie game?
The best way to find these RUclipsrs is to just manually browse who is playing new indie games regularly. Alternatively you could use creator contacting services like Woovit or Keymailer.
@@AuroDev Which ones did you use for your game?
@@revelations7289 I did the majority of work manually myself and then on top of that I used 1 month of Woovit premium, which I think was worth the money. I also tried Keymailer and Indieboost, but they weren't that effective for me.
I actually have a video on this subject with some additional details: ruclips.net/video/ukw_vTFjSDo/видео.html
But, and curators steam?
You should totally get some affiliate link for woovit ;d
I'll have to see at some point if they want to sponsor me :D
@@AuroDev Well, I've never heard of it, but I totally consider using it some day after watching your videos.
Whoa wait a min, what about RUclips?
...or did I miss it...
This video was made based on my own experiences and back then during the first game I didn't have a youtube channel.
Are you Finnish?
Yep!
Elon Musk
Btw. u look like Elon.
I have heard that a few times before :) got the looks, now I just need to get the money!
Twitter and Reddit are a complete waste of time, in my experience.
What are some good alternatives then?
@@RecraftedS allegedly, have streamers/influencers cover your game.
Do youtubers ever ask you for money?
I heard some Streamers will ask for like 10k+ USD to play your game. It's way too much when you're on a zero budget.
A few have asked me, but I also haven't had the budget for it.
Elon Musk