Good publishers can help with a lot more than just wishlists, they can help with Localization, Porting, they have contacts with Press, Streamers, they can get you in contact with Xbox/PS/Switch for events and special deals, etc. You might be able to get to 50k wishlists by yourself but might not have enough time (or contacts) to make the rest of that happen. Or you might simply need funding to finish your game. But yes definitely avoid a bad publisher that will just "post about your game" in return for 70%.
The calculus is if you can make more money with the publisher's help at that point vs on your own. Maybe they will cost you $100,000 or more but if they pay for themselves and more then it could be worth it, such as by localizing your game to new markets or porting it to new consoles, they could net you far more than they cost at the end of the day.
Just to clarify. You don't need to get 50K to get a publisher. When you sign with a publisher they often say "Our target is to launch your game when you get 30k-50K wishlists"
Hi Chris, great talk, I learned a lot. As someone who is making an auto battler, it's great to know the genre isn't saturated yet. A question on the steam page. When should I set a release date for it? Do I launch my page with or without a release date? Should I set a release date once I get the 7000 wishlists? Can I change my release date and would you advice this if you're short the 7000 wishlist goal?
Hey Chris, thank for sharing your knowledge together with CodeMonkey! I found it all very insightful but at the same time I fall in the category of working on a larger project as my first game. More specifically I'm creating a JRPG called Monster Haven (most of my stuff is on Twitter for now, it's done moderately well there). While I'm happy with how the game is shaping up personally I'm now a little worried that I'm wasting my time as I have zero audience on Steam thus far. What would you suggest me or other people in a similar situation do? Should I scrap working on the whole JRPG'ish story and focus first on just releasing say an auto battler? So I at least already have a starting audience after which I can continue on the main game?
@@MonsterHavenDev I think you’re falling into the exact trap Chris is talking about. I found you quite easily on twitter, but I don’t see your steampage? I found a Reddit post from 3 years ago, so you’ve been working on this for a while, but you don’t have a steam page? How are you going to get a following on Steam without a steampage? As Chris said, you aren’t going to get much following on twitter. If you want to make money off the game, your next Steam should be building a Steam page and linking to it from twitter and everywhere else you have. You spent quite a lot of time and I can tel you already have some screenshots for the game, so making it shouldn’t be that difficult. Hope it makes sense? PS: If you don’t plan to make it a commercial project, then just keep working on it as is and enjoy the process.
no no no, wrong mindset. Don't see similar games as competition. Contact them, befriend them, cross-promote and make a steam bundle together. Big opportunity.
@@testitestmann8819 Yes, but it's content that doesn't exist anywhere else on the internet (unlike game development, which has millions of tutorials and videos). Additionally, it includes a lot of great data analysis work accumulated over the years, making it totally worth it.
This is probably the most helpful video on this topic on this site. Chris's earnest and authoritative tone definitely helped me temper my expectations as an indie dev working on my first game. I'm gonna keep working on my 3D platformer but I'm definitely gonna scale it down and follow his marketing advice!
Chris! What a fantastic pairing of two of my favorite game dev informers. Thanks for the great video, actual useable and applicable knowledge is so helpful.
Hugo, thank you so much for making this video. I learned so much from Chris right here, and the things he said make a lot of sense. This video is a goldmine.
Chris is amazing. But I also want to say that Hugo is the best. I mean the questions that he asked, it was almost like I was lucky enough to have a direct conversation with Chris. This entire video is so genuinely informative that it would take someone months to gather this knowledge by themselves. Thank you so much Hugo and Chris.
I don't know how did 52 minutes finished so quickly , it was like a fun smooth movie. Really great and informative video , thanks Code Monkey for this collab 💝. I am looking forward to these Collab videos , as courses are just too expensive for me to buy even after discounts.
Following Chris techniques has led my game Sky Harvest to bag front page of steam for a whole week which led to an exclusive IGN Interview. This guy realllly knows what he is doing and he is soo good at it. 🙏
If you realease an early access game I 100% expect regular updates. Not necesarily code, but some sort of activity on the steam page. This is not a 'weird' position. This is the deal. You get money early to finish the product, I get to participate in the process on some level.
Chris was more referring to the people that demand non-stop daily updates. Expecting the game to be finished is absolutely a valid expectation, but there are people that say "dead game" even if the last update was less than a week ago, I know I've received those comments myself despite updating my own Early Access games every 1-2 weeks.
Some great advice here, but the idea of making a game of a certain genre just because it is more popular seems set up to fail. It's so hard to make a game indie you have to really care for it. I know I can't make my dream game yet but I'm trying to make the most simplified version of that style and then gradually work towards making better more advanced versions in the future.
They didn't recommend the good genres because they were popular among developers, but because they were popular among BUYERS. You definitely want your upcoming game to have an audience that will find it and play it right? But yes, indie is kind of hard, don't quit your dayjob etc. Hang in there and try to enjoy the development itself 😊
@@shadowflar3 I totally get that, and I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes I see with Indie devs. They aren’t doing something that taps into a specific interest/community/tribe and then wonder how to market it. My point was more that working on something that you aren’t personally interested in is going to be a real uphill battle and also why there is so much shovelware out there. Like you said, you have to enjoy the development journey!
@@HJJallday Yeah definitely it will be much easier to work on a game idea that you have real passion for. Unless you're stuck with trying to make it too perfect and you never get to release it. But you're absolutely right, unique, personal, original ideas are the true treasure trove of the indie side of the industry. I don't agree with everything said on video either. I think if you have plenty of game dev experience from working in different studios or software houses, you can absolutely make your first game a decent one without it being hopeless or time consuming. They're assuming people start from zero, and I'm not sure if that even applies to the majority of projects that end up on Steam.
some indies care too much about a game, obviously you should care about and want to work on your game but some wont accept criticism about their game or work on it for years until its perfect. you dont just have one game in you. if you start up dark souls you dont skip straight to the final game boss and just fight him for hours and hours and hours until finally you kill him. you beat normal enemies first and then smaller bosses, and then tougher enemies, and then you're ready for the final boss. at then end of the day hes just giving advice you can accept it if you want, if you dont accept it you're just putting yourself more into the hands of luck, you dont play the lottery for an income why is game dev any different
The last Steam Fest was brutally nerfed. It was deeper on the frontpage and was removed from the first page after the first two days of the week of the promo. So this information is kind of already outdated - no matter how new it is. I'm really sad about this change! :(
About puzzles and platformers. Unless you're big into these genres, chances are that you've played only the best of the best they have to offer. We're talking games that took multiple years and multiple people to develop, and even more years the developers had to spend prior studying the genre to avoid pitfalls you'd likely never know about unless you're familiar with that particular iceberg.
All true and good advices from Chris. I am just starting out with 3D in Blender and i want to make some maps for Assetto Corsa game. So the maps are kinda like my first games which will teach me the basics, maybe later i will make my own game, but right now, i'm not ready for that.
Ive been hovering around the game dev community a little bit lately... I'm trying to get ready to make my first game as a hobby project and an academic exercise. That said... my dream project is basically an rpg haha. So... what i take away from this is I might want to tinker in the world of game dev a little before committing to a bigger project like what I have in mind now.
I watched this video on 1.5x by accident and there is so much info in here that I feel like I hooked up a USB cable to Data from ST:TNG. Very awesome vid, lots of good suggestions, some of which I'm going to try right now. Cheers
fan fact most 29:05 most off game's you said is for example for what genre's to make is the game i don't like i don't like auto battle, horro, in most part cliker game i don't know how people enjoyed thos type of game it's some the worse game genre. one othe genre i don't like is visual novel. i prefer to make other types like platformers than make i game like those mention. how the hell horros seling well with the exception off good game like alien isolation and little nightmares and few off great horro game most the horror game are garbage.
The main thing about horror is how they are relatively simple games to make, and the audience likes to play lots of different games instead of just a single one. So you don't need to sell millions of copies to make a profit.
@@CodeMonkeyUnity even if profitable I rether make game that enjoy to play from my self. Form make i game that is profitable and easy to make i don't like the game I have create. I don't know about you but wean I'm making video games I don't focus on the profit, Instead I just focus to make enjoyable game's and if they ended up to be successful that is great. If end up to not be successful at least I have made game that I enjoy to play.
I was confused about what he said about early access. my understanding is that an early access release is not like your actual launch. when a game exits early access, then it is as if it just released, e.g. it does show up on "Popular Upcoming", “New & Trending”, etc. a game in early access cannot show up under "Popular Upcoming" until 1.0 is about to release. and the wishlist emails should still go out when 1.0 releases. so wishlists shouldn't really matter going into early access. am I missing something?
No, your Early Access launch is your launch. You only get a second launch on 1.0 if you are very successful in Early Access. If your EA release is not successful then you won't get a boost at all at 1.0 If you don't gather wishlists before EA then EA launch won't be successful and likely nothing will happen on 1.0; unless you somehow find massive success during EA but it's really hard to come back from a bad launch
@@CodeMonkeyUnity hey thanks, but that's essentially just a repetition of what's been said in the video. the thing is I'd like to understand the logic behind this. the official documentation state that a game transitioning out of EA is being treated the same as a title releasing fully for the first time. provided that they are not lying to us, how is gathering wishlists before EA really required? can you not also gather wishlists during EA? also, I have read Chris' blog post "ESTIMATING EARLY ACCESS SUCCESS" and am rather skeptical of the methodology. he filtered for games that performed extremely poorly during EA and then confirmed that they also did poorly when having their full release. I mean... yes, of course they would, right? but does that really have anything to do with EA? I reckon games that receive less than 10 reviews during their entire EA period are likely games of inexperienced indies that either a) hardly do any marketing or b) are perhaps not interesting / poorly made. so weren't those games destined to not gain much traction with their 1.0 releases, entirely unrelated of having gone through EA or not? isn't it quite possible that the issue here is not that it's "really hard to come back from a bad EA launch", but that those people just didn't really do marketing during EA?
I think it just harder to do marketing during EA. When the game is unreleased, you can build excitement, but when you ask to add to wishlist a game that was in EA for some time, but hasn't got much of reviews/hype, people are going to think that it is just not interesting and worth adding to wishlist. Because again, people treat Early Access as an actual release. If a person opens a Steam page and see very unfinished game with low review count or high negative count, they are going to assume that it's a bad game and they won't care about EA part
It was boring at first, when you discussed wish lists and criteria for marketing. Because the majority of beginners is the way too far from it. But then it became more and more exciting till the end. Thank you!
I always learn a lot from listening to Chris' talks. He is one of the few people teaching game marketing that is not constantly shilling his course but actually teaches valuable info without a paywall.
I think Chris has some good insights into marketing your game on Steam. Although, the part about it being impossible to be successful with your first game isn’t true. I think you should make the game you’re most passionate about but make sure your scope is within your timeline. Passion is key to finishing a project, no matter the size. My first game took 5 years to make and it was very successful.
It's not strictly impossible, it's just extremely difficult. You need to be either extremely talented or lucky or both. I made 40 games before I managed to make minimum wage. Congrats on your success!
@@CodeMonkeyUnityWere those commercially quality games or just prototype demos? From my observation, most games that don’t make it were never polished enough and fully completed, but I know it’s hard to make money from games. It’s a crystal ball, but I think the more stuff you can do to increase your chances, obviously the better. It’s a tough business that’s for sure. 😅
This is a great video! Thank you for putting it together🔥 I love Splattercat's channel! Most of the indie games I buy come from watching him. He's been doing this for a long while.
I've always had good experiences with Early Access so far with on eexception. Maybe because I develop RPGs but the feedback from players has so often been helpful for fine-tuning. It also had a big advantage for the release. But nowadays people are so critical on steam that you really need an Early Access with a lot of polish. With our last title, Dead Age 2, we were initially on Mixed (45%) and had to work our way up to 76% with lots of updates. Coder got a burnout because of this hard time and I had gotten sick because of the pressure situation. (better now ;-)) Just one example of what negative things can happen. But now that you've experienced it, you know what souls like horror awaits you, so EA is fitting if you make it through. ;-)
Thanks for this collab. I actually followed your tutorial for the Steam Page. I have a question : I've been working about 1 year and a half on a city builder type of game (1st game). It's not my dream game. I'll probably need another 6 to 12 months to finish it. Would you recommend I pause it to build a couple faster games, or finish that one first ?
I would question if you really truly need 6-12 months more. If you're building it for 1 year I'm guessing you already have quite a lot working. If you're getting lots of traction and lots of positive feedback, then perhaps sure keep working on it for 6-12 months more. But if not, if no one seems to be engaging with the game then I would analyze the game and cut it down to the absolute essentials and get a finished game done in 1 month. Just take what you have, add a Main Menu, End Screen, some progression, and you have a completed game.
Chris is great but during an AMA I asked him about how to juggle exposure with keeping original content close to your chest early on since I was making a dream passion project (fourth studio game released), he kind of gave a condescending answer how everyone was making their passion project and no one wants to steal ideas. In this video he again repeats his advice to keep your passion project dream game until your fourth or fifth project meaning not everyone is making their passion project so it kind of irritated me to be spoken down to that way. Anyway apart from that he is great
I quickly looked at your steam page. I would have hiden the name of the troops during the trailer. the big "SOLDIER 1 2 3 4..." just waste to pretty good look of the game.
Is it? Interesting, I never played it myself but I thought it was a 20hr game, maybe some confusion with Hollow Knight. I guess it goes to show how the most important thing is quality, if you have a short game that is really awesome then people will love it.
Thanks, I'm glad you appreciate that! This was a relatively complicated edit because I really wanted to show on screen everything we were talking about
i dont understand why people click on a video for marketing advice and complain when he gives marketing advice. You can do your strategy don't be surprised if it doesn't work out.
being honest here.. I wouldn't bare doing a small or basic game at this point, it's just too much time and energy for something that i wouldn't care about that much, i rather spend that on my main game even if it flops lol
Depending on your skillset, 6 months is more than enough time to make something pretty substantial. So when you hear "small games" don't just think "Flappy Bird", it can be a lot more complex than that. My own last game, Dinky Guardians, was made in about 7 months and it's a Factory automation game with tons of mechanics. It's small in scope but not Flappy Bird. ruclips.net/video/dVbU7jO67A8/видео.html
hmm that's a good question, I wonder if anyone has done that kind of research to see if a sidescroller shooter does tend to perform better. Or maybe it's very hard to tell because there aren't many, whereas on puzzle platformers you can see there are a ton and most don't find success
Marketing is uncreative? How so? Marketing by definition is all about creative, it's all about finding interesting ideas to promote your game. If you make something uncreative and boring it will suck as a piece of marketing.
Marketing is something that takes years to learn so if you're interested in learning I highly recommend you find the time. The TLDR is: Make a game that people want and reach those people
the audience for horror games is not the same audience for Inscryption, Inscryption along with Slay The Spire kicked off the love for card based games, mainly deckbuiliding roguelikes. Inscryption isnt just another horror game, its a genre defining game so you shouldn't just compare to that and say what about this
I don't have a dream game -- my first Steam game was a roguelite FPS. My next game will be an open world first person RPG -- I considered a dollhouse life simulator, but that would have been much, much harder to make really work and be good quality. The RPG I can definitely finish. (Of course, life sims are so few the audience is chomping at the bit to have more than one game available, if you can make a good one.)
I've been taking most advices from Chris except the "hire someone to make the thumbnail" bit... At least for my first game on steam. I just want to walk through the whole process by myself at least once and wouldn't wanna miss out on that. I guess whatever traffic I can get from my self-made store assets is what the game deserves
If you wanna dip into horror without necessarily liking the genre, you could try for something like Plants Vs Zombies or more of a child-like version of horror. So like certain Disney movies can have scary moments (Frollo is pretty scary) but are clearly not on the same level as Saw or Resident Evil. You could argue Zelda games have horror elements with things like ReDeads that are always terrifying even though that's not in the same class as Silent Hill.
Great content! A lot of Early Access games fall into the stigma created by big studios with 'Pre-Orders'. Very tricky step to take and agree that version 1.0 > all. Game development takes time, if you want early support - it gets hard :/
Right, the part which said "people use their game designer brains and there must be this system and that system...just make the horror game! just make it scary!". This is something I wanted to convey to people, but somehow it's super hard to tell them. I kinda understood why people started with platformers. It's because there are abundance of free tutorials on platformers. I don't know real origin, but even me started with 2D platformer for my first game. What I want people to understand is that game development sometimes could be about experimenting which Code Monkey seems to love. Sometimes it's about storytelling, sending messages, or making an artwork. You people should start asking yourselves what do you want to do in game development. For me it's just storytelling because I love working on world building. As for you, well just ask yourselves.
Look at Chilla's Art. Their horror games are not that complicated, but they have some sort of a story. Their graphics style is also very unique. Like PS1 style graphics.
Thank you very much for this valuable insight! I am close to release my game Cursed Dungeon Raider in hard mode on Steam and thanks to you guys, now I know what I have to do to make my marketing, my whole presentation better. Really appreciated!
🎮 Get Chris' Masterclasses! Ending SOON! cmonkey.co/howtomarketagame
This site is blocked due to a possible security threat lol
Imagine a publisher requiring 50k wishlists to sign a deal, surely getting there alone would mean you don't need a publisher anymore
Good publishers can help with a lot more than just wishlists, they can help with Localization, Porting, they have contacts with Press, Streamers, they can get you in contact with Xbox/PS/Switch for events and special deals, etc.
You might be able to get to 50k wishlists by yourself but might not have enough time (or contacts) to make the rest of that happen. Or you might simply need funding to finish your game.
But yes definitely avoid a bad publisher that will just "post about your game" in return for 70%.
The calculus is if you can make more money with the publisher's help at that point vs on your own. Maybe they will cost you $100,000 or more but if they pay for themselves and more then it could be worth it, such as by localizing your game to new markets or porting it to new consoles, they could net you far more than they cost at the end of the day.
@@CodeMonkeyUnity But you can hire people to help you with the launch instead at that point.
Just to clarify. You don't need to get 50K to get a publisher. When you sign with a publisher they often say "Our target is to launch your game when you get 30k-50K wishlists"
@@spiderspyy yeah, and some publishers are essentially just like that, but they also have the power of their own brand to market your game even more
Hi This is Chris, thanks for watching. Let me know if you have any questions. I will answer them here.
Hi Chris, great talk, I learned a lot.
As someone who is making an auto battler, it's great to know the genre isn't saturated yet.
A question on the steam page. When should I set a release date for it?
Do I launch my page with or without a release date?
Should I set a release date once I get the 7000 wishlists?
Can I change my release date and would you advice this if you're short the 7000 wishlist goal?
Thanks for sharing all your knowledge Chris!
Hey Chris, thank for sharing your knowledge together with CodeMonkey!
I found it all very insightful but at the same time I fall in the category of working on a larger project as my first game.
More specifically I'm creating a JRPG called Monster Haven (most of my stuff is on Twitter for now, it's done moderately well there). While I'm happy with how the game is shaping up personally I'm now a little worried that I'm wasting my time as I have zero audience on Steam thus far.
What would you suggest me or other people in a similar situation do? Should I scrap working on the whole JRPG'ish story and focus first on just releasing say an auto battler? So I at least already have a starting audience after which I can continue on the main game?
@@MonsterHavenDev I think you’re falling into the exact trap Chris is talking about.
I found you quite easily on twitter, but I don’t see your steampage?
I found a Reddit post from 3 years ago, so you’ve been working on this for a while, but you don’t have a steam page?
How are you going to get a following on Steam without a steampage?
As Chris said, you aren’t going to get much following on twitter.
If you want to make money off the game, your next Steam should be building a Steam page and linking to it from twitter and everywhere else you have.
You spent quite a lot of time and I can tel you already have some screenshots for the game, so making it shouldn’t be that difficult.
Hope it makes sense?
PS: If you don’t plan to make it a commercial project, then just keep working on it as is and enjoy the process.
Very informative - thanks buddy.
Listen guys. PLEASE, DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS ADVICE...if you also make strategy and Tycoon games and have a release date close to one of mine😅
heh best of luck with the release!
no no no, wrong mindset. Don't see similar games as competition. Contact them, befriend them, cross-promote and make a steam bundle together. Big opportunity.
Chris is awesome, he's one of those rare people who actually know what they are talking about and are not just trying to sell you some scam course
@@edupe6185 you just steal my words :)
@@edupe6185 lmfao, do you think thomas brush is selling a scam course?
@edupe6185 Lol oh god not him. Doesn't he charge over $500 for a game dev course 😂
Chris is also selling a 500$ course here.
@@testitestmann8819 Yes, but it's content that doesn't exist anywhere else on the internet (unlike game development, which has millions of tutorials and videos). Additionally, it includes a lot of great data analysis work accumulated over the years, making it totally worth it.
Chris setup lights in that way, so i thought he was made in UE5
Lol 😂
He looks like Gman from Alyx
This is probably the most helpful video on this topic on this site.
Chris's earnest and authoritative tone definitely helped me temper my expectations as an indie dev working on my first game. I'm gonna keep working on my 3D platformer but I'm definitely gonna scale it down and follow his marketing advice!
Chris! What a fantastic pairing of two of my favorite game dev informers. Thanks for the great video, actual useable and applicable knowledge is so helpful.
Hugo, thank you so much for making this video. I learned so much from Chris right here, and the things he said make a lot of sense. This video is a goldmine.
recently bought his course! he's amazing thanks for this video!
Nice! I hope it helps you find success with BUMBI!
It's such a good course.. I'm going through it now.
@@CodeMonkeyUnity Thank you :)!
@@samyam haha he said don't make platformers khhhh
Chris is amazing. But I also want to say that Hugo is the best. I mean the questions that he asked, it was almost like I was lucky enough to have a direct conversation with Chris. This entire video is so genuinely informative that it would take someone months to gather this knowledge by themselves. Thank you so much Hugo and Chris.
Thanks! Yeah I tried my best to come up with questions that I thought people would want to know
Can anyone send me hugo links
This video is almost like a treasure given by those gentlemen, thanks a lot
Chris got some good camera lighting right there, very sweet.
One of the best videos i saw on game marketing
I don't know how did 52 minutes finished so quickly , it was like a fun smooth movie. Really great and informative video , thanks Code Monkey for this collab 💝. I am looking forward to these Collab videos , as courses are just too expensive for me to buy even after discounts.
You are putting out really valuable stuff on the internet. Thanks for all the work you do monkey :)
love the interview, good knowledge..
but this is basiically the meme of devs being introvert and marketing being extroverts :D
Following Chris techniques has led my game Sky Harvest to bag front page of steam for a whole week which led to an exclusive IGN Interview. This guy realllly knows what he is doing and he is soo good at it. 🙏
That's awesome!!
That's awesome! Congrats!
thankyou so much to you both for this video
If you realease an early access game I 100% expect regular updates. Not necesarily code, but some sort of activity on the steam page. This is not a 'weird' position. This is the deal. You get money early to finish the product, I get to participate in the process on some level.
Chris was more referring to the people that demand non-stop daily updates. Expecting the game to be finished is absolutely a valid expectation, but there are people that say "dead game" even if the last update was less than a week ago, I know I've received those comments myself despite updating my own Early Access games every 1-2 weeks.
Dude’s intimately positioned to his camera
Great interview, thank you very much
This guy is a treasure. Great knowledge, great personality.
Thanks for sharing! I am a little overwhelmed in where to start.
I always wondered what the G-Man does for a living... xD
Some great advice here, but the idea of making a game of a certain genre just because it is more popular seems set up to fail. It's so hard to make a game indie you have to really care for it. I know I can't make my dream game yet but I'm trying to make the most simplified version of that style and then gradually work towards making better more advanced versions in the future.
They didn't recommend the good genres because they were popular among developers, but because they were popular among BUYERS. You definitely want your upcoming game to have an audience that will find it and play it right? But yes, indie is kind of hard, don't quit your dayjob etc. Hang in there and try to enjoy the development itself 😊
@@shadowflar3 I totally get that, and I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes I see with Indie devs. They aren’t doing something that taps into a specific interest/community/tribe and then wonder how to market it.
My point was more that working on something that you aren’t personally interested in is going to be a real uphill battle and also why there is so much shovelware out there. Like you said, you have to enjoy the development journey!
@@HJJallday Yeah definitely it will be much easier to work on a game idea that you have real passion for. Unless you're stuck with trying to make it too perfect and you never get to release it. But you're absolutely right, unique, personal, original ideas are the true treasure trove of the indie side of the industry.
I don't agree with everything said on video either. I think if you have plenty of game dev experience from working in different studios or software houses, you can absolutely make your first game a decent one without it being hopeless or time consuming. They're assuming people start from zero, and I'm not sure if that even applies to the majority of projects that end up on Steam.
some indies care too much about a game, obviously you should care about and want to work on your game but some wont accept criticism about their game or work on it for years until its perfect. you dont just have one game in you. if you start up dark souls you dont skip straight to the final game boss and just fight him for hours and hours and hours until finally you kill him. you beat normal enemies first and then smaller bosses, and then tougher enemies, and then you're ready for the final boss. at then end of the day hes just giving advice you can accept it if you want, if you dont accept it you're just putting yourself more into the hands of luck, you dont play the lottery for an income why is game dev any different
Great having his teaching updated since most of his video was a bit old. I like his teaching because he always very positive, so I like positiviness.
The last Steam Fest was brutally nerfed. It was deeper on the frontpage and was removed from the first page after the first two days of the week of the promo. So this information is kind of already outdated - no matter how new it is. I'm really sad about this change! :(
About puzzles and platformers. Unless you're big into these genres, chances are that you've played only the best of the best they have to offer. We're talking games that took multiple years and multiple people to develop, and even more years the developers had to spend prior studying the genre to avoid pitfalls you'd likely never know about unless you're familiar with that particular iceberg.
isn't that basically every genre at this point?
All true and good advices from Chris. I am just starting out with 3D in Blender and i want to make some maps for Assetto Corsa game. So the maps are kinda like my first games which will teach me the basics, maybe later i will make my own game, but right now, i'm not ready for that.
Nice! Modding is always a great way to get started in game dev!
Ive been hovering around the game dev community a little bit lately... I'm trying to get ready to make my first game as a hobby project and an academic exercise.
That said... my dream project is basically an rpg haha. So... what i take away from this is I might want to tinker in the world of game dev a little before committing to a bigger project like what I have in mind now.
I watched this video on 1.5x by accident and there is so much info in here that I feel like I hooked up a USB cable to Data from ST:TNG. Very awesome vid, lots of good suggestions, some of which I'm going to try right now. Cheers
fan fact most 29:05 most off game's you said is for example for what genre's to make is the game i don't like
i don't like auto battle, horro, in most part cliker game
i don't know how people enjoyed thos type of game it's some the worse game genre. one othe genre i don't like is visual novel.
i prefer to make other types like platformers than make i game like those mention.
how the hell horros seling well with the exception off good game like alien isolation and little nightmares and few off great horro game most the horror game are garbage.
The main thing about horror is how they are relatively simple games to make, and the audience likes to play lots of different games instead of just a single one. So you don't need to sell millions of copies to make a profit.
@@CodeMonkeyUnity even if profitable I rether make game that enjoy to play from my self.
Form make i game that is profitable and easy to make i don't like the game I have create.
I don't know about you but wean I'm making video games I don't focus on the profit,
Instead I just focus to make enjoyable game's and if they ended up to be successful that is great.
If end up to not be successful at least I have made game that I enjoy to play.
Same. These games are lazy and oversaturated on mobile. No reason to play them on pc, switch, or xbox.
Chris Zukowski has THE BEST GDC talks
Who made him the steam expert?
He has been studying and researching Steam marketing since 2015, you can go read all the blog posts
dude, just cuz of the content and length, here it comes my like!!! tnkssssss dude. u the best!
I was confused about what he said about early access.
my understanding is that an early access release is not like your actual launch.
when a game exits early access, then it is as if it just released, e.g. it does show up on "Popular Upcoming", “New & Trending”, etc.
a game in early access cannot show up under "Popular Upcoming" until 1.0 is about to release.
and the wishlist emails should still go out when 1.0 releases.
so wishlists shouldn't really matter going into early access.
am I missing something?
No, your Early Access launch is your launch. You only get a second launch on 1.0 if you are very successful in Early Access.
If your EA release is not successful then you won't get a boost at all at 1.0
If you don't gather wishlists before EA then EA launch won't be successful and likely nothing will happen on 1.0; unless you somehow find massive success during EA but it's really hard to come back from a bad launch
@@CodeMonkeyUnity hey thanks, but that's essentially just a repetition of what's been said in the video.
the thing is I'd like to understand the logic behind this.
the official documentation state that a game transitioning out of EA is being treated the same as a title releasing fully for the first time.
provided that they are not lying to us, how is gathering wishlists before EA really required?
can you not also gather wishlists during EA?
also, I have read Chris' blog post "ESTIMATING EARLY ACCESS SUCCESS" and am rather skeptical of the methodology.
he filtered for games that performed extremely poorly during EA and then confirmed that they also did poorly when having their full release.
I mean... yes, of course they would, right? but does that really have anything to do with EA?
I reckon games that receive less than 10 reviews during their entire EA period are likely games of inexperienced indies that either
a) hardly do any marketing or
b) are perhaps not interesting / poorly made.
so weren't those games destined to not gain much traction with their 1.0 releases, entirely unrelated of having gone through EA or not?
isn't it quite possible that the issue here is not that it's "really hard to come back from a bad EA launch", but that those people just didn't really do marketing during EA?
I think it just harder to do marketing during EA. When the game is unreleased, you can build excitement, but when you ask to add to wishlist a game that was in EA for some time, but hasn't got much of reviews/hype, people are going to think that it is just not interesting and worth adding to wishlist. Because again, people treat Early Access as an actual release. If a person opens a Steam page and see very unfinished game with low review count or high negative count, they are going to assume that it's a bad game and they won't care about EA part
It was boring at first, when you discussed wish lists and criteria for marketing. Because the majority of beginners is the way too far from it.
But then it became more and more exciting till the end.
Thank you!
It sucks when you are a fan of and like to make Genres that do badly.
heh yeah that sucks, although if game development is not your job feel free to build what you want to build regardless of potential sales number
I always learn a lot from listening to Chris' talks. He is one of the few people teaching game marketing that is not constantly shilling his course but actually teaches valuable info without a paywall.
I think Chris has some good insights into marketing your game on Steam. Although, the part about it being impossible to be successful with your first game isn’t true. I think you should make the game you’re most passionate about but make sure your scope is within your timeline. Passion is key to finishing a project, no matter the size. My first game took 5 years to make and it was very successful.
It's not strictly impossible, it's just extremely difficult. You need to be either extremely talented or lucky or both. I made 40 games before I managed to make minimum wage.
Congrats on your success!
@@CodeMonkeyUnityWere those commercially quality games or just prototype demos? From my observation, most games that don’t make it were never polished enough and fully completed, but I know it’s hard to make money from games. It’s a crystal ball, but I think the more stuff you can do to increase your chances, obviously the better. It’s a tough business that’s for sure. 😅
This is a great video! Thank you for putting it together🔥
I love Splattercat's channel! Most of the indie games I buy come from watching him. He's been doing this for a long while.
Cris is the coolest indie game marketing teacher
A long video, but packed with good stuff!
Early Access is Hard Mode indeed!
Best colab in indie games!
Fun story,I connect those two 🎉
Haha! Nice :)
As someone who has been working on an RPG for ages, yeah, he's right. Do something smaller first.
I've always had good experiences with Early Access so far with on eexception. Maybe because I develop RPGs but the feedback from players has so often been helpful for fine-tuning. It also had a big advantage for the release. But nowadays people are so critical on steam that you really need an Early Access with a lot of polish. With our last title, Dead Age 2, we were initially on Mixed (45%) and had to work our way up to 76% with lots of updates. Coder got a burnout because of this hard time and I had gotten sick because of the pressure situation. (better now ;-)) Just one example of what negative things can happen. But now that you've experienced it, you know what souls like horror awaits you, so EA is fitting if you make it through. ;-)
Thanks for this collab. I actually followed your tutorial for the Steam Page.
I have a question : I've been working about 1 year and a half on a city builder type of game (1st game). It's not my dream game. I'll probably need another 6 to 12 months to finish it. Would you recommend I pause it to build a couple faster games, or finish that one first ?
I would question if you really truly need 6-12 months more. If you're building it for 1 year I'm guessing you already have quite a lot working.
If you're getting lots of traction and lots of positive feedback, then perhaps sure keep working on it for 6-12 months more.
But if not, if no one seems to be engaging with the game then I would analyze the game and cut it down to the absolute essentials and get a finished game done in 1 month. Just take what you have, add a Main Menu, End Screen, some progression, and you have a completed game.
29:20
Chris: Make small games
Dev: What you want me to crunch?
Chris: NOOOO!
Haha amazing xDD
42:19 I hope this happens to me 😂
Thank you guys so much for this helpful video! I‘ve learned a lot! Chris is a master! 🙌🏻👏🏼
Chris is great but during an AMA I asked him about how to juggle exposure with keeping original content close to your chest early on since I was making a dream passion project (fourth studio game released), he kind of gave a condescending answer how everyone was making their passion project and no one wants to steal ideas. In this video he again repeats his advice to keep your passion project dream game until your fourth or fifth project meaning not everyone is making their passion project so it kind of irritated me to be spoken down to that way. Anyway apart from that he is great
I made it all WRONG... =( I wish I would see this video soon... my game got 3 downloads... Put it in Early Access... (Toon Troops Strategy)
I quickly looked at your steam page. I would have hiden the name of the troops during the trailer. the big "SOLDIER 1 2 3 4..." just waste to pretty good look of the game.
ChrisZ keeping us Tucson devs on the map!
520 represent!
Thank You for this information 😁💯👍🏻
This is really valuable.
Shovel knight was like non even 10 hrs but I get his point.
Is it? Interesting, I never played it myself but I thought it was a 20hr game, maybe some confusion with Hollow Knight.
I guess it goes to show how the most important thing is quality, if you have a short game that is really awesome then people will love it.
With those questions you asked, it shows you did your homework for this interview ! This was a very informative and knowledgeable interview.
I'd love to see the stats of what genres do best in Early Access. Perhaps some genres, benefit more from Early Access.
So cool to see you both in one video
What about Castlevania didn't hit even when it is just a platformer or it's because it's souls like genre
The tags that sell well, are under-served markets. Like, there are so few Colony Sims out there.
It's great to see a collab like this on the channel. I've been a fan of Chris' talks for a while now, really insightful!
Oh my, what a great interview. Congrats to Hugo and Chris. I learned a ton and will start reading Chris blog
Awesome interview thank you! I've seen a lot of Chris's talks but every time I learn something new or get reminded of something I had forgotten
Surprised by some info he mentions about popular upcoming and new and trending. It's wrong and misleading a bit...
Like what? What did Chris say that was wrong or misleading?
like if you thought the thumb nail was fight club
I stumbled across Chris' videos for the first time yesterday and binged all of them. So it was awesome to see this pop up in my notifications!!!! 🤣🤣🤣
Do i need to have a business? And do I also need a separate Steam account to release vs personal account?
So, horror it is. It seems the previous project will end up in the 'better times' pile😂
What an amazing person Chris is! Thank for this great talk!❤
the problem with making a horror game is id spook myself out on my own play tests
The US in the space race. Dont lie, just stage it 😅
Damn. This was a joy to listen to this guy
Why are there quantum singularities in the bg and he’s got the same eyes of the shady suite guy in mass effect 2?
GOATED! TY man, epic content
Thank you for all the added content like the steam pages of the games being discussed. Very well made video!
Thanks, I'm glad you appreciate that! This was a relatively complicated edit because I really wanted to show on screen everything we were talking about
Tldr. Make a game that you would want to see on the store and you'll be fine. If you aren't getting click you are doing something wrong. Simple.
i dont understand why people click on a video for marketing advice and complain when he gives marketing advice. You can do your strategy don't be surprised if it doesn't work out.
being honest here.. I wouldn't bare doing a small or basic game at this point, it's just too much time and energy for something that i wouldn't care about that much, i rather spend that on my main game even if it flops lol
Depending on your skillset, 6 months is more than enough time to make something pretty substantial. So when you hear "small games" don't just think "Flappy Bird", it can be a lot more complex than that. My own last game, Dinky Guardians, was made in about 7 months and it's a Factory automation game with tons of mechanics. It's small in scope but not Flappy Bird. ruclips.net/video/dVbU7jO67A8/видео.html
See the weird thing is I feel like action platformers have decent potential, but eeeeeeveryone and their dog does a PUZZLE platformer.
hmm that's a good question, I wonder if anyone has done that kind of research to see if a sidescroller shooter does tend to perform better. Or maybe it's very hard to tell because there aren't many, whereas on puzzle platformers you can see there are a ton and most don't find success
I had CaseOh play my game and that single 10 minute bit on his stream was the best marketing that happened to me in 3 years of gamedev
It's not that marketing is difficult. It's that it's uncreative and boring.
Marketing is uncreative? How so? Marketing by definition is all about creative, it's all about finding interesting ideas to promote your game. If you make something uncreative and boring it will suck as a piece of marketing.
Do you HAVE to do click bait thumbs? Am I confusing this channel for another one?
Uh? What's the clickbait? The thumbnail shows Chris who is in the video
Can someone give a TL;DR? 52 minutes is too long.
Marketing is something that takes years to learn so if you're interested in learning I highly recommend you find the time.
The TLDR is: Make a game that people want and reach those people
38:00 What about Inscyrption that’s a horror game with card game and rouge light elements.
the audience for horror games is not the same audience for Inscryption, Inscryption along with Slay The Spire kicked off the love for card based games, mainly deckbuiliding roguelikes. Inscryption isnt just another horror game, its a genre defining game so you shouldn't just compare to that and say what about this
I don't have a dream game -- my first Steam game was a roguelite FPS. My next game will be an open world first person RPG -- I considered a dollhouse life simulator, but that would have been much, much harder to make really work and be good quality. The RPG I can definitely finish.
(Of course, life sims are so few the audience is chomping at the bit to have more than one game available, if you can make a good one.)
lol 7k wishlists!
He’s got a built in smile like a second hand car salesman.
dont sell yourself, on steam
Who knew Code Monkey was GIGACHAD all along.
I've been taking most advices from Chris except the "hire someone to make the thumbnail" bit... At least for my first game on steam. I just want to walk through the whole process by myself at least once and wouldn't wanna miss out on that. I guess whatever traffic I can get from my self-made store assets is what the game deserves
If you wanna dip into horror without necessarily liking the genre, you could try for something like Plants Vs Zombies or more of a child-like version of horror. So like certain Disney movies can have scary moments (Frollo is pretty scary) but are clearly not on the same level as Saw or Resident Evil. You could argue Zelda games have horror elements with things like ReDeads that are always terrifying even though that's not in the same class as Silent Hill.
Great content! A lot of Early Access games fall into the stigma created by big studios with 'Pre-Orders'. Very tricky step to take and agree that version 1.0 > all. Game development takes time, if you want early support - it gets hard :/
Right, the part which said "people use their game designer brains and there must be this system and that system...just make the horror game! just make it scary!". This is something I wanted to convey to people, but somehow it's super hard to tell them.
I kinda understood why people started with platformers. It's because there are abundance of free tutorials on platformers. I don't know real origin, but even me started with 2D platformer for my first game.
What I want people to understand is that game development sometimes could be about experimenting which Code Monkey seems to love. Sometimes it's about storytelling, sending messages, or making an artwork. You people should start asking yourselves what do you want to do in game development. For me it's just storytelling because I love working on world building. As for you, well just ask yourselves.
Chris has really improved his lighting, I call this look "God of Analytics"
Look at Chilla's Art. Their horror games are not that complicated, but they have some sort of a story. Their graphics style is also very unique. Like PS1 style graphics.
This guy seems like he knows his stuff BTW, thank you Code Monkey for having him on!
Great video! I love Chris' insight. He's got such fantastic advice!
Great information, thanks!
Thank you very much for this valuable insight! I am close to release my game Cursed Dungeon Raider in hard mode on Steam and thanks to you guys, now I know what I have to do to make my marketing, my whole presentation better.
Really appreciated!
Well you heard it first!!!!