Marketing and building community

Hi,

I am struggling with the marketing issue as well. One hint I was given is to use Reddit, but I didn't try it yet. Additionally, you could use imgur, Pinterest, etc to post images of you game and with a little bit of luck, a few people will see them.

Personally, I prefer providing a Dev Blog every week to cover the new features. Additionally, my games are listed on IndieDB and I try to create an article every week that gets to the main page.

I think the key in community building is to include your target group as early as possible into the development. Ask questions, ask for feedback, etc. As they "participate" in the process, they build a personal connection to the game.

There was one article on Gamasutra that mentioned, you could use Discord as a community platform. Here is the link: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/300175/Devs_share_tips_on_using_Discord_to_build_a_prerelease_community.php

Check out the "Indie Marketing For Noobs" articles in the GameDev Unboxed Column, and Pixel Prospector's Marketing Guide for Game Developers.

The truth is, with marketing, you could do everything right and yet fall short of making waves.

On the one hand, there are a lot of best practices (thanks jbadams), but there is also such as thing as creative grassroots marketing and making sure everything you do underlines a specific strategy.

While making a game is about selling a gameplay, marketing is about selling an idea about the game, and not the game itself.

For a while, a lot of developers had success selling the story of the 'indie startup', but that's been overdone, so you need to find something unique about your situation that is noteworthy, and somehow catch the attention of the press.

Once it does, it will funnel traffic to your other marketing tools (website, etc.) and that's when it will start paying off.

As for finding that actual unique angle, I'd say a lot of people do this for a day job, and few actual succeed, so it is a right place right time kind of thing, but not just gambling.

Good luck!

On 2/12/2018 at 10:16 AM, Gezu said:

game project and building it's community.

The building a community part is all about interaction.

A good example is here on gamedev.net. when one of the community members post something people are more willing to take a look if it's someone who gave advice or just commented on one of there topics.

This is a well known human condition. Think of a friend dying vs a stranger dying, we value things relative to our self.