Hi all! I'm real new to the community, and I wanted to share a first post to meet some new faces. I've made multiple undergrad projects, each new project refining into a better, more viable product. Although my teammates and I can polish our skills and make a really jaw-dropping game, it can still flop if the marketing for it isn't planned out.

So one of my biggest questions for those devs who can share of advice or insight:

What's the Best way to Market your Indie Projects?

Perhaps some of these points can help formulate your answers!

• What sites are the best to communicate and gain the most exposure?
• How much time should your team allocate to planning and marketing once the product is ready to ship?
• Where do influencers and content creators fit into this? How to collaborate and not fall for scams?
• How to keep the momentum going after game launch!

I can't wait to hear all your replies! <3

Nezuyaki said:
What's the Best way to Market your Indie Projects?

Better to find the best way to market YOUR project, not others' projects. Unless you are in marketing yourself. Marketing questions have been asked before here - it would be a good starting place for you to do some reading in the Games Business and Law forum. Your question has been moved there. Then, why not come back and tell us what you think might be the answers to your own questions. Now go read. And good luck with your project.

Nezuyaki said:
What's the Best way to Market your Indie Projects?

Tell people who know lots of people or who can influence lots of people.

@GeneralJist

Are there any helpful sites or tools that you've used to find influential people?

I'm a content creator myself and have networked with others in the past for some events and projects and was wondering if there were some popular sites many indie creators utilize for making connections, like how itch.io is one of the larger platforms for showcasing small-scale projects.

@Tom Sloper

Hi, thanks for replying!

I'm not quite sure if perhaps I worded my question weirdly, but what I was asking for is advice from devs who have previously launched games themselves and what tools they utilized, as well as their thought process behind tackling their launch, and not how to market other people's games for them. I have found it relatively hard to find sites that help small creators network with influencers or gain exposure and was wondering if perhaps I'm not looking in the right places.

On a side note, thank you for moving my question and directing me to the right forum category! I'll definitely read through other people's posts and responses to see if I can find some helpful answers there.

Nezuyaki said:
I'll definitely read through other people's posts and responses to see if I can find some helpful answers there.

Good. Marketing is a tough nut to crack!

Nezuyaki said:
Are there any helpful sites or tools that you've used to find influential people?

LinkedIn

Finding, connecting, and having relationships with these people is usually a manual task you must do yourself.

Everyone wants these people, and these people want privacy, our goals are diametrically appose.

I'm specifically referring to other CEOs and executives.

As for influencers you also must find them manually.

Big organizations can pay for something called a “press wire”, or something like that, where it notifies all the press orgs.

When your ready, you should put together a “press kit”, so you have a standard document and images you send to the press/ influencers.

No matter what kind of game your going to make, imo, the best market strategy is to make at least a demo web version of it.
A free web game can bring new users in, and can also be easily packaged for android and apple phones.

If you have a web game, marketing becomes straight foward; upload that web game, either a free full version or demo,
to every game portal that lets you; gamedev, itch, newgrounds, indiexpo, gamejolt. And on each of those you would also put a link to your twitter discord youtube and facebook. And if your game is to be sold on steam, you would have the demo or web version out at least 1 month before the steam release, with all places you put it on linking to the steam page, and your tweets building up to the steam release.

Then to get a burst of new visits to each of the portals, you'll want to master a place like reddit or discord.
Follow all the rules carefully, take time to build repuation and they can be a source of instant thousands of views of your games pages.
You'll want to end up having one link to each portal. In that manner you build residual players.

Any 2D or isometric game can be made without webgl to run in every modern web browser and modern phone.
Libraries like Pixi Phaser and Tabageos make it easy.
Tools like Construct and GameMaker make things straightforawd.

Influencers in the gamedev world, are those that make videos of themselves playing games.
A search for “watch me play these indi games” or similar would yeild many of the kind of influencers you would want to contact.
Best thing would be, if you had a web version of the game they could play right away. You would just send them a message on youtube with a link to your game on one of the known portals (itch is most common, as you can also put a download just in case it does not work for them in their browser)

In the past, I've also gotten “early access” steam keys from some indies.

IDK how to do that myself, but would be worth looking into and setting up.

If you want press, it's usually standard practice to send them a key, in return for their feedback and press exposure. So they don't need to “buy” your game to review it.

Tom Sloper said:
ood. Marketing is a tough nut to crack!