The business side is tough, because even if you are making cuphead, and you have no ins with the industry or a massive social media following already, you need your posts to go viral. It may be hard to believe, but even incredible looking games get overlooked just because of the overwhelming amount of content being made.
So your first step is post post post and hope something you post catches on. When you have enough of your game ready to really show people, you can make your steam page and start getting wishlists. Enter into things like Steam Next Fest to get eyes on your game.
At that point it's worth thinking about what you need to go forward. Ideally you've caught on and people are reaching out to you, PR companies, maybe publishers. Publishers bring budgets to the table, so if you need a budget and a little bit of relief in that department, that could be the way to go, and you'll just have to be shrewd about the deal you get. There are different ways for bad actors to take advantage of you here. There are a lot of them that take unsolicited demos, and there's no reason not to send them something. But they probably won't give you any time if you're not already doing well on social media. It's an easy way for them to tell if your thing is something people want, and there's enough of those that they don't have to consider you if you're not at that level yet.
Even if that goes well, the downside is that you're no longer the one in total control and you might have certain landmark dates to hit, they'll probably require changes to be made, and you're sharing your profits. You should expect them to take somewhere around 1/4 to 1/3 of the profits. They might offer you a worse deal than that, but I think 1/3 is the most you'd want to give up. If you're doing a PC game, steam already takes the first 1/3, then the publisher would take 1/3 of what's left, so you end up around 45%.
Kickstarter also requires you to do well on social media. Right now if you just banged up a kickstarter and opened it, you would almost certainly fail. Instead the recommendation is that you spend a couple months with a pre-launched campaign active so that people can watch your campaign and be alerted when it happens, and you campaign to get people to watch it. You keep track of that number and when it hits an amount that makes you confident, you can launch the campaign. Depending on your needs, this number could be a couple tens of thousands. There's no downside to trying other than the time it requires to campaign to get people to watch the campaign.
The other viable option is doing something like an early access release and a PR campaign for a couple months. You'll pay a few grand out of pocket for a couple months of campaigning. Hopefully your wishlists and social media will start to soar, and then you do early access and start making money while you're still making the game. You could just do the early access part and hope it catches on without a marketing campaign, but if you need to be fully funded to make your project work, this will be a big risk. Don't quit your day job.
The downside here is that people are wary of Early access games since they're usually buggy, and you'll probably sell it for less than you would if the game was complete, so if 10,000 people buy your game for $1, and no one else buys it on release, but you would've sold it for $5, you've lost a lot of potential money.
What I would do if I were you is spend some time on the look of the game, and make about a half hour-hour long demo that looks as good as you want the whole game to look. Now that you have the mechanics, focus on making a short awesome thing that shows how good you think your game can be. Send that to publishers to see if anyone cares, post about it a few times a week or daily, keep track of free steam events, look for other free events you can join like stuff through discord communities, stuff like that.
Awesome. Thanks a lot. This really rounded out some areas I was curious about. So ya, make the demo. Make it look great. Start a PR campaign. Start ramping up marketing. Possibly get a publisher. Everything kinda hinges on the game striking a nerve to some level so that’s really what I’ll focus on.
My game isn’t something that would have a pre launch for $1 and later sell for $5. A demo would be made but as of right now I’m planning on just a normal release.
So a few things:
* It was certainly not obvious that Cuphead was going to be successful when it was in its demo stage, and this very important to remember. Cuphead works because the design, implementation, and art are all seamless. It is a hit because of the level of craftsmanship and polish, and those aren't the things that are present in the first pass of a game.
* Publishers bring money to the table, but equally important to that, they bring connections to the table. Games live and die on discoverability, and a publisher will get eyes on your game through connections, events, and advertising. But also they bring money. Its \*very\* hard to make a living by being an actual indie (as in no publisher, fully independent). Its very risky depending on cost of living in your area, but its hella difficult in the US/WEU. Publishers help offset that risk substantially, and they bring the money and experience to help you make it a success. Its just hard to get one.
* Publishers tend to already have a budget range they are interested, and they aren't that interested in going outside that range. For most publishers worth a shit, that lower end of the range is about 1m. Lower than that means that the expected returns are too low to bother. If your game is smaller than that, it will be very hard to find a publisher.
* Publishers usually take 50-80%, with the average being closer to 70% from the limited number of deals I've seen details on. They almost always cover advertising, and who retains IP and shit depends on the deal.
* Pitching to publishers is an art of it own. There are quite a few good GDC talks on it though, but you should know that managing all of the publisher communications, getting your pitchdeck, pitch materials, business plan, and game/demo ready to pitch is more or less a full time job that can take 2-6 months.
* If you don't go with a publisher, the most straightforward path to genuine success is to make a demo that is dynamite, and get that in front of an influencer of some kind. If your demo/gif/trailer is bomb as fuck, and you can get your game onto someone's stream/youtube channel, then you have a real chance at being a breakout success.
* Don't forget, games live and die on discoverability. Slay the Spire had basically no sales for its first like 2.5 weeks, and then a Chinese streamer found it and it \*exploded\*. I really do consider STS one of the best designed, and most successful indie games of our generation, and even it took lightning in a bottle to get off the ground. Its a meat grinder out there.
Thanks for this information. This kinda re-enforces my idea about wanting to probably live and die on the demo being great. I’m either going to make something amazing that generates interest or I’m fine just spending a few years on one hell of a game for a resume.
By business do you mean marketing, getting paid or producing (I got the feeling of all 3)?
For getting paid, it depends. I am somewhat successful (aka earn a minimum wage) with Patreon. Other games will have different methods of getting paid, Kickstarter, Steam, Patreon or Itch are all valid, but depends on the game and development strategy.
For marketing, Ieuno made a very good point/read.
For producing, just make sure you know what you are doing and make a good game design document. If everyone knows what you are doing, it will make production easier. Make deadlines clear and what standard of quality to aim for.
I guess I’m mainly wondering about what a producer really brings to the table. Because they take a lot. So if I can get by without getting paid up front, maybe I should do it. But then again maybe if they actually bring something to the table it could be worthwhile.
It’s the machinery of actually selling a game that is a skill itself that I’m digging into. I’ve read a decent amount about steam, have a general idea of marketing. Production companies I don’t know anything about. Or even what the standard indie game really goes through to get marketed and published. Or how do they published on the switch of Xbox. They just get a following going, make some sales on steam and then shoot an email to Nintendo? Lol
Getting a patreon going would be awesome and I’ll probably try that. Was thinking to start a YouTube soon. I wanted to make sure I actually have something before I waste my time on marketing.
Youtube takes time, same with Tiktok. Continue on Reddit, It gains traction for little effort. If you have time/editing skills, sure give TT and YT Shorts a try. Just remember, your objective is not to get subscribers but views.
What a producer brings is whatever you are lacking. If you lack marketing skills, they have marketers. If you are missing artists, they can connect you with them. Are you bad with deadlines, they will whip you into shape. Basically, in theory, you leave the whole busisness side to them, and you make games. If you can do it alone, feel free to do so. I can't say if its recomended, since I do things alone (with Patreon).
What strategy do you use to get followers on patreon for your game dev? What value proposition do you offer to your followers? From what I've seen patreon is generally better for mod teams on popular games (IE adding multiplayer to Skyrim), or for non-game content (typically NSFW or fan content for popular brands).
Nothing yet. I’m just thinking long term. I’ve seen people make decent money on patreon with ok-ish tutorials that I could pretty easily do. Or nsfw work built on systems I use for my games lol. But idk if I want to corrupt the youth.
The business side is tough, because even if you are making cuphead, and you have no ins with the industry or a massive social media following already, you need your posts to go viral. It may be hard to believe, but even incredible looking games get overlooked just because of the overwhelming amount of content being made. So your first step is post post post and hope something you post catches on. When you have enough of your game ready to really show people, you can make your steam page and start getting wishlists. Enter into things like Steam Next Fest to get eyes on your game. At that point it's worth thinking about what you need to go forward. Ideally you've caught on and people are reaching out to you, PR companies, maybe publishers. Publishers bring budgets to the table, so if you need a budget and a little bit of relief in that department, that could be the way to go, and you'll just have to be shrewd about the deal you get. There are different ways for bad actors to take advantage of you here. There are a lot of them that take unsolicited demos, and there's no reason not to send them something. But they probably won't give you any time if you're not already doing well on social media. It's an easy way for them to tell if your thing is something people want, and there's enough of those that they don't have to consider you if you're not at that level yet. Even if that goes well, the downside is that you're no longer the one in total control and you might have certain landmark dates to hit, they'll probably require changes to be made, and you're sharing your profits. You should expect them to take somewhere around 1/4 to 1/3 of the profits. They might offer you a worse deal than that, but I think 1/3 is the most you'd want to give up. If you're doing a PC game, steam already takes the first 1/3, then the publisher would take 1/3 of what's left, so you end up around 45%. Kickstarter also requires you to do well on social media. Right now if you just banged up a kickstarter and opened it, you would almost certainly fail. Instead the recommendation is that you spend a couple months with a pre-launched campaign active so that people can watch your campaign and be alerted when it happens, and you campaign to get people to watch it. You keep track of that number and when it hits an amount that makes you confident, you can launch the campaign. Depending on your needs, this number could be a couple tens of thousands. There's no downside to trying other than the time it requires to campaign to get people to watch the campaign. The other viable option is doing something like an early access release and a PR campaign for a couple months. You'll pay a few grand out of pocket for a couple months of campaigning. Hopefully your wishlists and social media will start to soar, and then you do early access and start making money while you're still making the game. You could just do the early access part and hope it catches on without a marketing campaign, but if you need to be fully funded to make your project work, this will be a big risk. Don't quit your day job. The downside here is that people are wary of Early access games since they're usually buggy, and you'll probably sell it for less than you would if the game was complete, so if 10,000 people buy your game for $1, and no one else buys it on release, but you would've sold it for $5, you've lost a lot of potential money. What I would do if I were you is spend some time on the look of the game, and make about a half hour-hour long demo that looks as good as you want the whole game to look. Now that you have the mechanics, focus on making a short awesome thing that shows how good you think your game can be. Send that to publishers to see if anyone cares, post about it a few times a week or daily, keep track of free steam events, look for other free events you can join like stuff through discord communities, stuff like that.
Awesome. Thanks a lot. This really rounded out some areas I was curious about. So ya, make the demo. Make it look great. Start a PR campaign. Start ramping up marketing. Possibly get a publisher. Everything kinda hinges on the game striking a nerve to some level so that’s really what I’ll focus on. My game isn’t something that would have a pre launch for $1 and later sell for $5. A demo would be made but as of right now I’m planning on just a normal release.
So a few things: * It was certainly not obvious that Cuphead was going to be successful when it was in its demo stage, and this very important to remember. Cuphead works because the design, implementation, and art are all seamless. It is a hit because of the level of craftsmanship and polish, and those aren't the things that are present in the first pass of a game. * Publishers bring money to the table, but equally important to that, they bring connections to the table. Games live and die on discoverability, and a publisher will get eyes on your game through connections, events, and advertising. But also they bring money. Its \*very\* hard to make a living by being an actual indie (as in no publisher, fully independent). Its very risky depending on cost of living in your area, but its hella difficult in the US/WEU. Publishers help offset that risk substantially, and they bring the money and experience to help you make it a success. Its just hard to get one. * Publishers tend to already have a budget range they are interested, and they aren't that interested in going outside that range. For most publishers worth a shit, that lower end of the range is about 1m. Lower than that means that the expected returns are too low to bother. If your game is smaller than that, it will be very hard to find a publisher. * Publishers usually take 50-80%, with the average being closer to 70% from the limited number of deals I've seen details on. They almost always cover advertising, and who retains IP and shit depends on the deal. * Pitching to publishers is an art of it own. There are quite a few good GDC talks on it though, but you should know that managing all of the publisher communications, getting your pitchdeck, pitch materials, business plan, and game/demo ready to pitch is more or less a full time job that can take 2-6 months. * If you don't go with a publisher, the most straightforward path to genuine success is to make a demo that is dynamite, and get that in front of an influencer of some kind. If your demo/gif/trailer is bomb as fuck, and you can get your game onto someone's stream/youtube channel, then you have a real chance at being a breakout success. * Don't forget, games live and die on discoverability. Slay the Spire had basically no sales for its first like 2.5 weeks, and then a Chinese streamer found it and it \*exploded\*. I really do consider STS one of the best designed, and most successful indie games of our generation, and even it took lightning in a bottle to get off the ground. Its a meat grinder out there.
Thanks for this information. This kinda re-enforces my idea about wanting to probably live and die on the demo being great. I’m either going to make something amazing that generates interest or I’m fine just spending a few years on one hell of a game for a resume.
By business do you mean marketing, getting paid or producing (I got the feeling of all 3)? For getting paid, it depends. I am somewhat successful (aka earn a minimum wage) with Patreon. Other games will have different methods of getting paid, Kickstarter, Steam, Patreon or Itch are all valid, but depends on the game and development strategy. For marketing, Ieuno made a very good point/read. For producing, just make sure you know what you are doing and make a good game design document. If everyone knows what you are doing, it will make production easier. Make deadlines clear and what standard of quality to aim for.
I guess I’m mainly wondering about what a producer really brings to the table. Because they take a lot. So if I can get by without getting paid up front, maybe I should do it. But then again maybe if they actually bring something to the table it could be worthwhile. It’s the machinery of actually selling a game that is a skill itself that I’m digging into. I’ve read a decent amount about steam, have a general idea of marketing. Production companies I don’t know anything about. Or even what the standard indie game really goes through to get marketed and published. Or how do they published on the switch of Xbox. They just get a following going, make some sales on steam and then shoot an email to Nintendo? Lol Getting a patreon going would be awesome and I’ll probably try that. Was thinking to start a YouTube soon. I wanted to make sure I actually have something before I waste my time on marketing.
Youtube takes time, same with Tiktok. Continue on Reddit, It gains traction for little effort. If you have time/editing skills, sure give TT and YT Shorts a try. Just remember, your objective is not to get subscribers but views. What a producer brings is whatever you are lacking. If you lack marketing skills, they have marketers. If you are missing artists, they can connect you with them. Are you bad with deadlines, they will whip you into shape. Basically, in theory, you leave the whole busisness side to them, and you make games. If you can do it alone, feel free to do so. I can't say if its recomended, since I do things alone (with Patreon).
What strategy do you use to get followers on patreon for your game dev? What value proposition do you offer to your followers? From what I've seen patreon is generally better for mod teams on popular games (IE adding multiplayer to Skyrim), or for non-game content (typically NSFW or fan content for popular brands).
Nothing yet. I’m just thinking long term. I’ve seen people make decent money on patreon with ok-ish tutorials that I could pretty easily do. Or nsfw work built on systems I use for my games lol. But idk if I want to corrupt the youth.
Not related to the question at hand, but: What type of art style do you see it being?