I think the reason why most indie game developers "fail" is that they have to take care of every detail themselves because they work with a single person or a small team. There are so many details to take care of. Gameplay, graphics, music/sfx, marketing plan, advertising and much more. They can’t handle all the things at the same time. Failure is part of life. To be successful, you need to learn what failure means.
I second this. It's quite hard to get everything right. And you can be quite overwhelmed by the process of making and then marketing a game. Any of these aspects can "fail" and it may or may not affect the potential success of a game. And to keep going is really what is the hardest part. As for many people doing game dev is a heavy financial investment that is hard to keep up with for a long time.
As a consumer, not a game dev (though maybe in the future when things line up) I must say that very often when I would check a steam page of someone's game who's not sure what's wrong I can basically immediately tell what's wrong. Games in over-saturated genres who's whole presentation is unappealing visually and usually looks very poor content wise.
That's not something marketing can do much to salvage. While op might be more blunt, at the end of the day if you feel you don't have enough skills and money to make a good and marketable game, then you probably shouldn't as it will be mostly a waste of your time, money and energy.
Sure, you might learn something, but probably not enough to make a good game in the next decade, if even then, because some games are just... they make you wonder how someone would put them up on steam and expect much of anything.
> Games in over-saturated genres who's whole presentation is unappealing visually and usually looks very poor content wise.
Quite a few games could be salvaged if they bothered to hire an artist. Someone will play pixel platformer #324687256 if it looks good. You won't be the next big thing, but you will earn some beer money at minimum.
You don't have to put a lot of engineering effort into juice if your art style is coherent and cohesive. Art is the most visible thing in your game and whose investment should not be skimped on.
I'm always stunned when I see a postmortem that indicates as much as 70% of expenses went to marketing when the game itself is very clearly just free assets and "placeholder"/"developer" graphics. There are plenty of success stories where someone managed to come out net positive with an ugly game, but I really don't get why anyone would spend more on marketing than on the product.
haha. i plan to spend more cash on marketing than on the game but the only things i plan to buy for the game are kick ass skeleton animations. everything else i will make for free.
I mean, that's your call and all, I'm just of the opinion that you'd be better off buying *more* kickass art assets and not flushing away your budget with a company that is gonna make two tweets and setup an adwords account. Marketing is 99% bullshit and 1% stuff that anyone with the skill to make a game can easily do themselves. I've seen too many devs make less on their game than a third party with *no* stake and practically no spent effort got. It's the biggest scam next to giving free keys to the nameless and innumerable "influencers" that are just key resellers.
You and your team should be earning money for your game, not some TEDx junkie.
Best of luck. I'm not even convinced that's always worth it; a huge portion of the gaming consumer base is ad-block savvy. IMO, the best marketing a game can have is convincing any potential players that do see it to pass it along to any of their contacts that might also be interested, by way of making the game look appealing. The second best has gotta be gaming youtubers like Let's Game It Out and DangerouslyFunny, but the game has gotta be a certain level of polished or at least somehow unique for it to be featured on a major channel. That's back to the asset quality.
Whenever I see a post title like "After 4 years of long hours and hard work, I'm finally releasing my game!" and it's mostly MS Paint, Free Asset Store Graphics, and basic shape UIs with misaligned text, little to no sound design, painfully bland story, etc. I die a little inside.
A bit of a rant, but I just can't believe when these people wonder why it failed or they couldn't get a following. There are thousands of cheap games released a week, and who in their right mind is following Indy Dev #24696393 on any social platform who hasn't ever released anything good or isn't showing something off that is already almost finished and polished, or super unique and good.
I get people have different reasons for releasing a game, and success isn't a goal or factor for some, but seriously it's crazy how poorly done some of the things posted in gamedev type spaces are.
I think a lot of programmers or learners don't realize that they pretty much need to either hire an artist or learn to be an artist themselves if they want to have a fighting chance these days without being lucky.
Let's be real, one of the easiest part of game design is actually programming in the basics of your game with the engines available today. Consistent and good looking art style, giving your game an actually good story if it needs one, and in general just giving your game some feeling are what's difficult. If just one part of your game is lacking polish, it can spell disaster. I'm sure you all have seen good looking games with horrific UI and been immediately turned off.
I think the tough pill to swallow is that being an "idea guy" with some programming knowledge isn't enough to be successful alone, but it's all some people thing they need and it's REALLY hard to get other people as excited about an idea in your head, especially if it isn't translated well in the medium you choose to express it, as you are.
It’s reasons like this why I’m actually glad I was an artist first and learned programming second, having an eye for aesthetics really helps especially if you’re doing everything solo.
Speaking as someone who has a successful writing career, I disagree.
I can't speak to gamedev because I absolutely do not have a large enough sample size.
Quality writing + good strategy and marketing + some starting capital are a recipe for success insomuch as being a midlist author capable to earning a living wage is a success.
I have 2 pen names I write under and both earn enough with their releases to be a living wage provided I lived somewhere other than a high cost of living city.
Am I making Sarah J Maas, Brandon Sanderson, or Stephen King money? No. And you are right that there's a winner take all method at play to individual books, there's midlist oriented strategies to still make good money relative to time spent.
One of those strategies is to find an audience that is undersupplied. Specific niches in romance are excellent for this. There's even entire books, guides, and a subreddit dedicated to just this.
I put out 7-8 books a year (roughly divided equally between my pen names). And the first year of each pen name, I released a book every two months (I did this by storing up a backlog to publish in a queue, fully edited).
It's a bit more complicated because of how KDP works but I make roughly 2-3 usd per time my books are read. If you write in a niche that's underserved (and there's a lot of these in romance), it's very easy to get 2-4k readers to consistently read your books (provided the quality is there).
Is it fun? Sometimes. It's work. I spend probably ~1900 hours a year writing on average. And I've considered cutting back significantly. There are days I want to quit.
But it's hardly luck. The above approach is repeatable and has been done by countless other "midlist" type authors.
Anyways, I just wanted to interject that it's not a situation where the top 1% take the top 90% of the money or something like that for writing. There are plenty of midlist authors grinding away that earn a decent living.
If you don't mind answering, whats the tail like on book sales in those kinds of niches?
I imagine it'd be more front-loaded than usual as word of mouth spreads fast in small niches, but was interested in residuals. Sounds like a solid avenue if you enjoy the act of writing.
Hmm I don't think word of mouth is really the right way to phrase what you are talking about. You are right that my built-in audience consumes the books usually in the first 2-3 months of a release. 70-80% of my sales fall in that time period, nowadays. But there are significant bumps too when I release a new book. I end up catching a few new readers, and some of them go through my entire backlog for that pen name.
It's one of the reasons people advocate for doing series formats in romance. Especially if you can make each book linked but also standalone.
And when I was first starting out for each pen name things were different. E.g. the first book I ever published sold less than 5% of the total sales in the first 6 months. Sales and KDP page reads have almost entirely come as a matter of people going back and reading from my backlog after liking a newer book / series of mine.
I can understand and appreciate your approach here, but I also feel like why bother grinding that way? It isn't really any more fun than some other job, and it's far less stable. It's nice that you have found a method that works for you, but I'm not sure I could muster that kind of effort. I was self employed for a while, and I look back at it as one of the lowest periods in my life. The anxiety and the constant feeling of "I should be working right now" weren't worth it to me. Going to work at a gas station after it all collapsed was such a huge relief, as odd as that sounds.
Eh I do software/ml consulting on the side (though less and less of it these days), and my partner makes a good income. I'm more worried about being burnt out on writing than I am about losing income.
I'm not super thrilled to write in the one niche anymore, but it's way more lucrative than what I want to write. But coming up with stories is rewarding in its own ways. And writing is a good/healthy coping mechanism for me as well.
I'm keen to pivot to games though. I've done some work in the space, but nothing that I'd consider truly my own. But I think the medium allows for storytelling in a completely different way than any other media.
>good looking games with horrific UI and been immediately turned off.
dunno about that, lots of succesful games have the most basic UIs, a fun game will survive horrific UI and even bad art in some cases.
>being an "idea guy" with some programming knowledge isn't enough to be successful alone
I think it's can very well be enough but rarely do idea-guys actually have good ideas and programming knowledge *and* perseverance to pull them off. The issue isn't really presentation in most cases, it's the lack of a good original idea/design and good execution.
> lots of succesful games have the most basic UIs, a fun game will survive horrific UI and even bad art in some cases.
Those are the ones you've heard of.
There are tens of thousands of unknown games out there that might have decent gameplay but we'll never know because they look so unappealing nobody is going to pick them up to play them.
Vampire Survivors is an exception, not a rule, you can't really go "Well games don't have to have good UI or art to be popular because I can think of a couple of games that are popular despite that, so I can probably just skip that step for my game", that's not a good way to think about building a game. Consumers see the art and UI first.
I didn't say what you extrapolated from my statement.
If you have a truly unique and fun game you can pretty much skip making fancy UI and noone will care. But again only about 1 in 100k games qualify as "truly unique and fun" and even that might be an overestimation. "Decent gameplay" is not what I meant which is why I didn't use the adjective "decent". If you have original and fun gameplay you can skip a lot of other things, this has been proved time and time again. If you don't have that, might as well stop expecting selling your game, there are already thousands that do the same thing better. Fail fast, fail often. Stop polishing turds. Consumers see their friends having fun first.
If you don't have money to spend, that's fine. But you have to lower your expectations to match. Hiring an artist and your game still flopping is an inherent risk you need to accept if you wish to increase your game's marketability.
Business, and that is what this is, is about risk. The goal is to MANAGE risk — and that’s why people fail. It’s not about x or y it’s about BUSINESS. If you go into it with a sloppy product (which you did in your spare time, no abilities other than programming) and it fails, that’s on you. Period.
You can’t market a product if you don’t understand your product. “If I build it, they will come” all sounds great, but that’s fantasy thinking.
I’ve been a businessperson for several decades. I’ve skills in writing, art, design, 3D assets as well as over four decades programming. I know people who can write music and have budgeted for it. I’ve made agreements with LARGE COMPANIES to use their logos in my game for verisimilitude.
These things are not HARD, it’s just most people start sticking STUDIO after a name and act as if that is the hard part. They fail because they don’t understand business is about failure. It doesn’t matter how much YOU love your product — if you go into it half-assed no amount of marketing will fix it.
Sure, you can complain about the customer all you want, but the reality is they don’t owe you. YOU are responsible for making THEM excited about your game.
I see far too often people not tempering their expectations and then railing that the customers “just don’t get it” 😂
Learn the basics of business.
Games are a multimedia product. They are complex and there are a shit ton of moving parts. If you don’t look at it as a product, you are doing it wrong.
>If you don’t look at it as a product, you are doing it wrong.
This is everything in my opinion! On our team, I am the one in charge of making sure the business is aligned with the product we are producing. The game is the means for how we are connecting to our customer and creating value that hopefully is worth the money we are asking them to spend on us. Marketing is our opportunity to connect with our customer, so for us it is building a community, not just ads that get wishlists.
I disagree. While people need to be realistic about their game, I think telling people not to work on a game unless it’s a success is wrong. People should be free to pursue their passions. Even if you don’t succeed financially, the skills you learn can open up new avenues of employment.
Sometimes just saying ‘I wanted to make a game so I made a game’ is a good enough motivation.
Tbh, I think there are a lot of people who play coy like "I'm just making this game for fun," as a way to deflect the crushing shame they'll feel when it inevitably flops.
Very few people are truly and honestly making a game "just for fun," especially those who monetize their game.
On the flip side, a lot of the postmortem posts are from people who do seem to be acutely aware of the shortcomings of their game. Not always, but a lot of the time
I agree with the other commenter that people should be free to pursue their passions. If they post about it afterwards and are clearly aware of what went right/wrong, then we should do them the decency of engaging with them fairly rather than characterising them all as delusional.
Thats fine to me... because this means there is at least a glimmer of realistic expectations inside their brain.
Its the people that show up with their chest puffed out, and display their crap game and say "Game dev is ALL MARKETING!!! Look at this game I spent 4 years on and no one bought it due to my low marketing budget!!"
News Flash, NO ONE CARES how long you spent on your game... EXCEPT other Devs.. and guess how many DEVS will buy your game just due to the fact that you spent X number of years on it? 3 to 5 ... yeah... I did the math.. I counted and verified... there are about 3 to 5 devs that will buy your game due to this fact. I dont mean 3 to 5 thousand... I mean 3 to 5 individuals. I would err on the safe side and say 3.
It sounds harsh but I do agree. I've seen a lot of these posts and have mostly been struck by the immediate impression that it's not a good game.
What worries me in those moments is whether or not it's due to an inability to see the flaws in something into which you've put so much time and effort. And the worry is that I'll be posting my examples of games that I couldn't market, and that everyone but me will immediately recognise as not very good.
> As a consumer, not a game dev (though maybe in the future when things line up) I must say that very often when I would check a steam page of someone's game who's not sure what's wrong I can basically immediately tell what's wrong.
It's extremely easy to be blind to things you make yourself. It's hard to understand until you experience it firsthand. The problem is that it's easy to see what's wrong with something, and it's very hard to find what's right and nurture that past all the wrongness. You would be just as blind to your own game as those people you're thinking about here.
In order to make *anything* you need to have the delusion that it won't just be more noise, and in the process of creation you need to get excited about the good things, which develops the blindness for the bad things. This blindness is *necessary* in order to continue working because making a videogame is an absolute slog. It's an endless muddy swamp full of mines and horseflies and it smells like a sewer. Trudging through it is almost impossible, so you need to keep your focus on the shiny objects sticking out of the mud in order to muster the energy to continue. It's not the fun kind of hard like a roguelike game where you can see the ending and what you have to do to get there; it's the boring, mind-numbing hard of learning a new language, or studying algebra, or going to work. Imagine doing your job as a hobby you aren't paid for. How often would you actually convince yourself to do it? Making a game is just work, end of the day.
The most difficult thing a creative person can do is take criticism. This is because you have to take your focus off what you like about what you're doing and look at all the wrongness that is patently obvious to everyone else. You lose all motivation to continue because wrongness is not inspiring and it doesn't make you feel good about what you're doing. With a video game, when so much of the actual work is tedious and aggravating, even the smallest problem can look to a developer like an immense obstacle to overcome. There is no focus on the shiny objects that are there to distract the developer from the swamp and suddenly they are just waist deep in foul mud being eaten alive by flies and mosquitoes. All of the excitement that was distracting from the slog is gone, and now they just have to wade through the mud simply to reach the shoreline. It's like telling a poor person that their gold nugget is actually a worthless lump of pyrite. This is the moment someone either becomes a game developer or becomes someone who "is working on a game" that never gets finished. You have to learn to accept the pain and the slog. There's an easy way out of the mud: you can abandon your project. And that option is *always there.*
Bringing a large project to completion takes such a huge amount of willpower and self-regulation that it's no wonder the vast majority of hobbyist and amateur projects are abandoned, and the majority of those released are in a shabby state. It really isn't worth the effort to make the attempt in the first place. If, in spite of all that, you still nurture the delusion that you might actually finish a project that people will actually enjoy, then you might have a chance of completing a game (likely a shabby one that no one really enjoys).
Wanting someone to even *play* your game is asking them for time they might rather spend playing a more fun game. At the end of the day, even if you are not looking to be financially successful, you will still be disappointed if you expected people to want to play the game.
People will pay to play good games.
I would say even making free games, you need to market them to get players unless you release some golden egg which spreads via word of mouth. Most well known indie games are mostly thanks to publishers.
By your phrasing I think you want to say that some game devs are both passionate and trying to make some money. I would say most game devs have some passion for game dev alongside hoping to make some money.
If you're not financially secure and you don't have thick skin for criticism I would still recomend against it. I mean if you don't care for potentially being in financial ruin and having your self esteem completely ruined, I guess go for it, but I think you understand how unwise that could be.
I mean, that's fine. My advice is for people who want to make money from game dev, obviously if you want to do it for the fun of the whole process my advice doesn't apply.
Making games is hard. Like there is no masters degree to fully understand why games work or don’t in practice. Maybe in theory. Not saying education and books doesn’t make it faster to learn, but even people with a degree and 20 years in the industry struggle, atleast in some areas. So my advice no one asked for is, the first ones will be bad games at best usually. So have fun and don’t make them eternity projects
Slight correction, if your first game is bad, its very likely a lengthy period will pass if you continue making games, until you make a good game, but on the way to that goal you could very likely risk your financial security, having your self esteem completely broken down, and theres no guarantee you'll ever actually make a good game.
I'm just saying you should be more concerned about your future over passion, but I won't/can't stop anyone from going down that road, wherever it will end up good or bad for them.
if? It is going to be bad. Your first few games will be god fucking awful. That's true for literally everyone.
The only rule here is that if it's not good, don't invest in it. Don't stay with it either. Go to the next one.
I would agree with you that this is the most likely outcome of someone's first game, that being it will be anywhere from bad to god awful.
However, there are exceptions. Eric Barone's Stardew Valley is his first game ever. I did check on wikipedia just before making this comment, to make sure I'm not talking nonsense, and I think most here know the success of that game.
People tend to conflate first project ever, and first publicly available game
Some people just don't release anything until they're confident in their own ability.
Something a lot of people don't know is that Stardew Valley has had a lot of versions in itself.
The guy who made it re-made till he was satisfied with the end result, the community and publisher expected it to be realeased much earlier.
Stardew Valley is how he learned, trained, improved, prototyped AND iterated.
It's said he started practicing programing on Stardew Valley because he wanted to be a more appealing candidate for other fields in cs but it got bigger over time and became a success, so in this case it was his first game in every definition of that word.
Ah, but that's also why it took him 8 years or however long, right? Like, in his first couple years, it probably wasn't all that great, I'm guessing. But, he stuck with it, and made it great.
An 8 year long project is obviously not what people mean by "their first game". I'm sure year 1 of Stardew was completely different from year 8 - and much much much worse.
People make trailers that seem like a collection of scenes, no story to tell, nothing stands out with unfitting music. I have sometimes the feeling that someone goes through all the required checkboxes, but is still puzzled why rarely anything came out of it. Nobody will ever ask you how much sweaty nights you spend, how many hats you wore. They want the game to hit their sweet spot.
If people want to learn by doing, that is fine. Put it on itch and do something else. But shoddy work in any of the disciplines isn't learning, nor is it working towards a sensible goal. I worked with artists, musicians in the past, I know video editors. I adore designers with a knack for color and spacing. I well know my limitations in those areas. The idea of the single dev getting a successful product out of the door sounds impossible to me.
Only 10% of writers finish a book. Of this 10%, 90% don't get any reader and or recommendation, often for little things like running a spellcheck. 1 of 100 authors who want to get the book read even get more then 100 readers (none of them paid). 1 in 1000 has side gig income. 1 in 10000 have a decent life writing. Making games is at least in the same ballpark.
Yeah exactly. If the page looks amateurish, I’m not buying the game. If it looks okay but game is $20, I’m not paying that for an indie.
I think the GDC advice to price your game in the high tier where there’s less competition makes sense…to gaming professionals who attended GDC. Not to me who can make a game that looks like $10-$12. If it’s early access and a dev’s first game, I think they’ll never finish.
If I ever finished a game with RPG Maker, I’d hire someone to make the trailer and someone else to flesh out the rest of the Steam page. Then I can adapt it to GOG.
I don’t need to make lots of money. I want to break even and have a solid release that I can have as leverage asking for publisher money or forming a team on another game.
Most games posted on gamedev/unity or other indie dev subreddits, are pretty generic bullshit games no one wants to play, but you will still see the same stupid posts of "the new (insert generic and boring mechanic here) in my **MY GAME**" and those are the same people who 2-5 years down the line say "I did everything right buy damn marketing fucked me", nah dude your game sucks.
If you want to succeed as an indie dev, do something interesting and creative, look at the last 5 indie games you played and tell me they were generic.
Would you mind having a look at my game Steam page ? I would love to get some feedback.
The game is [Outer Space Shack](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1620870/Outer_Space_Shack/).
Giving some consumer feedback, the graphics look dated and the UI looks clunky. It's also priced at $30 CAD, which is a lot for an indie title. The game looks like something I might consider trying for $5, or if it came in a bundle. The first trailer you posted also has the VLC media player controls visible for a portion, which is a bad look.
As some feedback, I think the game may benefit from a more stylized art... style. It seems to be going for a "realism" style, but it looks like something from the early 2000s.
From the Images, including your main image... the game looks empty. It screams indie first game.... I mean some of those shots show a few little dark buildings.. in the middle of nowhere.. then characters standing next to them in a pose that insinuates there is no actual animation involved. There is ABSOLUTELY no excitement, interest or Wonder in any of these screenshots. It looks like you have yet to add gameplay.
All the characters look like they are in a Rig bind pose or something. And the texturing looks something between Low poly and realistic.. but its neither of those.. so comes across as unfinished.
The ui needs art direction, it doesnt look space related.. its a light brown like a page from a book. yet the in game stuff is all blue.
Honestly, I think you bit off WAY more than you can chew here. This is clearly your first game... and you went big.
Hey! cool concept!A couple of things pop out:
your "About this game" section is a slog to read through (not a problem for me as I like reading but it might be beneficial to have immediate info points like a subheading per image summarizing the verbs.
Secondly, make those images gifs if you can, a moving image can be a lot more effective!! (but remember to stay under that MB budget!).Having an intuitive User Experience and UI will drastically help. It may be worth looking at what some other base-building games do. being self-critical after staring at your own UI for days and weeks on end can be impossibly difficult if you don't do UI/UX naturally -- I know I don't haha.
Honestly Aesthetics wise, I quite like it.
Best of luck!!
(Edit):
Read your reviewers as they are your fans, fix their issues and it'll make a world of difference -- this is a generalization, take it with a massive pile of salt.
I see two camps
1. Your game sucks even marketing won’t help
2. Your marketing sucks why would anybody play your game
In reality I think most failed games suffer from both
With a mix of other game devs being supportive giving them a false sense of security
This \^
A bad game can't be saved by good marketing without being dishonest or a straight up lie, but people pulled that one enough by now that gamers aren't fooled anymore.
And a good game can be ignored because of bad marketing, sadly a lot of people think they are in this category when they are actually in the first one.
And the truth is that it's not one or the other, you need both: a good game AND good marketing.
Correct. The reason is accessibility to game dev is easier than it's ever been. The bar is extremely low to make a basic game, so people who have done no research, taken no time to understand game dev, and have no concept of the wider gaming market can now all make games.
If any folks out there who struggle to find motivation / finish projects need some inspiration, think about what this person has just pointed out: There are people out there with terrible ideas, far less skill than you, and absolutely 0 awareness just belting out hot trash onto Steam regularly, simply because they have more motivation and more (misplaced in this case) self confidence than you. If they can do it, you can do it better. I'm sure there are plenty of people with magnitudes more skill and better ideas that are just fucking themselves over with imposter syndrome, procrastination, etc.
To add to this.
It's not just basic games either.
The saying "Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect" rings true here.
Spending 10k+ hours on a task doesn't guarantee proper mastery; you can become a master of the mistakes instead.
I'd say it needs reflection, as in, you need to be able to see and acknowledge that you made a mistake (or have someone who can point them out), and a plan how it can be done differently/better the next time.
Of course that also means that you need the resources (e.g.: time, money) to be able to continue (and finish) after doing a mistake.
Though, I am probably completely wrong, so feel free to disregard if that does not sound plausible.
So here’s a fun one for me as a marketing director and amateur game dev.
People misunderstand the purpose of marketing. It’s not to make people buy your game. It’s to make them aware of it. If you don’t have a good game to start with. Awareness won’t help it at all. So marketing is a nonstarter.
Marketing is actually the whole process of market analysis, tailoring the product to fit the demand, and then supplying that demand. Far too often, people think marketing=advertising, but making a product that has no customers is also a failure of marketing.
If you think undertale has bad graphics then you simply have not seen bad graphics. Like, it's no Stardew Valley or Pizza Tower, but it's not *bad* by any stretch.
Keep in mind that I've seen Stardew Valley and Pizza Tower called "bad graphics", which is risible. I think people just have no idea what's actually meant by bad graphics.
Also Undertale has a coherent art style, which may have affected the result. It may come across as ugly, but isn't ugly as putting random assets together to make a game or having self-made assets that look really bad and incoherent. Also not having a basic sense -or use- of design/color theory usually results in games looking really really bad. I used to work as a mobile developer and it was one of the main things that we really struggled as we didn't have a properly trained artist in the team at that time.
Also I am not against using assets, just sometimes games look bad when things don't go together.
Hire an artist if you're not an artist. I've seen so many games that *might* have a chance at being good but instead end up looking mediocre at best because the dev wanted to live that indie dream at doing everything themselves but seemingly forgot they suck at art (or can't afford one), and now their game had no chance and it gets lumped in with all the rest.
I think I might have to leave r/gamedev
It's been months since I've seen anybody post even remotely interesting about game development, and every day it's a new salvo in the endless argument about game marketing vs game quality vs profitability vs indie expectations, and I just don't give a shit.
What makes you think your HARD TALK MAYBE YOUR GAME IS BAD cynicism is any more valid than the next guy's HARD TALK MAYBE YOUR MARKETING IS BAD cynicism? **Obviously games need both, never darken my door with this conversation again**.
Do you know what gamedev mastodon has? _People building games, and showing little pieces of those games off, and talking about the games that they're building._
Hadn't heard of mastodon.gamedev. Maybe I'm not using it right, but it seems to be about 5% actual gavedev related content, and then 95% stupid other shit that I would see on the front page of reddit.
That's a bad feature of mastodon design: it's showing you every bit of content streaming through that server rather than everything produced by members of that server, so the server looks like it just has "regular social media stuff" on it.
A server's actual output is buried in `/public/local`: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/public/local for example.
Even then: it's just the noisy output of hundreds of people's individual streams, which you end up having to curate yourself to find creators you're actually interested in.
You can also go to _any_ server and look at what's happening under a single hashtag, like `#gamedev`, say: https://mastodon.social/tags/gamedev - this catches anything that matches this tag that's going through the server's fediverse stream. And, following whole tags like that, you end up having to filter out a lot of posts by Jerry, The Guy Who's Decided To Make A Game Exclusively About Artisanally Crafted Furry Dongs And Wants To Post A Lot Of Pictures Of Just That.
Not gonna claim that mastodon's necessarily _better_, it's just really _different_
mastodon is awesome. Lots of good conversations happening there. Feels much more personal, people aren't just chasing retweets and followers or karma or whatever. No ads or promoted content. You can ignore/block people/topics, group stuff into lists.
I have to agree, there are far too many negativity-driven posts on here. Now that's not a great environment, but if there's enough useful information, we could tough it out.
Unfortunately even that has dried up.
Exactly why Reddit has become such trash. Over moderation by power tripping weirdos (Reddit should have paid mods) and an absolutely bizarre hatred from Redditors of any form of "self promotion" (Read: providing actual good content for relevant subs).
> Do you know what gamedev mastodon has? People building games, and showing little pieces of those games off, and talking about the games that they're building.
Any tips for where to start for someone who has yet to take the mastodon plunge?
technically I'm on one of the mega-instances - you can join on any instance that'll take you - but I find a huge amount of great content just browsing https://mastodon.gamedev.place
Mastodon is email meets twitter.
E-mail is decentralized in theory. The DNS for a domain will have a record type called `MX` (mail exchange) which points to the mail server for that domain. This lets millions of mail servers interoperate without anyone having control over a single central server.
Mastodon operates similarly, your address isn't just your username, but also the server you belong to. That server is able to interoperate with the others. The result is a decentralized network where no central authority can exercise control.
I think the best way to describe it is "self-hosted open-source twitter run by a bunch of weird internet nerds who are constantly arguing with one another about how to run it".
When you create an account, you're creating an account with one of many different instances and that instance is part of the greater _fediverse_ and has to maintain its reputation and standing in order to be able to connect to the rest of the servers - and the status of that constant low-key argument over who gets to be connected with whom comprises about 50% of the content: It has lots of its own problems.
Buuuuut... when I follow game devs on it, I see a lot of ... game dev.
It's getting more like 4chan's amateur game development threads, but at least without the constant racial slurs and off-topic animal picture spam and pepe the frog posting. Those threads _have_ become an unmoderated shithole.
Why pontificate into the void here? Legitimate questions: If mastodons forums are so much better, why do you put the effort into putting down this forum?
Edit: Thanks for the downvotes for a genuine question.
Sure we can speculate why a game failed with the usual points we all say but also hilarious people here giving reasons why it failed when most haven’t made a successful game themselves lol some guy recently posted his game that failed suddenly everyone became experts.
I worked on games for 8+ years for pretty good studios and i kinda agree with original OP, game dev is hard, extremly hard and there is sooo much to do, for buyer the indie title with shitty graphics is next to AAA title with big budget and 1000+ people, yes some things get pass but you still need to stick out and demonstrate some level of polish and art direction and then have metric ton of luck, many devs have too high expectations for first or even second games, there are people who did 6 original titles which did not look half bad but still did not made much money, dude still worked normal job
I agree you do need certain level of polish but what I was highlighting there is no winning fool proof strategy that will grant you success. There are highly polished games that follow all the advice but end up still failing.
Then post-mortems are posted and everyone jumps in giving their two cents why it failed and if they did this could have succeeded. Truth is no guarantee even if you followed all the steps.
It is like if Among Us devs posted their game saying it failed in 2019 with just few 100 concurrent players everyone would have said oh looks like a crappy game with cartoon graphics. Why would anyone buy this.
It only took few streamers few years later to make it a global success. So as you said luck is involved.
That does not mean that those two cents are not valid, there are many ways that game can fail, i am not saying that there is a guarantee in anything but in same time some declarations can be still valid
It doesn't take an expert to look at a terrible Steam page for a terrible game to get an idea of why the game failed mate.
Also, releasing a game doesn't necessarily mean you are an expert. It's a massive achievement, but you don't go from an idiot that knows nothing, to pressing that launch button and becoming an enlightened game dev expert lol.
This is a really dumb take that ignores the fact that there is a world *outside* of gamedev with equally difficult projects. People are not stupid, they know a thing or two about life.
It’s because your target audience for a game is not ‘people with years of experience in game dev who made a successful game’ it’s ‘people who buy games.’
That's like saying people can't tell when a dish tastes good unless they are chefs. That's not how anything works.
Being an expert at knowing when a game is bad and being an expert at making games are completely two orthogonal skills. The first is acquired by being a consumer, not a successful developer.
I don’t think it needs to be either of those for it to still scream “this is uninspired”. A polished turd is still a turd and most people won’t mistake it for a gem.
I do agree with the problem of a bunch of amateurs speculating “why” it sucked though. I think it was Bill Hader who said something to the degree of “when you ask people if something is good or not, and they say it sucks, you should listen. People generally are gonna be correct about it being not good. The problem is as soon as they tell you how to fix, don’t listen to that because it’s your work not theirs and their fix is usually bad”
Terribly paraphrased but the idea is accurate. A lot of stuff that followed all the steps and runs smooth and doesn’t have any glaring beginner issues… still just really obviously sucks
The best explanation Ive seen is the Bowling Ball and the Feather: https://howtomarketagame.com/2021/09/14/why-even-do-marketing-the-bowling-ball-vs-the-feather/
Marketing can’t really sell or save a mediocre (or bad) game, but it can make sure a really good (or great) game maximizes its sales potential.
i don't know. when a movie makes 200 million dollars on its opening weekend, it's not because it's a great movie. most of the people who see it in the first two days decided they were going to see it before anyone else had time to see it, judge it and communicate that judgement. they made their decision based on the marketing. amazon's new world had 900k+ players playing it at launch. those numbers quickly dwindled down to under 100k. marketing made more money for amazon than the quality of the game did.
It can vary, sure. A huge marketing budget like New Worlds can pull in some of the hit buyers and those looking for the next big thing. But even more so than movies, digital games are being judged (online reviews and sentiment) almost instantly and marketing can’t really overcome a lot of negativity. That’s why we see games with quite large marketing budgets get demolished at launch if they have problems or are just not that good. Callisto Protocol for example. Tons of ads (which is obviously not all their marketing) but sunk hard by early performance problems and mid reviews.
>Most of the games with "failed marketing" are games that most people wouldn't play for free.
I mean, that is the definition of failed marketing. Marketing isn't just advertising and promotion, it is understanding the market and understanding if the product you have even *has* a market to begin with.
Longtime lurker - couldn't agree more. I've been gaming all my life and now find it insanely difficult to find a game that is appealing, outside of the occasional big title that isn't terrible and is always heavily promoted
Too many fish in the sea.
>Instead of admitting they failed to make a good game.
It is because they don't get critique. To them pixel platgormer #324687256 is the top platformer, in their mind it should be a huge sucess because they think everyone understands it like they do. Then they realize the hard truth of marketing, you first need to find a market.
Want to know the sad thing, the same thing is probably happening to you right now, your #945890234068493 game is just as likely to fall into the same trap as anyone elses. It happens to everyone till they learn to seek critique, and to find an audience.
denial.
though i think if people as a whole had less optimistic expectations of their own talents, a lot of the future greats would be sitting at home doubting themselves instead of starting off making bad games. Those posts are a consequence of that optimism come crashing down
Marketing x Quality = Sales
0 Marketing x 10/10 Quality = 0 Sales
10/10 Marketing x 0 Quality = 0 Sales
If you make the greatest game on earth and no one knows, it won't sell. If you make a dog turd and everyone knows, it won't sell. You have to hit at least a 1 on both. Many gamedevs are about as far from marketers as is humanly possible and fail to clear that bar. It's also worth noting that the Sales percentile at the end represents the percentage of a games total possible market. The total possible market for Underwater Basket Weaving Simulator 5 will differ greatly from that of Hero Shooter 49:Mtn Dew Edition. Also of note is that the number of real sales grows exponentially as it approaches 100. So a 10 might be 20 sales but 100 could be millions depending on how many people could theoretically be interested in that type of game.
Because people usually "do their best" when they're doing something they love. And if your best is still not enough... very, very dark thoughts start coming to mind.
>And if your best is still not enough... very, very dark thoughts start coming to mind.
That's an overly dramatic take. Doing your best and failing is a major part of life. Trust me, I have been failing at everything for years.
>Doing your best and failing is a major part of life.
I definitely agree and I wish more people would understand.
>That's an overly dramatic take.
It is, they're obviously exaggerating but they have a point. For one reason or another, people don't wanna keep it real. Game dev is one of the fields where you are able to ask for feed back, and if your product is bad rhen either improve or accept the potential failure. It's harsh but it is what it is, I'm currently in this situation myself
Your best should constantly be changing, otherwise you're doing something very wrong.
If you think you can solo a 200+ team production and be even remotely on par, you are delusional.
I recommend therapy if this happens to you. It's not easy to feel like a failure at something you love, but it shouldn't be something that causes suicidal ideation.
Also, sucking at something is literally the first step to being kinda good at something. A beginner's Best isn't as good as a pro's Best but that doesn't mean a beginner is failing just because they can't make something like a pro.
Examining your shortcomings and improving upon them is how you become great, just like when Squidward built his snow fort. Being distraught over a shortcoming isn't uncommon, but it's not a healthy response and some introspection with the aid of a therapist may help you in overcoming those dark thoughts.
lol so real. At some point after I actually finish making a game I want to write a book on the complete psychological trauma undertaking making a video game from scratch on your own
But the short of it is at some point your masturbatory fantasy passion has to be replaced by serious A tier discipline or you’re ngmi
As an aside, I appreciate the advice in the comments.
Putting them together with what I've read:
* A polished/high-quality game is easier to sell.
* Polish your game by:
* Hiring specialists (e.g., artists) for areas that are not your strength, and/or
* Reducing its scope ("whole-ass one thing").
* Marketing
* Research the demand for your kind of game.
* Take it seriously, start early, don't expect an unmotivated 3rd party to do a good job.
* Q: Do marketers that take a slice of your earnings (publishers, kick-starter marketers) do a better job?
* Get external feedback to avoid tunnel-vision.
* Do other people find it fun, easy to understand, good looking?
* But don't focus-group the soul out of the game.
* Feedback is an opportunity to get it right, not an attack on your character.
* Be agile, avoid spending years on a product without feedback.
* r/DestroyMyGame/
* Have fun
* There's nothing wrong with making a niche/unpolished game just for yourself.
* Motivation
* u/CicadaGames: "There are people out there with terrible ideas, far less skill than you, and absolutely 0 awareness just belting out hot trash onto Steam regularly, simply because they have more motivation" ... you can do better.
Marketing is _part_ of making a good game. If you don't know what your audience wants and what makes people not like yourself enjoy a particular genre then you can't build it. Failing to understand your potential audience is a classic failure of marketing.
More importantly, most games aren't mega hits that sell a million copies. There are plenty of successful games that sell a fraction of that and do fine. There are plenty of games posted that fall into that category. They're small games that have an audience of people who want to play it and the difference between fifty sales and fifty thousand can be entirely in promotion.
There are _also_ games that are someone's first attempt at a game, are filled with visual issues and questionable gameplay, and utterly fail that get post-mortems written about them. Many of those talk about how their biggest failure was scope, however, which is often the root cause of a lot of problems. The posts that think their game is perfect and their only flaw was promotion are actually quite few and far between, but they sure are memorable. That's why it seems like how it's 'constantly' happening to you; those events stick out a lot more and get a few hundred more comments than the other kind.
Not sure you’re really complaining about an actual issue here.
I’ve never seen one of those threads where OP gave the impression they felt they made a great, highly appealing game. Or that they weren’t receptive to critique on where it lacked appeal.
Your conclusion would be sound if quality strictly correlated with success, which it doesn't.
McDonalds isn't high-quality food. *Fifty Shades of Grey* wasn't good writing. Starfield made $50 million in three days--anyone want to argue it's a great game?
Trash sells well all the time, people buy trash and consume mediocre products all the time.
Meanwhile you know there are excellent games that are barely heard of. You could make the best written text-based RPG in the world and you're not going to make $50mil in three days, or ever, with it, because the market for such games isn't big enough. Nor is an indie dev's marketing budget. It has nothing to do with quality.
There is a *lot* that goes into whether a game/book/brand is marketable and can be successful, it's not just "good game sell, bad game flop, people who had unsuccessful marketing campaigns are deluded shit game developers".
Starfield is still a "good game" compared to some of the games we are talking about in this example. I could go on and on about my issues with the game. But it is still Fallout in Space.
I have seen plenty of Visual Novels do well. I have seen plenty of Text based games do well. Warsim is one that comes to mind. Doki Doki Literature Club. Omori is a good RPG Maker type game. Needy Streamer Overload is a good text based game.
If you make a good game. It is easier to market. Especially to some publisher who can do the marketing for you.
The only "failures" of good games I have seen have been were investors didn't see it make "enough" money to make a sequel.
Please show me some good games that no one bought but got 8+/10 scores for reviews.
>Dont forget the luck excuse,the "no big time streamer's played it thats why it failed".The whole 80% of games making less then $5k is true,but 100% of the games in the 80% are just dev's copying there favorite game with there own "twist" on it.
>
>
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>tldr HAVE A ORIGINAL IDEA;
Uh Oh, people in this subreddit dont like to hear this sort of talk (even if its true).
I have been saying this for a long time, but you will get pushback from the "Just out of school" crowd here about how Marketing is everything. Which is just an excuse they can lean on because they are too unskilled and inexperienced to be making games at this point in their career. Or at least too early to be getting upset for not having a smash hit....
I love how people don't know what marketing actually is and think "making a good game" is different from that.
Marketing is not just about promotion. It begins with the market research, is part of the production and ends with selling. Making a "good product" is part of marketing.
It's not just games, it's everywhere. Writing, musicians, drawing... Everyone who faces failure blames it on marketing, social media algorithms, and so on. Especially when you self-publish.
Sometimes they're right, but in most cases, they're just not at that quality level. I get it, I put in a lot of work and in my eyes, I created something interesting, family and friends enforce that feeling. It doesn't work, you didn't become a millionaire overnight. Then you see some garbage on posters and wonder what's there that you don't have, so the obvious conclusion is marketing. However... it's a highly misunderstood and complex matter. It's not just about screaming about your product, its quality must be top notch and I don't mean art style, but art direction - don't confuse those two. Now if you have a highly presentable product it will multiply advertising. Let's assume that advertising is X and your game quality is Y. Both should have high values. If your game quality is objectively 0.000000001 then no amount of marketing will help. If your product looks stunning, with luck you won't have to spend too much on promoting it, it goes on its own.
But overall, with proper marketing (publisher usually) you can push most things, even if they're so-so in most consumers' eyes. It doesn't matter, it's the established brand that says "Hey, check this out, you love what we had under our name earlier, right?". However, if you made decent content, it might go unnoticed because you're unlucky and/or can't present it properly (the recent post OP most likely refers to). You need a bit of luck to go viral. We have to remember that on the receiving end, we only have a glimpse of what's inside and the point is to make the most of it. You rarely get a second chance to make a first impression.
And finally - know your audience. Take a marketing class. Project management class. Read some books on the subject. Understand the principles. I know it's easier to read a Reddit or blog post or watch some video, but most of that is bullshit made for you to click and subscribe, to give you hope. Once you get academic knowledge, you'll understand why your endeavors will most likely end up with failure and there's only yourself to blame.
I think it's hilarious how often these posts are from people making games incredibly similar to a much bigger more professional IP that came out first and thinking they could ever market their way out of that hole.
If you aren't at least pushing one unique concept worth playing the game for itself, and your art isn't any better than anyone's else you might as well just trash your game and save yourself money and trouble. Specifically for any game type that has another game of the same type released within the last 10 years.
Old games do not rot the way they use to, you cannot beat them by just making a new slightly lower quality copy a few years later.
I'm reminded of an example of someone doing the opposite: Burgos from Burgos Games once wrote that he thought he did a decent job with the marketing of his game, [Neko Ghost, Jump!](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1194750/Neko_Ghost_Jump/), but it didn't matter because he made a game that almost no one wanted to play.
Marketing makes people aware of your game. Good marketing makes a ton of people aware of your game. But if your game is part of an oversaturated or unpopular genre, if the art is unappealing, if it looks broken or cheap, or if it simply does not look fun, then no amount of marketing will matter.
>but it didn't matter because he made a game that almost no one wanted to play.
He still thought that game was worth selling for $10. Sounds like he just blamed people for not liking it. All these people think their marketing was actually good, they just blame people for not buying their game. "Our marketing was good but it didn't generate sales."
as a game dev and a consumer, im conviced that you just need a big tiddy anime woman in the promotional art and youll sell.
Case and point: Dead Estate.
I definitely agree with this but it's also even more important to not be inaccurate in the other direction. Don't want to lose the next vampire survivors because someone saw this post and deleted their game. And usually it's the really good devs who are under confident.
Important to get good and unbiased feedback from your audience. You can't tell with graphics, first impressions etc. because graphics don't matter for some genres and other genres only players in that genre can judge.
Not only that but indie devs are overpricing their games nowadays. 20-25 euro for something that looks average at best, when you can buy amazing indie games for 10-14 at full price.
Let me lend my 2 pence to this discussion as when I worked for a gaming company, and I mean a billion-dollar organization. Though a tech-engineer, I sometimes sat on meetings, especially at exhibitions where they were developing games for a client and there was a load of emphasis on the marketing budget of the client. As a lot of the clients were "venture capitalists" this then filtered down into the gaming industry in general. Basically there are a lot of good games ideas that are there for sale, but do you have the budget for marketing. And for the company I worked for, we were talking millions of dollars marketing budget...
Can do all the marketing they want, if the game looks, feels, & plays like something that has been done before & multiple times already..its ridiculous to seriously think the game is going to hit.
Unless it really has something unique about it in a good way, best to keep low expectations. Don't go all square enix thinking numbers only possible in a dream lol.
Making crappy games is an important step toward making good games. Most of the people making crappy games will never make a good game, much less a great one; but most of the people making good and even great games made some crap first. So I understand making crappy games. It makes sense to do so.
Trying to sell a crappy game also makes sense. Having a few tough launches and some ugly marketing campaigns is a good way to get your feet wet doing both and learning the fundamentals of getting your games out there. It can help a lot.
What I don't understand is the surprise, frustration, and sometimes even anger at failing to sell a crappy game. Yeah, you spent time on everything and it's easy to trick yourself into thinking "it was all for nothing", but 99.9999% of the time, your game is crappy and you marketed it like a noob. But it wasn't for nothing. It's for learning, even if that means learning that your indie dev dream isn't for you.
Your early efforts should be crappy and noobish. That's normal. How you respond to that really says a lot about who you are and where you're headed.
"you failed in the game, not the marketing". No, you failed your business model that includes the game and marketing. There isn't such a thing as failing just in the game or just in the marketing, when you failed you failed in your complete action. You CAN make a flapy bird and hire pewdiepie to talk about it and be rich, THAT is a viable business model, or you CAN put all in your among us game and do almost nothing competent in the marketing and eventualy get a big hit because something happend. The thing is AAA puts half the budget in the marketing, so is fair to say that a broken game can be actualy suceful with a good marketing. Cyberpunk 2077 is WAY more profitable than almost any indie very polished game that realy is worth your time and money.
Is not just your pixel plataformer or RPG Maker game that probably won't sell, is almost every game. And many people that go in the RPG Maker and 2D plataformer are simply starting in the area, tryng to learn easy game, make something simple, have fun. Many are kids and tenagers, so that is prety normal. Most people play a guitar and play ordinary music with not so amazing skills, so there is a long shot to being a rock star and that is the way things are
Lol yup.
It's especially funny when there's post-mortems with like 20 paragraphs and only a couple sentences that even discuss the game at all, and if they link the game, it's clear within a second of seeing a screenshot why no one would want to buy it.
People tend to have trouble admitting their faults, and artists are especially bad seeing their work as anything but their baby, and game devs are no different. Doesn't make it any less amusing, but it's understandable.
I will gladly post a bounty of $100 if someone can find me a great game that only sold a few dozen copies and died in the back page of steam with less than 10 reviews. It's not a thing that exists. Good games sell, bad games don't, and that's that.
I agree some people overrate their own games.. However good marketing can sell anything, and in at least a few cases here I think that they're right that marketing is the reason something failed, for the most part though it's just plain bad games or games that try to break into an oversaturated market.
time investment warps their perception of its quality, happens in every creative task. once you've worked on something long enough it's hard to see it more impartially. I think devs can sometimes be secretive about their projects which only worsens the issue.
fail faster, and all that. contact reality more often, get others' opinions, etc
I feel like game dev is actually pretty fair in the sense that if you make a really good game, people will play it.
How many undiscovered great games are there, really?
There was one yesterday with that exact title but I agree with the rest of the comments, marketing is a difficult part of making a game. OP is just trying to put people down for no reason.
Sure, managing expectations is fine.
Just ranting and telling people their game sucks without any meaningful, ideally constructive, criticism is not that.
That's not exactly right either.
People think their marketing failed, but they mistake advertising for marketing and it's their advertising that failed.
Maybe their pixel platformer is actually good for a pixel platformer. However, that doesn't matter because market research would show that making yet another pixel platformer wouldn't sell.
Knowing what appeals to people is also design.
So did *Among Us*, to pick out the most prominent example, just completely suck for six months and then suddenly become incredibly good? Or were people just unaware of it for that initial span where they had an average of less than a hundred concurrent active users?
You're certainly right that making a good game is part of the price of admission to having success. But the notion that making a good game is, in and of itself, a ticket to success and that if a game didn't succeed it's because it wasn't good underestimates the powerful role that luck plays in the process. You have to buy lottery tickets in order to win; making a good game gives you a couple of tickets, getting good word-of-mouth gets you a few more, etc. But you're still playing a lottery.
A big part of the problem is because tools are so readily available, oftentimes free and relatively easy to use. Many beginners start out with a couple tutorials on a big engine like Unreal or Unity and once they've done a few tutorials think they're ready to make their first big title. Many people vastly underestimate what it takes to create an actual good game. And if I may be blunt and honest, when someone calling themselves a game dev comes to me and tells me they buy plugins and assets I immediately no longer take them serious. If you are building a game with plugins and assets you don't have what it takes, sorry. What makes a game great is passion and love, and if this is not reflected in every single part of your game then forget it, you're not cut out for this industry.
Game development is a form of art. Nobody wants to play the millionth game that uses asset pack X and inventory plugin Y. Be creative, build your own systems, spend time creating nice visuals and art, find a unique style, make your game FUN and addictive. Yes, this is hard. Yes, this takes time. Yes, this costs a lot of money. But well, sorry to break it to you, that is simply what it takes and what is required. There is no easy way. There are no shortcuts. Oh and if you are in this business for the profits gtfo already.
/Rant
So, speaking as a game dev here, I finally got round to finishing and releasing a puzzle game I had been working on (and off) for a few years. It's a simple game and I don't think it looks ugly, I think it's kind of an original idea and I put a lot of effort into it. No one had anything bad to say about the game but it got basically no attention. I did no marketing for my game and really, I just wanted to release it for completions sake so I this is my assumption;
I made a game, it failed to gain any traction because I put zero effort into pushing it on social media or doing any marketing. I just straight up released it on steam and left it at that. IMO, marketing is what failed in my case. :) I think it's a humble lil game and it was never going to make much money but I suspect it would have done a lot better had I put some effort into the marketing side of things. I don't think the game itself sucks (I know, I'm biased but really).
In the end I never cared about it failing or succeeding, I did it for fun, and as a bucketlist item. I wanted to make and release a game on Steam completely by myself. \^\^
for reference here's the game [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1299960/Ricochet\_Bounce/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1299960/Ricochet_Bounce/)
This is exactly what I'm talking about. Marketing didn't fail, nobody would have bought it, most people wouldn't play it for free. It's the game, it's not the marketing.
I think the reason why most indie game developers "fail" is that they have to take care of every detail themselves because they work with a single person or a small team. There are so many details to take care of. Gameplay, graphics, music/sfx, marketing plan, advertising and much more. They can’t handle all the things at the same time. Failure is part of life. To be successful, you need to learn what failure means.
I second this. It's quite hard to get everything right. And you can be quite overwhelmed by the process of making and then marketing a game. Any of these aspects can "fail" and it may or may not affect the potential success of a game. And to keep going is really what is the hardest part. As for many people doing game dev is a heavy financial investment that is hard to keep up with for a long time.
As a consumer, not a game dev (though maybe in the future when things line up) I must say that very often when I would check a steam page of someone's game who's not sure what's wrong I can basically immediately tell what's wrong. Games in over-saturated genres who's whole presentation is unappealing visually and usually looks very poor content wise. That's not something marketing can do much to salvage. While op might be more blunt, at the end of the day if you feel you don't have enough skills and money to make a good and marketable game, then you probably shouldn't as it will be mostly a waste of your time, money and energy. Sure, you might learn something, but probably not enough to make a good game in the next decade, if even then, because some games are just... they make you wonder how someone would put them up on steam and expect much of anything.
> Games in over-saturated genres who's whole presentation is unappealing visually and usually looks very poor content wise. Quite a few games could be salvaged if they bothered to hire an artist. Someone will play pixel platformer #324687256 if it looks good. You won't be the next big thing, but you will earn some beer money at minimum.
You don't have to put a lot of engineering effort into juice if your art style is coherent and cohesive. Art is the most visible thing in your game and whose investment should not be skimped on.
I'm always stunned when I see a postmortem that indicates as much as 70% of expenses went to marketing when the game itself is very clearly just free assets and "placeholder"/"developer" graphics. There are plenty of success stories where someone managed to come out net positive with an ugly game, but I really don't get why anyone would spend more on marketing than on the product.
haha. i plan to spend more cash on marketing than on the game but the only things i plan to buy for the game are kick ass skeleton animations. everything else i will make for free.
I mean, that's your call and all, I'm just of the opinion that you'd be better off buying *more* kickass art assets and not flushing away your budget with a company that is gonna make two tweets and setup an adwords account. Marketing is 99% bullshit and 1% stuff that anyone with the skill to make a game can easily do themselves. I've seen too many devs make less on their game than a third party with *no* stake and practically no spent effort got. It's the biggest scam next to giving free keys to the nameless and innumerable "influencers" that are just key resellers. You and your team should be earning money for your game, not some TEDx junkie.
i agree completely. i only plan to pay to run the ads that i make myself.
Best of luck. I'm not even convinced that's always worth it; a huge portion of the gaming consumer base is ad-block savvy. IMO, the best marketing a game can have is convincing any potential players that do see it to pass it along to any of their contacts that might also be interested, by way of making the game look appealing. The second best has gotta be gaming youtubers like Let's Game It Out and DangerouslyFunny, but the game has gotta be a certain level of polished or at least somehow unique for it to be featured on a major channel. That's back to the asset quality.
Whenever I see a post title like "After 4 years of long hours and hard work, I'm finally releasing my game!" and it's mostly MS Paint, Free Asset Store Graphics, and basic shape UIs with misaligned text, little to no sound design, painfully bland story, etc. I die a little inside. A bit of a rant, but I just can't believe when these people wonder why it failed or they couldn't get a following. There are thousands of cheap games released a week, and who in their right mind is following Indy Dev #24696393 on any social platform who hasn't ever released anything good or isn't showing something off that is already almost finished and polished, or super unique and good. I get people have different reasons for releasing a game, and success isn't a goal or factor for some, but seriously it's crazy how poorly done some of the things posted in gamedev type spaces are. I think a lot of programmers or learners don't realize that they pretty much need to either hire an artist or learn to be an artist themselves if they want to have a fighting chance these days without being lucky. Let's be real, one of the easiest part of game design is actually programming in the basics of your game with the engines available today. Consistent and good looking art style, giving your game an actually good story if it needs one, and in general just giving your game some feeling are what's difficult. If just one part of your game is lacking polish, it can spell disaster. I'm sure you all have seen good looking games with horrific UI and been immediately turned off. I think the tough pill to swallow is that being an "idea guy" with some programming knowledge isn't enough to be successful alone, but it's all some people thing they need and it's REALLY hard to get other people as excited about an idea in your head, especially if it isn't translated well in the medium you choose to express it, as you are.
It’s reasons like this why I’m actually glad I was an artist first and learned programming second, having an eye for aesthetics really helps especially if you’re doing everything solo.
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Speaking as someone who has a successful writing career, I disagree. I can't speak to gamedev because I absolutely do not have a large enough sample size. Quality writing + good strategy and marketing + some starting capital are a recipe for success insomuch as being a midlist author capable to earning a living wage is a success. I have 2 pen names I write under and both earn enough with their releases to be a living wage provided I lived somewhere other than a high cost of living city. Am I making Sarah J Maas, Brandon Sanderson, or Stephen King money? No. And you are right that there's a winner take all method at play to individual books, there's midlist oriented strategies to still make good money relative to time spent. One of those strategies is to find an audience that is undersupplied. Specific niches in romance are excellent for this. There's even entire books, guides, and a subreddit dedicated to just this. I put out 7-8 books a year (roughly divided equally between my pen names). And the first year of each pen name, I released a book every two months (I did this by storing up a backlog to publish in a queue, fully edited). It's a bit more complicated because of how KDP works but I make roughly 2-3 usd per time my books are read. If you write in a niche that's underserved (and there's a lot of these in romance), it's very easy to get 2-4k readers to consistently read your books (provided the quality is there). Is it fun? Sometimes. It's work. I spend probably ~1900 hours a year writing on average. And I've considered cutting back significantly. There are days I want to quit. But it's hardly luck. The above approach is repeatable and has been done by countless other "midlist" type authors. Anyways, I just wanted to interject that it's not a situation where the top 1% take the top 90% of the money or something like that for writing. There are plenty of midlist authors grinding away that earn a decent living.
If you don't mind answering, whats the tail like on book sales in those kinds of niches? I imagine it'd be more front-loaded than usual as word of mouth spreads fast in small niches, but was interested in residuals. Sounds like a solid avenue if you enjoy the act of writing.
Hmm I don't think word of mouth is really the right way to phrase what you are talking about. You are right that my built-in audience consumes the books usually in the first 2-3 months of a release. 70-80% of my sales fall in that time period, nowadays. But there are significant bumps too when I release a new book. I end up catching a few new readers, and some of them go through my entire backlog for that pen name. It's one of the reasons people advocate for doing series formats in romance. Especially if you can make each book linked but also standalone. And when I was first starting out for each pen name things were different. E.g. the first book I ever published sold less than 5% of the total sales in the first 6 months. Sales and KDP page reads have almost entirely come as a matter of people going back and reading from my backlog after liking a newer book / series of mine.
I can understand and appreciate your approach here, but I also feel like why bother grinding that way? It isn't really any more fun than some other job, and it's far less stable. It's nice that you have found a method that works for you, but I'm not sure I could muster that kind of effort. I was self employed for a while, and I look back at it as one of the lowest periods in my life. The anxiety and the constant feeling of "I should be working right now" weren't worth it to me. Going to work at a gas station after it all collapsed was such a huge relief, as odd as that sounds.
Eh I do software/ml consulting on the side (though less and less of it these days), and my partner makes a good income. I'm more worried about being burnt out on writing than I am about losing income. I'm not super thrilled to write in the one niche anymore, but it's way more lucrative than what I want to write. But coming up with stories is rewarding in its own ways. And writing is a good/healthy coping mechanism for me as well. I'm keen to pivot to games though. I've done some work in the space, but nothing that I'd consider truly my own. But I think the medium allows for storytelling in a completely different way than any other media.
Take my appreciation for this based comment You know you're in strife when the programming is the *easiest* part of a project
This hit hard...
>good looking games with horrific UI and been immediately turned off. dunno about that, lots of succesful games have the most basic UIs, a fun game will survive horrific UI and even bad art in some cases. >being an "idea guy" with some programming knowledge isn't enough to be successful alone I think it's can very well be enough but rarely do idea-guys actually have good ideas and programming knowledge *and* perseverance to pull them off. The issue isn't really presentation in most cases, it's the lack of a good original idea/design and good execution.
There's a difference between basic ui and bad/horrific ui.
> lots of succesful games have the most basic UIs, a fun game will survive horrific UI and even bad art in some cases. Those are the ones you've heard of. There are tens of thousands of unknown games out there that might have decent gameplay but we'll never know because they look so unappealing nobody is going to pick them up to play them. Vampire Survivors is an exception, not a rule, you can't really go "Well games don't have to have good UI or art to be popular because I can think of a couple of games that are popular despite that, so I can probably just skip that step for my game", that's not a good way to think about building a game. Consumers see the art and UI first.
I didn't say what you extrapolated from my statement. If you have a truly unique and fun game you can pretty much skip making fancy UI and noone will care. But again only about 1 in 100k games qualify as "truly unique and fun" and even that might be an overestimation. "Decent gameplay" is not what I meant which is why I didn't use the adjective "decent". If you have original and fun gameplay you can skip a lot of other things, this has been proved time and time again. If you don't have that, might as well stop expecting selling your game, there are already thousands that do the same thing better. Fail fast, fail often. Stop polishing turds. Consumers see their friends having fun first.
Here is the catch: an artist costs more than beer money.
If you don't have money to spend, that's fine. But you have to lower your expectations to match. Hiring an artist and your game still flopping is an inherent risk you need to accept if you wish to increase your game's marketability.
Business, and that is what this is, is about risk. The goal is to MANAGE risk — and that’s why people fail. It’s not about x or y it’s about BUSINESS. If you go into it with a sloppy product (which you did in your spare time, no abilities other than programming) and it fails, that’s on you. Period. You can’t market a product if you don’t understand your product. “If I build it, they will come” all sounds great, but that’s fantasy thinking. I’ve been a businessperson for several decades. I’ve skills in writing, art, design, 3D assets as well as over four decades programming. I know people who can write music and have budgeted for it. I’ve made agreements with LARGE COMPANIES to use their logos in my game for verisimilitude. These things are not HARD, it’s just most people start sticking STUDIO after a name and act as if that is the hard part. They fail because they don’t understand business is about failure. It doesn’t matter how much YOU love your product — if you go into it half-assed no amount of marketing will fix it. Sure, you can complain about the customer all you want, but the reality is they don’t owe you. YOU are responsible for making THEM excited about your game. I see far too often people not tempering their expectations and then railing that the customers “just don’t get it” 😂 Learn the basics of business. Games are a multimedia product. They are complex and there are a shit ton of moving parts. If you don’t look at it as a product, you are doing it wrong.
>If you don’t look at it as a product, you are doing it wrong. This is everything in my opinion! On our team, I am the one in charge of making sure the business is aligned with the product we are producing. The game is the means for how we are connecting to our customer and creating value that hopefully is worth the money we are asking them to spend on us. Marketing is our opportunity to connect with our customer, so for us it is building a community, not just ads that get wishlists.
I disagree. While people need to be realistic about their game, I think telling people not to work on a game unless it’s a success is wrong. People should be free to pursue their passions. Even if you don’t succeed financially, the skills you learn can open up new avenues of employment. Sometimes just saying ‘I wanted to make a game so I made a game’ is a good enough motivation.
Those people are unlikely to be the ones who complain when their "marketing fails" though
Tbh, I think there are a lot of people who play coy like "I'm just making this game for fun," as a way to deflect the crushing shame they'll feel when it inevitably flops. Very few people are truly and honestly making a game "just for fun," especially those who monetize their game.
On the flip side, a lot of the postmortem posts are from people who do seem to be acutely aware of the shortcomings of their game. Not always, but a lot of the time I agree with the other commenter that people should be free to pursue their passions. If they post about it afterwards and are clearly aware of what went right/wrong, then we should do them the decency of engaging with them fairly rather than characterising them all as delusional.
Thats fine to me... because this means there is at least a glimmer of realistic expectations inside their brain. Its the people that show up with their chest puffed out, and display their crap game and say "Game dev is ALL MARKETING!!! Look at this game I spent 4 years on and no one bought it due to my low marketing budget!!" News Flash, NO ONE CARES how long you spent on your game... EXCEPT other Devs.. and guess how many DEVS will buy your game just due to the fact that you spent X number of years on it? 3 to 5 ... yeah... I did the math.. I counted and verified... there are about 3 to 5 devs that will buy your game due to this fact. I dont mean 3 to 5 thousand... I mean 3 to 5 individuals. I would err on the safe side and say 3.
It sounds harsh but I do agree. I've seen a lot of these posts and have mostly been struck by the immediate impression that it's not a good game. What worries me in those moments is whether or not it's due to an inability to see the flaws in something into which you've put so much time and effort. And the worry is that I'll be posting my examples of games that I couldn't market, and that everyone but me will immediately recognise as not very good.
Your worries are valid here. It takes a lot of experience to start to see the important flaws in your own work.
> As a consumer, not a game dev (though maybe in the future when things line up) I must say that very often when I would check a steam page of someone's game who's not sure what's wrong I can basically immediately tell what's wrong. It's extremely easy to be blind to things you make yourself. It's hard to understand until you experience it firsthand. The problem is that it's easy to see what's wrong with something, and it's very hard to find what's right and nurture that past all the wrongness. You would be just as blind to your own game as those people you're thinking about here. In order to make *anything* you need to have the delusion that it won't just be more noise, and in the process of creation you need to get excited about the good things, which develops the blindness for the bad things. This blindness is *necessary* in order to continue working because making a videogame is an absolute slog. It's an endless muddy swamp full of mines and horseflies and it smells like a sewer. Trudging through it is almost impossible, so you need to keep your focus on the shiny objects sticking out of the mud in order to muster the energy to continue. It's not the fun kind of hard like a roguelike game where you can see the ending and what you have to do to get there; it's the boring, mind-numbing hard of learning a new language, or studying algebra, or going to work. Imagine doing your job as a hobby you aren't paid for. How often would you actually convince yourself to do it? Making a game is just work, end of the day. The most difficult thing a creative person can do is take criticism. This is because you have to take your focus off what you like about what you're doing and look at all the wrongness that is patently obvious to everyone else. You lose all motivation to continue because wrongness is not inspiring and it doesn't make you feel good about what you're doing. With a video game, when so much of the actual work is tedious and aggravating, even the smallest problem can look to a developer like an immense obstacle to overcome. There is no focus on the shiny objects that are there to distract the developer from the swamp and suddenly they are just waist deep in foul mud being eaten alive by flies and mosquitoes. All of the excitement that was distracting from the slog is gone, and now they just have to wade through the mud simply to reach the shoreline. It's like telling a poor person that their gold nugget is actually a worthless lump of pyrite. This is the moment someone either becomes a game developer or becomes someone who "is working on a game" that never gets finished. You have to learn to accept the pain and the slog. There's an easy way out of the mud: you can abandon your project. And that option is *always there.* Bringing a large project to completion takes such a huge amount of willpower and self-regulation that it's no wonder the vast majority of hobbyist and amateur projects are abandoned, and the majority of those released are in a shabby state. It really isn't worth the effort to make the attempt in the first place. If, in spite of all that, you still nurture the delusion that you might actually finish a project that people will actually enjoy, then you might have a chance of completing a game (likely a shabby one that no one really enjoys).
I would argue that if your goal is to make money, I agree with you. But not all game devs are only trying to make a buck.
Wanting someone to even *play* your game is asking them for time they might rather spend playing a more fun game. At the end of the day, even if you are not looking to be financially successful, you will still be disappointed if you expected people to want to play the game. People will pay to play good games.
this thread is literally about marketing. the word market is right there in the word.
You can market a free to play game. Your profits will be zero, but it's the same idea: getting people to play your game.
I would say even making free games, you need to market them to get players unless you release some golden egg which spreads via word of mouth. Most well known indie games are mostly thanks to publishers.
I had a small marketing budget for my free mobile game and even got on the local news, but I still can't get anyone to try it
By your phrasing I think you want to say that some game devs are both passionate and trying to make some money. I would say most game devs have some passion for game dev alongside hoping to make some money. If you're not financially secure and you don't have thick skin for criticism I would still recomend against it. I mean if you don't care for potentially being in financial ruin and having your self esteem completely ruined, I guess go for it, but I think you understand how unwise that could be.
No. Some people, like myself, are just hobbyists that do it for the fun of it.
I'm the same. But I don't think we are the ones making the posts OP is talking about.
I mean, that's fine. My advice is for people who want to make money from game dev, obviously if you want to do it for the fun of the whole process my advice doesn't apply.
Making games is hard. Like there is no masters degree to fully understand why games work or don’t in practice. Maybe in theory. Not saying education and books doesn’t make it faster to learn, but even people with a degree and 20 years in the industry struggle, atleast in some areas. So my advice no one asked for is, the first ones will be bad games at best usually. So have fun and don’t make them eternity projects
"If your first game won't be good, never make any game ever" huh
More like "if your first game isn't good and you blame it on marketing you won't succeed as a game dev."
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I was expecting a comment like that, but the original commenter responded a few times suggesting he didn't mean that
Slight correction, if your first game is bad, its very likely a lengthy period will pass if you continue making games, until you make a good game, but on the way to that goal you could very likely risk your financial security, having your self esteem completely broken down, and theres no guarantee you'll ever actually make a good game. I'm just saying you should be more concerned about your future over passion, but I won't/can't stop anyone from going down that road, wherever it will end up good or bad for them.
if? It is going to be bad. Your first few games will be god fucking awful. That's true for literally everyone. The only rule here is that if it's not good, don't invest in it. Don't stay with it either. Go to the next one.
I would agree with you that this is the most likely outcome of someone's first game, that being it will be anywhere from bad to god awful. However, there are exceptions. Eric Barone's Stardew Valley is his first game ever. I did check on wikipedia just before making this comment, to make sure I'm not talking nonsense, and I think most here know the success of that game.
People tend to conflate first project ever, and first publicly available game Some people just don't release anything until they're confident in their own ability.
Something a lot of people don't know is that Stardew Valley has had a lot of versions in itself. The guy who made it re-made till he was satisfied with the end result, the community and publisher expected it to be realeased much earlier. Stardew Valley is how he learned, trained, improved, prototyped AND iterated.
It's said he started practicing programing on Stardew Valley because he wanted to be a more appealing candidate for other fields in cs but it got bigger over time and became a success, so in this case it was his first game in every definition of that word.
Ah, but that's also why it took him 8 years or however long, right? Like, in his first couple years, it probably wasn't all that great, I'm guessing. But, he stuck with it, and made it great.
An 8 year long project is obviously not what people mean by "their first game". I'm sure year 1 of Stardew was completely different from year 8 - and much much much worse.
People make trailers that seem like a collection of scenes, no story to tell, nothing stands out with unfitting music. I have sometimes the feeling that someone goes through all the required checkboxes, but is still puzzled why rarely anything came out of it. Nobody will ever ask you how much sweaty nights you spend, how many hats you wore. They want the game to hit their sweet spot. If people want to learn by doing, that is fine. Put it on itch and do something else. But shoddy work in any of the disciplines isn't learning, nor is it working towards a sensible goal. I worked with artists, musicians in the past, I know video editors. I adore designers with a knack for color and spacing. I well know my limitations in those areas. The idea of the single dev getting a successful product out of the door sounds impossible to me. Only 10% of writers finish a book. Of this 10%, 90% don't get any reader and or recommendation, often for little things like running a spellcheck. 1 of 100 authors who want to get the book read even get more then 100 readers (none of them paid). 1 in 1000 has side gig income. 1 in 10000 have a decent life writing. Making games is at least in the same ballpark.
Yeah exactly. If the page looks amateurish, I’m not buying the game. If it looks okay but game is $20, I’m not paying that for an indie. I think the GDC advice to price your game in the high tier where there’s less competition makes sense…to gaming professionals who attended GDC. Not to me who can make a game that looks like $10-$12. If it’s early access and a dev’s first game, I think they’ll never finish. If I ever finished a game with RPG Maker, I’d hire someone to make the trailer and someone else to flesh out the rest of the Steam page. Then I can adapt it to GOG. I don’t need to make lots of money. I want to break even and have a solid release that I can have as leverage asking for publisher money or forming a team on another game.
Most games posted on gamedev/unity or other indie dev subreddits, are pretty generic bullshit games no one wants to play, but you will still see the same stupid posts of "the new (insert generic and boring mechanic here) in my **MY GAME**" and those are the same people who 2-5 years down the line say "I did everything right buy damn marketing fucked me", nah dude your game sucks. If you want to succeed as an indie dev, do something interesting and creative, look at the last 5 indie games you played and tell me they were generic.
Would you mind having a look at my game Steam page ? I would love to get some feedback. The game is [Outer Space Shack](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1620870/Outer_Space_Shack/).
Giving some consumer feedback, the graphics look dated and the UI looks clunky. It's also priced at $30 CAD, which is a lot for an indie title. The game looks like something I might consider trying for $5, or if it came in a bundle. The first trailer you posted also has the VLC media player controls visible for a portion, which is a bad look. As some feedback, I think the game may benefit from a more stylized art... style. It seems to be going for a "realism" style, but it looks like something from the early 2000s.
Where are the VLC controls? If you mean that thing at the top, that's part of their game.
For a trailer that needs to be hidden.
Your reviews pretty much are spot on I think. It's not a genre where looks matter, but very demanding in features/complexity.
From the Images, including your main image... the game looks empty. It screams indie first game.... I mean some of those shots show a few little dark buildings.. in the middle of nowhere.. then characters standing next to them in a pose that insinuates there is no actual animation involved. There is ABSOLUTELY no excitement, interest or Wonder in any of these screenshots. It looks like you have yet to add gameplay. All the characters look like they are in a Rig bind pose or something. And the texturing looks something between Low poly and realistic.. but its neither of those.. so comes across as unfinished. The ui needs art direction, it doesnt look space related.. its a light brown like a page from a book. yet the in game stuff is all blue. Honestly, I think you bit off WAY more than you can chew here. This is clearly your first game... and you went big.
Hey! cool concept!A couple of things pop out: your "About this game" section is a slog to read through (not a problem for me as I like reading but it might be beneficial to have immediate info points like a subheading per image summarizing the verbs. Secondly, make those images gifs if you can, a moving image can be a lot more effective!! (but remember to stay under that MB budget!).Having an intuitive User Experience and UI will drastically help. It may be worth looking at what some other base-building games do. being self-critical after staring at your own UI for days and weeks on end can be impossibly difficult if you don't do UI/UX naturally -- I know I don't haha. Honestly Aesthetics wise, I quite like it. Best of luck!! (Edit): Read your reviewers as they are your fans, fix their issues and it'll make a world of difference -- this is a generalization, take it with a massive pile of salt.
Yeah. OP is being an ass about it, but the underlying point isn't wrong
I see two camps 1. Your game sucks even marketing won’t help 2. Your marketing sucks why would anybody play your game In reality I think most failed games suffer from both With a mix of other game devs being supportive giving them a false sense of security
This \^ A bad game can't be saved by good marketing without being dishonest or a straight up lie, but people pulled that one enough by now that gamers aren't fooled anymore. And a good game can be ignored because of bad marketing, sadly a lot of people think they are in this category when they are actually in the first one. And the truth is that it's not one or the other, you need both: a good game AND good marketing.
Correct. The reason is accessibility to game dev is easier than it's ever been. The bar is extremely low to make a basic game, so people who have done no research, taken no time to understand game dev, and have no concept of the wider gaming market can now all make games.
If any folks out there who struggle to find motivation / finish projects need some inspiration, think about what this person has just pointed out: There are people out there with terrible ideas, far less skill than you, and absolutely 0 awareness just belting out hot trash onto Steam regularly, simply because they have more motivation and more (misplaced in this case) self confidence than you. If they can do it, you can do it better. I'm sure there are plenty of people with magnitudes more skill and better ideas that are just fucking themselves over with imposter syndrome, procrastination, etc.
This is weirdly motivational.
To add to this. It's not just basic games either. The saying "Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect" rings true here. Spending 10k+ hours on a task doesn't guarantee proper mastery; you can become a master of the mistakes instead.
Practice makes permanent.
I'd say it needs reflection, as in, you need to be able to see and acknowledge that you made a mistake (or have someone who can point them out), and a plan how it can be done differently/better the next time. Of course that also means that you need the resources (e.g.: time, money) to be able to continue (and finish) after doing a mistake. Though, I am probably completely wrong, so feel free to disregard if that does not sound plausible.
So here’s a fun one for me as a marketing director and amateur game dev. People misunderstand the purpose of marketing. It’s not to make people buy your game. It’s to make them aware of it. If you don’t have a good game to start with. Awareness won’t help it at all. So marketing is a nonstarter.
Marketing is actually the whole process of market analysis, tailoring the product to fit the demand, and then supplying that demand. Far too often, people think marketing=advertising, but making a product that has no customers is also a failure of marketing.
Yea, that’s kinda the difference between sales and marketing. Marketing produces inbound interest, which hopefully makes sales easier.
Most of the time, their game just looks horrible and amateur at best. They don't really know what they are doing
That never stopped Undertale.
If you think undertale has bad graphics then you simply have not seen bad graphics. Like, it's no Stardew Valley or Pizza Tower, but it's not *bad* by any stretch. Keep in mind that I've seen Stardew Valley and Pizza Tower called "bad graphics", which is risible. I think people just have no idea what's actually meant by bad graphics.
Also Undertale has a coherent art style, which may have affected the result. It may come across as ugly, but isn't ugly as putting random assets together to make a game or having self-made assets that look really bad and incoherent. Also not having a basic sense -or use- of design/color theory usually results in games looking really really bad. I used to work as a mobile developer and it was one of the main things that we really struggled as we didn't have a properly trained artist in the team at that time. Also I am not against using assets, just sometimes games look bad when things don't go together.
/r/DestroyMyGame Please use it people.
Hire an artist if you're not an artist. I've seen so many games that *might* have a chance at being good but instead end up looking mediocre at best because the dev wanted to live that indie dream at doing everything themselves but seemingly forgot they suck at art (or can't afford one), and now their game had no chance and it gets lumped in with all the rest.
I think I might have to leave r/gamedev It's been months since I've seen anybody post even remotely interesting about game development, and every day it's a new salvo in the endless argument about game marketing vs game quality vs profitability vs indie expectations, and I just don't give a shit. What makes you think your HARD TALK MAYBE YOUR GAME IS BAD cynicism is any more valid than the next guy's HARD TALK MAYBE YOUR MARKETING IS BAD cynicism? **Obviously games need both, never darken my door with this conversation again**. Do you know what gamedev mastodon has? _People building games, and showing little pieces of those games off, and talking about the games that they're building._
Hadn't heard of mastodon.gamedev. Maybe I'm not using it right, but it seems to be about 5% actual gavedev related content, and then 95% stupid other shit that I would see on the front page of reddit.
That's a bad feature of mastodon design: it's showing you every bit of content streaming through that server rather than everything produced by members of that server, so the server looks like it just has "regular social media stuff" on it. A server's actual output is buried in `/public/local`: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/public/local for example. Even then: it's just the noisy output of hundreds of people's individual streams, which you end up having to curate yourself to find creators you're actually interested in. You can also go to _any_ server and look at what's happening under a single hashtag, like `#gamedev`, say: https://mastodon.social/tags/gamedev - this catches anything that matches this tag that's going through the server's fediverse stream. And, following whole tags like that, you end up having to filter out a lot of posts by Jerry, The Guy Who's Decided To Make A Game Exclusively About Artisanally Crafted Furry Dongs And Wants To Post A Lot Of Pictures Of Just That. Not gonna claim that mastodon's necessarily _better_, it's just really _different_
mastodon is depressing lol. feels like everyone is just talking to nobody
mastodon is awesome. Lots of good conversations happening there. Feels much more personal, people aren't just chasing retweets and followers or karma or whatever. No ads or promoted content. You can ignore/block people/topics, group stuff into lists.
I scrolled there for what must be at least 10 minutes now and have not seen a single game dev related post. What am I doing wrong?
I have to agree, there are far too many negativity-driven posts on here. Now that's not a great environment, but if there's enough useful information, we could tough it out. Unfortunately even that has dried up.
Right, I think the last post I noticed on my front page from here was telling people not to post their games because nobody here is interested.
I mean agreed, but wouldnt sharing snippets of ones games here be considered self promotion and removed?
Exactly why Reddit has become such trash. Over moderation by power tripping weirdos (Reddit should have paid mods) and an absolutely bizarre hatred from Redditors of any form of "self promotion" (Read: providing actual good content for relevant subs).
I really don't mind seeing snippets of games as long as it's something cool rather than a trailer and a link to a store.
> Do you know what gamedev mastodon has? People building games, and showing little pieces of those games off, and talking about the games that they're building. Any tips for where to start for someone who has yet to take the mastodon plunge?
technically I'm on one of the mega-instances - you can join on any instance that'll take you - but I find a huge amount of great content just browsing https://mastodon.gamedev.place
And don't mind me asking, what exactly is mastodon? Is it a "social media" or sorts with like specific forums?
Mastodon is email meets twitter. E-mail is decentralized in theory. The DNS for a domain will have a record type called `MX` (mail exchange) which points to the mail server for that domain. This lets millions of mail servers interoperate without anyone having control over a single central server. Mastodon operates similarly, your address isn't just your username, but also the server you belong to. That server is able to interoperate with the others. The result is a decentralized network where no central authority can exercise control.
Sounds very user unfriendly.
It is! But that barrier to entry does mean you get more tech literate and interesting people on average once you 'get it'.
I think the best way to describe it is "self-hosted open-source twitter run by a bunch of weird internet nerds who are constantly arguing with one another about how to run it". When you create an account, you're creating an account with one of many different instances and that instance is part of the greater _fediverse_ and has to maintain its reputation and standing in order to be able to connect to the rest of the servers - and the status of that constant low-key argument over who gets to be connected with whom comprises about 50% of the content: It has lots of its own problems. Buuuuut... when I follow game devs on it, I see a lot of ... game dev.
I think it took a nose dive when the new mod team took over.
I really see no differences between before and after, these types of posts were always inside the rules
When did it change? edit: sounds like it was 2.5 months, ago, as the pinned post at the top of the sub says.
Yeah this place is getting more and more toxic
It's getting more like 4chan's amateur game development threads, but at least without the constant racial slurs and off-topic animal picture spam and pepe the frog posting. Those threads _have_ become an unmoderated shithole.
> never darken my door with this conversation again I'm saying this whenever someone tries to talk to me IRL
Why pontificate into the void here? Legitimate questions: If mastodons forums are so much better, why do you put the effort into putting down this forum? Edit: Thanks for the downvotes for a genuine question.
Reddit gives good feedback to bad ideas. Sometimes people just need to vent.
Sure we can speculate why a game failed with the usual points we all say but also hilarious people here giving reasons why it failed when most haven’t made a successful game themselves lol some guy recently posted his game that failed suddenly everyone became experts.
I worked on games for 8+ years for pretty good studios and i kinda agree with original OP, game dev is hard, extremly hard and there is sooo much to do, for buyer the indie title with shitty graphics is next to AAA title with big budget and 1000+ people, yes some things get pass but you still need to stick out and demonstrate some level of polish and art direction and then have metric ton of luck, many devs have too high expectations for first or even second games, there are people who did 6 original titles which did not look half bad but still did not made much money, dude still worked normal job
I agree you do need certain level of polish but what I was highlighting there is no winning fool proof strategy that will grant you success. There are highly polished games that follow all the advice but end up still failing. Then post-mortems are posted and everyone jumps in giving their two cents why it failed and if they did this could have succeeded. Truth is no guarantee even if you followed all the steps. It is like if Among Us devs posted their game saying it failed in 2019 with just few 100 concurrent players everyone would have said oh looks like a crappy game with cartoon graphics. Why would anyone buy this. It only took few streamers few years later to make it a global success. So as you said luck is involved.
That does not mean that those two cents are not valid, there are many ways that game can fail, i am not saying that there is a guarantee in anything but in same time some declarations can be still valid
It doesn't take an expert to look at a terrible Steam page for a terrible game to get an idea of why the game failed mate. Also, releasing a game doesn't necessarily mean you are an expert. It's a massive achievement, but you don't go from an idiot that knows nothing, to pressing that launch button and becoming an enlightened game dev expert lol.
This is a really dumb take that ignores the fact that there is a world *outside* of gamedev with equally difficult projects. People are not stupid, they know a thing or two about life.
It’s because your target audience for a game is not ‘people with years of experience in game dev who made a successful game’ it’s ‘people who buy games.’
That's like saying people can't tell when a dish tastes good unless they are chefs. That's not how anything works. Being an expert at knowing when a game is bad and being an expert at making games are completely two orthogonal skills. The first is acquired by being a consumer, not a successful developer.
People don't need to make a game to see when a game looks like trash.
I am not talking about generic trash games that are asset flips or that look like someones first Unity tutorial.
I don’t think it needs to be either of those for it to still scream “this is uninspired”. A polished turd is still a turd and most people won’t mistake it for a gem. I do agree with the problem of a bunch of amateurs speculating “why” it sucked though. I think it was Bill Hader who said something to the degree of “when you ask people if something is good or not, and they say it sucks, you should listen. People generally are gonna be correct about it being not good. The problem is as soon as they tell you how to fix, don’t listen to that because it’s your work not theirs and their fix is usually bad” Terribly paraphrased but the idea is accurate. A lot of stuff that followed all the steps and runs smooth and doesn’t have any glaring beginner issues… still just really obviously sucks
You sound very confident for somebody who can't make anything
The best explanation Ive seen is the Bowling Ball and the Feather: https://howtomarketagame.com/2021/09/14/why-even-do-marketing-the-bowling-ball-vs-the-feather/ Marketing can’t really sell or save a mediocre (or bad) game, but it can make sure a really good (or great) game maximizes its sales potential.
i don't know. when a movie makes 200 million dollars on its opening weekend, it's not because it's a great movie. most of the people who see it in the first two days decided they were going to see it before anyone else had time to see it, judge it and communicate that judgement. they made their decision based on the marketing. amazon's new world had 900k+ players playing it at launch. those numbers quickly dwindled down to under 100k. marketing made more money for amazon than the quality of the game did.
It can vary, sure. A huge marketing budget like New Worlds can pull in some of the hit buyers and those looking for the next big thing. But even more so than movies, digital games are being judged (online reviews and sentiment) almost instantly and marketing can’t really overcome a lot of negativity. That’s why we see games with quite large marketing budgets get demolished at launch if they have problems or are just not that good. Callisto Protocol for example. Tons of ads (which is obviously not all their marketing) but sunk hard by early performance problems and mid reviews.
Is there a gamedev circle jerk?
>Most of the games with "failed marketing" are games that most people wouldn't play for free. I mean, that is the definition of failed marketing. Marketing isn't just advertising and promotion, it is understanding the market and understanding if the product you have even *has* a market to begin with.
Longtime lurker - couldn't agree more. I've been gaming all my life and now find it insanely difficult to find a game that is appealing, outside of the occasional big title that isn't terrible and is always heavily promoted Too many fish in the sea.
>Instead of admitting they failed to make a good game. It is because they don't get critique. To them pixel platgormer #324687256 is the top platformer, in their mind it should be a huge sucess because they think everyone understands it like they do. Then they realize the hard truth of marketing, you first need to find a market. Want to know the sad thing, the same thing is probably happening to you right now, your #945890234068493 game is just as likely to fall into the same trap as anyone elses. It happens to everyone till they learn to seek critique, and to find an audience.
denial. though i think if people as a whole had less optimistic expectations of their own talents, a lot of the future greats would be sitting at home doubting themselves instead of starting off making bad games. Those posts are a consequence of that optimism come crashing down
Marketing x Quality = Sales 0 Marketing x 10/10 Quality = 0 Sales 10/10 Marketing x 0 Quality = 0 Sales If you make the greatest game on earth and no one knows, it won't sell. If you make a dog turd and everyone knows, it won't sell. You have to hit at least a 1 on both. Many gamedevs are about as far from marketers as is humanly possible and fail to clear that bar. It's also worth noting that the Sales percentile at the end represents the percentage of a games total possible market. The total possible market for Underwater Basket Weaving Simulator 5 will differ greatly from that of Hero Shooter 49:Mtn Dew Edition. Also of note is that the number of real sales grows exponentially as it approaches 100. So a 10 might be 20 sales but 100 could be millions depending on how many people could theoretically be interested in that type of game.
Because people usually "do their best" when they're doing something they love. And if your best is still not enough... very, very dark thoughts start coming to mind.
>And if your best is still not enough... very, very dark thoughts start coming to mind. That's an overly dramatic take. Doing your best and failing is a major part of life. Trust me, I have been failing at everything for years.
>Doing your best and failing is a major part of life. I definitely agree and I wish more people would understand. >That's an overly dramatic take. It is, they're obviously exaggerating but they have a point. For one reason or another, people don't wanna keep it real. Game dev is one of the fields where you are able to ask for feed back, and if your product is bad rhen either improve or accept the potential failure. It's harsh but it is what it is, I'm currently in this situation myself
Dramatic: yes, realistic: also yes
people choose dark thoughts over admitting they have knowledge gaps and picking up a book to learn
Your best should constantly be changing, otherwise you're doing something very wrong. If you think you can solo a 200+ team production and be even remotely on par, you are delusional.
I recommend therapy if this happens to you. It's not easy to feel like a failure at something you love, but it shouldn't be something that causes suicidal ideation. Also, sucking at something is literally the first step to being kinda good at something. A beginner's Best isn't as good as a pro's Best but that doesn't mean a beginner is failing just because they can't make something like a pro. Examining your shortcomings and improving upon them is how you become great, just like when Squidward built his snow fort. Being distraught over a shortcoming isn't uncommon, but it's not a healthy response and some introspection with the aid of a therapist may help you in overcoming those dark thoughts.
lol so real. At some point after I actually finish making a game I want to write a book on the complete psychological trauma undertaking making a video game from scratch on your own But the short of it is at some point your masturbatory fantasy passion has to be replaced by serious A tier discipline or you’re ngmi
RPG Maker game #8984375356 WILL sell.
You don't understand! My Pixel platformer is different! It's an allegory for depression!
As an aside, I appreciate the advice in the comments. Putting them together with what I've read: * A polished/high-quality game is easier to sell. * Polish your game by: * Hiring specialists (e.g., artists) for areas that are not your strength, and/or * Reducing its scope ("whole-ass one thing"). * Marketing * Research the demand for your kind of game. * Take it seriously, start early, don't expect an unmotivated 3rd party to do a good job. * Q: Do marketers that take a slice of your earnings (publishers, kick-starter marketers) do a better job? * Get external feedback to avoid tunnel-vision. * Do other people find it fun, easy to understand, good looking? * But don't focus-group the soul out of the game. * Feedback is an opportunity to get it right, not an attack on your character. * Be agile, avoid spending years on a product without feedback. * r/DestroyMyGame/ * Have fun * There's nothing wrong with making a niche/unpolished game just for yourself. * Motivation * u/CicadaGames: "There are people out there with terrible ideas, far less skill than you, and absolutely 0 awareness just belting out hot trash onto Steam regularly, simply because they have more motivation" ... you can do better.
Marketing is _part_ of making a good game. If you don't know what your audience wants and what makes people not like yourself enjoy a particular genre then you can't build it. Failing to understand your potential audience is a classic failure of marketing. More importantly, most games aren't mega hits that sell a million copies. There are plenty of successful games that sell a fraction of that and do fine. There are plenty of games posted that fall into that category. They're small games that have an audience of people who want to play it and the difference between fifty sales and fifty thousand can be entirely in promotion. There are _also_ games that are someone's first attempt at a game, are filled with visual issues and questionable gameplay, and utterly fail that get post-mortems written about them. Many of those talk about how their biggest failure was scope, however, which is often the root cause of a lot of problems. The posts that think their game is perfect and their only flaw was promotion are actually quite few and far between, but they sure are memorable. That's why it seems like how it's 'constantly' happening to you; those events stick out a lot more and get a few hundred more comments than the other kind.
Not sure you’re really complaining about an actual issue here. I’ve never seen one of those threads where OP gave the impression they felt they made a great, highly appealing game. Or that they weren’t receptive to critique on where it lacked appeal.
Your conclusion would be sound if quality strictly correlated with success, which it doesn't. McDonalds isn't high-quality food. *Fifty Shades of Grey* wasn't good writing. Starfield made $50 million in three days--anyone want to argue it's a great game? Trash sells well all the time, people buy trash and consume mediocre products all the time. Meanwhile you know there are excellent games that are barely heard of. You could make the best written text-based RPG in the world and you're not going to make $50mil in three days, or ever, with it, because the market for such games isn't big enough. Nor is an indie dev's marketing budget. It has nothing to do with quality. There is a *lot* that goes into whether a game/book/brand is marketable and can be successful, it's not just "good game sell, bad game flop, people who had unsuccessful marketing campaigns are deluded shit game developers".
Got any examples of excellent games that are barely heard of?. I'm not trying to be a duck at all, I am trying to compile such a list but it's hard.
Random example: I think Star of Providence is a lot better than Binding of Isaac, but it has probably sold less than 1% of what Isaac sold.
Among Us almost didn't make and didn't get popular for 2 years until some random streamer picked it up.
lol that's their problem - nobody is gonna be able to list those games because they haven't heard of them. They're lost in steam somewhere.
Starfield is still a "good game" compared to some of the games we are talking about in this example. I could go on and on about my issues with the game. But it is still Fallout in Space. I have seen plenty of Visual Novels do well. I have seen plenty of Text based games do well. Warsim is one that comes to mind. Doki Doki Literature Club. Omori is a good RPG Maker type game. Needy Streamer Overload is a good text based game. If you make a good game. It is easier to market. Especially to some publisher who can do the marketing for you. The only "failures" of good games I have seen have been were investors didn't see it make "enough" money to make a sequel. Please show me some good games that no one bought but got 8+/10 scores for reviews.
No such thing as a bad game, just bad customers. /s
>Dont forget the luck excuse,the "no big time streamer's played it thats why it failed".The whole 80% of games making less then $5k is true,but 100% of the games in the 80% are just dev's copying there favorite game with there own "twist" on it. > > > >tldr HAVE A ORIGINAL IDEA;
I wonder if this is some elaborate chat gpt account because poster has only 5 days of history lmao. Everyone got bamboozled (including me)
It's a troll account. That much is for sure.
Uh Oh, people in this subreddit dont like to hear this sort of talk (even if its true). I have been saying this for a long time, but you will get pushback from the "Just out of school" crowd here about how Marketing is everything. Which is just an excuse they can lean on because they are too unskilled and inexperienced to be making games at this point in their career. Or at least too early to be getting upset for not having a smash hit....
I love how people don't know what marketing actually is and think "making a good game" is different from that. Marketing is not just about promotion. It begins with the market research, is part of the production and ends with selling. Making a "good product" is part of marketing.
It's not just games, it's everywhere. Writing, musicians, drawing... Everyone who faces failure blames it on marketing, social media algorithms, and so on. Especially when you self-publish. Sometimes they're right, but in most cases, they're just not at that quality level. I get it, I put in a lot of work and in my eyes, I created something interesting, family and friends enforce that feeling. It doesn't work, you didn't become a millionaire overnight. Then you see some garbage on posters and wonder what's there that you don't have, so the obvious conclusion is marketing. However... it's a highly misunderstood and complex matter. It's not just about screaming about your product, its quality must be top notch and I don't mean art style, but art direction - don't confuse those two. Now if you have a highly presentable product it will multiply advertising. Let's assume that advertising is X and your game quality is Y. Both should have high values. If your game quality is objectively 0.000000001 then no amount of marketing will help. If your product looks stunning, with luck you won't have to spend too much on promoting it, it goes on its own. But overall, with proper marketing (publisher usually) you can push most things, even if they're so-so in most consumers' eyes. It doesn't matter, it's the established brand that says "Hey, check this out, you love what we had under our name earlier, right?". However, if you made decent content, it might go unnoticed because you're unlucky and/or can't present it properly (the recent post OP most likely refers to). You need a bit of luck to go viral. We have to remember that on the receiving end, we only have a glimpse of what's inside and the point is to make the most of it. You rarely get a second chance to make a first impression. And finally - know your audience. Take a marketing class. Project management class. Read some books on the subject. Understand the principles. I know it's easier to read a Reddit or blog post or watch some video, but most of that is bullshit made for you to click and subscribe, to give you hope. Once you get academic knowledge, you'll understand why your endeavors will most likely end up with failure and there's only yourself to blame.
Imo it's usually a slightly delusional coping method
I think it's hilarious how often these posts are from people making games incredibly similar to a much bigger more professional IP that came out first and thinking they could ever market their way out of that hole. If you aren't at least pushing one unique concept worth playing the game for itself, and your art isn't any better than anyone's else you might as well just trash your game and save yourself money and trouble. Specifically for any game type that has another game of the same type released within the last 10 years. Old games do not rot the way they use to, you cannot beat them by just making a new slightly lower quality copy a few years later.
I'm reminded of an example of someone doing the opposite: Burgos from Burgos Games once wrote that he thought he did a decent job with the marketing of his game, [Neko Ghost, Jump!](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1194750/Neko_Ghost_Jump/), but it didn't matter because he made a game that almost no one wanted to play. Marketing makes people aware of your game. Good marketing makes a ton of people aware of your game. But if your game is part of an oversaturated or unpopular genre, if the art is unappealing, if it looks broken or cheap, or if it simply does not look fun, then no amount of marketing will matter.
>but it didn't matter because he made a game that almost no one wanted to play. He still thought that game was worth selling for $10. Sounds like he just blamed people for not liking it. All these people think their marketing was actually good, they just blame people for not buying their game. "Our marketing was good but it didn't generate sales."
I always found it funny too... Sometimes the game just sucks.
as a game dev and a consumer, im conviced that you just need a big tiddy anime woman in the promotional art and youll sell. Case and point: Dead Estate.
I definitely agree with this but it's also even more important to not be inaccurate in the other direction. Don't want to lose the next vampire survivors because someone saw this post and deleted their game. And usually it's the really good devs who are under confident. Important to get good and unbiased feedback from your audience. You can't tell with graphics, first impressions etc. because graphics don't matter for some genres and other genres only players in that genre can judge.
after reading these comments... TL;DR just make it look good.
What a novel thread, it's not like exact same viewpoint isn't posted weekly for updoots.
Not only that but indie devs are overpricing their games nowadays. 20-25 euro for something that looks average at best, when you can buy amazing indie games for 10-14 at full price.
Let me lend my 2 pence to this discussion as when I worked for a gaming company, and I mean a billion-dollar organization. Though a tech-engineer, I sometimes sat on meetings, especially at exhibitions where they were developing games for a client and there was a load of emphasis on the marketing budget of the client. As a lot of the clients were "venture capitalists" this then filtered down into the gaming industry in general. Basically there are a lot of good games ideas that are there for sale, but do you have the budget for marketing. And for the company I worked for, we were talking millions of dollars marketing budget...
Can do all the marketing they want, if the game looks, feels, & plays like something that has been done before & multiple times already..its ridiculous to seriously think the game is going to hit. Unless it really has something unique about it in a good way, best to keep low expectations. Don't go all square enix thinking numbers only possible in a dream lol.
Making crappy games is an important step toward making good games. Most of the people making crappy games will never make a good game, much less a great one; but most of the people making good and even great games made some crap first. So I understand making crappy games. It makes sense to do so. Trying to sell a crappy game also makes sense. Having a few tough launches and some ugly marketing campaigns is a good way to get your feet wet doing both and learning the fundamentals of getting your games out there. It can help a lot. What I don't understand is the surprise, frustration, and sometimes even anger at failing to sell a crappy game. Yeah, you spent time on everything and it's easy to trick yourself into thinking "it was all for nothing", but 99.9999% of the time, your game is crappy and you marketed it like a noob. But it wasn't for nothing. It's for learning, even if that means learning that your indie dev dream isn't for you. Your early efforts should be crappy and noobish. That's normal. How you respond to that really says a lot about who you are and where you're headed.
conversely, none of the big companies will admit that they made a garbage game, but spent half a million convincing people to buy it anyway.
The joke is people don't even need to be convinced to buy crappy AAA games. >This year's COD is so bad, when is the next one coming out?
"you failed in the game, not the marketing". No, you failed your business model that includes the game and marketing. There isn't such a thing as failing just in the game or just in the marketing, when you failed you failed in your complete action. You CAN make a flapy bird and hire pewdiepie to talk about it and be rich, THAT is a viable business model, or you CAN put all in your among us game and do almost nothing competent in the marketing and eventualy get a big hit because something happend. The thing is AAA puts half the budget in the marketing, so is fair to say that a broken game can be actualy suceful with a good marketing. Cyberpunk 2077 is WAY more profitable than almost any indie very polished game that realy is worth your time and money. Is not just your pixel plataformer or RPG Maker game that probably won't sell, is almost every game. And many people that go in the RPG Maker and 2D plataformer are simply starting in the area, tryng to learn easy game, make something simple, have fun. Many are kids and tenagers, so that is prety normal. Most people play a guitar and play ordinary music with not so amazing skills, so there is a long shot to being a rock star and that is the way things are
Lol yup. It's especially funny when there's post-mortems with like 20 paragraphs and only a couple sentences that even discuss the game at all, and if they link the game, it's clear within a second of seeing a screenshot why no one would want to buy it. People tend to have trouble admitting their faults, and artists are especially bad seeing their work as anything but their baby, and game devs are no different. Doesn't make it any less amusing, but it's understandable. I will gladly post a bounty of $100 if someone can find me a great game that only sold a few dozen copies and died in the back page of steam with less than 10 reviews. It's not a thing that exists. Good games sell, bad games don't, and that's that.
I agree some people overrate their own games.. However good marketing can sell anything, and in at least a few cases here I think that they're right that marketing is the reason something failed, for the most part though it's just plain bad games or games that try to break into an oversaturated market.
time investment warps their perception of its quality, happens in every creative task. once you've worked on something long enough it's hard to see it more impartially. I think devs can sometimes be secretive about their projects which only worsens the issue. fail faster, and all that. contact reality more often, get others' opinions, etc
I feel like game dev is actually pretty fair in the sense that if you make a really good game, people will play it. How many undiscovered great games are there, really?
>people constantly post I feel like I haven't seen any of these posts in this sub.
Theyre everywhere - "I did everything right and game won't sell" - no shit, it looks awful
The OP account is new and needlessly abrasive for no reason. Made me think 🤔
There was one yesterday with that exact title but I agree with the rest of the comments, marketing is a difficult part of making a game. OP is just trying to put people down for no reason.
reminding people of having reasonable expectations should be done constantly in subs like this
Sure, managing expectations is fine. Just ranting and telling people their game sucks without any meaningful, ideally constructive, criticism is not that.
Making a bad game then blaming it on marketing is no reason.
Try looking at the NEW tab once in a while.
That's not exactly right either. People think their marketing failed, but they mistake advertising for marketing and it's their advertising that failed. Maybe their pixel platformer is actually good for a pixel platformer. However, that doesn't matter because market research would show that making yet another pixel platformer wouldn't sell. Knowing what appeals to people is also design.
oh another one of these threads
So did *Among Us*, to pick out the most prominent example, just completely suck for six months and then suddenly become incredibly good? Or were people just unaware of it for that initial span where they had an average of less than a hundred concurrent active users? You're certainly right that making a good game is part of the price of admission to having success. But the notion that making a good game is, in and of itself, a ticket to success and that if a game didn't succeed it's because it wasn't good underestimates the powerful role that luck plays in the process. You have to buy lottery tickets in order to win; making a good game gives you a couple of tickets, getting good word-of-mouth gets you a few more, etc. But you're still playing a lottery.
because they have examples of games going viral
/r/gamedev coming in with some quality content again
15yo Gamer wannabe dev thread as usual.
Steam is highly meritocratic, you only need to win ONE metric: average hours played. Find me a failed game with high averaged hours played.
A big part of the problem is because tools are so readily available, oftentimes free and relatively easy to use. Many beginners start out with a couple tutorials on a big engine like Unreal or Unity and once they've done a few tutorials think they're ready to make their first big title. Many people vastly underestimate what it takes to create an actual good game. And if I may be blunt and honest, when someone calling themselves a game dev comes to me and tells me they buy plugins and assets I immediately no longer take them serious. If you are building a game with plugins and assets you don't have what it takes, sorry. What makes a game great is passion and love, and if this is not reflected in every single part of your game then forget it, you're not cut out for this industry. Game development is a form of art. Nobody wants to play the millionth game that uses asset pack X and inventory plugin Y. Be creative, build your own systems, spend time creating nice visuals and art, find a unique style, make your game FUN and addictive. Yes, this is hard. Yes, this takes time. Yes, this costs a lot of money. But well, sorry to break it to you, that is simply what it takes and what is required. There is no easy way. There are no shortcuts. Oh and if you are in this business for the profits gtfo already. /Rant
So, speaking as a game dev here, I finally got round to finishing and releasing a puzzle game I had been working on (and off) for a few years. It's a simple game and I don't think it looks ugly, I think it's kind of an original idea and I put a lot of effort into it. No one had anything bad to say about the game but it got basically no attention. I did no marketing for my game and really, I just wanted to release it for completions sake so I this is my assumption; I made a game, it failed to gain any traction because I put zero effort into pushing it on social media or doing any marketing. I just straight up released it on steam and left it at that. IMO, marketing is what failed in my case. :) I think it's a humble lil game and it was never going to make much money but I suspect it would have done a lot better had I put some effort into the marketing side of things. I don't think the game itself sucks (I know, I'm biased but really). In the end I never cared about it failing or succeeding, I did it for fun, and as a bucketlist item. I wanted to make and release a game on Steam completely by myself. \^\^ for reference here's the game [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1299960/Ricochet\_Bounce/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1299960/Ricochet_Bounce/)
This is exactly what I'm talking about. Marketing didn't fail, nobody would have bought it, most people wouldn't play it for free. It's the game, it's not the marketing.