Influencer Guide Part Two: 8 Tips to Make Influencers Fall in Love With Your Game

Published in July 2022 by Gamecity Hamburg as the second installment of an influencer series, this practical guide helps game developers, particularly indie studios, recruit streamers and content creators to promote their titles. Its central thesis is that influencers with close community ties can turn a game into a hit, but success depends on targeted, respectful outreach rather than mass solicitation.

The guide lays out eight tips. Developers should first research creators on Twitch, YouTube, TikTok and other platforms by examining who covers similar games or uses relevant hashtags. Smaller, genre-focused creators are favored over larger generalists: a niche audience of 1,000 may deliver more real interest than a general audience of 10,000, where only a few dozen viewers might care. Creators unfamiliar with a genre may bounce off a game, which can discourage their audience during a live stream. Developers should also decide what content they want, such as a Let's Play or an invitation to showcase the game themselves, depending on whether the title is released or still in development.

Outreach advice centers on a tailored elevator pitch that references the creator's earlier content and highlights features that are fun with a community. Developers should use official business emails or management contacts where available, falling back on DMs that include an email address. Making evaluation easy through trailers, websites, demos or a shared press folder is encouraged. Messages should be treated as business inquiries: polite, with measured follow-up, recognizing that many smaller creators treat the activity as a hobby. Finally, developers should expect larger names to request payment, since influencing is now a viable profession, and should be candid about budget limits, though some creators may still take on a game they genuinely like.

The guide is qualitative and experience-based, with no formal methodology or survey data, and it has a general international scope with a Hamburg-based framing. It points readers to the series' first installment on Hamburg creators and to marketing advice from Mooneye Studios, developer of Lost Ember, on low-budget self-promotion.