Live Q&A (Inside Conference)

Hey, hey, hey, I'm going live right here right this morning. Look at this. Hey, good to see you all. It's uh Friday. Happy Friday if you're in the western What what hemisphere am I in? I'm in the western hemisphere. So, if you're If you're on this side of the international dateline, happy Friday. Good to see you all. Um I'm just kicking things off. I got to send a little message on Discord says, "Hey, pop in the live stream. It's live. I'm here." I got to go over to Discord world. Just Just stick with me. We'll be starting in just a minute. Uh what I want you to do is say hi in the chat and link to your game. Just link to it. Just go straight up link to your game in the chat while I'm uh while I'm getting ready here. This is going to be fun. This is going to be a fun Friday.

All right, I'm live. Okay, back. I'm back from Discord land. Here we go. Let's do this. Um Let Let Let me slam this over into this. Okay, we are here. Um This is uh this is my Q&A on YouTube. Uh I'm here to answer your questions. So, here's how it's going to run. I am going to ask you for questions. Now, when I look over at live chat, it is just a stream of chat and I can't see everything. So, what I need you to do is if you're just going to chit-chat, God love you. Thank you. If you've got a question, I want you to say question like in all

bold and then put your question in, okay? That way I can scan through the chat and find the questions and answer them. If you just tuck your question and it's just a quiet question and you don't put the big word question, I'm just going to think you're chitter-chattering and I can't do it. It's a one-man show here, folks. So, I got to I got to I got to have some hacks in order to do it. So, thank you so much. Yep. I hope you can I hope you can hear. Let's see here. Can you hear me okay? I just want to make sure that you can hear me. Just give me a thumbs-up if you can hear me. Um I'm just I'm just double-checking. I'm always paranoid. And so when I see again starts on time, yep, yep. I just I haven't seen anybody actually say if they can hear me okay. I'm just making sure. Um Yes, yes. Yes, you can. All right. Whoa. A little like uh Uh I just bumped the tripod with my foot

here. It was like an earthquake for a second there. Okay, let me fix that. All right, we're back on it. Back on. Um okay, so here's here's how it's going to work. I'm going to um I'm going to answer your questions um while we're while we're getting the questions. So again, if you want your question answered about how to market a game on Steam, if you've got a mobile question, I don't know it. If you got any other questions, I don't know it. But if you've got a question about Steam, like if you got life questions, I don't know. You got a question about Steam, that I can help you with, okay? So, um that's how we're going to do it. Now, um while we're waiting while I'm while you're popping in those questions. So again, if you've got a question for me do big bold question and do it. Um one of the things we're doing here, um I just posted a blog post. Well, I posted it I I did a little schedule post. I did it last night. It was kind of a busy week. Um looks like he hit. Like he hit him. He hit the games. I got I I I just got to shift my shift my presentation over here just a little bit, folks. So, hit games. All right. So, what I do is

every every year and throughout the quarters Oops, there's my website. Um I look at the hit games of 2020 2025 or whatever. And here we are. Um So, what I'd like to do is um just look and see like what's trending, what's going on. Um if you Here's the deal. If you start looking at general trends, you get out of the vibes feel, okay? And you And you don't feel like the world's on fire all the time. If you look at overall average metrics, that sort of thing, it kind of I find it reassuring in this chaotic world. And you know, people are like, "Oh, there's so many games on Steam, so many games. Oh my goodness." But if you look at the stats, yes, it goes up every year. Let's see this dot. This is so far the first quarter. We're in first quarter. We just finished it, actually. We're in second quarter. This is 2025. See that little dot? See, that was 2024. This is 2025. It's a

smaller dot. See, there was a big jump when it went up to um 2024. And people Anytime there's a jump, people are like, "Oh, it's over." Indie games is over. Everything's done. We are done. Um because they're like, "Oh, it's all AI slop now." But if you look at the stats, um we are not increasing at an increasing rate, which is what exponential. Every time somebody's really worried about something, they say it's exponential. They're like, "Oh, exponential growth. Oh my god. Uh, games are growing exponentially." So, here was 2025. It was a big jump. It was about a big jump 2024. But 2025 is actually we're not growing as fast. We're still growing. I mean, there's more people every day. Um but it's not as a a dramatic as it was previously. It's actually fluctuating, which is not exponential. I think it's polyrhythmic. I always forget what I Um Um, but basically, the the growth is up, but it's it's, you know, on the lower side. See, there's the 11s and 10s. This is 15. Before it was like 25% we grew a lot. So, um, the percentage increase isn't as much. Um,

the other interesting thing that I found when looking back at the numbers, you can get this at howtomarketagame.com is horror is always the the number one, but this uh at this time. Now, this is just we're just at Q1, track it throughout the thing. Horror has always been number one, but a narrative jumped in front of it. Now, that doesn't mean horror is dead. Oh my god, horror is dead. No, it just means that the narrative is really jumping up front. And what a narrative game is and it's you have to just look at the games. Like there's no like super firm definition, but usually a horror game or a narrative game is anything where the narrative and the choices you make take center stage instead of like minute-to-minute gameplay. You know, if it's a rogue-like, you know, you do a lot of battling and hitting skeletons and stuff and then maybe there's some story sprinkled in. But a narrative game's like, no, you're just making choices the whole way through. And so I saw those narrative games uh jump right ahead. And my one theory I have, and I have if I scroll down, I noticed that every year it's been growing. This is why I track this year by year just to see what the trends are.

Not just like one thing where it's like, oh, it's over. Um, if you look, narrative games have been growing. 17 games hit 1,000 reviews. And so what this this number is is number of games that have hit well. They have a thousand reviews or more. They might not be total bestsellers. They may not even be profitable, but to get to a thousand reviews, you really need the Steam algorithm to say, this is good. We're going to push this. That's pretty much the only games that get to a thousand are ones that have a lot of algorithm push, meaning something good is happening behind the scenes. So, only in 2022, 17 games hit 17 narrative games hit a thousand. Then it went up to 20, then 30, and this year we're already seeing it as the number one. So, narrative games are very front and center. Now, if you want to know what they what I mean by this, come look at this list right here. This is This is what I These are all the narrative games that I saw hit 1,000 views. So, you can judge and say like, "Oh, that's that's what you mean by a narrative game." And it could be visual novels. Oh, visual novels are a lot of them, but there are other ones like a walking simulator. Like, The Root Trees Are Dead is kind of like a walking simulator. And people are like, "Well, what's the difference between that and puzzle game?" Puzzle game is like the puzzles

are the thing, you know, like Yes, there was a story in Portal, but it was really you were stumped if you didn't solve the puzzles. I And this is just my personal opinion. Puzzles on on Portal were like front and center. Like, if you didn't solve the puzzle, that's what people there for, and then the narrative was the spice on top. Whereas, The Root Trees Are Dead is There are some puzzle elements, but the narrative is really there. It's all about, you know, exploring who the root trees are and kind of the mystery behind that. So, that's basically my definition. But, all the other ones are pretty much um visual novels where there's a dialogue choice and you're like reading the dialogue, you push the button. So, um just some interesting stuff here on what what's there. Um So, um that's that. Um I'm going to dive into some questions, but one thing that I want to uh let you know, if you go up here, you see the spring sale. One thing that I'm doing is um every year I get back from some conferences, and there's some good talks. There's some really good talks there. And I gave a talk, and I want to

share it with the community. And so, what I do is a micro-conference. And the thing with a um micro-conference, I call it the Inside Conference. And um it starts on Monday. After this weekend, starts Monday at this time. Monday at this time, we're doing the micro-conference. And if you buy it before Monday, it'll be $39. The price goes up after the conference starts. It will go up. So, now's the time to get it if you're going to attend. Now, what I do is So, I'm giving a talk all on how Steam works. Like, uh cuz they changed a lot of the rules, a a of the algorithm stuff. And so, I want to make sure you know what the changes are so that when you make your game you're you're maximizing what they do. I mean, it's not like totally different, but there's a lot of tools that Steam's like Valve is like, "Here's some tools." And if you don't use those, you're not getting as much visibility as you could be. So, I'm going to go line by line. Now, if you attend to my GDC talk, it was 30 minutes. They only give me 30 minutes. This one's going to be an hour. I had to cut stuff for my GDC talk

to fit it in that 30 minutes. I had to talk a mile a minute. When I have an hour, which is basically what I have, I'm going to let it go. It's just going to be a slower talk, more stuff. I had to cut like 30% of my slides in order to fit within the 30 minutes. There's no limits here. I own it. This is my town. Uh so, uh that's what that's going to be. But, in addition to that, let me uh click on the thing here. And the way you get there is you just uh go to my website howtomarketagame.com. Look, I'm in San Francisco. Um you just go to my website, click up at the top it says spring sale, click that, and then you can come here to uh the conference page, and not only do I speak, but I bring in speakers to also do it cuz I don't want to be just the center stage. Like, "Yeah, it's me." Um part of this conference, I also bring in other experts cuz I want to know them. Uh a lot Many of these speakers gave talks at GDC. Some of them didn't. Um Thomas Bidaux is the expert on Kickstarter. People always ask me about Kickstarter. I don't know. I know nothing about Kickstarter. So, if you

want to ask the question, should I publish my Steam page and my Kickstarter page at the same time? Don't ask me. Ask this guy. He's going to be at the conference. Um he's going to be talking about the trends of Kickstarter. And the weird thing is right at the end of 2025, I mean, it was like or 2024, it was like Kickstarter revenues were kind of flat, and then it kind of spiked up, and they uh Kickstarter has been adding a lot of new features. Thomas is going to be going through those. So, if you're thinking about Kickstarter, come to this um come to the presentation. Uh the conference will be there. And yes, even if you can't make his hour cuz he's at a specific time. Let's see when it is. I I list all the times on the speakers. So, he's on Tuesday. Next Tuesday is Thomas Bidaux. How do you get crowdfunding? Um, he is uh going to be there. Even if you can't make it like Tuesday, I got to go to the dentist. All of these are recorded. And so, once you buy it, you get all the recordings. I I try and upload them the day of just in case somebody is like on a different time zone, they're sleeping when these talks are. Um, they can watch the talk the next morning. So, I try my best to get these

up as soon as possible. We got Clara Sia. She used to work for Devolver. Like she was the director of marketing at Devolver. I think that was her title. I think it says right in here. Director of marketing. But she was at Devolver. Like she was in charge of like contacting streamers to cover Devolver games. She's so smart about getting streamers to play your game. So, we're going to talk to her about how you can get covered. She left Devolver. She was like, "See you at Devolver. I can do more on my own than I can with you." And um, so she'll be there. That's me. I'm going to do Steam page. So, if you got a Steam page you want reviewed, I've got a survey. So, once you sign up for the conference, once you join, if you've already joined, if you've already bought your ticket, click it. There'll be things that's getting started. Click that and there's a form and you fill out that form and you put your Steam page in and say, "Chris, review this." I'm going to try and review as many I'll go 2 hours. I might go 2 hours. I'm going to try and get everybody's Steam page that's submitted a quick review. Like 5, 10 minutes, somewhere in there depending on how interesting it is. Um, sometimes I see the same mistake over and over and

I'm not going to say the same mistake over and over. I might just point to your page and say like, "Oop, problem number four." And I've already talked about what problem number four is. Problem number four is usually when you click your name, you don't go to the developer page, you go to the default page. That's the number four. Uh, so we'll talk about that. Uh, we got something on how to get publishers to fund you. I got a little wrinkle here. Let me Let me fix this wrinkle. Um, that didn't that did nothing. Okay, sorry. I'm painting. So, my uh my office is a little bamba jaya. Um it's all crooked-y. Okay, so uh we're going to talk about how to get publishers to fund you, how to get funding funding uh with Jason Della Rocca. We got Khalid Booker who's doing this really interesting He got a Blackjack game on Discord and he's doing like this game jam startup. It's pretty cool. Um so that's all that and then I got two secret things, two secret talks. They've agreed to do it. It's just the scheduling and they had some big moments to their their game was up for an award and it's a big game. It's a game you all know.

I haven't announced it yet cuz I don't know what time they are speaking. Um but let me tell you you want to see this talk. It's two different talks for the same game. I'm just going to tease it like that. It's a big game um but it's coming and I just they haven't picked a time, so I don't want to tell everybody to sign up and then I don't know the time. So it's going to be big stuff. But anyway, so yes, if you're going to do the conference, now is the time to do it and yes, the the thing changes the the amount changes when you click it cuz what it does is it calculates VAT and all this stuff. I I tried my best, but See, uh uh the the platform is Teachable that I do. So if you click it and you're like the price is different, it's different I I tried to do the best price I can. It's just that depending on your country and your currency and your VAT and all that stuff, you get a different price. So um but this is the coupon. If you click on my website, that's it. But again, it expires on Monday when the conference starts. So get it now, otherwise the price is going up. All right, so um let's answer some I'm going to answer some questions here. Okay. Um My internet is worse. Okay, so sorry if

it's jumpy. This is recorded, so I might up re-upload this video as a thing. It's locally recorded, so it will be good. All right, so we're going to go through the questions. All right, I'm going to just going to start picking questions that you've been asking and I'm going to go through them. All right. All right. Question, just posted my Steam page today. Do you do Steam page reviews at all? Um I don't do them one-on-one anymore. What I do, again, if this conference, if you sign up for the conference, I will try my best to get through everybody's Steam page. I'm going to stick around until everybody's Steam page is reviews are done. I'm going to try it my best. So, sign up, put your Steam page in there. I'll I'll get it to it. But, I don't do one-on-one reviews. I don't do like, "Hey, one-on-one things." I don't do those anymore. Um okay. Um let's see here. Should I make a demo or a prologue for my Steam page? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Okay, this is really what I'm going to This is

one of the big changes. It's demo. Prologue has basically gone away. I think Steam Steam doesn't disallow prologues, but um they're kind of like I have a feeling one of these days they're going to be no more prologues. And or you're going to create a prologue and they'll be like, "Nope. Stop it. It's a demo. Do the demo." There's a lot of tools built into Steam to do demo tools, and that's what I'm going to be talking about specifically in my talk is the demo thing. But, no prologue. Do demo. Um let's see. Uh a lot of marketing techniques assume the existence of a fan base. For a completely fresh indie dev, how do you I don't That is not Well, I don't know who's who's fan base who you're talking So, the question is, sorry, a lot of marketing assumes a fan base and to go from there, how do I do it if I have no fan base? I don't believe that's true. Well, I mean, not my stuff. My stuff does not talk about a fan base. Okay. Um I don't know what marketing talk we're talking about here, who we're talking about, but I assume $0, zero fan base. And that's one of the things. People are always like, "Oh, Steam's not

worth the 30%." If your game is hot and it is good, Steam will catapult you to the top. And that's what I talk about. I talk about how to get the Steam algorithm to promote you. You do not need a fan base, and I actually don't think it's as much like the way social networks are working then the the way the um algorithms are changing is they're more like hey if they don't care how big your following is, they just care about um is your thing hot and they'll push it to the top. That's a lot with TikTok and stuff like that. Now, I think with this if this existing fan base, maybe this is coming from I've more and more this year I heard a lot of people being like, oh should I start a dev log on YouTube? I don't I don't think you dev logs on YouTube and that's just where it's like you see a lot of popular you probably come from YouTube so you watch a lot of YouTube videos and see a see a lot of streamers who have big followings and then they have good Steam pages. So by following the YouTube kind of I would say kind of intelligentsia, the people on YouTube who talk a lot about game dev, it makes you think, oh these YouTubers have a big following and their

games do well so that means I need a new following. No, no, no, no. You're stuck in the YouTube bubble. Break out. Just punch through the YouTube bubble. YouTube sucks. Get out of YouTube. Go to blogs. Blogs are cool kids. howtomarketgame.com where um you get out of the YouTube bubble, okay? So let's go to YouTube uh howtomarketgame.com and I explain this stuff how to get through it. Now, here's the deal. I don't think building a YouTube audience to then funnel to a game that you um get a following, I don't think that's actually very practical. It's very hard to build a YouTube following. I don't think it's worth it. I don't think you should. Um if you get a good demo, you contact streamers who already have the big following, you just contact them. They will elevate you. So I do not think building a following is as important. I think you're kind of stuck in a something like a maybe the YouTube bubble. I'm I'm I'm reverse engineering where you're coming from and it seems like when you watch a lot of YouTube that these big YouTubers with huge followings have successful games and that's a requirement. It is not, my friend. You don't need a YouTube channel. You really don't. You just need to contact the right YouTube people. Uh

I'm going to be talking to Clara Sia from Devolver. She'll tell you how to contact those YouTubers. My talk on how to get a demo up, that does it. But yeah, you do not need a big following. You don't need money to do this. I'm just going to set that clear. So break out of your YouTube bubble. All right. Um and it is not Half-Life 3. I do not It's not Half-Life 3 that is going to be guessed I I don't have Gabe from Half-Life talking about Half-Life 3 on my channel. It's not that big. It's a big game. It's not the biggest. Um it's not the big It's not the big game. All right. Um Thanks, Nikhil, for the question. Vin, the percentage of horror games released versus actually making 1,000 views is so low. So, why choose that because it's easy to market? I wrote a whole blog. Just search my blog for horror. It's horror. Just search See this button this search thing right there. There's a search Why don't I just go I don't know why I'm making it harder on myself. Um Uh search. Okay, so here is why. Yes, if you do a raw percentage, survivorship

bias Survivorship bias. Um the raw percentage Correct. I totally I totally grant that. But, it's still high. Um I did want to If you look at 2025 horror, um I looked at that and the percentage is still pretty high. Even if it's not the highest, the percent of horror that are made that still succeed is still very high. And the number of games See, the thing is the reason I count total number I do this stuff. Um like when I look at the blog, the reason I do total number is um let's see. Taking a second to load. Sorry. Sorry, folks. It's taking a long time, which makes me feel like the internet's not working. If I fade out, if my internet crashes, and I disappear, I'm still here. I'm still going to keep streaming. All right. So, um I'm going to record it and I'll upload later. All right. The reason I look at these hit games is because there's energy. The hardest thing about Steam See, the way the Steam algorithm

works is they're looking for people to buy games. That means there's a fan base. And when you see a bunch of horror games And this is, even though horror dropped to three, that's still good. That means there are a lot of horror game fans out there buying lots of games. See, there's no MOBAs on here. The MOBA audience is not buy a lot of games. They just buy one. And they bought it like 5 years ago, or they're buying, you know, battle passes or whatever. And they play the same one for years. The MOBA fan base is not very active. They don't buy a lot of games. They buy one game and a lot of stuff from one game. Whereas horror, simulation, those narrative fans, they buy a lot of games. So, that tells me there's a lot of energy in these genres. These fan bases love good games. And even if you do the percentage, it's actually pretty good. It is actually pretty good. There's a I did a breakdown. It's there. The other thing that horror can do is the horror games can go viral.

Like crazy viral. Like if you make a trailer and you upload it to YouTube and it is good. I've seen a YouTube trailer for a horror game get 100,000 wish lists in a weekend. I'm not kidding. That's not an exaggeration. I wrote about it, too. Just search my blog for horror and I explain in detail all it is. So, there's an active fan base. They buy a lot of games. There are lots when your trailer does well, you can get so many impressions from a trailer because people share and they're like, "Look at this horror game." It gets word-of-mouth sharing. And I'll be honest, I'm not saying it's easy, but compared to other genres like if you're making a survival game, open world survival craft, open 4X, that's also why there's not a lot of 4X. There's a There's a big fan base for 4X, but they're very hard to make. It takes a lot of code. And open world survival craft has a lot You have to build a lot of code and a lot of tech and a lot of art to do it. Whereas a horror game has it's a lot of easier. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's easier.

It's, you know, you're confined in a small space. You got to you got to explore a haunted house. You make this monster and then there's not a lot of code. I mean, there is code. I'm not minimizing it, but it's not like you have to build these deep deep deep deep deep systems. Um, and is and your art doesn't have to be perfect because it's a lot of like realistic settings. My theory is horror, the better the horror games the horror games do better when they're set in a realistic place because a realistic place um is relatable. I know this realistic place. Oh, I've been in a place just like this. Oh, and it and it plays on your fears. If you make a fantasy environment instead of horror game in a fantasy environment, people are like split-mind cuz they're like, "Oh, I just want to learn about this exploring place, but I'm not scared of this thing cuz I'm I have nothing to relate to it." Whereas a realistic environment like a creepy abandoned mall. Oh, that's so creepy because I've been in creepy abandoned malls and there was like a weird guy over there. What if it turned out I'm playing a game where that weird guy really did try and attack me. So, I think that's why horror games do well is

cuz it's relatable. So, anyway, what I'm saying is when it's a realistic area, you can buy asset packs like buy the broom pack, buy the used car pack off of that, splash some blood on it and you've got like decor. Whereas if you do a fantasy world where it's like a very specific art style like if you're doing a Hades-style roguelike, you've got to create all this art from the ground up. So, the development costs are shorter as as shorter. Horror games can be shorter duration-wise so you don't have to develop as much. The fan base, if you hit it right and you have to hit it right. Can't do every game. But if you get it right, it can go viral. There's a hungry audience. So, there's a lot of factors in horror's favor. I'm not saying it's perfect. I'm not saying it's easy money. It's still hard. I'm just saying there is a real audience here and it's worth at least trying for. That's why and so we don't just look at It's not simple. We don't just look at raw percentages. We look at all the other factors behind development, the audience, the

marketing, all those aspects. It's not just a one silver bullet. You got to look at all the aspects of it. So, like an RPG, lots of RPGs are very popular. I don't recommend them as much because they take forever to make and they need so much content. That yes, that I I consider RPGs much riskier than horror cuz if you fail with a horror, you can get one out in 6 months and if it fails, you only spend 6 months. Whereas if your RPG fails, those take like 5 years to make. So, that's why I don't recommend an RPG. All right, let's keep going. So, great questions. Keep them coming. Keep them coming. Uh let's see. What do you think? Hunt says, "What do you think about games that use a mid-journey AI to create sprites or backgrounds?" I think it's going to turn out bad. Um I've never seen it. Um I don't think AI is there yet. Um to create sprites See, the thing is with video games, especially for sprites, you need all the angles and you need like all this stuff and it has to be consistent art style. And I've tried. I play with AI every once in a while. It's kind of silly. It's kind of fun. I can

never like even in this I'm just trying to do one project. I was trying to make a picture of my street, my my own home and I wanted to to line the street with white trees because white barked trees cuz I want to try and tell people, "Hey, let's plant some white bark trees in our street." It looks like what what what it could look like cuz I was trying to sell my neighbors on like going in to to line our streets with white trees. And it was so I was like, "Okay, ChatGPT, can you make a a residential neighborhood with white trees lining it?" And it like put like a car with a tree growing out of the car. I was like, "No. Okay, the trees look good, but there's a car with a tree growing out of it. Can you re-render it?" And there was like it all of a sudden made brown trees, but there were no cars under the trees. So, I was like, "Okay, well, you got the cars right, but you messed up the trees. I want white trees and no cars growing with them growing out and I want a residential street." And then it would like grow like it drew like a city block with white trees and no cars. And I was like, this is the most mind-frustrating thing I've ever seen. So, I don't think

it's going to work. I mean, maybe years off, but see the thing with games, this is what people don't realize. It's not just about making the game. The game has to have a consistent art style, a very consistent, deliberate art style. And I just whether you think it's ethical or not, I just don't think it's there. And so, you can usually tell when you see a game you're like, that There's something there AI art that's just like it just it looks just it looks plastic. I don't know what it is. I can't put my finger on it. Just looks weird. I don't think it's there. Um it's going to be a long ways off. And I I People are always like, "Oh, the AI flood's coming on Steam." I am not seeing it. I'm not seeing it. I mean, yes, there might be a capsule here and there. Usually, in the the reason you could AI generate a capsule for your game is capsules, even if you can hire an artist, they never quite look like the game. And that's by design. Like the book book covers never like have the actual characters that are in the book. They're just like, "This is the vibe." AI is good at making just a vibe, but anything that's specific, like it's really bad at. If you're like, "I need a a woman who has a blue shirt and

red pants." And then you're going to get a woman with like blue shirt, blue pants. You're like, "You were close. You're very close, but not close enough. And she has to have a belt and five uh pouches on there." It's not And then they'll never get the five pouches and the shirt and pant color. They'll get one of the things. It's just This is not there. I I don't know. I know it's fun to talk about AI and complain about stuff, but I just don't think it's there. Should you keep your free demo live on launch before you know if you're going to succeed? What would you consider making that choice? I don't know. I don't have enough data on it. Um I just don't know. Um Um I can tell you some vibes I have, so don't say Chris told me to do this. This is These are the things that I'm looking at. So, what I think part of this question is based off this blog post here. Um if you look at this blog post, um, the newsletter, um, I looked Let me see where that is. Demo lab after launch. Okay, I looked at it. And I found that these games Now, all these games that are in my survey that I'm looking at succeeded. They got the

1,000 reviews. There were five of them that kept their demo up even after launch. And I noticed that they had a higher percentage. Look, 94% versus 84% uh review score for the people without a demo, okay? And my theory is, and the reason I specifically Somebody asked this on the Discord. The reason I broke this down was I was just like really quick measure because the one of the things that people claim I keep my demo up after launch because it it gets rid of bad reviews because if somebody's a hater, they're going to play your demo like, "This game sucks." And then they'll just leave. They're not going to be like because otherwise people go, "Maybe this game." They'll try it, they buy it, they throw their money down, they're like, "This game sucks. I'm going to leave a bad review." So, keeping your demo up hides bad reviews. Um and it hides those bad reviews. And by doing that, you get a better score. That's the theory. Yeah, I mean, I could see several arguments why this number is not consistent. Maybe there were only five games. Maybe if you already know you have a good game, you're more likely to put There's several reasons. I'm not saying this is definitive. We can't have definitive when we're doing marketing

because it's a business. It's an entrepreneur. I can give you some hints, okay? I could tell I can name myself five reasons why this data does not hold up, but I see it vibe trend, okay? And if we wait for perfect data, the market will have moved on. You've got to take a risk. You are an entrepreneur. So, 10% I'm like, maybe maybe something's here. Now, if these games are all hits, all of these games have what I call the magic. I Here's my thought is if your game doesn't have the magic, if you've done everything I talk about, if you've gotten a demo out, and you've reached out to streamers, and you've entered festivals, and despite all of that, it was still hard to get to 7,000 uh lists, your game probably doesn't have the magic, and it doesn't matter if you have a demo or not. It just doesn't have it. I'm sorry. And it's not going to get to that 1,000 reviews. You could try it. You could try putting your game out uh putting your demo on. Here's what I'd recommend. Um if it's really hard to get to the 7,000, take your demo down, launch your game, and then after launch, maybe put

it up, try it for a month, take it down for a month. You could just take your demo up and down up and down once you've launched. It doesn't matter. So, try that. Um but I think it's not it's not because like if you launched and you did everything right, did all the marketing, and it didn't hit, it's not because you had your demo up or not. It's It's all those other things. That's the bigger question. Um but here's the thing, folks. Just try it. I don't know. Just try it. Put it up for a month, try it, take it down for a month. Put it up for a month, try it. Just Just experiment. Just try some stuff, okay? All right. Um let's see here. How would you recommend Um okay. Question, how would you recommend starting the promotion of marketing for a horror game? Make a really good trailer with a very scary monster. Show the monster right in the first 5 seconds within the first 5 seconds. What you do is you make a trailer where it's like you're walking down a scary hallway and you hear this like sound behind you. It's like And then you like quickly whip pan over

and then you see this monster coming out of a dark shadow and it comes right at your face and then you have a scream and then it says your game's title, okay? And then is it game play and that's all in the first 5 seconds. And then the rest of the trailer is you doing things like maybe it's an abandoned mine and you show some mining and then you should do some stuff where you're like putting groceries away and you're in a haunted grocery store and you're putting groceries away and then something comes at you and you build that story of what your game actually is after that point. You take that trailer, you knock on the door of IGN and you say, "Hey, look at this awesome trailer. You want to feature it?" And they go, "Wow, this is such a scary trailer." And then you do it. And if you knock on the door and then they upload it and then you hopefully go viral. If you make a trailer like I just described. Oh, and by the way, I did not come up with this idea. Go to Choo-Choo Charles, look at Lunch Lady, um look at um Don't Scream. Those trailers are perfect. Those are

all It It's a formula. There's no magic secret trick. That's the formula. You show the scary monster in the first 5 seconds. That's it. If you do exactly that and you show it to people and they're and you show it to your game dev friends and you're like, "Did I get it? Did I get it right?" And you listen to all their feedback. Okay, if you do that, get all their feedback, you reach out to IGN and say, "Here's my scary trailer." And they say, "No." And then you upload it to YouTube and it doesn't go viral. Fix your monster. It has to be a scary monster. I And I don't know what's scary. I don't know. I can't tell you. It's like a joke. I always say, "Horror is like a joke. Either the joke is funny or it's not. You can't be like, 'Let me explain to you why my joke is funny.' If the joke is not funny, you can't explain it. You would just You're just like, 'This is a funny joke. I like it. I It makes me laugh.'" And that's the thing with horror. It's either scary or it's not. And so if you upload that trailer and it doesn't go anywhere and nobody thinks it's scary, try again. Like for the most part if you're an unknown indie with no backlog, who

cares? No history, just pull the trailer or change the game's name and fix that monster. It has to be scary. If it's not scary, you you've already failed. You can't be like, "Yeah, but the puzzles are really good." No, at the core, the horror game has to be scary. And if it's not scary in that trailer, it's over. It There's not There's nothing you can do. So you got to fix it. You got to make it scary. All right. AAA studios are increasing their games' prices at the moment. Do you think the trend with indies as well or how How you indies respond to that with prices? Uh This is the left behind. Yeah, I think Indies should be bumping their price up. Look at my blog, search my blog for price, just do the search bar right here. Search how should I price my game? I wrote a whole blog post arguing, if you look at the trend up for AAA, it's always going up. Indies is flat. With a little tiny bump at the end. Flat with a bump. We should be getting more reasonable prices. I think we should be doing it 20%. You can't just like raise your price 100% or something. So, look at games in your marketplace, like same

quality level, same genre. Put it in a spreadsheet. Average them, and then whatever that average is, increase it by 20%. We should be pushing up on our prices. We should be pushing up on our prices. Um okay. Great questions. I'm just going to do a quick aside. Here we are. Just reminding everybody inside conference. If you can't make it to Here's Here's why conferences suck. You got to go to San Francisco. You got to spend thousands of dollars to get a hotel room, an airplane. You might catch COVID. You have to be exhausted by the end of it. You get a scratchy throat even if you don't catch COVID. You're talking to people. It's exhausting. And it cost you thousands of dollars. This cost you less than a AAA game. And I'm going to tell you the best part. I just took the best talks that I saw. And I was like, this is a good talk. This is a good talk. I took them. You get them for less than the price of a AAA game. Speaking of prices of AAA games, that's why I brought it up. Um so, it's it's cheaper than a AAA game. It's pretty cheap.

GTA, the next GTA is going to be like 100 bucks. This is half of GTA. And you know what? It's going to make you more money than GTA cuz it's going to tell you exactly how to market a game. Again, some of these questions like, um you know, how do you do a demo? Demo versus prologue. I'm answering that cuz I'm doing a whole talk what's new with Steam and the Steam algorithm. The Steam algorithm is all about demos now. So, I'm going to talk about how to do demos, how to launch your demo, all that stuff, how to use the algorithm. All that stuff. We also got um people talking about streamers and crowdfunding and publisher funding and publishing uh game jam games, that's what Khaled's working on. Really cool stuff and two secret talks uh from a really good game um that I'm know you've heard of. Uh I just got to get them scheduled. All right, I'm going to go back. So, please um again, price goes up on Monday cuz Monday's the first day. This time on Monday, we're going to be listening to some talks. It's all virtual. You just log in, you sign up, and then we do a live chat and then you can also ask these experts questions cuz I'm going to do 30 minutes of talking to

the expert and saying like, "Oh, what Is Kickstarter good? How do you do Kickstarter?" And then at the end, we turn it over to the audience and the audience gets to ask the them questions. So, if you like if you want to ask the questions like, "I'm doing a Kickstarter." This expert that you have to pay hundreds of dollars for normally per hour, you can just ask them their your your awesome question for just the price of it. So, anyway, let's continue. Um Um how would you boom Okay, is freemium monetization of a game viable on Steam? Like first world free then unlock the full game? It is not. Uh freemium doesn't work. Um free to play I I I it it's an uphill battle. The Steam player base is very much they love premium. They just love pay up front. That's the way it is. Um the Steam algorithm is mostly favoring pay up front like because Steam promotion's based on how much money you earn and it's a lot easier for indies to just do premium. The problem

is not visibility and I think a lot of times the people do this um freemium thing, they're thinking, "Well, I'll get a lot more attention and more people will try it if it's free and then they'll convert to pay and that free attention will get me a lot more and then that No, that's not how it works. The Steam algorithm is looking at money. So, if you've got a good game, it it visibility is not the limiting factor. Everybody's like, how do I get visibility? Steam gives you a lot of visibility. I'm going to be talking about this in my talk. Steam gives you a lot of visibility. It's how you deal with it. If you don't do with that visibility that Steam gives you, they're like, here is 25,000 impressions. Here you go. Do what you will with this. And some games, they take that 25,000 and they're like, yeah, and they sell it so much that 25,000 Steam's like, right on, dude. Way to go. Way to sell to my 25,000 I give you. Now I'm going to give you this and this and this. Oh, you're still selling. Give me more more more more. And then um and then some games, Steam's like, here's 25,000 and they're like, uh and they never monetize that. Some games don't. And Steam's like, well, I

gave you 25,000 you did nothing with it. Why would I give you another 25,000? Sorry, dude. You're out. That's basically in a very colloquially a way how the Steam algorithm works. So, it's not um it's not It's not the limiting factor is not impressions and visibility. Steam gives you plenty. It's how you deal with it. And see, when you do freemium, Steam's like, here's this impressions and then you try and do your freemium weirdness where it's first one's free, next one's paid and Steam's like, well, that was weird. I don't know. You didn't convert very well. I'm going to just pull back my impressions from you. No more impressions. You're too weird. And that's the way the freemium stuff is. So, just premium and if it doesn't sell well, make another one. Okay? Uh that's it. Okay, Funky Sloth says, is the simulation genre cooked? Why is everybody like, so failed? Simulation It It's like the second most popular genre on there. Why is it cooked? If you mean hot, if it's cooked cuz it's so hot and it's doing good, it's awesome. Like, one of the biggest games right now is Schedule I, which I

consider simulation because you're like managing a business and stuff. So, simulation's awesome. I don't If you mean cooked as in awesome, it is cooking. It is cooking. That genre is cooking. It's hot. I would I'd throw into that pot. Um, I don't know what that means, Funky Sloth. Maybe too funky for me. All right, Claudio. Uh, you emphasize showcasing three biomes. What if you have a shop management game with one single biome? Should I add lunar shop, a garage sale, or whatever? Yeah, I mean, typically these shop games, if you play them, play a lot of shop games. Just play them. And look at what other shop games do. They typically have like, oh, you start in a little tiny corner shop, and it looks gross, and it's ugly, and there's like rats running around. And then as you upgrade, you eventually move into like a warehouse. You have to show that progression. Those are the biomes, like gross house all the way to awesome factory. That's That's how it is. So, my advice is, go look at the other games. Go play the other games. See what they do on their Steam page. Go look. Don't Don't talk to me. Go do it. You don't need me. Just go look at them. They They

do them. You'll see them. You'll see them in all those other simulation shop games. They always have crappy shop all the way to good shop. So, go. Your homework is to go do it. Go look at those other games. Just copy. You can You're allowed to copy, folks. School taught you can't copy. Don't steal. But get inspired. Which is really just saying copy. Copy what the big boys do. Okay. Um, remember you have to say the word question, otherwise I'm not going to ask it. You have to have the big question. People are doing great job. How would you approach marketing shorter games like cozy bee games? You make a lot, and you put them out there. You make a demo. You reach out to streamers. You reach out to influencers. It's basically the same. It's just you speed run it. And always time it around Do a Next Fest. You get a Next Fest in there, and just do it. Streamers, festivals, um, Next Fest. Do it. You got it. You just You just speed run it. You do it faster. All right. Let's keep going.

Uh, more questions, more questions. Let's see. All you got to do is keep You have to keep You have to say the word question in big bold. Notice I answered the questions that have the big word question. If you look back on your question, you asked me a question, and didn't put the big bold question. I didn't answer it, did I? You can re-ask it. Just make sure you do the big bold question. And sometimes an emoji with like a finger like question. That even gets my eye a little better. All right. All right. Is it worth waiting? Hipster Doofus. I love that name. Is it worth waiting for Next Fest if you have an inexpensive game? It seems like I could get lost in the flood of releases just after Next Fest instead of just releasing now. For Next Fest if you have an inexpensive No. What Well, here's the thing, folks. I don't know I don't fully understand this question. But you don't have to release your game right away. It's not like I finished this game and then I have to release it. No, you can finish the game and then continue marketing it until the timing is right. And so there's kind of two

questions in there. Should you do Next Fest? Everybody should do Next Fest. It's free. You are paying Well, not free. You're paying 30% of your revenue to Steam and they're like, here's this free thing we call it Next Fest. And people are like, uh should I do this? You are paying for it. Do it. If you go to an all you can eat buffet, you eat every piece of food. You eat it even if you don't like it. Eat it. You are paying for it. So, you are paying for Next Fest to appear in that. You should do it. Do it. Um and then don't release right after. And if you look at my blog, should just search my blog for should I release after Next Fest or just search the gap. I wrote about it. A lot of people think, I did Next Fest, I got to release. No, there's no You can You can just wait. Wait. Wait. Um because I find that so many games release right after Next Fest. They just like, I'm done with Next Fest, done. Releasing. I'm done. No. No. Well, wait. Wait. Let's settle down. Settle down. There you'll see the spike of releases and it's huge right after Next Fest. And it's like, why are you

doing that? You're just competing with all these other indies. And remember, it's not the size of the game that you're competing against. It's the number of games. So, all these little goofy games release all the time right after Next Fest. Wait. Wait. Wait. Okay? Look at Steam DB for the release dates, and that's that's when you should do it. All right, let's keep going. These questions are fantastic. I am so excited with you all. Okay. Um Let's see. I kind of just started asking questions. Where's that doofus? Hipster doofus. Okay, I was asking the questions right after One Pal One Pedro Salado. It's clear that the launch of the Steam page has to be used as an announcement and everything that entails trailer content person. But, do we need the demo for the announcement? No, do not launch your demo with the announcement. No, no, no, no, no. I give the explicit Sign up for this this thing. Again. The timing of your release and your demo it's it's very careful. Like, this is the most important thing that you're going to learn is when to time those things out. I go I have a calendar. Like, I'll show you like kind of kind

of. I don't have Let me Let me show you a little bit preview of the presentation. I This is a little bit preview. I'm just going to do it. I'm just going to do it right now. A little bit of a preview. But, I'm going to tease it. Don't get mad at me. I'm clickbaiting it. I'm clickbaiting. But, here's the talk. Here's the talk. I'll give a little bit of a talk. I'll even give a little bit. This is a preview of the talk you're going to see when you when you buy the course. Um But, um I go through Whoops. Um This is classified. But, I give step-by-step when you release the demo, when you do this, when you do that, when you reach out to That's what all these symbols mean. And then, I put the description here, but it's classified cuz you've been about the the conference. But, in general, no. Don't launch your demo with your thing. Space them out. That's like having birthday and Christmas and Mother's Day all on the same day. It's too much. And people are like, "I'm kind of tired of too much cake. You gave me too much cake." So, you space out your announcements. But, I give you the explicit thing. This is not bacon. There's not a special day where you eat bacon. This means time lapse. Uh but, there's a very specific order that I recommend.

Um but, that's you're going to have to wait for the the thing. One thing, if you are from Europe and you're buying this course, this buying this um um conference that I'm doing. Be very careful. There's this part we have to do the billing and I hate this. Okay, I I don't make this platform. It's Teachable. I just pay them to host my stuff and then they they make the forms and they handle all the taxes and stuff. They they put this form in this stupid thing and I've opened up support tickets saying, "Please don't do this." They have this stupid thing that says um right here. Business name optional tax ID number. They call it tax ID. I've told them, "Nobody in America calls it that and everybody in Europe calls it VAT and the Europeans are the ones who care about it cuz they have a VAT." Call this VAT. Just say VAT. Just call this VAT. And they're like, "I don't care. This is your VAT ID. You have to put it. If you put this in and then you buy it if you forget to put this in and you buy it, we can't go back and do it. I'm sorry. It's not I don't make the rules. I think Europe makes the rules. I don't know." Um, but it is it's

it's stupid. I hate it, but you have to put it in before. So, be very careful, European friends. When you're going through this, you're doing your billing address, be very careful. Look for this very stupid thing. I think there's even a checkbox here that you have to check and it says like, um I want to put in my business ID. It's really hidden. Just slow. Take it slow. Take it slow. Go through this form and then do your tax. That's your VAT. Okay. You have to put it I can't do it after the fact. Please be careful with that. Uh what we got to do is I got to refund you and then you got to buy it again and remember to do this. I can't I can't add it after the fact. I'm just I'm just telling you folks. Okay. Um, but again, uh that's the talk. Um, I it's I'm going to tell specific timing and what to do with the demo. It's very specific. It it takes me like an hour to get through it about the timing. So, just do it. It's going to be so fun. And it's cheaper than a triple A game. It's cheaper than the next GTA and it'll teach you a lot more about how to actually sell your game. It's like the most important thing you can do is invest in yourself. Okay, I just like I like to alleviate all

these fears and these questions that people have. It's a very complicated thing, but it does it. Okay. Um let's see. Next question, does click-through rate matter? What do you think is a good percentage? Ho ho ho, go to my website howtomarketagame.com and um if you look at how to market a game.com and search benchmarks right up at the top. I you can't see this cuz I'm stupid thing. Wait, wait, let me let me fix it again. Let me fix it again. So, whoa whoa whoa Let me fix this. Let me see this. Okay, see this thing up at the top? It says benchmarks. Click this benchmarks thing. See it right there? Websites are cool, okay? Because you can do them on your thing. YouTube sucks because you can't click through something else and just enjoy it on your own time. You always have to have somebody yelling at you. Okay, so on your own time, go to my website howtomarketagame.com click benchmarks, scroll down to benchmarks, and on your own time you can cruise through all this, and I got some stats here. Um

what is it? Oh, wish list. I think it's wish Yeah, it's wish list organic visibility. What is a normal click-through rate in wish list on Steam? That's it. That's the article right there. And I break through. Here's a Here's the secrets. Click-through rate doesn't matter. It's a fake stat and it'd take me an hour to explain why, but this article, just read it and I'll explain it to you. Um but click-through rate doesn't matter. It's It's because of the way Steam gives visibility. You would actually And I'll just show you the quick thing. You actually want a lower click-through rate. Um these games over on this side of the chart are getting thousands of wish lists a day, and their click-through rate is abysmal. It's terrible. These games have no visibility on Steam. They're getting no wish lists, and their click-through rate is huge. Click-through rate is actually inversely proportional. The more wish lists you are getting, which is what you want, means you have a lower click-through rate. It sounds weird and upside down. That's why you got to read it. Read the article. It's much better. It's better explanation than I could do. All right. How

Let's see. Good question. Let's see. Does click-through rate matter? It does not. Hello, how to get feedback for my game? I'm trying to upgrade my demo to make it as good as I can. Go to your Go to Reddit. Whatever your genre is, find that subreddit and say, "Hey, I'm going to give you a free copy of my game. All you got to do is feedback." Embed a survey in the game. So, when you're playing the game, there's a little pop-up or a little button that says, "Tell me why this bad." It's good. And then you push the button and then it does a Google survey. Write a little survey. Also, search my blog for feedback. I used to be a UX designer / researcher and I'll tell you how to interview people, watch people. Go to a bar and say, "I will buy you a beer if you play my game." And then if you're over 21. And then have a laptop and don't say anything. Just give them the beer. And then watch them play and don't say anything. And then keep watching and don't say anything. Keep watching and don't say anything. And see what happens. And then ask them at the end, "Why did you do that? Why did you do that? Why did you do that?" And that'll tell you a lot.

That's how you do it. So, search feedback. Just search how do I get feedback right here. And I wrote a whole blog post about how to get feedback. Okay. Good gameplay. Progression is great and establishing it early makes it really the player engage. Oh, that wasn't a question. I read it. Sorry. Um Question, if a game doesn't pick up, is it republishing it under a different name a good idea? No, because I don't know what you did that it didn't work, but don't. So, if you've published a game, if you've sold it for money, it's too late. You can't You You basically can't Your game's done. Okay. And republishing it's it's No. Just start a next game. If it didn't do well, here's the thing. Steam gives you visibility and if the game did nothing with it, my my advice is make a second game. Everybody should be making more games. Don't give up after your first game fails. It will fail. Your first game always fails. You got to plan for like three, four, five five of them. Okay? It Okay? You just have to do it. So, don't

do this weird stuff. You're probably just going to make Valve mad and you're going to make somebody mad. Do a new one. And like find out what's wrong with that first game, why it didn't take off, and start that You don't have to throw out your code. Like you can just build off of it and say like, "Oh, everybody said it was janky." Okay, fix the janky stuff, change the setting to like pirates, and then upload another one, and do a second game, and then a third game. Like don't don't don't try to be weird. Don't be don't be weird. That's that's weird. Okay, question. Is 35 to 45 price point too much for a 3D indie action RPG? I don't know. What you got to do is go pay I I know you have to pay. Go to VGInsights. You have to pay for like 1 month of it. You can pay for this in 1 month. And sort for all those tags that you have. Do the tags. Okay? Do the tags that you think 3D action RPG. Sort by revenue, and just start going down the list, and start at the most expensive one. Click the screenshots and you're like, "Whoa, that looks really good. Really good. I don't think we are that good of artists." And then keep scrolling. Keep scrolling. Click it. Oh, that that looks really good. Keep scrolling. Skip to Oh, that looks like

our art. Our art style is like that style. Okay, yeah. Click it. Say like, "Oh, yeah, features. Okay, got it. Okay, put that price in the in the spreadsheet." Then keep going. "Oh, yeah, that's our looks like our Put in the spreadsheet." That looks like our game. Like that looks like our quality. Do that. You got a spreadsheet. You follow that. That's what you do. And then you figure out the price from that because that's the expectation. And then you increase price by 20%. Again, all this right here. Just read the article. It's really good article. I spent a long time on it. Please read it. Just search how should I price my game or pricing tips, and I explain how to do that stuff. So, it's a really good article. Um I don't know. Every game is different. I don't know what your game looks like. You got to look at everybody else. Our Vampire Survivor-likes gained on out of Steam. Uh-huh, I see it. I see what you did. Um, let's look at my blog. Um they are actually doing okay. Um, here they are. They are right. Um Um Right, where are they?

Action rogu- I'm sorry, my my I know the text is small, but um action roguelike. Here they are. Um there were two of them so far this year. They're holding their own. Um the main thing is um I saw a couple of ones at Pixel Art um action roguelike. Action roguelike is what I call them. Uh let me scroll up a little bit more. Um I call them action roguelikes. I know but everybody uses that tag. I know bullet heaven and whatever. People still haven't figured out the proper term, but I use action roguelike for this one. And I know action roguelike is like Dead Cells. I didn't invent these terms. I'm just going off what the community has invented. There were two so far this year. They're holding on. It's just the they have to have a very good theming. Or they have to be from an existing IP like Temtem, Ditto Survivors like um uh there was another game um Deep Rock Galactic Survivors. It's now becoming you have to have a secondary IP or it has to be very very very very deep and really really good looking graphics. Um I don't think for the first year and a

half or two years you could put up almost anything as an action roguelike and it would do well. It's now very it really has to be good. So I still think they're good starting game. You might not make a thousand reviews. I still think it's a good genre cuz you learn I as a first time dev look, you're not going to become a millionaire on your first game. I'm sorry. You're just not. Your first game's going to fail. I still think you should make an action roguelike because you learn progression and you learn how to make a game and you learn how to market a game. And they're not that hard or weird or you know like they're not There's not much content needs to be made. I still think you should make them. Even though you might not make a a you won't become a millionaire. Like a year and a half ago it was like you better make this and you could become a millionaire. Now it's not that, but I still think it's a really good genre just like horror where it's like you really learn how to make a game with these. They're fun. People like them. You have genre constraints that you can kind of follow. Sometimes genre constraints aren't constraints, they're rails that you can ride on and and it makes decisions for you like should we do it? No, let's everybody does this. Let's just do that. And and then you

innovate on the very specific thing. So I that's why I think they're really good. They're they're they're very good. You can make them fast. It's good Not everything you do has to make you a million dollars and I think that's one thing a lot of people do. They're like well is this game going to make me a million dollars? Sometimes it's good just to make like $10,000. Like if you make $10,000 off your first game, you won. You won at life, okay? So make your decisions assuming your first game is going to make $10,000. That's why I still think horror's good, action roguelike's good. If you're a good writer, like you've won an award at school or your teacher when you were in school was like you're a really good writer. Make a narrative game. If you're if you suck at writing, don't make a narrative game. I think they're good. Um Um so that's that's my general advice. All right. Um I'm still going to keep going. I mean we're we're at the top of the hour. I forgot to get a drink of water before, but I'm going to I'm going to muscle through. All right, let's do this. Um

since we're at the top of the hour, I'm just going to switch here. Um you know, I should also say if you come over here and you go to spring sale. I I am I am doing the conference. I'm doing the conference, but if you keep scrolling I also put everything else I do on sale. It's a spring sale cuz it's spring time. It's almost summer time actually, but it's spring time. So this is my spring sale. We got the inside conference. We also have the bundle. So all the other conferences for $69. 69 Um all the other conferences. So you get this one if you get the conference and then you just pay $20 more, you get all the other conferences that I've done. This is my third one. Uh so, you get the things. Um Um there was another talk by Jenny Windom of wholesome games, and she was talking about how to get streamers. So, now you're going to have two people telling you how to get streamers. Really good in one of the previous conferences. That was one of my favorite talks. Um or if you get everything I've ever made, there's a super low price on that. Um or if you just want to buy the other courses like individually, again, super cheap. These are like 40% off. Really good price. Uh spring sale. It ends

when the conference ends. So, the conference is 2 weeks. It ends April 30th. All these prices go back to normal. Spring sale's over. Um and uh so, my um virtual conference, which only which costs you less than GTA, um will be um starting on Monday, and this price will go up. It's going to go up about $10 on Monday. Um yeah, that's that is weird. I got to change the price on that number there. That That looks really weird. But anyway, that's the final price. Sorry. I I was doing this late at last night uh the other night. But anyway, this is the best price for the conference. It goes up on Monday, okay? Uh when the conference starts, which is in in 1 day. All right. Um let's go on with the questions. You guys are asking great questions. Let's keep doing them. I'm going to keep going. Okay. Um I just answered a question that did not have a question. So, if you want a question, you got to put in big bold text, "Question!" and then ask your question, okay? All right. Um this might be a bit weird, but

I'm making a horror game, and it doesn't really have a scary monster because they're all invisible. I wanted the main hook to be the plot and gameplay, but uh I mean, try it, but if it doesn't work, that's the reason. It These games have to have a scary monster. You can't be subtle about it. And people are like, "Uh you're giving away You're spoiling it." No. I And I was thinking about that. I was like, "Are we?" But then, remember Jaws? I know it's not technically a horror, but it's a horror It's one of the scariest movies around water. What's on the cover of Jaws? The shark. The shark is on the cover of the movie poster for Jaws. Every horror movie always puts the monster right there. You always show the monster in horror things. You just do. Um I'm sorry, you've got to. Like I I mean you could try it, but if it's not working, it's not going to happen. Now, I don't know your game, but if it's subtle, like it might be more of a narrative game. Now, you know how I talked about those narratives uh the narrative games in that survey that I did? Uh most of those narrative games, let me

go back to my blog about uh the hit games of early 2020. If you look at the narrative games, like even though I'm like, oh narrative's actually taken front front position, most of them were horror tinged. Like they they weren't like explicitly like a monster's chasing you, but they were creepy horror. I don't know what type of game you're making. That might work for a narrative horror game where it's like choose your own, you're talking to a scary invisible thing. I don't I don't I don't know. Test it. Like make a trailer with no monsters and see if it does well. If it doesn't, release it real quick and make one with a gross monster with like an eye hanging out or a girl in a white dress and blood coming out of her eyes, cuz that's what That's what people People are so scared of people in white dresses, little girls in white dresses with like blood on them. That's That's like It's just That's That's what horror people love. You all are so scared of women wearing white dresses. I don't know what it is. We could go Freudian on it. We could do

whatever. I don't know. Yes, Silver Lining, even though you didn't ask a question, she's awesome. Clara, um uh yeah, Silver Lining, I guess I met you. I I don't remember meeting you. I'm sorry, I don't remember your your face, cuz your face is an avatar. But yes, that is Clara Cia. She's awesome. And if you attend the conference, we do Q&A at the end of our our thing. It's Clara Cia. She's from Devolver. Like she was in charge of like streamer outreach at Devolver. And I'm just going to tell her I'm just going to say like tell me everything you know about reaching out to streamers when you worked at Devolver. What do we do? And basically, if you do what she says, you basically got published by Devolver. See? See what See that value? All for the price of less than GTA. All right. All right, let's keep going. This might be I'm making horror game question. If you really have some money to place and paid marketing, what would you pay for? Capsule, of course. I would do Facebook ads. Facebook or Reddit ads. Just do those. Try them. Influencer Paying for influencers is very high cost.

It doesn't seem to convert as well. It's paid ads. Facebook, Twitter, I maybe X, I don't know. I don't know. Um question, what are your thoughts on prologues? Don't do them. That I I think that and if you watch my talk, I'll talk about the prologues and demos and play tests and when to do each one. Prologues are out with a new demo rule. So the Steam's not Steam basically took the best stuff of prologues and they made them into a demo. And I have a feeling eventually Valve's going to be like, "No. If you try and submit a game that's a prologue, they're going to be like, "No. Use our demo thing. You're not allowed to do that." And they won't let you do it. I have a feeling that's coming. I don't think demos work. Or pro- I Nix that. Demos definitely work. I don't think prologues are going to be allowed anymore. They might work, but I'll I'll tell you in my talk exactly in that talk detailed by detailed exactly how to do it. Okay. Um All right. Looks like people having an

AI fight. Totally healthy. Question, do 2D Metroidvania games sell well on Steam? I don't think they do. They're very hard to I didn't see a single Metroidvania in my survey that succeeded. 3D, 2D, whatever. I think that um here's the thing, folks, is I just feel like the Metroidvania formula, I love it. It's one of my favorite games. Super Metroid, one of my favorite games. I remember playing Super Metroid as a kid, and I purposely said I'm only going to play an hour a day because I don't want this to end. Like consciously, even as a 14-year-old, I was like I think I was 14. I was like, I do not want this moment to end. I want to enjoy every second of this game. It's one of my favorite genres. But I just think that the genre has is kind of there's not as much innovation in it. And so people are kind of tired of the genre. I just think that there's just like if you innovate too much, there's a hardcore base that's like, that's not a Metroidvania. And there's just not much. And so the only way to stand out is amazing graphics. Like the best graphics

you've ever seen. And I've seen some beautiful Metroidvanias that just haven't sold. So I just don't think it's it doesn't have That's why I study this is because these people who are these fans are like, give us every single one of these that you can. That's why I study like generally, like how much energy is there in the genre? You know, does the genre have a fan base that is just buying tons of games? And they are. All these genres are. I didn't see a single Metroidvania on this list. And that tells me this the Metroidvania fan base is just like, I don't know. I just don't think there's a fan base as much on Steam that's that energized and buys a ton. They might They're probably all waiting for Silksong or whatever and they're doing that over on Switch. Um so I just think that you have to be the best Metroidvania or nothing at all. And that's that's a hard thing. That's like why MOBAs don't show up here very much is because it's like you're either the best MOBA and I will dedicate and the

players will dedicate their entire lives to your game or you're nothing. And I think Metroidvania is that. You're either, you know, um Silksong or you're nothing. And I I that's a lot of what it is. And you would expect people getting excited for the new Hollow Knight or whatever. You would expect oh I'm going to play some I'm going to buy some Metroidvanias to get excited for it. I don't see it. I didn't see a single Metroidvania that it reached a thousand reviews in the first three months of this year. It just I I just don't think it's there. I just don't think and they're very hard to make, they're very long. And if you don't make them long enough people are like, "Nah, it's not long enough. I want a 20-hour Metroidvania. Eh." And you got to make a lot of content and you got to make a lot of bosses and you know a lot it's hard to make and the audience isn't there. That's like a two strikes and you're out. I don't know. I just don't think it is. I'm sorry. Um what I would do is see this simulation? Take that beautiful pixel art. Make like a I I just see this beautiful pixel art. I Here's the thing is I see these beautiful pixel art games and there's so the art is so good.

And there are genres on here that do well despite the worst art. And if you could just take that art, that skill, that God-given talent that you got in that hard work and apply it to some of these genres like simulation. There are some like shop management, village management, city builders. I I I kind of mentioned it but the the tower defense genre is kind of popping off. The tower defense is kind of like blobbing out with city builders and base builders. So there's this kind of blob of city builder, base builder, tower defense. They don't quite line up to these genres and so people like, "Where's the city builder?" And it's like they're kind of living right in here. If you take that beautiful pixel art ability that you have and you applied it to like either a city builder, a strategy game, a simulation, they're just that genre is so hungry for beautiful art. I just anytime I see like a 2D pixel art game that looks beautiful, I'm like, "God, this should be a better game." And I don't mean that mean it. I just mean like a better game like that

beautiful art talent should be applied to a better genre that will appreciate you because I I feel like the Metroidvania fans are so spoiled with such beautiful art and they're like Silksong's better. It's like, you know who would love beautiful pixel art? Simulation fans. Like these management games. Like if you made a beautiful pixel art dinosaur um theme park style management game where you you pick dinosaurs and you you set the prices of popcorn and you sell balloons out of a stand you place a stand and it has beautiful pixel art. Like and it's just like and I see these beautiful pixel arts and I'm like, I'm going to make a Metroidvania and I'm like, please just make make a cool man dinosaur store management game or like a a a game where you make potions or something like that. Like just why? Like let me tell you, the Metroid fans they don't love you. They don't love you like I love you. You know who loves you? Simulation. You know, all these other genres. They

they love you. Adult would really love you. Um these other genres would love your pixel art much more. Again, Metroidvania fans don't don't love you. They don't appreciate you enough. Go to another genre that will love you, okay? Okay. How many free licenses versus unique users should I aim for? Is there a healthy ratio? Um it's too complicated. Just look at wishlists. That's the problem. Uh just look at wishlists. Again, use my benchmarks thing. People try and pick one number that they think looks good and it's like just forget about it. Just look at wishlists. I know wishlists aren't all of it but the core thing is am I getting enough wishlists? And they're like, no. Why? It's the game. Like it it's probably the genre. Did you reach out to streamers? Did you reach out to festivals? Don't try and people try and cherry-pick numbers like, oh is the click-through rate to wishlist to this the right proportion? No. How's your wishlist rate? Is it a thousand? Is that don't try and cherry-pick your numbers too much. Just just look at wishlists.

That's that's the core thing, okay? If your wish lists aren't good, reach out to streamers, okay? All right. Uh questions. Do you have some tips on how to get my trailer on Game Trailers YouTube? Yeah, you find their contact, you knock on their door, and say, "Exclusive access to my trailer. Do you want it? Yes, no." And if they say no, or they don't answer your email, make a better trailer. Come back. Is this? No? Then ship it and forget it. Like, it's not going to happen. I don't know. You just got to try. You don't know what they want. You just don't know. Get some feedback on your trailer. A lot of times, you probably put the logo, or you have a very slow intro. And if you do, and you do like, "In a world." Don't do that. Put Put gameplay in the first 4 seconds. Do all that stuff. Ship it to them. It's If they don't answer, they're just not interested. It's just the the cruel truth. All right, next. I'm curious if

you have thoughts on the Bramble Royale sales failure and postmortem. Kind of terrifying. I don't I haven't like studied it. Maybe I should. Um I don't know. I'm I'm not going to say anything. I don't I just don't know. I don't know. I'll I'll take a look. Uh maybe I'll do that. I've heard of a couple people like, "What's going on with Bramble Royale?" I don't know. I'll have to look into it. I don't have no ideas. Um but I'll look into it. I'm going to take a note. I'll see what Maybe I can ask somebody. If you know anybody at Bramble Royale, cuz a lot of things is what you see from the outside. And that's why I kind of took away that channel that's called Why Did This Game Succeed or Fail? Is people just coming up with the wildest ass reasons. And here's the thing. What do they say about um every happy family is the same, every broken family is unique in their own special way. Every failed game is It is so deep. And it could be things that you don't even know. Like, you haven't even seen. And there's reasons why. And so, I always I don't like outside projections. So if you know somebody at Bramble

Royale, message me and say, "Hey, I know them. I could introduce you." I I'll look into it. I've never heard a couple people asking about this. Um I don't like to just uh theorize without like seeing some numbers, talking to them, hearing the details. That's the kind of stuff. So I don't know. All right, I'm curious if you have thoughts on the Oh, that's the same one that I just told you. Next one is Hunt. What do you think of games that use Mind Journey? Oh, I have I'm back around. I'm back around. I'm doing it. All right. That means if I answered all those questions, um I'm I'm going to keep going. I'm not stopping, folks. I've got gas in the tank. We're going to keep doing these things. But I want I'll be I'll go back down. I'll answer your question if you asked it and I haven't gotten to it yet. I'm going back down. Um don't worry. I just want to remind you I'm doing this as part of my Standing Side Comfrey conference. It kind of cut off. I don't know. It's hard. I You know how many times I've had to size this to upload it to all the

things. And depending on a st Whenever you do a big promotion, you know this stuff. There's like so many screenshots, and every screenshot needs to be a different size, and then they cut off because it's responsive and it's So here's your Inside Comfrey conference. Okay, uh conference. Um it is my annual conference where I take some of the best talks I saw, like Clarissa and Thomas Bedu, and um I'm just like, "Come on." I want to show it to the world so that so not everybody has to travel to San Francisco and spend like like $300 a night in a hotel. I When I checked in my hotel, there was plastic on the floor. And I like on the hallway, and I was like, "What happened?" And then I looked, and it was like the trashiest wedding that ever happened right outside my my window cuz I was like a balcony to a a rooftop like little restaurant thing. And there were like bottles and I swear I saw just a pool of vomit. And it was like colored. It was like multi-colored. And there was like It was

like the wildest ass party had happened the night before and I was paying like $300 a night for this place. They cleaned it up and there were just bottles everywhere. Like hardcore alcohol bottles. Not just like beer bottles or like wine glasses. It was like the hardest alcohol you've ever seen just like strewn everywhere and I was like, "I'm paying $300 a night for this." Listen, that was awful. Okay. You don't have to experience that. You can wake up in your beautiful house, just rub the sleep out of your eyes, roll out of bed. You don't even have to put clothes on. And you can sit and you can ask Claricea why your game's not getting covered by streamers. You can do that. You don't have to like see the pools of vomit for $300 a night that I had to see when I went to San Francisco, okay? That's just story time and a little personal information about myself. But, you know what? I think this is a a good deal. Okay? So, check it out. It's worth it. Let's go. That was just That's That's what life is all about. All right. All right, where

does farming come under? I think it's sort of under-served. It I saw one farming game. There is one I just call it farm. Did I I thought I saw one farm. Here it is, farm. There was one farm game. It is served. I think it's It's a hot genre. I I do think it is. Sometimes farm kind of falls under open world survival craft and survivor Oh, no, that is survivor. Sometimes I change it. Um Farm Farm is pretty good and I I like the genre. It It's just hard to make. That's a good pixel art genre. If you're really good at pixel art, you know, the Metroidvania's don't love you. Farm Farm people love you. The farmers. The The problem with farm is it is a genre where if you don't hit the tone right, if you don't do enough, it goes nowhere. Farm fans are like, "My farm fantasy has to be just like this. And if you It's one of those genres there's a couple of genres where if you deviate too much from the accepted thing, the fans just totally ignore you. Souls-like is like this. I don't think most people should make Souls-like even though it is a pretty good selling genre. I think we

had a couple Souls-likes. If you don't hit the Souls-like combat just right, fans are like, "Janky. Zero stars. Janky. I hate you because your game is janky." That's what Souls-like fans are. So, farm fans, they're wholesome and they're probably in a nice sweater, but they still hate you if it's like I don't know what like there weren't enough crops to grow in the autumn season. I hate you. That's kind of what farm fans are, but they're very nice about it. But, I find farm games are like you have to be deep. Your farm has to be good. I don't know what it is. I think it's depth. Um but, a farm is a very passionate audience. They're just very demanding in a nice way with nice cozy sweaters. Um All right, let's see here. Um keep going. Question. Um What do you think a city Um let's see. What do you think about a small game Let's see. Oh, sorry. I'm kind of getting lost here. Question. Short snow.

Oh, I have an idea. I see you forgot the question thing. See, but I saw you I saw you short snow. Um I have an idea for a funny game funny fun game. So, what graphic style do you suggest? Low poly realistic? Um I don't know. I Here's the thing is funny games I I don't know. I don't I'm not a dev- I'm not a developer. That's the thing is like I know I talk about genre, but I'm not a developer. Don't ask me. I don't know. I'm not a designer. I'm de- I try to make a game and I'm a bad designer. I'm just not good at this stuff. I don't like funny games. Funny games So, here's the thing is I think funny games some of the times I see it's like just make a video of it. Just like I've seen developers spend like 3 years making a game off of one joke. No and seen this happen multiple times. Funny games are funny for like 1 second. So, just make a fake make a trailer for a fake game that is funny, this one joke, and just put that out on YouTube. And then just say, "Ah, join my mailing list." That's it. Don't actually make the game. Just make the trailer. It's like Usually, I

find people are like, "I have an idea for a funny game." It's a one-note joke, and it's funny. I'm not saying it's not funny. But, if you make a full game out of it, it's not that funny. There's a few exceptions. It's usually sandbox games like Goat Simulator or Squirrel with a Gun. They usually don't do well cuz they're very flash-in-the-pan because somebody's like, "Ah, that's a funny joke. Do you want to buy it?" Nah, I get the joke. I'm done. I laughed. I had my chuckle, and I'm done. So, in general, I don't suggest funny games unless it's really deep like Garry's Mod. They typically have to be sandbox Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, Garry's Mod, Goat Simulator, cuz they're systematic. They're secretly systematic games, but they're funny in that way. I just I don't know. I kind of get a little scared when I see funny games cuz they don't They're They're one-note. And you can't do a demo because You You just don't do a demo because if somebody plays the demo, they're like, "Ah, that was funny. I get it. I can buy it." No, I already laughed. I already laughed. That's the whole problem with funny games. It's people like, "Yeah, I already laughed. What do What do you want from me?" Um Let's see. What do you think makes a city-builder

game good? I don't know. I'm not a designer. I'm not that good at that stuff. Go play a bunch of city-builders, and then write down, "This one's good because This one's not." The best designers play tons of games. You have to build Go buy a bunch of city-builders. Go buy them. And then write a grid and make a spreadsheet and say, "Which features do they all have?" And then they say, like, "Oh, this one did it and that." And then go look at the reviews and see that they Did the people in the reviews say, "This is This game's good because it has a police station. This game lacks police stations. I love police stations." Then you know police stations are good. That's the thing. Um so, that's the thing. You have to do this. Go. Go. I You don't need me. Go. Do your own research. Go. Go. Get out of it. I'm I'm I'm a stupid marketer. I'm not a game designer. Go. Be a game designer. Go do it. Okay? All right. Um what's the hottest genres of 2025, 2026? Go look at this blog post. I just I've just I just spent like thousands of word read this blog post. This is Go. Go. Go read. Go. You don't need me. Go read this article. Here it is. I just I just

told you all this stuff. I just I recorded 3 hours of me looking at the hottest genre. Go. Get out of here. Get out of here. What are you doing? Snark tips. You're too snarky. Get out of here. Go. Watch this stuff. I've spent literally 3 hours telling you the hottest genres. Go do it. Okay? All right. Question. I have released demo as early demo and will keep updating. Is this a good thing or should I have released it? That's a perfect I'll talk all about that in my my um talk that I'll be doing at the Inside conference. But yeah, I just update your demo. Go. Update it. Go update it. Do it. Yes, do it. If What's going to What's the worst that's going to happen? Question. Have you done an analysis of developers more than one game? That is how does a second game do relative to first? Um I haven't done that, but there's other secret things like Um there's not many people that have actually done many games. But here here's one example. Let me show you this. This is a very specific thing. Um let's see. The it's a very first one here. Coming soon page launch.

I did this analysis. Here's one example. So, ooh, let me see. See this? This is um how many uh wish list you get in the first 2 weeks of your game and launch. And there are some games that give huge spikes. Look at all these spikes. And then there's games that are like nothing uh in the first 2 weeks. Well, guess what? I colored in red everybody who had made a previous game. You see? Look at them all. Like the top five most wish listed games all had previous games. Now, I know it's selection bias because if you released a failed game and your studio closed, you're not here to release a second one. I know, but most of the thing is your previous games Steam gives more traffic to release games. Like even if even if you have a hit game like up to, the the amount of traffic that Valve gives you for a game that's available for sale is about three times the traffic that you get when your game is just coming soon, when it's not purchased. Three times as much because

Valve is actually taking a chance on an unreleased game cuz they're like, we don't know if this game is actually going to launch or be good. So, they limit the amount of traffic they give those games that are unreleased. But they know, even if it's a game that doesn't sell well, if we give traffic to that, there's a certain portion of people that are going to buy it and then we're going to get money. So, of course they're going to prioritize games that have released, give them traffic. And so, your released game serves traffic to your unreleased games. So, when you launch a store page, if you have existing games, you just do better. The reason I don't do it is cuz there's so many particulars like people swap genres and people developers are terrible about this. They have a hit game in a genre and they're and they're like, man, we just nailed it with this game. We sold so well. Well, time to abandon all that, redo my code base, start in a different genre, totally different fan base, everything, throwing it out. I'm like, why did you do that? That is so You found the money. Why not just keep nurturing that? And they're like, no, we're bored. We're going to move on to something. It's like, you're still making video games, but what am I to say? I don't know. I'm just just a

marketing guy who has ideas, but I don't know. I'm just stupid marketer. What do I know? But people are like, I'm just going to move on from my game that's a hit. I'm just like, please. You did it. You you're living the dream. Just stick with it. So, the data is like very, very noisy and very few people make a second game. In my analysis, 75% of studios close after their first game and it's like, yikes. So, make more games. Let me tell you, I haven't done the analysis, but you know what? I don't need to. Just make more games. I I don't know how many more stats like this. This alone would make me like, "Oh yeah, maybe I should make more games." Just make more games. There's never going to be a perfect answer in the data. Here's the thing, is I could study and it's like, "Yes, you have a 50% chance." But, just I just know it. There's so many other ways that I've seen it. Just make more games. Go on, just make them. You don't What are you still doing here? Go make more games. Um let's keep going here. All right. Um let's see. Um

what do you think about city builder type of game like Frostpunk? Um I love city builders. I think they I think they are the right type of genre for Steam. It's just a kind of evolving, I think and I I wrote it in not this blog post, but the the new blog post that I did, the new blog post says basically, I think the city builder is adding a very strategic defensive level. I I've noticed it cuz I've been tracking city uh tower defense games cuz people are like, "Oh, tower defense." I tower defense and before I used to say, "No, no, tower defense is dead." But, there's been a lot of tower defense games recently that are basically half city builder, half tower defense. So, I think city builder, the act of like a game where you're just like a list of buildings and you place them on a grid and then resources increase, that core mechanic is still there. It's just kind of evolved into more of a strategic, more of kind of like a uh defensive action side of it. Not just, "Hey, build a city." Um but, I I do like city builders. I think it's a good genre. Um is there a shift where RPG is now doing

better than survival crafty? Only one in the is the only one in this list. No, I see I see um RPG all the time in lists. Like, if you look at my other recaps, I always see RPGs at the top. It's a popular genre. RPGs are really popular. The reason I don't be like, "Oh, everybody should make an RPG." is RPGs are basically like three to four different types of games smashed together. And I'm I'm talking mostly to a new audience of developers who are making their first game. I don't think you should start with an RPG because if you think about it like, okay, you've got a battle mechanic, which is like either turn-based or maybe real-time kind of thing. So that's like a strategy game basically. It's you know, you got to come up with that system. You have a narrative cuz every RPG needs a narrative, so that's a narrative game. Then you need a world to explore. RPGs are always kind of like an open world type of I can go anywhere, so that's an open world survival craft. Um then you've got like um skills to level up like every character needs to be leveling up skills. So that's basically

like an incremental game where it's like you in battle, you take those points, you apply them, and you do a skill tree and stuff. So those that's already like four genres, four distinct games that all have to melt perfectly together to work. It's a very they're very hard to make. They're very big. They're very expensive. They take a long time, and they're risky. And that's why I don't I'm not like even though the number is high, like yes, like let's look at the chart. The I mean there's an active audience. People love RPGs on Steam. It's a it's a deep genre. Oh, the other thing is like the game has to be like 40 hours long, otherwise RPG fans hate it. Like it is, the number clearly is high. But again, folks, there isn't just one number. And this is the thing is like when I do these reports and stuff like this, I'm not just looking at one number. Like, oh, what's the percentage of success? There it is, but I also factor in all these other things like dev time. Like the dev time in RPG is ridiculous. It's years and years and years and years and years. And most devs focus on RPGs as their first genre because they love RPGs, and that's

totally understandable. I love this game. I'm going to make one. Yikes, that is so hard. If you love RPGs, tell think about it. Like what do you actually love about RPGs? Do you like the skill trees? If you like the skill trees, make an idle game. See, idle games are very hot. Nobody's asking about idle games. Idle games are hot. So if you like the experience in spending your points and upgrading a character and seeing the numbers go up, if you like that part of RPGs, make an idler. If you love the narrative, like, "Oh, man, I I want to tell the story of this like couple and they battle together and they go on a journey and they fall in love, but then there's problems." Make a narrative game. Strip out all the combat, all that stuff, just make a narrative game. If you want to do the battle, the strategy part, just make a strategy game. Like, uh like either a shooter if it's real-time or if it's uh there's strategy here, strategy where it's like, "Oh, I want to be like on a grid and it's turn-based." Then just make a strategy game. Like, every time I see somebody saying, "My first game, I don't know any of the mechanics, but I'm going to make an RPG." It's always like, there's that's like four games. Pick one of the four Pick whatever your favorite type of part

of the RPG is and make that. And if you're like, "I can't decide." Well, decide. This is a hard job. Like, that's a that's the thing is like, I just I don't like RPGs as your first game cuz they're Like I said, you've never made one game and now you're making the hardest which is like four games smashed together in a perfect fusion. It's too hard. Pick one. And then, you know, here's what it is. Okay, here If you want to make an RPG, make the four genres separately, so make four games, and then your fifth game, use everything that you learned with those previous four games, you mash them together, and now you've Your code base is already done, you smash them together, and there's your fifth game. I know it doesn't work that way. Don't tell I mean, I've made a game before, but that's my general feeling. It's just RPGs are way too big and they're too risky and you're going to die before it gets released. It just happens. All right. Um Um weird. Um let's see here. Do games that use store-bought assets succeed? Yeah, all the time. Yeah, store-bought especially with horror games. Um

I mean, I don't know. I don't know all the store stuff, but like that What's that low-poly style? I think that one's getting a little overused. What I can't remember is Skillex or something, Strelex, whatever that website is that sells a low poly stuff. Because people have now recognized and they're like, "Oh, it's using that low poly asset pack. It's probably done." Like in other words, like "Oh, it's probably like somebody's first game." But there's lots of games that succeed with Strobalt assets. The whole thing is like you've got to kind of disguise it. Like you've got to put textures on it or you got to shaders on it or you know, what they call kit bashing. Like that's how Star Wars was built. It was just a bunch of toys they like broke apart and then they built models. That's what you got to do. You've got to disguise it well. It's all in art direction. It's an art direction. All right. Is there a good ratio between free license and we got there? Okay, back around. Answer all those questions. Good questions everybody. Um Um just to remind you, I'm still going.

Still going an hour and a half. Um I do this because I'm running this inside conference. The sale price here price is going to go up. It will go up. That is I I'm I think that's 58 that I crossed out. I kind of messed up the prices there. But I I'll change it. Monday the price is going up because the conference is starting. So if you want the low price, buy it now before the start of the conference. It's early bird discount. Um I'm interviewing people. You don't have to see a hotel room covered in vomit. Well, it wasn't the inside my room. Let me just clarify. It was not inside the room. It was in the balcony because there was a rooftop like event space. That's where the vomit was. But it was like you don't have to Whatever that is, you don't have to experience it. You can do it for cheaper than a triple A game. And you get to learn how to actually market your game from industry experts from like Devolver Devolver and like industry expert in Kickstarter. Like this guy runs an agency that is like the number one agency for running a Kickstarter. And this guy will talk to you and you can ask him, "What should I do?" And he will

give you an answer. And you didn't have to pay a lot. So choice is up to you. All right, let's go back to more questions. I love these questions. These are awesome. Why are adult games so popular and is it a short-term trend or a long-term depression? No, um here's the deal. They're not they're 10%. I have studied this for years. Um I have cuz I you look at this over the years. It's always about 10%. Look at my blog and search um year in review. All the year in review, past ones that I did. Adult games only make up 10% of the store. Like it's like 10% of the store is porn. It's very consistent. They're not more popular, they're not less popular, it's just 10%. This is it. That's it. And why? Cuz you know, people people like porn. What what What do you want? What do you want from me? It's always 10%. It just is. It is. And don't freak out. That's why I look at the numbers. That's why I love graphs because people for have a recency bias and they're like, "I saw a porn game today. Porn's everywhere." Every you know, you're like going to Steam and like two porn games on there. "Porn's everywhere." But if you look at

the data, you look over time, you draw a graph over years, you start to see the trends. Trend is 10%. It's just 10% porn. That's it. 10% you know, it's like tithing. 10% good enough for God, good enough for Steam. Porn is 10%. Um so don't freak out. That's That's in general. That My general advice is people don't freak out until you've made a bar chart, okay? Make a bar chart, then you can freak out. But until you make a bar chart, don't freak out because usually we have a recency bias and if you see something that's surprising, you freak out. So don't freak out until you make a bar chart about it. Then freak out after the bar chart, okay? If it's true. All right, question with two hands. I love the pink hands. Um SDG games, you mentioned that AI in the blog. What are any games with 1,000 reviews that had an AI disclosure tag? I didn't actually I didn't do the AI disclosure tag. I didn't look at that. I should have. I really should have. Maybe I'll go back. This is why it takes me so long. It took me 3 hours to go through all those games. So I'm going to take another couple hours and I'll just go through and look at the AI disclosure. I didn't really look at it. I should have, but you You this stuff. There Every year I

get to the bottom of the list, I'm like, "Oh yeah, I should have done that." So then I have to go back all the way through the list and look at every single one and do it. Um but yeah, I'll do it. I'll do it. And I just go through it cuz everybody's asking about the AI. But in closure closure. But in general, again, the freak out about bar charts, why you shouldn't freak out until you see a bar chart. Like let me just go let me let me just go back. Let's talk about the freak out. Everybody always wants to freak out about how many games are released on Steam. And yes, they're going up, but it's not it is not um going up um exponentially. See how it's then the increase is actually less than it was previously. Okay, and it was actually less than 21. I think, you know, pandemic hit, everyone's like, "Well, what am I going to do? I'm going to work on a game." So everybody released a game in 2021 after they did it. And then everyone's like, "Oh yeah, I like being outside." And so everybody enjoyed outside. And then the people who made a game and they over-scoped finally released it maybe in 2024. So there was like, "I'm going to make a quick 6-month game while I'm in lockdown." And then it took them 4 years and then everybody released it maybe I don't know. I think this might be like

the funding ran out. And here's here's here's an interesting I just came up with this. Maybe it was like cuz there was a lot of funding like every studio was getting money during this time cuz nobody had any money to spend on anything except like funding studios. And so there's a big glut and so it takes 2 to 3 years for these well-funded studios to finally release and I think they ran out of money and nobody was giving them extension loans or whatever. And so they're like, "Well, crap, we got to release." And so everybody just dumped their game in 2024. And there's no funding, so games are down again. This is cyclical. There's nothing where it's like, "Oh, it's all AI slop now." No, the increase is decreasing. Well, the de- the increase of the increase it's not exponential, okay? It's not. Uh so again, don't freak out until you make a nice chart. Then you can freak out, okay? Um let's see here. What if let's see here. Um Let's see. Sorry, I got I lost my place.

Um Let's see here. If it hasn't answered, is the Metroidvania survivable? I meant answered it, but I don't think it is. I'm sorry. I don't I wouldn't make an I wouldn't make a Metroidvania. I'm sorry. If you If it's almost done, put it out, but I don't know. I just don't think Metroidvania's got it. I just didn't see any this year in this chart. I didn't see a single one hit in 2025. Usually I'd expect at least one by now. All right. Question by the sloth by the funky sloth. Is there any genre that would be good for beginner developers that would actually make some money even if it's less than 10K? Um yeah, well, that's why I do this. So, the genres I think a beginner should work on. And actually, if you search my blog for AAA, just search AAA dev. I wrote this blog post, what games should former AAA developers make when they go indie. I know you're probably not a Not everybody's AAA developer. It

actually applies. It's actually for everybody, but everybody wants to be a AAA developer, so this is good marketing to say like, "Oh, I want to be a AAA developer. Well, let's see what it is." But anyway, I'll list all the genres that you should make as a first-time dev. But I think if It depends on who you are. If you are good writer, if you've had a teacher say, "You know what, you're really good writer." and you love to write, and you love to read books, movies, you love narrative. Not just like, "Oh yeah, I kind of like narrative." No, like you are a good writer, make a narrative game, make it small, short, release it within a year. That's a whole thing. Short games, release them soon. If you um are fancy enough. I think everybody should make a horror game, but a lot of people are like, "Oh, I'm too scared to I don't want to make a horror game." Just make a horror game. I think everybody should make a horror game. That's a good first one because it's confined. You can release a 2-hour horror game, and people don't yell at you. They're like, "Oh, it's a 2-hour horror game. Great. I can only be scared for 2 hours and then I want to pee my pants." You could do it. So, horror game's good. I think idols are really good one. If you're really into like stats and you

want to make like these epic upgrading games, like strategy games, I think idols are a perfect genre for that because it's about incrementing stats and making the the increments feel good and all the math associated and it's not as resource-intensive. I think um adult is good if you're if you're feeling spicy. Um I think tower defense is tricky because tower defense is a good genre, but it's it's tricky to make a one that's actually has a chance. You have to make very deep strategy. I'd say make an idle game and then after idle, then make a tower defense because the skills that you learn of how to upgrade and how to make it deep for an idle game will serve you well to go make a um a tower defense game. I do think there's another genre hiding in here. Oh, I do think action roguelike is good even though they're not the hot thing where it's like you can just make the crappiest game and still make a million dollars. I still think it's a good genre because again it it it's it's very easy to have the game running very quickly.

The assets required aren't as extensive as some of these other genres. Um you get that you get to learn how you have to increment and how your upgrades work and how to make the game deep because here's the thing, folks. Steam players want deep games. They don't want linear games where it's like a single narrative unless it's like a a visual novel. But they want deep deep crunchy games and even if you're making a narrative game, they want choices. They want you'll see there's choices matter and they will yell at you if your choices don't matter. They want to see deep deep deep narratives or they want to see deep deep deep strategy, you know, upgrades, up you know, enhancements and charges and all these things or they want a horror game that scares their pants off and it's simple and stupid and only takes 2 hours. That's that's Steam. They either want a deep game or they want a horror game that scares their pants off. That's that's Steam, okay? All right, let's keep going. Let's keep going. Um Um let's see here. Um

Do you think a horror survival game focused on exploration hunting would work in a mild tiny crafting experience? I don't like mixing genres. In general, I don't like mixing genres. See, the whole thing of horror is you're confined and you're powerless and you're weak and you don't have a lot. I don't like mixing genres because that is a very tight experience. And if you're new to this and you've never made a horror game or you've never made a survival game, you're making two games at once. Make one of them. Whatever one you like. If you like the survival crafting aspect open world, make that. If you like horror games, make a horror game. Don't make both at the same time. It's too hard. Once you release one of them, then maybe you could make a sequel or a second type of game that is that combination. I just don't like mixing genres. I think people use that as a shortcut to make their game have a hook. I think it's more risky than anything cuz you have to develop like two games simultaneously and you're actually making three because you're constantly battling which which element do I take from this genre and which element do I take this genre and you're very likely

to alienate the two audiences because a crafty open world, I think that's what you're looking for. Um exploration hunting. Exploration hunting open world survival craft games are really good. I mean, even though it's it was only one, it's it's there's plenty of time. That genre is very I like that genre. I think it's great. But those people want to feel empowered. That's a that's a genre about feeling empowered like I'm collecting these things. I'm feeling stronger. My base is getting bigger and I'm hunting things and I can hunt something that I couldn't before. Whereas horror games, you want to feel weak and powerless. And that's the the thrill of it is like I'm weak, I'm powerless. And then something scary happens and then I'm scared and then I go. But see how they're in conflict with each other, those two genres? And exploration is like I can go anywhere. I can go anywhere I want. Where's horror like, there's only one dark hallway and there's one blinking bulb that's like flickering and I have to run by and I think a monster might jump out by that window, but I got to run past. I got to be strong. You're Remember, it's confining. So, see that's where it's like when you mash genres, you're in confliction. You're You're conflicting. You've got big open world survival

hunting game or you have tight closed quarters horror game and it's That's You pick one or the other and that's why I think you got to be bold. Make a stand. Pick one. Only do one. And so, that's I don't think it's going to work. I don't I just my gut. But what do I know? I'm a stupid marketer. I don't know genre. I don't know how to make a game. So, um it's up to you. Make it. I don't know. I Try it, but my general feel is And And I didn't do it this time, but most of these games that I saw that succeeded are not genre mashups for the most part. They're like one genre. It's just they had a very good um interesting art or something. Okay. Um is there a place to way to browse games that failed, but were well-made? Good graphics. Um Yeah, there's just this one checkbox that's on Steam that says, "Show me good games that failed." No. You got to do the legwork. So, what I would do is sign up for VG Insights um and

um um it's 15 bucks. I know you got to pay for it, but just do it for 1 month. If you're looking to pick a game, spend $15 and the game you pick is the biggest decision and worth millions potentially. So, it's worth spending just 1 month like 15 bucks. I don't get paid by them. I just Any of these services. Game Discover Co. Any of them. Pick the genre that you're looking at and just go down the list. Sort it by revenue, estimated revenue and just go down the list and you'll keep going down the list and you're like, "This game looks really good and it didn't do well. Why not?" And buy it, play it and find out. A lot of times the games look good or the concept sounds good, but the execution was terrible. Or sometimes the game looks good but it's in a genre like there are tons of great Metroidvanias but that genre just doesn't attract people as much as it used to. And so it could be a genre but there's just not a fan base where they're like, "Yeah, it's a well-made game but I don't know." Same thing with puzzle games. Puzzle games do terribly on Steam and there's tons of high-quality puzzle games but people are like, "Meh, I don't

know. I don't like puzzle games." That's that's Steam. And so that's what it is and it just takes time. You just got to go do it. Um go try it. Go play a bunch of games and you can uh so I would use VG Insights sort by the tags that you're thinking of, sort by revenue and then just start going down the list. It just just take an afternoon. If it's too much just sort it by the I would say sort it after 2020. Go 2020 to today and then just sort by revenue and just start going down. Start going out. I It took me 3 hours to build this list. Just do it and you'll learn so much. You just start to get a sense. And that's what I tell people. Don't just rely on Steam. Like if you just go to front page of Steam, you're only seeing successful games, okay? Maybe like one or two up-and-coming games but you are so filtered. And when you start breaking out of the algorithm that Steam has and just raw dump of all the games, you start to see the trends. You're like, "Ah, I bet that game didn't make money." And then you look, "Nope, it did not." I bet this game made money. Ah, it did. Okay. You can just start to get a a

sense but you only develop that skill after looking at a bunch of games. Okay. Um Would Steam throttle store page traffic if I release multiple games in a year? No, there's no They don't care. They don't care. They will throttle your game if it doesn't sell well um but um don't go crazy. Like uh there are some studios that would just they'd make a Steam page and if it didn't hit its numbers they'd move on to the next game and they wouldn't even release the game and they got in trouble cuz I think they released like five games without releasing the games but they don't care. Steam does not care what you do. They only care about the game and how much money it makes. So, if you make five games and they all make a million dollars, Steam's like, "We're going to show you more." That's the only thing they care about. If the algorithm is so stupid, it's just like, "Did this game make money? Yes, give it more." That's it. And that's not not not even like, "Did it make money in proportion to the wish list that converted and all that?" No. It's like, "How much money came from this game?" Not as a proportion of wish list or per traffic or per click or per view or per

whatever. It's just like, "How much money did this game make? Did it make a lot? More. Did it make money? No, less." That's it. It's the algorithm is so stupid, people. Okay. Um Uh let's see here. Are stealth games dead? I see a lot of cool-looking ones on Twitter, but it never turns out them so Yeah, they don't Uh stealth games are what I call going around games where it's like a dude walking around, even if it's stealth, it's just like games where there's this linear content where you're controlling this person who's walking through an environment, they just don't sell well because I think they're mostly PlayStation style. A lot of PlayStation like PlayStation with like Metal Gear Solid. Those are kind of like console games. When you're a dude like walking through a hallway exploring some place, that's totally console games. Steam games in general, high level, are much more about sitting at a desk with a mouse and a keyboard and just like building something in a sandbox. That's the ideal Steam game. Whereas,

console games are all about like sitting and being a dude with that's like a cool character and you're you're using a joystick. If you look at the stats for how many people use a joystick like a controller on Steam, it's ridiculously low. I think it's like 20% or something. Most people are sitting on a keyboard and a mouse, okay? And stealth games, I know you could WASD it, but that stealth experience is best, I think, with a controller. And so, I just think exploring uh a house like that is more console. Now, you have stealth. If it's stealthily avoiding a scary monster and it's first-person camera, horror does well like the Amnesia games do really well. They're all about stealth. So, if you just pour blood all over everything and you have a scary monster chasing you, stealth game could work. But, it's a horror game. So, horror's all about stealth. So, um but if you're thinking of making like a Metal Gear Solid or a Thief-style game, I don't know. I just don't think they I

don't I don't think they're that great. Um Uh question, my game is in a festival. How many wishlists should I expect? Go to my Discord, howtomarketagame.com/discord, and then we've got an ongoing event chat, and then we sort it, we create buckets for every event. Go back to the previous event and look at how the previous one does. It entirely depends on how much featuring the Steam store gives that game cuz sometimes they have the widget and it's only up for like a day, sometimes it's up for 3 days, sometimes it's up for a whole week. And then how many games are in the festival? It depends on the festival and how much featuring it gets. So, go back to past events that we have on the Discord and look through and see if it's the same event um if you can get a correlator. But, usually events, depending on the size, we're talking like 500 to like 4,000 wishlists, somewhere in that range. That's what we're we're looking at, depending on featuring. All right. Uh I'm I can't do 2 hours. Wait, I think I might actually have a Oh, no. I think I might actually have a meeting. I think I might I have to I got

to check my calendar. I I was having so much fun, I think I am actually Oh, no. Okay. No, I'm fine. It's at 11:00. So, I got 10 minutes and then I got to, you know, going to drink a water, go to the bathroom, 5 minutes. So, I'm going to go for 10 minutes. I'm going to set a 10-minute timer. Um Set a 10-minute timer. Okay, when this timer goes off, I got to bail. So, this is my reminder, last minute reminder, put your final questions in. If you want to take the class, click this spring sale. If you want to take the one if you want to do the sales spring sale. This only lasts until the end of April, then I kill it. The Inside Conference price goes up on Monday. It's going to be awesome. You don't have to see the vomit. You just show up. No hotel rooms required. You don't have to get COVID. You're just in your own bedroom at your own time. Even if you miss a talk, you'll be able to watch the video replay. It's coming up. It starts on Monday this time.

Or if you want to see all the conferences for 20 just 20 bucks more, you get all every past conference. I've been doing this for 3 years, so it's super fun. And then it goes from there. So, that's just on my howtomarketagame.com. Just click this spring sale 2025 and you'll find it. That's all you have to do. howtomarketagame.com. Okay? Let's see here. Um Okay, I'm going to go. Sorry if I missed your question. I'm just going to start at the bottom again and go back up. What do you think about a game like Fears to Fathom? Guy released a free horror narrative. I don't know guys. I don't know if it's specific specific games. I'm not going to answer those. Like, what do you think about this game with this? I don't know. You do the research. Go get out of here. Go download a bunch of them. But in general, horror or crafty building games. Crafty building games are the games. I'm not I'm cuz I don't have 10 minutes. I'm going to focus on specific marketing questions. Don't ask me like, what about this game? What if it's What if it's a What if it's a guy and he's got a blue hat? Would that Would a guy with a blue hat? I don't know. I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm not I can't predict the

future. I don't know. Test it. Try it. Look for other examples of it working. Okay, can I open a store page with a basic trailer to gather wish list and then do a proper announce with a showcase trailer after. Can I open a Steam page with a basic trailer? I don't know what basic trailer, but yeah, you should always and I did a thing watch look at this blog post here. There's a blog post you should always launch with a trailer. Watch when should I post my Steam coming soon page or a whole blog out post on this. Search it March 10th I did it. Mario day. Um it talks about when you should launch your Steam page. The trailer, it should be a gameplay focused trailer. Read that it's got all the things that you should be doing. Okay? Um Uh let's see here. Can I open a Steam page? Let's see. Portshore, should we apply for both Day of the Devs Summer Game Fest edition and Summer Game Fest or is that enough? I know Day of this apply for everything you got. Try everything. What's what's the worst going to I know it's like well it cost a couple hundred bucks. It's

worth it. If you're doing this seriously, it's worth taking the shot. Do all of them. Try for everything. Do it. Do everything. Yes, do it all. Um post release big updates can be awkward on Steam. Big updates can be Do you think Steam should add more obvious post release levers? I don't know what you mean by awkward. Promoting your game's never awkward. It's you. It's your game. It's never awkward. Um obvious post release levers to pull for promotion. Well, here's the thing is Steam only promotes games that have already sold well. So, I do think that there should be more and I I was talking to Valve cuz I at GDC Valve had a special like feedback session. I was talking to him. I was like, you need more for the games that are like at 200 to 500 reviews. And that's what I told him like these mid-tier games. It doesn't have to be as big as like a daily deal or something like a little bit smaller. And they're like, we think we have some stuff in the works. But I think that's the thing is like there are some games that are just kind of stuck in the middle that maybe get a little bit more, but it's not going to be much. Let me Here's the thing folks, you don't just in general. You don't grind on Steam. It's not like

you don't grind for every review and every sale. You just don't grind. What happens is Valve looks in a very short period of time. We're talking like 1 to 2 weeks, sometimes even like 8 hours. And they see, are you a hot game? Like, all right, is it awesome? And if it is, they just put you on the front page. You are just blasted to the top. Like, all these games, like this 2025 games, I found 75% of games that hit 1,000 reviews did it in within 3 months. It's like that's the way the Steam algorithm works. It's like, they're just constantly like the eye of Sauron looking at games that have the the magic that are hot, and they just pluck them out and they put them on the top of, I don't know, Sauron Mountain or something. I don't know. It's probably like Mitha Ghoul Mountain or whatever. I don't remember what it is. But then they just pluck the game and they just put it on the on the front page. That's how it works. They know very quick. It's not You don't grind up for reviews. And if it's not working, and this is not this is not my

Don't yell at me. I'm just a messenger here. I've looked at the stats. Games don't succeed after the fact. If you if you don't have like 250 reviews within the first like month, basically, I didn't see a single game go on to succeed. Don't yell at me. I I didn't make the rules. That's Valve's rules. Don't yell at me and say, "Well, that's that's wrong, Chris." I know I think it is, but that's just what it is. So, if it doesn't happen, it's time to move on. Like, get do the update and try your best, do a couple promotions, reach out to streamers. If it still doesn't work, work on game two. You want to be the game that is so hot, Valve just goes, "Whoop whoop, you're on the front page." But it happens so fast, folks. Okay. Um Let's see. I'm going to keep going. Should we apply? Let's see. Um Oh, if my game is proposed for predisposed to gore, should I add it in or is it a bad idea?

If your game's a horror game, you should definitely have gore. Here's the thing is, you have to be specific to your genre. Like, if it's it's a wholesome game, don't put gore in it. Do not put gore in a wholesome game. If it's a horror game, put gore. You have to know your audience. Know it I don't know what type of game you are, but yes, you should make it scary. Um Um How to detect the Steam key fishers on email? Just most of the time it's no. How to detect them? Just saying no. If they ask for a key, they're not legitimate. I I really haven't heard. Like, if it's a streamer that's big enough to give you traffic, they're just going to buy the game. They're not going to bother waiting for you to give them a key. So, my my general feeling is if they ask for a key, it's a no. It's just no. Uh what do you think about a game like fear I already answered that with a non question. How are new platforms doing for indie game marketing? Platforms like Blue Sky? I don't think Blue Sky I I haven't seen it. I just don't see what Blue Sky I know Blue Sky seems So, well,

here's the thing. Social media never worked really, folks. It just does Social media I don't know how it got to be that social media is associated with marketing. I think it's cuz it's visible. But social media has never really worked. It hasn't. So, I don't have much hope for Blue Sky. It seems kind of insular. I don't know, but I don't know. If somebody has I'm waiting. I'm waiting for somebody to say, "Hey, I got a thousand wishlists from Blue Sky." I haven't seen it, but um we'll see. Do you think a demo is suitable for narrative horror walking sim with a short duration and would it potentially back for I think it would because look at that what's that game called that horror game called PT? It was only a demo. It was never actually a full game with that PT demo. I think horror game you just got to confine it. If it's a two-hour experience, make a 20 20-minute experience. I think it can. Um The other game a narrative game and I was just talk He was on the Discord today, Tony from Don't Slay the Princess or Do You Slay I always forget if you do Slay the Princess or Don't. I think it's Don't Slay the Princess. Um he They did a demo and it's a narrative linear

um visual novel. Of course, it's got branching paths and that's part of the loop. But yeah, they do it. You do it. Everything needs a demo. Everything needs a demo. Um visibility Do you think a demo is suitable for near Okay, visibility before the demo. How do we reach out to people and on what platforms? Okay, Reddit banned my account four times now. Well, don't do that. Something I mean, Reddit will ban you four times. That's on you. four times. You Here's what you do. You tweet about your game every day and I know social media doesn't work, but you're trying to attract other people and you find your genre and you find the people that will like it and you give screenshots to content creators like on TikTok, there are people who specialize like on wholesome games. So, if you're making a wholesome game, you send them that. You're probably not making a wholesome game cuz wholesome games do not get banned. People who make who people get banned four times typically don't make wholesome games. They're like, "Oh, they're so good. They're so nice."

I don't know. Four times, man. That's That's a little aggressive. Uh four You get banned four times. Listen, most of promotion doesn't work until you get your demo out and that's what I'm going to be talking about during my conference is Here's the thing, folks. You got to get the demo Even the best games, their traffic really doesn't come until they release the demo. So, there really aren't that many avenues. You can reach out to streamers. You get your trailer out. Trailers on YouTube. You try and get IGN to host your trailer. You try and get game trailers to host your trailer. If they don't like your or more interesting game, and then after that, if you still don't get covered by all that stuff, the influencers on TikTok or or game trailers or IGN, get that demo out. There aren't many avenues before the demo. That's the thing. I mean, there aren't that many. There just aren't. Okay, and Reddit's never really been that good. So, just go easy on Reddit. Just stop Stop posting. Four times? That's on you. Don't don't lay off Reddit, okay?

It doesn't do that good. Um What if my game doesn't hit a good quality Okay, what if before the Steam page launch, my game doesn't hit that good quality in screenshots and trailer? Should I delay? I mean if this is your first game try your best, get it out, make the game, make another one. Get a better one. It's like Here's my fear and my time's up, so I got to I got to end this. Um here's my fear is you if you've got this mindset where it's like my game my art isn't good enough. My art isn't good. Your game is going to go on for 5 years and you're never going to release it, okay? Here's the deal. This is your first game. It sounds like it's your first game. Just do the best you have now, try and release it, see how it goes, make your next game, then your next one, and your next one. And maybe by your second or third game you hire an artist and then your art's good, okay? Or make Make a game smaller and hire an artist or make a game smaller and get some asset art and kit bash it and hire an artist to

kit bash it for you and make it look good. But here's the thing is if you're just waiting for your art skills to get good, you were never going to release your game. If you're like, "Well, it's still not good enough. I'm not going to release my Steam page." That is just a recipe for scope creep and a game that takes you 3 years to make. Please do not spend 3 years. Please, if you get anything out of it, don't spend 3 years on your first game. Go make one of these other genres that are smaller, less art intensive, hire an artist. If you don't have the money, make it. Again, focus on a genre that does not rely as much on art. A lot of people like RPGs and they're not good at art. RPGs live and die based on art. You have to have good art to have a good RPG or something like that. Or a narrative game, you have to have good art in a narrative game. Games like idlers, even horror games don't require a lot of art cuz you can use a lot of asset store art. There are genres that are that require a lot less art to be good. And so then you take that and and you save up and you hire an artist for your next genre or something like that. But your first game just just get your first couple games out. You're they're going to suck. Let me tell you

folks, your first this is a long-term project. It's not your first game is not going to be a hit. It just won't. With that positive news, uh let's just say goodbye and I hope to see you at the conference because it's going to be this. It's me that's going to be the speakers. It's not like a talk where you sit and talk. It's interactive. It's like this, but this plus that speaker, whatever speaker you're going to attend is going to be right here. And then it's you asking me to ask a speaker those questions. It's just like this, but with another person. That's going to be fun. That's going to be really good. So I hope to see you there. It's really it's going to help you with your marketing. I'm excited for you. I want you to be confident. I want you to be really good. I want you to be like, "Yes, I'm confident doing this." I want I want you inspired. That's my goal. I'm keep doing this cuz this Imagine this person standing right here. Both of us the two of us helping you. Isn't that cool? Like the two of us and chat, we're all helping each other. All good. That's what That's the vision you can have. Just click the spring sale 2025 on my website, how to market a game.com. I want you to feel confident marketing your game. Bye. Bye, I'll be around, but see you later. Bye.