Making Your First Game: Launching! - How to Market Your Game - Extra Credits

For the last three episodes, we've been talking about where to start when making a game. But once you've made the game you love, what are you going to do with it? Well, first you got to find a way to let people know about it. Now, many people might say, "Boo, marketing and PR. Boo." But if you're really going to be an indie developer, if you're really going to make a living off of this thing and be able to fund developing your games full-time, this is a big part of your job. Besides, if you truly have a great game and you don't let people know about it, you're doing everybody a disservice. The first thing you need to do is understand your own message. Why is your game unique and interesting? With so many options for their free time, why should people play your game? What experience do you offer them that they've never been offered before? Really understanding what's going to draw players into your game is essential as you reach out to other people. As a side benefit, if you figure this out early enough, it'll also really help you make the game better when you're building it. Okay, so now you figured out what's special about your game and how to convey it, how do you get the

word out? Well, let's assume that you've got no marketing budget. What can you do? First, you'll need to put together a few things to get noticed. These can be pretty basic. They just have to be clean, elegant, and express that core idea. One thing you'll need is a trailer. Make sure it's no more than 3 minutes long. There's plenty of free video editing software out there, so this can be done with just some elbow grease. But if you got a friend who's already done some editing before, it might be time to call in a favor. The other thing you'll need is a website. Something basic is fine. It could even be WordPress. It just has to look presentable. Simple and professional is a lot better than complex and amateur. Once you have those, it's time to enter your game into the indie game competitions. Getting into something like IGF is a great way to get your game noticed, and it's essentially free. There are small fees attached to some of them, but it's trivial compared to any paid marketing or PR. Second, start communicating with other people in the game industry over social media. See if you can get your game into the hands of one of the tastemakers out there. If If like Tim Schafer tweets about your game, a lot of people, including media people, are going to perk up. Again, don't be

shy about calling in favors here. Next, mail all of the game news sites. Now, you might think, "I'll never get picked up by somebody like Rock, Paper, Shotgun, or Destructoid, or Kotaku." But, the truth is, their job is to have content. That's what catches eyes and generates ad revenue. If it's a slow news day, they'll absolutely post about a tiny indie game if it looks interesting. And start also giving some love to the smaller game sites that really focus on your genre. Whether it's intense strategy war gaming or quiet emotive experiences, there are sites dedicated to the aspect of play that your game focuses on, and that's where you'll find your early adopters and your most vocal evangelists. As your game goes towards launch, figure out how you're going to build up the attention as the launch closes in. Consider doing a Reddit AMA, or go on podcasts. Release new screenshots and trailers frequently, and make sure to let all the media sites know each time you do it. Once you've done all that, it's time to launch. But, where are you going to launch your game? Well, there are a ton of options here. First off, there are, of course, traditional digital distributors like Good Old Games and Steam. We'll talk a

little bit more about Steam in a bit, but don't be afraid to reach out to these services. They may seem like these monolithic entities where real games go, and you may think that your game is beneath their notice. Don't worry about that. Digital distributors are actually a lot easier to get your game on than many people think. They make their money off of every sale you make, whether you sell 100 or 100,000 copies. And since it doesn't really cost them anything to put more products up on their store, they're generally pretty happy to work with anybody who has a reasonably well-put-together product. As for Steam in particular, just know that you're really going to have to do that press and PR stuff I mentioned earlier if you want to make it past Greenlight. But, when you're thinking about distribution, also think beyond the traditional digital distributors. The various mobile app stores out there actually reach way more customers than Steam does by a fairly wide margin. Sites like Kongregate and Newgrounds allow your audience instant access to your game from basically any PC in the world, and provide you an opportunity to get feedback every second of every day. Specialty distributors like Slitherine can really help you reach a niche. Heck, Xbox One, the PS4, and the Wii U all

have digital stores as well. And while they are more difficult to get into than some of the PC distributors, it's actually easier to get access to these as a developer than it's ever been since all these companies are looking for unique selling points for their platforms. Even Facebook is a distribution possibility. Don't rule out anything. Think about how your game plays and where it's going to find its audience and put it there. And this is where I'm going to make my one Unity plug because Unity makes porting your game to new platforms really simple. The real answer to the question, "Where should I distribute my game?" is everywhere you can. Back when James started working in games, porting a game was a nightmare. It required tons of work. You'd often have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to some outsourced company to have them port the game for you. And you would just cross your fingers and hope they did a good job. The one-button porting promise of Unity isn't entirely accurate. You're probably going to have to get in there and still fiddle with some things, but still though, for those of us who have had to port games before engines like Unity were a thing, the difference is amazing. Go get your games out there in as many ways as you can. And once you do, then

comes the hard part, supporting your game and accepting its flaws. Just going through the exercise of exposing your work to the internet and seeing the feedback you get has value. It's tough and it will hurt and there will be plenty of times that your beautiful baby comes back covered in somebody else's slime-covered filth. But for all that, you'll learn so much more about where you could go with your game and what it needs to truly shine. Way more than you'll learn from just testing it with friends. Your future games will be better just for having really released a game. And lastly, support your title. This means bug fixes and gameplay updates and all that stuff that we've come to expect, but it also means keeping in touch with fans and the media, planning out sales and promotions, even doing the headache of accounting if you're not giving your game away for free. Well, with that, we say good luck and good creating. We hope to be playing some of your games soon. See you next week.