My Broadcast

Okay. Can you hear this at all? All right.
Can you hear this?

I'm coming. All right. Sorry, folks. Had to move everything. Just just following in. Can you can hear me? You can't see me. I know you can't see me. My camera and my audio went bonkers. Can you hear it? Okay. Just give me a thumbs up that you can hear it. Okay. Like, say I can hear you, Chris.
Right. You can hear typing. You can hear me. That's great. I am so sorry. Okay. Sounds good on YouTube. I have to give you YouTube credit. I got to give them credit where it's due. It actually worked. All right. I am sorry for the thing. Yes, I should hire somebody. If you are a professional stream operator, I don't even know what to call these people. Just send me an email. I I I want to hire somebody for this stuff. I can't take this anymore. So, tell me.

But you have to you can't be interested. You have to have done this professionally. If you have never done this, don't send me an email. I will pay you. But if you've never done this, don't send me an email. Well, if you just like YouTube, that doesn't count. Okay. All right. So, here's how to get the sale. I know. I know. I know you signed up for the webinar. This is the same thing. It's the same webinar. I just had to do it. All right. The sales live. Go to how toarketame.comlive. Here's the deal. Let me just walk through real quick. Um Um
Let me just send I got to send an email real quick. Um [laughter] I just got to send an email real quick to everybody who who subscribed. Um, so anyway, um, that's where it's live. Let me show you real quick while you're here. Okay, watch this thing if you're from Europe. There's a very It's my site is tricky for how to enter your VAT. I cannot do it afterwards. Please watch that video real quick and um, watch that to figure out how to enter your VAT. Be very,

very, very careful if you have to enter a VAT. Do not buy it until you enter the VAT. Okay? Please don't. if you need to be. I cannot undo it. Once you buy it and you didn't enter your VAT, nothing nothing can be changed. Okay, here's the thing. This is the big sale. If you buy it during the next two hours while I'm doing this live stream, you enter the code live. If you buy the full bundle, enter this code called live. Just type in live at the at the code thing, okay? When you have to enter the coupon code, you'll get 10 bucks off. But this ends at the end of the stream. Okay? Now, for the other ones, for all the other courses, if you buy any of these courses, I will give you the inside conference for free because you bought them during this next hour and a half. I'm going to go for two hours here because I messed up and all the stream messed up. Okay? So, here's how we're going to do it. I'm going to do a live Q&A. So, what I need you to do is ask your questions. Go live and go question in

all bold and then ask your question about Steam. Okay? and I will do it. I will answer your question about Steam, making your game, all that kind of stuff. Um, so ask away. I'm just, you're going to hear some typing because I just have to send an emergency u email to everybody uh to tell them, hey, I moved the broadcast. Um, so wait, let me just duplicate this real quick. Uh, that sort of thing. [laughter] Okay.
Sorry, I'm just typing this in. So, ask your question. Um, and uh we're going to go to the live stream. Okay. Uh or we're going to go I'll go to those questions during the live stream and stuff. Okay. So, let me just answer. So yeah, go to how tomarketaggame.com/live to get those coupon codes and that's

where you you get them. So if you get So what what happens here? Here, let me tell you what how this works. Okay. So, when you buy the master class during this next live stream, I will go in and give you a free um
uh I'll give you a free uh inside conference, the one from 2025, but you have to buy it during this two hours. And so, it doesn't happen automatically. It has to go um it has to I have to go in afterwards and I have to go add the coupon to everybody who bought. Okay? So, it's not going to show up right away. It's going to take a little bit. Okay? I'm sorry. Uh I just have to add it in automatically. So, you got to do that stuff. Okay? Now, um this is the deepest. These are the discounts that I do for the year. This is the last one for the year. The next one won't be until January of next year, I think. Uh no, February. It'll be in February next year because I'm gonna do it for the next next fest. Okay. So, this is your last chance. If you're looking for a

special Christmas gift for somebody, this is the way to do it. Okay. Oh, and by the way, this is recorded. So, if you have to go and like put the kid to bed or something, I understand this is going to live forever. This is on YouTube and stuff, so it'll be there. Don't worry. Um, we'll go from there. Okay. All right. So, let's ask some real questions. Um, all right. So, I see some more questions. I'm going to go back in through them and answer these questions. So, does pricing influence a conversion rate from wish list to sales? How about early access? Um, here's the thing. It's not exactly This is from uh Raza, I think Rav's. Um, it's not, don't think of it as conversion from wish lists. Think of it as your price matters. Because here's the deal. It's wish list conversion is based on a ton of things. Like, if your game is good and people like it, it's going to convert better. That's necess not necessarily the price. It all goes into a soup. So it's like the price and whether the game's fun and whether it looks good all influence the

wish and where you got those wish lists. So all that stuff goes into a soup that determines how well you convert. But your price matters. So really pay attention to your price.
Um do your analysis and people are going to ask, "How do I find it?" Go to all the games that are similar to yours. Same genre, same graphics, generality, you know, like not super high quality. they match your quality of graphics. See what the prices are, average them up, and then add 20%. That's my general price recommendations. Um because you add 20% because you're going to be constantly discounting. So that's it. Okay. Um let me uh just turn this all off. Okay. So um All right. The feedback. How about that? Is that better? Can you hear? Okay. The feedback. Not too much feedback. I turned off all speakers and everything. It's just it's just terrible. This all sucks. All right. Um, okay. Let's see here. Next one. Um,
can you hear?

Okay. So, let me see. I think I've turned off the audio, the feedback. Um, just message below if you can hear the feedback. Okay. Um,
okay. In case one succeeds with crowdfunding part of the development, would you say that there's a big impact on launch or is it negligible considering the 30,000 wish list at launch? I just
I don't understand the CR. I think what you're asking is if I have a lot of backers and then I go to sales, will the early backers buy it? They will not. But if you did very well and you're getting tons of wish list, that means you have excitement and there will always be new audiences to find your game. I think that's what your question is. And so if you had a successful Kickstarter, that usually means that you did very well and your game's exciting and that leads to conversions because you've tested it with that. It those Kickstarter backers are not going to go over and buy that stuff. In other words, like they can't buy it, so they won't influence your sales. That's the risk of crowdfunding. But the bigger thing is, is your game

fun and exciting? And if it's not exciting, it will not convert. Okay. Um, I can't answer the questions from the webinar. So, I you're going to have to ask him again here because when I killed it and started again, I lost all the questions. I'm sorry. So, just rewrite your question there. I'll get to them. What are your thoughts on doing a private and you need to get good and practice releasing your play test and get feedback and all that business? Okay. So, yes, you Okay. Um All right. Yes. Still feedback. I I'm sorry. I don't I don't know. I don't feedback [laughter] thing. If you're an audio person who has managed live streams, you have to have proven success to do this. Please comment. Um, so, uh, please comment if Oh, wait. Here, here might be it. Okay. If you've done live broadcasts before, um, and you an audio person with

proven paid success, email me and I'll hire you. Um, it may have lagged. I don't know. My internet's also held by spiders. It's held together by spiders. Okay. So, let me just real quick. Um, let me just show you. Um, all right. So, we're running the sale for the master class. Um, here's what here's the deal with the master class. Um, I update it all the time. And let me just give you a quick preview. I'll get back to questions real quick. I'm just going to show you what's going on with the master class and how all this works. Okay, so my wish list invisibility master class is how you learn how to get wish lists. Okay, it's just it's how it works. Okay, and this is what it looks like and it's normally 400 bucks for the sale. I'm discounting it. Um, click those link click those links in how tomarketaggame.comlive how tomarketame dol live is how you get

it. And um that's how you learn how to do the thing uh how to get wish lists. Here are testimonials. Real developers have taken this like Tiny Glade. My course was so good I ended up in the credits of Tiny Glade. This game got a million wish lists. I'm not guaranteeing if you take this course you're going to get a million wish lists. That game got a million wishes because it's an awesome game. But Micro Civilization did well. Momento, it's getting they at 75,000 wish lists in six weeks and they credit the course. These are my testimonials. Also, if you search Reddit for Chris Sukowski course, you'll see a couple people that are like, "Yeah, this course is awesome." And they recommend it wholeheartedly. So, don't take my word. Search you Reddit. Just search Chris Sukowski course and you'll see some comments and search the comments because people comment on it. Um, and they'll say it's awesome. So, don't take my word for it. It's awesome. And also, I if you buy it and you don't like it, I 30-day. Remember, it's not eternal. It's 30-day money back guarantee. I'll give it your money back and you have lifetime access

which means if the algorithm changes anyway I will update the course do well and just say hey' you do it and they say oh yeah we did this so anyway that's that just quick commercial I'm just breaking so that I can do some more Q&A here I'm going to answer more questions um let me just double check the audio um okay good good all right so I think we had a little bit of a lag but I'm back at it all All right. So, um, again, that link is how toarketame.comlive. I posted in chat, so just go there for the chat. Okay. What are your thoughts on keeping a live demo on Steam versus releasing just one good demo? You've got to keep it up. It's obvious like keep that demo up as long as you can until maybe launch. Maybe launch. The reason you keep it up is because content creators are constantly just browsing Steam looking for stuff. And you never know when streamers going to find you. And sometimes a big festival will introduce it to you them

and then they'll find it from a big festival that you're in and then they'll play your game and it'll go big. So keep your demo up. The only time you take it down is if you're going to do a big re-release of the demo, maybe add some features. Take it down for maybe a month to build anticipation and then re-release it a month later or something. And maybe during launch you take it down just to increase excitement. Okay. Current one. And should the game playbook as big games? Should the use the same play book to promote big games? Okay. Quick question. I don't know how long it's going to last. The hardest thing to predict is the future. Who knows? That's what my second blog post I was looking at the concurrent player counts and all I'm doing with that was saying like is it are we still in a bunch of people playing it? I have no idea. I'm not a fortune teller. I just know that it's still going on. Um, but I don't know how long it'll last. So, get on it now because I think it's worth it to to practice. Even if it fails and the bubble pops or whatever and people hate

friendlop or they hate idol games in two months, you made a game and you released it. You learned how that works. That's the most important thing is you just got to learn how Steam works and you don't learn that until you release a game. So, you got to learn how to release a game. All right. Now, regarding everything else, here's what I would recommend. Um, well, actually the master class. Whoops. Um, the master class right here. I have uh road maps. That's a new thing that I did. Um, let's see. Let me find it. This new thing that I added are road. Let's see. There's testimonials. I put it here. You can kind of see them here. There's this whole section, go to market strategies. I give you step by step how, what's special about it. And look, rapid release, go to market strategy. I give you a specific plan and I give you like a road map, like a literal picture that shows the road map of how you do it for how to do these rapid release games like a fast follow um grand conjunction games, great conjunction games. Okay. Now, with

those, so I give you the the step by step on how to do it here in the master class. But here's the other thing. You cannot do this for big games. Like if you're then making your dream game, that's the one where then I go, you got to slow it down and you got to do minimum six months of Steam marketing and lots of demos and all that stuff. It's different. But but the important thing is you did learn how to run a beta, how to run a play test, how to upload a demo. You learned all these things, which when you do your Grand Conjunction game, you're going to you're going to mess up. You're going to you're going to you're going to do something dumb. But that's fine because you just did a small game that doesn't earn much and it didn't risk much. So lower risk but you learned a lot and that's the most important thing. Okay. Okay. The next question is I'm focused on visual novel development at the moment. Do you believe the presence of more interactive gameplay in narrative games affects the pole of the audience they might get? I don't know. I don't know the visual novel environment very well. I just don't know that genre as well. That's up to you. And I find that

the visual novel genre is very clicky or very tight. And if you don't understand it perfectly, you're just going to fail. So really invest yourself in that community. Deep dive. Learn all the players. Try all that stuff. Play all the visual novel and interactive games. I have no idea. That's a that's a game design question, not a marketing question. I mean, they're kind of close, but I don't know. You got to do the research. You do it, not me. Question. If you plan on having your release during the summer, is there any of the months better than others, or does the months have good or bad dates for releasing game? It doesn't matter. devs spend way too long managing the perfect day to release their game. It just doesn't matter. I really don't think it matters. I don't at all. The only time is maybe the last month of November because every other game is releasing. It's the number of games. And the important thing is look on Steam DB, look at the calendar, you can see upcoming releases. You want to look for how many games above 7,000 wish lists are or 700 followers, which equals 7,000

wish lists, are launching right around your game because that's what determines how competitive it is. It's not whether this one big game is releasing. It's all the other ones. But for the most part, folks, the biggest question is what's your genre? It's not when do you release. So stop focusing so much on the release date. It's too much. You're spending too long on that. In case one succeeds with crowdfunding, uh you already asked that one. I already answered that. Or is it negligible considering? Okay. Is Halfife 3 coming out tomorrow? Par I don't know. Question. I've taken the plunge and I'm going to produce a commercial game. At what age do I get my Steam page up? Just starting horror game. Um I've written about this a lot. It's kind of complicated. Look at my blog post. Search Steam page on my blog how tomarketagame.com um blog and just search it. How to market a game and just search my thing for release date. I've written two big blog posts about it. It's complicated. It's sooner than you think, but don't put up crap. Okay. Um, here's this Black Friday page. Um, can you still hear me? Okay. Um, I hope so. Um, so, um, what I

want you to do is, um, go to how toarket.comlive. See this? And I have the secret code. If you buy it during this webinar, 10 bucks off if you use this code live on this thing on these. If you buy any of these, I'll give you uh the inside conference 2025. Yes, I'm aware if you buy this one, it is the conference itself. No, you don't get it for free. I just had to copy and paste that in there real quick. So, I just linked to it. I mean, if you buy this, you will get it for free, but if you buy anything else, I will give you a free copy of the inside conference 2025. And what I have to do, just be patient when you buy it. I have to go in and I have to um manually add that to your thing. I can period and I'll add it on there. Okay. All right, next question. I'm going back into the questions. Okay. All right. Um, is today a 50-50 split a good deal with a publisher? It's my

first commercial game? I don't know. There's a lot that goes into that. I don't know the aspect. I'm not a lawyer. I don't know everything about it. I don't know. I'm not going to answer that because there's a lot of stuff going on that in that question. Question. How do you view iterating your game direction based on wish list feedback or coming soon page as the game is quite far from finished? I don't like that. I I find the developers, especially if this the successful developers that make games very quickly and are more successful are the ones that say this is going to be my game. This is going to be the scope I'm and this is the genre. This is it. This is what it's going to look like. And they just go. They just heads down do it. They deliver it and then they see how it does. The devs that never ever finish their game and they work on it for a decade are the ones that are constantly iterating based on feedback. Oh no graphics. Oh no, I'm going to move to a new engine because I read this one article that said this one engine has a bad problem. No, no, no. The best devs that I think are the coolest ones, and my opinion is just one opinion, are the

ones who just say, "Yeah, I'm going to make a game. It's going to be this. It's going to be this many tiers, this many experience, and it's going to have this graphics. I mean, sure, they might play test a little bit, and they might tweak it based on, you know, somebody like, "Oh, I didn't understand this." So, they tweak that. But for the most part, the most successful, fastest developed devs don't iterate. They just like boom, focus ship. Boom, focus, ship. So, I say the first five games you make, just do that. Put your flag down, say, "I'm going to make this game." And then you see the reception after you launch. Okay? All right. Also, by the way, there might be some For some reason, my internet's a little flaky. What I'm going to do is I'm This is a recording, so you're going to see the full uninterrupted thing by the end. Okay, next question. Is it good strategy to copy a successful title, but of course, change it up so it's better? Not really. I think that most devs who copy are following the wrong lessons. Like, they'll copy a AAA game, which is totally different, or they don't

understand why. And a lot of times what they do is they see the outside. They're like, "Oh man, this dev did this tweet and then they got a thousand wish lists and really what how deal with another developer and that developer sent their traffic to that thing." You cannot see from the outside. It's just like what do they say about a marriage? You can't tell about what's going on on marriage from the outside. You have to be inside. The inside of a marriage is very different. The inside of any marketing campaign is very different from the external what you see. So don't copy it. Um what you should do is learn from case studies. look at case studies like I present because I dive deep into the sub what actually caused it, okay? What caused the problems and stuff or what actually worked. And so read those case studies and kind of see and then pick things that work from there. But don't try and copy somebody if you're just looking from the outside because there's a lot going on that you just don't see. And a lot of times people think social media works because they see a big funny person on social media and they're like, "Oh, it's social media." It's not. It's usually like a festival or streamer, and it's very hard to find out if a content creator streamed a game at a certain

time, but you don't know that from the outside just by looking at their social media. So, it contains multitudes behind the scenes. All right, the next question is, what Tik Tok factors can unintentionally suppress reach? And with my posts being purely gameplay, what practices or technical issues? I don't know Tik Tok very well. Um, so I don't know. I don't know Tik Tok. I I'm sorry. I just can't answer it. I just don't know. Tik Tok. Usually Tik Tok you upload it and you upload gameplay and it works. And if people aren't into the gameplay, it doesn't work. I don't know. So just try something. I don't know. I don't know. Tik Tok. I'm sorry. Question. You always say to go for festivals, but what happens when you almost have no alignment with the festivals? Ship your game and make one that does. I don't know. Usually festivals follow the popular genres. And so you've got that's why it's like very important. It's not just sales. A lot of the times the popular genres are the ones that have a lot of festivals. So it's like I I know

it sounds weird, but you got to stay current with what's shipping and what's going on right now. So my recommendation is if you're just not getting into any festivals or anything, ship it or reach out. You're going to be content creator heavy. If content creators aren't playing a game, make sure it's in a genre that was very All right. Thank you. Released our game in May 2025. We got about 20,000 installs. How to understand the game is worth pushing for more DLC and updates. If there's any course um help to go market games after launch. Okay, here's the deal with after launch. Okay, I don't know what your total sales are, but here's the deal. If your game hit, like if people like your game, it hits very fast. I'd say you would know in about six months whether your game has it. And this is what I mean. If in six months, May, let me let me count. May, June, July, August, September, October. Yep. You've been about six months out since May, are you at a thousand wish lists? Are you at

like maybe 800 wish lists? That's the that's the range. Like, if your game is going to succeed, it's going to happen in the first six months. And by succeed, I mean about a thousand wish lists. If you are nowhere near 800 wish lists, I am sorry. It's probably most likely 99% case not going to happen for this game. I am sorry. My sympathies are with you. This industry is hard. That's why you have to ship fast. Learn lessons. Ship again. Ship again. Ship again. Your first few games just will suck and won't make the market. They just won't. I'm sorry. And that's just the way it goes. So here's what happens. If you're not near there, the what I said like 800 to a,000 by now, make sure there's no like glaring bugs, like something very obviously wrong with your game. Uh patch that, make those updates, but don't invest more in this game. It's just not going to happen. There's nothing you can do to goose the numbers up by by about this time, after about

six months. My advice is start looking at your next game. What's your next game going to be? And if you're close, if if a lot of people are like, "This game's fun, but and there's a whole bunch of problems, that could mean, and if it's in one of the genres that I recommend, like crafty, buildy, strategy, simulation-y, or horror, use the same engine and re make a second game that uses most of the same code, but fixes all those core problems that people have with the game. They're like, "Oh, the pacing's too slow, or it's too hard." And your second game's going to be better. And you're not starting from zero. you're starting from the core base of your your current gain that kind of sold underperformed type of thing. Okay, that's my advice. But mostly, it's time to move on. It sounds like based on what you're saying, depending on the number of sales, it's time to move on. Okay, if if you're just not at that 1,000 after 6 months, if you had a $15,000 grant to spend on marketing, this is a classic question. How would you spend it other than good capsule art? Look, I wrote a

whole blog post about this. Search my blog for money on marketing. Um 15,000. Maybe spend it for one of the big showcases like the Jeff Keley show or the PC gaming show. Sometimes you can negotiate down the price. That might be it. But um courses, I would spend it on courses like this excellent course which is on