Oops 1 MORE Hour Answering Questions about Steam (Watch only after 1 hour of solid dev time)

Yes. Yes. Okay, I'm ready for happy vibes. Let's do a happy vibes question. All right. Andrew says, "I've got 10,000 wish lists." Yes. I love it. Okay. You can kind of run down the tracks a little bit. And I show you some tricks of how you can run the tracks. It's not as good as if you had gotten on that train that zipped you to wish list town,
but we're going to find you some other things. Then momentum. You don't have to freak out like, "Oh my god, we're going to lose momentum." That's where people start freaking out. They're like, "I'm going to lose it. Oh my god, I'm going to lose momentum. Like, what is momentum? There's no there's nothing to lose cuz it's not a thing. So, I feel like you're a little afraid of this imaginary thing that doesn't actually exist. The main thing is, folks, you just aren't doing enough. That's the main thing is like you're not actually taking those things. So, reach out to everybody. You cannot overexpose your game. You cannot. You are an indie. We have this much visibility. This is how much visibility we get ever. So you can never overex expose yourself because you have this much visibility to begin with.

So you're overexposing this much. The fear should not be, "Oh my god, I'm overexposing myself. I reached out too early. I had to wait for the demo." No, the fear is you are not doing enough. That's always the thing I'm telling indies. You're not doing enough. You're not reaching out to enough content creators. You're not reaching out to enough streamers. You're not reaching out to enough journalists. And this is the summer sale. So, um, it's the summer sale, and I put everything on sale. It's time to get rid of this. This is done now. Get rid of that. But what we do have is the big bundle. This is the super bundle. This is the big thing for summer. The summer sale right here. You can get everything I make in one low price. I give a super deep discount if you buy everything. But if you're not ready for that, I also have uh these things. Now, the big one I want to talk to you all about is Wish Class 3.0. Say yes, I'm ready. Um, I just updated this is my my flagship course. Um, I call it the master class and I just updated because the Steam algorithm updates all the time and this

is what I call version 3.0. I've been doing this for three years and this is the third version. Basically, every time Steam drastically changes the algorithm or there's a new way of working and I add um I need to update the course to make sure that you all know how this works. Now, here's the thing. If you already own this course, if you bought 2.0 or 1.0, bought the original course, I have good news for you. You got it. You've got all the content. You just go into the course, you don't even have to buy it again. Everything you if you buy this course, you have lifetime updates forever and ever. Um, you've got the content. Just log in and everything that's new for this release for 3.0 has a little blue dot next to the words. So, then you can just see like, oh, what's new? That's that's what's new. Okay. So, um, just go through and I'll talk about some of this stuff. This is all new content that I'm putting in here. The two there are two big big big things that I added to this kind of three, but they're kind of related. Okay, the first one is demos,

demos, demos, demos. The Steam algorithm changed and Valve supports demos. And we'll talk about this. I know I'm going to get questions about this. So, you can launch a demo. You have to be careful with your demo launch. I used to say in 2.0 and 1, throw a throw that demo up, whatever you want. just throw it up, see if it works, pull it down, take it down. Not anymore. The new algorithm is the demo is very careful. You have to launch your demo once and you get special things if you if you do it right. Okay? You have to be very careful when you launch your demo. And so, you need enough wish list and enough promotion to get it to go up the charts because they added this thing called new and trending free. And if you do it right, you can get your demo on the front page of Steam, new and trending free. And so, I had to update the course to teach people how do you get it on the front page. So, I have whole new course steps and actions and stuff of how to summon an army to go play your demo and get you on the top trending free. That's what I added. Number two is demos are so important. Demos, demos, demos are so critically important,

but I'm not a good game designer. I've designed games, but they're not great. Okay? I'm just not a game designer. That's not my specialty. So, what I did was I went to people who are good game designers and I played their demo while they watched me play their demo. And I just asked them like what is this? Why do we do this? What is going on here? And uh they were like Chris is what you do. So there's three demos, three developers, three demos that I went through. U Tiny Glade, Bull Work, Falconer Chronicles, and the third one is Slay the Princess. All top earning games, awesome developers, and this is like hours and hours of content because I'm playing through their demo, and it takes hours to play through the demo. And I was like, why'd you do this? Why'd you do that? And they're commentating. they're watching me play. So, it's really cool. Very excited about it. And then finally, the third thing that I added to this course that's new is I know this course is enormous. There's a lot going on and not everybody can do it. So, what I did was I created these what we call the road maps and they I

made a whole marketing plan for your game and I made specific ones for certain types of games because the marketing plan for a wholesome game is different from the marketing plan of a horror game. And so, I made you a marketing plan. If you're making a horror game, I have a specific strategy of how to market a horror game and it's a road map step by step. It goes through and then I tell you what what special things need to be done. It's awesome. So, there's road maps, there's demo tutorials, all that kind of stuff. So, I hope you check it out. The course is super deep discount now this until August 4th, I believe. Next Monday, like the first Monday of August, super deep discount. Archie, do we need to announce uh to announce page with trailer? Even if it's not in the demo, just drop a thing. You need a trailer. You should announce your game with a trailer. And I actually go through this in the master class. When you have a trailer, it unlocks all these options to get free visibility on your game. And really, a trailer, the announced trailer is such a special thing. You can go to the press and be like, "Announced trailer." And

they're like, "I'm going to cover you. I'm going to give you a wish list." If you launch your page without an announce trailer, you just missed out. I consider it like a train. like a train came by and was like, "Are you going to come aboard?" And you're like, "Nope, I'm not. I'm just not going to do it." And that's the trailer. If you have a trailer, you can get on the train. And if you didn't make a trailer, you can't get on the train. And so the guy's like, "Are you sure you don't want to in? We're going to wishlist town." And you're like, "No, I'm just going to stand here on the platform and not get on this train." That's what it's like if you don't launch your game with a trailer. Now, you might be asking because you didn't launch your game with a trailer. You didn't announce your game with a trailer. You can kind of run down the tracks a little bit. and I show you some tricks of how you can run the tracks. It's not as good as if you had gotten on that train that zipped you to wish list town, but we're going to find you some other things. Uh there's some other techniques. Sometimes you can trick the conductor be like, "Oh yeah, this is totally my announcement. I haven't announced my game yet." And the and the conductor's like, "Okay, well, I guess you can get on, but it kind of seems like you may have announced your game, but come on in this train." That's what

it is. Okay, so Archie, um hopefully you can get a trailer. So, I show some of those techniques and all the places you can use your trailer to get on there. Okay. From David, my first game, a 4x Steam page up for two and a half weeks. 98 wish list. Steam play test. I know I'll miss out on new and trending. It seems like an opportunity to start getting some wish list. Okay. Wait. All right. This one's a little bit more complicated, David. Okay. Um, should I launch my demo at Steam Forex Fest next three weeks? My in three weeks. I know I'll miss out on new and trending. It seems like an opportunity to get um No. Let's see how many how many total wish lists yet? No, I'd wait. Like, can you participate in the festival without a demo? Some festivals are different. I don't remember. I don't think you just don't have enough. And I think a lot of people will probably be launching their demo during the festival. The most important thing is just get a bunch of wish lists getting

ready for it. What I would do, here's what I would do for you. This is what I would do. have a big marketing thing saying play test. We're going for a play test and get people to join your mailing list. You're going to do a mailing list, right? And do a mailing list and treat it like this festival. If you can get into this festival without a demo, treat the the appearance that you're going to have. Even update the capsule that says, "Hey, play test coming. Sign up for the play test." And then get people to join a mailing list and then shovel them to a play test. A play test can get you wish lists. My course tells you how to do that. Um, so I'd highly recommend it. You might want to check out this thing here. Um, but I would go for a play test, not a demo. And then you do the play test. You get a ton of wish list from the play test and then you do the demo. Um, I think people get freaked out when they have a festival because they're getting a lot of visibility and they think they got to make stupid decisions. I think festivals kind of make people do dumb things. So don't do that dumb thing. Don't launch your demo just because of that. I don't think you're going to get it. I don't think you get new and trending just from this festival. Okay? You got to build up lots of wish lists. Okay. Um, Angela

says, "Should I run my own festival?" Marketing, not programmer, so it won't slow down production. Um, you're in marketing. If you can get Steam page featuring and basically what you do, and you got to um you got to organize a festival. Go reach out to Steam, reach out to devs, tell me about it. We'll put you in the spreadsheet, all that stuff. You should do it, but it takes a little bit. Um, takes time. So, if you can do it, um, see if you can get front page featuring from Steam. Try it and then tell me about it so I can put it in the spreadsheet to get people. You have to come up with a good theme. And the theme is not I want wish lists. The theme has to be something that people want like um, cooking games or games where you're a wizard, that kind of stuff. Okay, next one from Feliz. What do you make of free games plus paid DLC? I think Feliz, I feel like you asked this before or somebody keeps I don't know where this is coming from. I got the same question last time. If you asked it before, I'm sorry, Feliz. Um,

most people worshiping. Let's see. Star, I heard so many people asking this and then you're saying this. Let me look into this game here. Um, Strat Taff is a great name doing this and they are farming wishes. I'll look into it. I don't know the specific dev. I don't know specifically what's going on before I answer, but I don't know. This kind of feels a little gimmicky and it's risky. I don't like this free stuff. There was and it could have been a while ago. There was a lot of people trying this thing where they launch their game for free and then they switch it to paid and Val's like, "Stop doing that. That's stupid." And it stopped working and people like, "I don't think so. It's too gimmicky." You know what you do? You make a good game. I'm not See, with the master class, I don't do tricks. I don't like tricks. I just do honest stuff that's proven. And this sounds a little weird and tricky. I got to look up, see exactly what they're doing. I don't know specifically what they're doing, but it sounds if it's a little weird and too

cluji, too tricky. It makes me automatically go, I don't like this. Okay, Zach, what is the best bang for my buck in terms of content for someone who has never launched again? The best bang for your buck? Masterass on sale right now. That is the best bang for your buck. And I'll tell you, let me show you this this tutorial right here. Let me So, um, not tutorial, testimonial. If you scroll down, I have a testimonial section. Look at this section right here. This This is the quote from the developer of Micro Civilization. Here's his name right down here. Created the game Micro Civilization. Look at this quote from this guy. The master class was without a doubt the best investment in my entire project and it made so many things apparent which were invisible to me. That is the best bang for your buck. And I didn't say it. This guy did it. Um other this this one momento. Look at this. It was insane and we couldn't have done it without your incredible work on

the masterass and blog. I'm telling you folks this helps you. So, the whole thing about the master class is I teach you these secrets on Steam. Okay? Uh there's little things that you can do. They're not tricky, but they are the right things. And I also prevent you from stepping on a landmine like making a mistake that's back there. That's just the pitch. Best bang for your buck right there. Second bang, but you're going to be like, "Chris, do I do advertise?" Just do Facebook ads. Facebook and Red Ads. That's your best bang for the buck. Not streamers. A lot of people pay for streamers. It's not as good. Even though it's fun and you get somebody to compliment you and they do a little dance on screen, people think it's good. I still think ads are the best, but it's still not great. You're asking for dollars. Um, I think the best bang for your buck actually if you got about $10 to $30,000. I wouldn't spend it all, but going into a big show like PC Gaming, like PC Gaming or Jeff Keelley show, if you can get into those, sometimes they go up to 50,000. If that's your entire budget, if your entire budget's $30,000, don't blow

it all on these shows. But if you have a bigger bigger budget, those are very good. They convert very well. The wish list are good. The average of audience is very captive. Um those are good. So number one is my class. Remember without a doubt this guy had zero doubts. No doubts. This is his best investment. The second one is ads. If you're don't have a lot of money or Jeff Keelley PC gaming, those big shows that cost like 10 grand, 10 to 50 grand somewhere in that range. Uh that's your third best thing. Okay. Good luck. But here's the thing. Paid advertising doesn't work as well. All right. Um, Artum says, "Game sort of lethal company style dynamic radio 900 wish list. What are the chances of going EA with 900 wish lists? Not good." I don't recommend it. You want to get as many wish lists as you can. You want at least 7,000. It gets you up the charts. Do not I I highly don't recommend that. Um, don't do I I recommend you do it. Be safe. Do

some betas. Do some play tests. Please don't just launch like this. It's just not going to work. I I highly It's so risky. Very risky. Don't do it. All right. Curious Dynamics. If my demo is not ready for the 4X fest, is it worth doing my first public play test during the fest or better make? That's kind of what I was recommending. Maybe you don't do the play test during it or maybe you try it. But yeah, I I think doing a play test. Maybe you just have that play test button active. I think it's a better bet. You don't want to launch your demo on a whim just because you're freaking out because you're like, "It's a festival and you get this weird crazy thing." People get crazy when festivals happen. Don't be crazy. Don't do anything stupid like launching your demo. You have to be careful. You got to get a lot of wish list then launch your demo. So, I think that's a better thing. Run a play test. Maybe a play test button or drive people to your mailing list and say, "Hey, sign up for the play test." All right. Good job, Cle Curious Dynamics. Um, Petari, do play tests show up on new and trending or is only launching a demo? Play test is the wrinkle because a play

test does not count as that one shot that you have with a demo. So, you can do as many play tests as you want. Um, I do case studies. I show exact games that did the play test to get wish lists. So, I highly recommend while you're working out trying to figure out what your demo is going to be. I highly recommend that you do play tests, not demos, until you're ready. Then do a demo. Then get on new and trending free. Again, this the whole strategy is outlined in here. Um, and I kind of line up how it works. Um, and all that. So, um, now one one thing I should have mentioned, as long as I'm way down here on the bottom thing. Um, if you're wondering, I have a 30-day money get back guarantee. If you buy the course, you're like, Chris, this sucks. It doesn't suck, but it's really good. But if it still doesn't meet what you want, you can return it. And I call it the no questions asked, all question answered. If you're like, "Chris, I bought this course and it didn't explain this thing." And if you say, "Hey, what is it?" I will answer it. I will just give you a one-on-one text. I'll just text you. One-on-one text chat to to answer your question. If it was like,

"That's not in the course." I'll answer it and I'll give you a refund and I won't ask why. And and we'll call it there. And then the other thing is right down here, it says lifetime access. And that means I'm on 3.0. See this? This is version 3.0 of the class. It launched in 2022. That means I update it every year basically thereabouts. If you buy this course, you'll have lifetime updates. Every time the algorithm changes, I update the course or if I find some new trick, I put it in there. So, it's lifetime access. You don't have to reby it every time I come up with something new. All right. So, um, how do I know when my demo is ready for people to play? As a perfectionist, I find myself terrified that others will play. That right there explains all of Indie Dev. Terrified and I'm a perfectionist. You need to release games. Get it out there. Do your play test. Look for a high medium play time. Make sure don't people don't hate your game. Uh do surveys. And then you just got to do it. There's no perfect answer. Just get it out. You need to destroy your perfectionist

tendencies. The faster you could destroy your perfectionism, the better. Just start shipping. Ship this game. Just ship it. Okay? No, I'm just kidding. But the thing is, you don't get over this until you just start shipping games. Okay, I This sounds like your first game. Ship games. Ship your demo. Ship your game. Make another one. Ship that. Make another one. Ship. You just got to start pushing the work out. Just you fiddling the same thing over and over is death to you. So, get rid of that, Darl. Just destroy that part of your brain. Hit yourself with a 2x4. Try and break that part of your brain. All right. Duncan says, "I know it's quick and easy to say this game mixed with this game, but given the lawsuits between Nintendo and Power World, should we not use Nintendo properties?" No, don't worry. Nintendo only cares because they made a lot of money and it is literally the same. Um, I don't know. I'm not your lawyer. Don't just talk to a lawyer about this stuff. I don't know. I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think it's that bad

to to compare games. Like if you're just reaching out to a journalist and you say it's this plus this, I don't know. Talk to a lawyer. Talk to a lawyer. Daryl, it sounds like you're really you think a lot. Daryl, you're quite the thinker. I would just call a lawyer and ship your game. Okay, Duncan. Oh, no. That was Duncan that said that. Duncan and Daryl. I mixed your two up. Sorry about that. Duncan, talk to a lawyer. I am not a lawyer. Okay, Chelsea, are the individual courses on sale, too, or is it just the the bundle? Yeah, it everything's on sale. So, click on the offers. Look at the thing. There's an offers tab. Click the offers tab. It goes to my whole course page. Everything's on sale. Discounts on everything. I just talk about this thing because it's my baby. It's new and it's my baby. But everything's on discount. All you do is you go to go to the offers tab and it says get those discounts and it takes you to this page which is how toarketame.com/courses and everything here is on sale. Um, this is my big baby. Here is the the pitching

and funding master class. But this is my big baby. Yes, I'm ready. Master Class 3. That's That's my new one. So, I'm I'm so excited. This one I worked so hard though. So, this is my favorite course. I'll just tell you it's the most popular one. It's my favorite course. I work so freaking hard on this thing. I don't know anything else that I could add to this thing. Well, I I do. I always can see some other things, but everything I know about Steam, I put in here. Okay, let's keep going. I remember I'm trying to get to it. We got time. We got time, but I got to keep the train moving here because I I I do have a hard stop at the top of the hour. So, I'm trying to trying to get through the Q&A as fast as possible here. Um, we're heading into the final few months before early release, folks. These are looking a little long. Shorter shorter things. Shorter shorter questions, one sentence. Okay. Okay. Um, uh, what do you think is the most efficient way to maximize and compound the momentum across paid ads, PR campaigns, influencers, and demo? Um, since we already used our next best slot years ago, Pax will be our last major

momentum spike. Um, I I don't think momentum is I think momentum is overrated. Um, people people do dumb things when they get this like momentum thing. You heard the same people at the next like the festivals. They're like, "Oh my god, there's momentum." Momentum is actually overrated. Wish lists are a great store of value. It's better like packs. And it sounds like I'm I'm not sure, but I don't know if you got a pack. See, if you're at the festival of packs, like the physical, like you got a booth, it does nothing. The physical booth does nothing for momentum. It really doesn't. If you have a Steam page, because Steam sometimes does packs featuring that does something on the front page of Steam. Okay? So, there's no momentum. Okay? It's not like you have the star from Super Mario. What happens is you're going to get a ton of wish list from that and maybe some influencers will play you, but it's really it's the store of wish lists that get you there and then when you launch you get the wish list. So this kind of like momentum PR that sounds like something a PR person's trying to tell you to sell your stuff. That's not as

important and people do dumb stuff because of quote unquote momentum. I hot take I think momentum is overrated. Now there is velocity which I consider different than momentum. Velocity just means like hey I get a ton of wish list. I just get it and there's no like you have to get on top of it and do it at the right minute. I think that's you don't need to worry about it. What I would say is you just do lots of things at the same time. Like if you are on the Steam page, well also reach out to streamers because you can be like we're in PAX. And then streamers are like oh you're in PAX. Okay. That is different than momentum. You don't have to freak out like oh my god we're going to lose momentum. That's where people start freaking out. They're like I'm going to lose it. Oh my god, I'm going to lose momentum. Like what is momentum? There's no there's nothing to lose cuz it's not a thing. So, I feel like you're a little afraid of this imaginary thing that doesn't actually exist. Momentum. I know a PR person is going to tell me I'm wrong, but I don't see it in the data. You get wish list. You get a big pile of wish lists and then when you launch, you cash out those wish lists. Okay.

Okay. from Christy. How can I make sure everything goes live at the night right time after my Steam page is created so I don't miss the initial push? Even if streamers are interested in playing my demo, they might be too busy to do it right away. It's okay. It is okay if you announce your Steam page and you get something like you have time. You have time, folks. Let's don't freak out. Relax. It's going to be okay. So what'll happen is the most important thing is like I don't know Christy let's see here Christie I'm not entirely sure well yeah you can know like these things like you want to get your biggest one whatever the festival is and I talk about how to get the the biggest coverage when you announce your Steam page you focus on that one whether it's like IGN covering you you just focus on that one here's the time it's launching and you've got time like around that thing saying like you can go to a streamer and say like hey yesterday we went viral on IG jam. I got covered and they'll still cover you. It's not like they're like, "Well,

that's yesterday. That's too old." Relax. You got more time. Just relax. Uh you don't have to It doesn't have to It's not a It's not a literal like rocket launch where you have to fire the boosters after the coolant comes in. It has to be down to the nancond. It's okay. It is okay. All right. Should I email everyone for my first trailer Steam page or hold back for some demo down the road? Do it. Fire every gun you got. Just do it. Don't hold back. You will never folks you will never overexpose yourself. I know it's a something people are afraid of. Don't be afraid. I'm trying to There's a lot of a fear I'm feeling tonight. Too much momentum. Too early of the momentum. Just relax. Everything's going to be timing is wrong. Relax. The main thing is folks, you just aren't doing enough. That's the main thing is like you're not actually taking those things. So reach out to everybody. You cannot overexpose your game. You cannot. You are an indie. We have this much visibility. This is how much visibility we get ever. So you

can never overexpose yourself because you have this much visibility to begin with. So you're overexposing this much. The fear should not be, oh my god, I'm overexposing myself. I reached out too early. I had to wait for the demo. No, the fear is you are not doing enough. That's always the thing I'm telling indies. You're not doing enough. You're not reaching out to enough content creators. You're not reaching out to enough streamers. You're not reaching out to enough journalists. You can't blow out your audience because you're this big. That's like the ant saying, "Oh my gosh, I feel like I'm getting a little too fat." It's like you're an ant. You're too little. Okay, there's a lot of Relax, everybody. Relax. I don't know if it's the Eastern Hemisphere or the fact that it's the nighttime in the US. Just relax, everybody. All right. Um Um, you didn't mention PR and the best bang for your buck paid influence. Is that bad? If I need to choose between meta ads and PR is should I add ads by ourselves or through an agency. Here's the thing about PR and this is why dollars don't fix anything. You need

to make a good game and ad dollars PR all this stuff. It doesn't fix problems. If you're like oh my gosh I'm not getting any wish list. I know I'll hire a PR agency then I'll get wish list. Doesn't work that way. everything I talk about when you buy this class because this class is the best bang for your buck. If you do everything in this class, that's it. And if you can't if if doing everything in this class does not produce wish lists, you got bigger problems. PR does not fix that. I hire a PR agency. If you're like, man, we put that trailer out and we got 20,000 wish lists. Let's hire a PR agency. PR agencies are a multiplier. So, if you're if you're asking me this money question because you're like, "God, we're just not getting wish list. Why aren't we getting wish list? We contact people and nobody wants it." We should pay money. Money doesn't fix problems. Okay? It just amplifies things. So, if you have zero wish list, if you're all your marketing efforts are resulting in a big zero,

adding money is just going to be flushing. Zero times anything is zero. So, I don't I if you're trying to get wish list by spending money, it doesn't happen. Ads, same deal. If nobody's interested in the game and you're spending money, nobody's going to be interested in the game. You You spend the money after you've proven you've already had a hit. And so if you're getting zero wish list, take that money and save for your next game. Well, first buy the class and then save it for the next game. I don't know. I just money does not solve problems. If you have zero wish list, it just doesn't do anything. Only hire the PR agency if you're getting like 30 or 50,000 wish lists already and you just want to get to 100 150. then pay for PR maybe. The main thing is I've seen indies too much. They're like, "I have zero wish lists. PR will fix this." And then they spend $5,000 for one month of coverage because that's usually what it costs thereabouts. They spend $5,000 and they also get zero because a PR agency all they do is they have a list of people. They contact the people and those people

go, "Uh, this game doesn't look fun." And then they just throw it over their shoulder. PR agencies cannot force somebody to like a game. And that's why I say it's a multiplier. If you've already showed the game to some people and they're like, "Yeah, this is good. I'm going to play this." then a PR agency is going to show it to more people and they're all going to be like, "Yeah, this is great." But if your game is just not hitting, you're not you've reached out to hundreds of streamers and they're all just like they're going to throw it over their shoulder and nothing's going to happen. And then you're going to spend $5,000 and then hundreds of people are going to go and they're going to throw it over their shoulder. So you just paid $5,000 to have a bunch of people go, "Best bang for your buck right here. Best bang for your buck." All right. Um, is there a situation not to have a separate demo page? Nope. Have a separate demo page. All right. Which genres kind of games prefer best perform best on itch for wish list? Which genres do not? I don't I haven't studied that. I don't know. Um, just

I I itch is better, I think, for getting finding out if your game has the magic. And I think devs, they jump too fast in love with the game they're making. They're like, "This is the game. This is the one. This is going to be my dream game." And so they just jump into it and they start marketing this game. And it's like, I don't know. It hasn't proven. I think a better course of action say, "We're going to make three games. We're going to take three months. We're going to make three prototypes. We're going to throw them all on itch. Whichever one on itch does best, we're going to go take that and we're going to make a full game out of it." people are like instead I wish that's a much better policy than some people like this is my dream game heavy market validated no but it's my dream game it's like I don't know so I don't think your question is right there itch doesn't really drive wish wish lists it's more like you use itch really well to to kind of validate some ideas that you might have okay um is a is a releasing a short game for

free instead of cheap better to cross-promote an upcoming better release no I don't like free games. I'm actually going to be writing a blog post this week about this. I don't like free games. And it's usually just people put out free games, I think, cuz they're nervous. They're like, "Uh, I don't know. I I'm I don't want to get yelled at. I'm I'm not sure about this." So, they make their game free. See, the problem with free games is the Steam algorithm promotes games that make money. And when you make a free game, that game doesn't earn money. So, Val's like, "Why would I promote this thing? If we promote this game, that's going to be taking up a slot of a game that's for paid." People think, "Oh, free game means the barrier to entry is lower. That means more people play it." But that's actually the wrong thinking because if your game doesn't make money and it's it's the the the problem is not the barrier to entry. It is Valve promoting your game. That's the thing. And so it doesn't matter if it's free because people are like, "Okay, it's free. I'm not going to spend money." And then Val's like, "Why are I'm not going to promote this. This isn't making any money. No, go." And then they suppress you. So making your game free doesn't

give you really that much of anything. Okay? So put trust your game. Be like, "Yeah, my time is worth it. I'm going to make money on this. Yeah, I'm going to ask for money." You should do that, everybody. Like I want you all to stand up. I feel so much sad vibes tonight. I'm just feeling like Yeah. I'm feeling a lot of scared energy tonight. I I want you to all stand up. Yeah. Let's do this. Um Okay. If you're still tweaking your visual style, do you still recommend just putting everything out there on social media and the pre-stain page marketing? Yep. Um, just try it. Don't announce your Don't say like this is our next game and it's called this. You just do the old, hey, just messing around in Photoshop. Isn't this cool? And just just post a picture of whatever you are. And then if it sucks and everybody's like, this looks ugly. You're like, yeah, it does. I'm not going to work on this. I'm going to do something else. You're just trying to validate your stuff. And that's basically let's see I don't think I actually see um if you look at the

course I've got this whole section you can look at the road map of all this stuff. Um so uh these are like the road maps I'm talking about. So this is the road maps it tells you all about the game. See how it says prey maker it's all like and there's a new section that I added called social media hell month right here. See this one right down here. um social media hell month right here. Um this is where you test and I have a whole thing of how do you test if what you're making is interesting to people and you just test it and if it works it works and if it doesn't maybe it's time to try something new. Um and that's the main thing. That's a new one that I just added. Um some other um course items. So that that just reminds me of that one. Um some other things that are kind of interesting. These are like uh the demos that I was talking about. Let me show you. I just add this new section here. beta playthrough, demo playthrough. So, these are the ones. See, it's like an hour and a half that I'm spending playing Slay the Princess, almost an hour playing Tiny Glade, and over an

hour playing Bellwork. And it's just me playing a demo, trying out every feature while the dev is like, "See that we got this idea because of this and that." So, it's just like just pure game design. It's like a GDC talk, but it's me, a designer, and you if you get it. So, it's really cool. Um, so there we go. Okay, let's go. Um, uh, if you're still tweaking your visual style. Yeah. Okay. So, from Adam, are there any new hot genres on Steam you've noticed? Um, I mean, I think, um, I'm still just kind of monitoring idol games cuz I feel like idol games should go away, but I keep seeing like people love idol games. They're still doing pretty strong from what I'm seeing. Um, co-op, like co-op shooting kind of games still doing really well. like co-op uh platformers like that that new one that cost $5. What's that one called? From Agro Crab. Um uh those are doing well, the co-op thing. So, it doesn't change as fast as everybody thinks it does. I think it's just people didn't know what

was popular and then they learn what's popular and they're like, "Everything's changing. It's changing all this." Like, you changed. Steam didn't change. So, I still think crafty is still the way to go making crafty games. I'm surprised more people haven't made digging games. I think digging games are hot. Um, so yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking. Um, let's see. We have 42,000 wish lists. Way to go. That is hot. Way to go, Kendall. Um, six weeks of revealing. That is hot. Um, uh, there's a rumor that near 100,000 Steam reaches out and they interact with you to help. Is that real? Um, kind of. Okay. So, if you have around 100,000, you can go to Steam like right around your launch. Like I would say a couple months before launch, you just email Valve and you're like kind of a popup and they'll say maybe let's see how you launch because wish lists are not a guarantee. We don't know how they how well they convert and Valve knows.

They're like nobody knows how well they're going to convert. So they watch your launch. They see if your game matches your marketing because if it doesn't then the wish list will dive and they won't convert. But if they convert well, then Val's like, "Thanks for contacting them about the popup. You're in." And then they turn on the popup for you. That's kind of maybe what people are thinking, but there's nothing where Valve reaches out to you. Um, it's mainly like 100,000, you can reach out to Valve. It's usually you doing it. Um, and a pop-up might happen. But again, they'll often say, "I don't know. We're going to wait." And they wait to see what your numbers are at launch. And if they see the numbers that they that they like, then they step in and do stuff. So, but congratulations, Kendall. Um, Leonardo, is there any benchmark for good direct search results click-through rate? I feel like our rates are too low. Don't You're gonna drive yourself nuts with those numbers. Don't Don't drive yourself nuts. Just look at the wish list rate. Just like, did you get a streamer to cover you and did you get a ton of wishes? Don't deep dive in the

numbers. Especially if you have low wish list numbers. Deep diving those stats, they're like noise. They're so noisy, you'll be chasing your tail. You're like a little puppy chasing its tail. like, "Oh, what does this stat mean? What does this stat mean? What does this stat mean?" And then everything just like you're just going to confuse yourself. Stop stop looking at the stats too much. Unless you have tons of there's nothing you can do with it. It's mainly here's the test. Reach out to as many streamers as you can. Give your demo. Do they play the demo? Do you get wish list when they play your demo on stream? That's the metric to look at. Don't look at Don't deep dive in those like expanded things. It's just noise and it's just like you'll you'll drive yourself nuts trying to over interpret it. You might as well Here's what I would do is you take some chicken bones and you roll the chicken bones and if the chicken bone points to true north or the chicken bone points to the full moon rising in the east um that means something. No, you're just you're just reading old wives tales and stuff and you dig deep into that stuff. So Leonardo I you got better use of your

time. spend that time that you've been deep diving into those stats just reach out to streamers. Okay. All right. Duncan for pre- Steam page marketing. I am finding myself being intimidated by maintaining all the posts, email, tick tocking, and dev. Is it okay to get a decent amount of d deving done and save for the big push? Yep, I actually recommend it. Take the course. Cut back on social media. If you do not have a social media friendly game, stop doing it. It's just most of your wish lists come from streamers and big big shows and festivals. That's what drives the wish list. All this tweeting stuff just doesn't do stuff, folks. It just doesn't as much. All right, Duncan, you have my permission uh to skip that stuff. From Big Clips, I just released Tiny Tots on Steam early release. Do you mean early access? Um, I'm running ads right now, but I should I get streamers to play and try getting

exposure that way? Definitely. Streamers are much more effective than ads. So, definitely do streamers. We always talk about having a trailer or game or just gameplay. Should we announce trailer be a gameplay trailer or just a coming soon sort of thing? It should be gameplay. You want to show people gameplay because too many people do these like trailers that are like animation and slowm moving pans of the environment. They're like, "What game is it? What game is it?" They want to see what type of game you have. So, you got to show gameplay. Do game play. Archie asks, "We all That was Archie." Sorry. Sean, you've mentioned localizing your Steam page early. How many languages do you think is the minimum to support? There is no number but I would do Japanese, Chinese, simpl that's simplified Chinese, Korean, and then Spanish, Italian, French, Polish, seven, seven or eight. Did I say Spanish and then Portuguese? So, I do like eight or nine. Eight or nine. Yeah, I would do eight or nine. Um, Leonardo, we are just

finishing work on the reviewing our capsules for Steam. We are thinking about running campaigns to choose between different versions. What's your take on this? Uh, take the chicken bones and roll them. And if the chicken bone lands like this towards Scorpio on a full moon, that's a bad sign. No, you're going to over interpret yourself. Just Just It doesn't matter. Just make the capsule. Put it up there. Reach out to content creators. The capsule is mainly good for content creators. As long as the capsule looks good, it's not going to change that much. So, you're over interterpreting. Leonardo, just reach out to content creators. You're very smart, but you're spending too much time on the stat stuff. You're going to drive yourself crazy. Move on. All right. Richmond, is there still a chance of saving a game released on Steam four months ago? Um, I don't know. I don't know what you did. That's I I'm sorry, but look up. So, you're telling me

there's a chance there's a blog post. If you don't hit 250 reviews in the first month of launch, probably not. Probably not. But if you didn't do any marketing, you might still have a chance. But if you did a lot of marketing and you still had low reviews, then probably not. So read the blog post called, "So you're telling me there's a chance." All right. Happy vibes question here. Yes. Yes. Okay. I'm ready for happy vibes. Let's do a happy vibes question. All right. Andrew says, "I've got 10,000 wish lists." Yes, I love it. Okay, I want to multiply it with PR. Should I wait to do a festival or NextFest or should I just do it now for funsies? Cuz why not wait and do it at NextFest? Time it because if you do pretty well 10,000 around Nextfest, do it for another festival. Maybe if you're launching a demo. So all this this whole master class is built around these giant marketing beats. If you take this

course, what you've got, it sounds like you got money to burn. You got money burning a hole in your pocket here. I'm telling you, I tell you all the see this marketing beats check down checklist. I call this the marketing beats beatd down. This is a long lecture. This is a mega lecture because this is so important. Okay, this is PR in a box right here. But I give you a checklist of all the important marketing beats. Pick one of these marketing beats and do uh hire PR for one of these big marketing beats. Okay, that's when you should do it. Not just for funsies. Okay, good job on 10K. But see, Steam NextFest with 10K still isn't that great. Like to do very well in NextFest, you need on the order of 100,000. And I talk about that. I have a let's see, I have a whole section just on how Steam NextFest works. Um, I don't think I actually turned it on. Let's see if I have it. Um, there were a couple talks that I'm just uploading the translations because, oh,

I didn't mention that my game, and this is great for the Eastern Hemisphere. Every lecture in my course has captions in English, and it's captioned in pretty much all the same languages that I was just talking about for translation page. Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, um, uh, mentioned Portuguese, and then Chinese, Japanese. So, every single one, there were a couple that I didn't get in here. Yes, I do have a Steam page. I have a whole talk just on Steam pages or on Steam NextFest. I have two, actually two talks on Steam NextFest. I just I'm uploading the the translations right now, so they're not live, but they will be. There is a whole two lectures on Steam NextFest. I talk about it. Steam NextFest does best when you have a ton of wish lists. Okay. So, I would not save my PR beat for Steam NextFest. I would try the marketing beat for one of those um uh those beats that I was talking about before. Okay. Um

All right. Thank you for the happy vibes, Andrew. Thank you. All right. Um Tanya, I'm an artist working on a social media friendly game. Yes. Okay. Okay, that's awesome. Okay. Do you need to be as active on social media user to benefit from social media? I hate using it so I always post and ghost. Post and ghost is the name of the game. So like if you have social media friendly game and what I mean is I actually have benchmarks on what I consider actually a social media friendly game. Like that's what a hell month is all about. So social media hell month and then I tell you what benchmarks look like. What is viral? I tell you what it actually is. If you really do have a social media friendly game, you just post and ghost like those social if they are actually viral and you'll see examples of what I mean. I actually include examples here when you go into this. I show examples the ones that are successful. They're just like, "Hey, here's this cool thing." And it's like a 5-second gif and

then they're like, "Boom, see you later." That's kind of what works. Being like this, like memes and all that stuff. It doesn't work. It's all about just if your game is awesome and it's got the right sauce, it can go viral on social media and all you do is you just post the gift. So, um I you just got to test it. But I I don't think this overreactive like, oh, I got to do memes and I got to reply to every comment. I I I think it's overrated anyway. Okay, good question. Tanya Ryan says, "Want to do a public play test for certain aspects of my game?" I'm closer to having I play test too unpolished. Uh what should I have my Steam page ready for that or focus on that when Okay, I got to reread this. This is kind of confusing here, Ryan. Okay, let me check time. We got 10 minutes. I got some of these question. Okay, I want a public play test for certain aspects of my game. Combat test. Should I have my

Steam page ready for that? Absolutely. And I outline this exactly in my course. You want your Steam page Steam has great play test functionality. And so you I mean you could do just like a super small play test where you're just like five dudes in a Discord and get them to do it. But really play test is for wish list. You actually do play tests for wish list. That's a new strategy. I talk about exactly how to do it. See here's Steam page launch. This is how to launch your Steam page, right? And then after you launch your Steam page, look what happens. beta, which is the same as a play test. I really should put a slash in play test because people get confused. But see all this? This is all about the play test in beta. And I and you'll notice this comes after launching your Steam page. So this course is entirely laid out chronologically. This is a good question people always ask like I'm I'm here at the beta stage. Is this class relevant? Yes, you just skip ahead. You can skip all the way ahead to this section. Take all your lessons from there. Okay, next one. Uh I'm hoping to get all these things done. You were saying it's good

to translate the store page in many languages, but isn't an issue if the game itself doesn't support those languages? It is not because Steam automatically detects that and they put up a big box automatically that says this game is not translated to that language. Be warned. And some people are like, "That's okay. They don't hate it. I haven't heard anybody hating it." Um, and if you see a good response, then translate your Steam page into that or say translations are coming. So, um, you just wait. But Steam automatically puts a little box there and most people are aware of that. So, you just translate your Steam page and if it turns out you're doing awesome, translate your game. Okay, next one from Kendall. How would you suggest we motivate people to review our game demos given that Steam is pretty hard on not um soliciting them? Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. That whole thing about, oh, we need to get as many reviews. It's not the reviews. That's just a secondary effect. For those 10 reviews, you just you get your closest closest allies and just one-on-one say, review our game. buy it and review it. That's it. That's

it. After the 10 reviews, it doesn't matter. If you're having a hard time getting 10 reviews, you got bigger problems. The 10 reviews thing, I know I wrote all those blog posts, but if you again, like if you're having a hard time getting to 10 reviews, you're not going to do well anyway. It's not about the reviews. The reviews come automatically. You don't have to motivate people to review. They will review. The most important thing to focus on is get those wish lists, get them to convert, and make a good game. Here's the main thing. Just all that attention that you'd focus on getting reviews, just focus on making your game good. It's about getting a good game. The reviews come. Don't worry about it. Don't overindex on reviews. All right. Um, uh, you don't have to motivate. That's all I'm saying. It just happens. Okay. All right. Uh, since horror games are smaller in content length, how much content should a horror demo have? 30 minutes. Make a 30-minute demo. Um, does the medium playtime benchmark still apply? They do. Reread the play test benchmark sections I did. I broke it

down based on linear games or not. It just is like if it's a replayable game, it's like 45 minutes and if it is the median of a good game and if it's linear narrative, it's like 30 minutes. It's like a very slight change between narrative and linear and the median play time. Just search my benchmarks for medium play time. The answer is there for free. You don't even have to buy the class, but please do buy it. Uh, it's all there. So, yep. Um, check the benchmarks. Okay. Is this being recorded? Where's my thing, man? I clean my office. Let me tell you, everything I ever do Oh, I bumped my when I was uh I was just um checking my closet for my shirt. Everything I ever do or will ever do is always recorded, my friend. Everything I am I am constantly recorded. Everything I ever do is recorded. And I'm checking still recording. Everything's recorded and it

will be uploaded to YouTube and you'll be able to watch it. Everything I do is recorded. So don't you worry. Everything is recorded. Leonardo. Okay. Ardum. Does demo have any value once it goes silent after next? Well, don't make it go silent. Did you do don't make it go silent. Keep it up. I mean I sometimes say take it down for the launch of your game maybe. And then I the Bull work, Tiny Glade, I think Slay the Princess. All three of these the demo is live right now. These games are so successful they put their demo up after launch. That is a true baller move. True baller move. So I think if your game's good and it's selling well, put that demo up. It works. Um, and I even talked to uh the Bull Work guy. I asked him about it and he's really adamant. I was like, "Get that demo up. Keep it up." Even after launch. Okay. Archie, is it still worth play testing if it's basically a less polished demo, not particularly testing anything? That's the whole name of the game. You

are using your play test to test for the demo. And then once your play test is done and you've fixed everything that people are like, "This sucks." It turns into your demo. So I got that's what those whole lectures are about. So your play test is play testing the demo. All right. Um for the courses, does the summer bundle super price include every course? Yes, it is everything. It is. We'll just click on it here. Look it is it contains everything I make. Every single thing I have ever made is in the super duper bundle. Um, it has and I know it doesn't say right here, but um, if you click it. Why isn't that working? Oh, it's just loading. Oh, man. This Okay, it's not great. Sorry. It's not great. I'll find another page. It contains everything. So, it contains um, let's see if I click this thing. I kind of had to throw this. I was up till midnight getting all this stuff together. I I understand your thing. I

understand your questioning. I have a better bundle page and I'll fix it. I was just I was patching everything together. So the bundle includes everything. It includes master class uh the pitching and the the wish list master class, the pitching and funding masterass and it includes um pitching and funding master class and the um all my conferences because I've done three conferences where you see uh interviews with developers. It includes game marketing ideas. every single thing I sell, it's in the bundle. And it's actually like if you do the math, you just add those two together, uh, the two master classes together, and I think if you add $50, you get everything. So, it's like it's like those two plus 50 bucks and you get everything. I mean, I know it's expensive. I know it's it's all there, but everything's there. And again, everything 30-day money back guarantee. So, if you buy all this stuff and you're like, I actually don't need all this stuff or I'm not happy. All you have to do is email me. You don't even have to give me a reason. You just say, "I'd like a

refund." And I just go in and I find your your email address and I just push this button and it just all goes away and you get your money back and that's it. So I I'm you know where I live. I'm I'm easy to get a hold of. So if if anything for any course you're like, nah, I don't like this. No questions asked money back guarantee. And like I said, for this one, I call it the no questions asked, all questions answered thing because I will also, if you're like, Chris, well, you didn't tell me how to do this, I will answer it for you. That's what I mean. I will actually, if you're like, you just text me like, Chris, I'm so confident if you bought it and you want a refund because I didn't answer this one question, I will answer it. Now, don't ask me about Xbox. I don't know Xbox. I mean, don't ask me stuff I don't know, like how to how to grow a a vegetable garden in Maine. I don't know that. Don't ask me that. I'm not going to know that. Um, I won't understand Kickstarter for the most part. But I will answer with to the best of my ability every

steam question you ask because you're like, "Chris, you didn't answer this and I want to know this stuff in your master class." I'll be like, "Here it is." So, that's my my 30back money 30-day money back, no questions asked, all questions answered money back guarantee. I came up with that last night at midnight. I was going crazy and I was like, "Yeah, let's throw it in there." So, yep. That's that. And lifetime access. Um, and again, here's those testimonials. Like, Tiny Glade loved this course so much they put me in the special thanks credit. See, Chris Sukowski for the most excellent marketing course. See that? I didn't Photoshop. You can actually download their demo. The the Tiny Glade demo is still live. You download it. You can see it for yourself. It's free. You can see I'm in the special thanks credits because my course is so awesome. This is the course that put me in the credits, okay? I'm telling you, I This is like the best course in the world for marketing a game. Like, there's nothing better. And I work very, very hard on this thing. I I go crazy making this awesome. I go up till midnight the night before and I still have to add more

stuff. Like, there's stuff that I'm uploading like tomorrow because I'm exhausted. I'm not I'm not going to do it tonight. I told myself not tonight, but there's constantly stuff being added. Um, now, um, okay. So, I think I've answered all the questions I can answer. Um, devlogs on YouTube. No, don't do devlogs. I don't think they're worth it. Don't do devlogs. Um, Sean says, "How would you recommend balancing mailing list and wish list call to action once you launch wish list?" And I talk about once you launch your uh Steam page and you go to wish list, again, it's all covered in the master class. I tell you what the call to action should be for every single phase you're in. um what you should be driving wish list to, uh what you should be drawing the call to action to. It's all answered in there. Um okay, we're almost out of time. I got to go. Uh but I want to kind of wrap up with some other cool things that's going on. One, a lot of people ask about capsules. And I was like, I think most people don't want to make a capsule because they don't want to they're afraid of artists because artists are really cool and it's kind of

intimidating work with them. So for my master class, I was so happy to do it. I decided I had a crazy idea. I was like, I will just hire a capsule artist to design the art for this master class. And so I hired an artist to make all this art. And I kind of treated it like a capsule. And I videoed the whole thing. Every conversation you get to see a live conversation with me and them and like how I designed all this stuff or I didn't design, I was like how I communicated with them so they could design it. And this is going to turn into like a like a very long YouTube video. I'm going to upload it to YouTube, so stay tuned for that. That's coming this week. I'm also going to be uploading an interview I did with the Bull Workdev. So, as long as you're subscribed to the newsletter, how toarketame.com/free. Make sure you join the newsletter. I'll be updating all these kind of activities that I've done. Um, all this the coming weeks. Um, I've got another Q. I'm doing the capsule review. I'm going to review

your capsules. Subscribe again. I was up till midnight working on this stuff. The whole schedule of fun activities that are coming this week. This is going to be so fun. This is going to be like such a fun week, everybody. Um, if you go to the top here, this is I again I just slammed this together. This is going to go away tonight and I'm going to put a calendar list of all the fun activities I'm doing the next two weeks like this capsule review. You can submit your capsule. I'm going to do um the the the YouTube video about how to make a how to make and work with an artist. I'm going to do a um that interview with the Bull Work game developer. That'll be there. It's gonna be so much fun. I'm even forgetting things. I don't even know what I'm remembering because I'm kind of running on fumes here, but it's awesome stuff. So, awesome stuff's coming. Stay subscribed to the newsletter and then we're going to do awesome stuff. So, all I can say is this is it. So, thank you so much. I appreciate your questions. There were only a few like I know I was complaining about um have having a down mood. The questions were awesome. Great

questions everybody. There were just a couple in a row that I was like I'm always worried when devs are afraid. You shouldn't be afraid that you should be like powerful and I was just feeling like you guys are a little too afraid. So I want you to be in power. So I want all of you to like stand up, have that power and just make something freaking awesome. I know you can do it. You can do it. You can have the awesomeness. You're strong. You're good. You're ready to go. Your game's awesome. You're getting 10,000 wish list, 45,000 wish list, all this stuff. You got the power. You know how to do it. We all have the power. All right. Um, thank you so much for showing up. I really appreciate you. I hope you have a good day or a good night, depending on which hemisphere you're on. And, uh, good luck to all of you. I really wish you the best. And I want your games all to make a million dollars. But there's no guarantee. There's no guarantee. I can't guarantee this. You'll notice I never guarantee you're going to make a million dollars cuz that's sleazy. I am not. I'm an honest person. I can't promise it, but I do hope I do hope that you make a million dollars. Okay. All right. Bye.

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