Recap: Greatest tips from my conference

Hello. Hello. This is Chris Akowski here. Just doing a quick check-in. This is not a full video. This is cool though. This is cool though. I did I'm doing this conference and I just wanted to show you some clips. You're going to watch clips from everybody who's spoken so far. It's really like I'm giving some free tips away here. Just check this out. But anyway, um it's coming right in a second. I just wanted to check in because it's halfway through the conference. If you still buy it now, still five bucks off once the conference is over. Goes up to full price. So, you might want to check it out. I'm just giving this preview. Just keep watching this video. You're going to find out how to do Kickstarter, how to contact publishers, how to how to reach out to streamers, and like weird ways you can send out your game, like builds of your demo to like Discord. You know, you can publish your game on Discord. It's pretty cool. Anyway, so um yeah, let's let's watch some clips. Uh I'm just going to cut them in right here. This is a real quick video. So this is Thomas Bou. Sorry, I'm not French speakaking. So Bedau, he is a Kickstarter expert. He consults. So let's watch this clip right now. Here's how to do Kickstarter. My Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, just to just clarify. So, um with this coming soon page, I've seen it. I I mean, I've

clicked on some campaigns before. Is it that there's like a little tiny widget? It really doesn't scroll or anything. It just says coming soon. There isn't much information. Is that what you're talking about coming soon or is there something? That's what I'm talking about, but it's changed um for So, it used to be the only thing you see is key, title, subtitle, and that's it. You know, no date for when it's coming soon or anything like that. Yeah, now you have the ability to actually add more things. So people have added u link to their steam pages, to their socials or things like that. You can do that now. You don't have to. So you can make it very minimalist think uh but but now you have option for that. I I'll put on the chat if that's okay of a campaign that I'm working on that has coming soon that I find uh uh interesting in that sense. That is awesome. And I'll I'll copy that for folks. Um, if you're watching this as a recording, I'll just post that link down below this video, too. So, because it sounds like what you could do, I mean, on Steam, we know wish lists will say,

"Oh, 7,000 wish lists." That's a pretty that's I'd say the minimum bar before you should launch is at least 7,000. And then, you know, you do we know you do a lot better if you have like 30,000 wish lists. That there's no bar in the Steam algorithm. But, it's also nice to have that follower count that you were just mentioning. And it sounds like so that sounds like the math is okay. Let me just recap and make sure I got it right. So your way is follower equal backers. If you if you want you want 500 backers, try to get 500 followers. That's the simplest way you can look at it. Yeah. Okay. And is there any penalty? Here's a here's a question I probably will get in the Q&A. I haven't checked. Is there any penalty for throwing up a coming soon on Kickstarter and it never like the numbers are weak and you're like and you pull it down and you put up another one some other thing and just keep testing ideas on Kickstarter. Uh so you All right, really cool cool tip, right? Okay, here's the next one. This is Claraia. Uh she used to work for Deolver. She's her own consultant now.

And what she does is she contacts streamers and YouTubers and gets them to play your game. and that's what her job is. So, she gives tips on how to get a streamer to play your game or YouTuber. They're the same thing in my book, but who cares? Anyway, watch her clip right now with this contact. Okay, let's say we we're at the stage where you're emailing them and they don't respond. Should you just should you follow up a few days later and say like, "Oh, just, hey, just uh reminding you we got this key live." That sort of thing. It does it matter or no, don't do a follow-up. Oh, yeah. Definitely do a follow-up. I mean, if you would asked me this 5 years ago, I'd say no. Uh, but it's a different world. Uh, now it's constantly shifting. Yes, you I I can't get away with just one email now. I have I usually send an email and then I send them a DM. I sent you a key. The keys there. Remember the game that we already talked about? Check your email. Sorry for swearing. Yeah, those are more effective. I just go straight to the source. Again, the email is just it'sformational. It's just all there. It's literally because I can't do the same thing in a DM. It's

just not rich enough content. an email. I can format a specific way. It's got links. I can make it look nice and have all the every possible bit of information that they can need. Um, and I can do it at scale. Um, but the DM is just like, "Check your email. Do it now." Um, that's usually what gets them to actually check their email. They'll search for it because uh, and then especially for bigger content creators, they they have managed inboxes. They don't even look at their own email. Sometimes they have to like hit their managers like, "Hey, find this key from Clara. Um, I said I would play it, you know, like they they don't even look at their own emails. I get like 500 a day. Um, so or some of they just search. They just just I'll find it. It's there somewhere. Yeah, they're just searching then. Okay. You mentioned the emails have richer presence. There's more stuff in there. What kind of things are you putting in your outreach email? Uh, let me I'm Okay. Uh, I'm actually looking at one right now, uh, of when I put effort

into. Uh, let's watch my clip. I'm going to show you how to do a demo. Tips about demos. So, let's watch this right now. No intro. Now, once you're confident, you're like, we think we got something hot here. People are liking it. Our medium play time is much better than it used to be. Much better. It's time to launch the demo. Okay. So, when you create your demo, there's a there's a button that says, "Hey, we're going to make a demo. Create the thing." When you do it, there's this question and it says, "Enable store page for this demo optional. Check this." Okay, you want to check this. Let me explain why. Okay, when you check that thing, you get two items. So, when you search a game like Nomad Idol, you actually get two entries here. Boom. Boom. See them? Here's the demo. Here's the normal, the full version. This is good. This is not confusing. This is good. I know it's not confusing because I studied I at the last Nextfest I emailed everybody who was in NextFest that gives data and I was like can you give me your data and one of the questions was did you do the demo on the same page or did you do a

separate demo page that Nomad idol had the separate page where you get two results when you search the game name otherwise it's just a button on the game on the main game and I did the analytics I did the median I did the average I did everything it basically makes no difference one it's split right down the middle 50% % of the people who gave me data did did the same page, 50% did separate demo page. It it made no difference. 50/50. Okay. And the stats, the results were 50/50 just about. One had a higher median, one had a higher average. It was barely a difference. Minor, very minor. It made no difference. Okay. But here's the reason why. Let me let me let me before I go. The good thing is people can leave reviews on the demo. That's why I say you should do a separate demo page cuz when they do the separate demo page, people can leave reviews on your demo. And I know indies are paranoid about this. They're like, "Oh my god, I might hear bad news." Do it. Okay? Do it. Do

it. Do it. You want to get feedback on your demo because you're going to learn this stuff no matter what. It's better to learn it at the demo that people hate your game than at the full game. Because if they give you the worst reviews, you can fix it. If they give you those bad reviews when you launch your game, you're toast. You're done. It's over. Okay? It is really, really important that you get feedback from actual people who do not know you. You are going to learn so much. That's why you should do this. I've I Everybody has excuses. I've never heard a good one for this. Okay, if it's and if something weird happens where they review bomb you or something like that, you can pull this. You just push like one button and it disappears and all the reviews just vanish. They just vanish and you never have to see them again. It's like what if you could just rewind time and let all your mistakes vanish? It's awesome, right? I wish I could have that. But you can have

that with this demo page. You can just make all life's mistakes disappear. Just you just push a button, they disappear. Okay? And you're going to be fine. Okay? So, all right. Welcome back. This is Khaled Booker. Now, this guy is doing really cool publishing stuff. He's got this like new publisher, new format. Let's watch how you can get your game seen by more people by getting your demo into more places. Let's watch that right now. You know, the cool thing about that is that you can distribute these games wherever. like you can publish that that final build to itch to crazy games to pokey cool math games wherever for distribution and you know you get data back to like improve you know we're publish we're publishing games so we're looking at things like retention playtime um k factor people sharing the game but you know that's an additional layer of feedback that you get as well when you publish this this game is spread out to a bunch of different web platforms and you know another cool strategy not I think you might have touched on this in one of your articles but you can gather gather wish list by

doing this just like getting your game out there. It's on these free websites and getting player feedback and wish list for for the full game. Sort of use it as like a like a marketing distribution strategy as well if you're publishing your game on Steam. But yeah, honestly, I think that everyone should be looking at Discord as a as a um place to publish their games. All right. And then we got Jason Delaroka. He is a pitching publisher getting signed by publishers master. Let's just get a tip here. Roll that footage. This is kind of an interesting situation. They they got 2,000 wish lists in their first week. And if you go to how toarketame.com/benchmarks, that's pretty good first week. And they're already getting some publishers nibbling. Should they maybe wait three months or so to see how the numbers keep going or and maybe even get a better deal or should they just bite the bullet and go for the publisher now? Well, I mean, well, depends. I never

want to say the word depends. Um, I got the button. It's right. Yeah. I mean, I mean, if they're reaching out to you, I mean, you also want to be a courteous and polite human. You know, it's never good to ignore folks. So, whenever someone even if you think you're not ready or it's too early, it's never a bad thing to, oh, thank you for your interest and like at least responding like a human being. and and out of curiosity, you can have a call. And and the way you handle that is you basically say, "Well, we're not looking for a publisher right now. You know, I'm I'm glad you reached out. You know, I'm curious to know more. H how do you publish? Like what what are your standard terms? Like how do you like what do you do? What are your services?" And literally kind of flip the script and let the publisher pitch to you. I mean, they're the one that reached out to you after all. So, so it's a bit counterintuitive, but say like, "Hey, I don't have a pitch deck. We're not looking for a publisher. You know, we've

been heads down on this." Well, thanks for reaching out. Wow. You know, we're really humbled, but like, you know, like tell me about you, Mr. Publisher. Like, like, pitch me. And then just take your notes and then say, "Thank you." And, you know, and now you've got a bunch of notes and you know all the details about publisher A and publisher B and publisher C. Um, and you you can ask them things like, you know, how many wish lists do you need to see and what are your standard deal terms? And you can ask them all that all those questions. Uh, and then and then you decide, right? If you think it's a sweet deal and that would really help you, okay, fine. You go for it. If you're like, ah, you know what? It doesn't sound like really what we need right now and and we're sort of, you know, we're working weekends, we're doing fine. Okay, then then you punt it down, you know, a you punt it a a little bit. you keep you keep going um and then you can come back to them and now if you've got you know 20,000 wish lists well again now you've got a bit more bit more conference is halfway

through we got two new speakers I got two speakers from play stack who published Bellatro they're going to be giving one is giving me a tip on how they marketed Batro step by step and you know me I go crazy on the wish list we're going to look at chart by chart by chart howro got where it got to the other one is play stack if you want to get published by play stack we're going to be looking how to make a vertical slice, which is different than a demo, and get covered, uh, get play stack to look at it, play your game, and then maybe sign you if your game's good. But you got to make a good game. So, that is coming later this week. You got to sign up now. And then the Pista Resistance, again, my French is terrible. Why do I keep trying to speak French? Um, tomorrow, it's Tuesday. Tomorrow, Tuesday, April 22nd. That's that's the date. I'm doing live Steam page reviews. If you get this course today on Monday, and then submit your Steam page, there's there's a whole form on how to do that. I will review Steam Page. I'm doing live quick, super quick reviews. Get it in. Save five

bucks. Do it now. Tuesday, I'm reviewing Steam Pages. So, you get to watch that. A Steam Page tearown. All this stuff only if you back. Sign up. But the inside conference 2025, it's ending soon. You got to do it now. Otherwise, the price goes up and you won't get to like interact because you get to ask, let me tell you, when you do the when you do the thing live, you can watch the Billetro talk and ask them like, "Hey, how how do how do you do this or that?" You know, we'll do that. So, um, sign up. It's good. So, I hope you enjoyed it. Goodbye.