The $0 Budget Marketing Guide with Victoria Tran | 215

I [Music] alright hello everybody welcome to another episode of game dev Unchained into one game development podcast about team development in the lifestyle of era I am your host Brandon Pham and welcoming a special guest this week Victoria Tran are you doing Victoria hello I'm good it is warm in Montreal and I'm happy about that perfect so this is the part of podcasts where I ask the guests such as yourself to introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers out there of who you are where you're from where you're heading alright yeah so I'm Victoria Tran I'm the communications director at Kitfox Games we're a small indie studio in Montreal Canada and we're making games like boyfriend dungeon and Lucifer within us and also publishing a few

games like Dwarf Fortress and mondo Museum so we're doing a lot it's a great time but me personally I am actually from Vancouver so here in Quebec we speak a lot of French which I do Nana which is unfortunate but yeah I'm really involved in the games industry so far and honestly I've been writing a lot and doing some GDC talks about marketing designing communities for kindness and all that kind of stuff alright that brings today's topic to light so I found you actually through your trending article about the zero dollar marketing budget which worked really well in my opinion but one of the main topics I want to cover is let's go ahead and start like what are the main misconceptions when it comes to small teams or developers when it comes to marketing I think well so far honestly the biggest I mean okay there's two actually there's two biggest misconceptions first is that you don't

need it and that you know just a good game by itself will somehow magically spread and you don't need to put any work behind it and I think that misconception comes comes a lot because people usually only see you know the big viral hits it's like oh yeah of course under the tail did well or of course stardew valley did well they don't really hear about all of the press where that went behind it or all the teams work that went behind it and also that I so I call it zero my post $0 marketing was kind of a clickbait title because it's not like there's any such thing as zero dollar marketing because for example I do all the marketing for Kitfox but that doesn't mean I don't get paid a salary so it's one of those things that people don't account for very much and then suddenly you know they're like in debt and they're spending all this marketing money they don't know why or how because they didn't plan for it properly mm-hmm now what what are the general because marketing is something especially for

smaller teams we think of less I think it only recently teams are starting to realize that we should kind of budget for that and a lot of people are very surprised and but when thinking in retrospect that you should kind of save half your budget towards marketing people are kind of blown away with that which makes sense because that's what the bigger guys are doing right so when it comes to awareness it's something that you talked extensively about you kind of mentioned within the article that that is usually the first and only step that a lot of developers think about when it comes to giving attention to their product can you kind of expand on that and why that is a mistake yeah so I'm in the awareness phase that's the thing where I'm referencing something that's called the modern buyers journey and it's at first it used to be like this like chain that just went down naturally but it's actually more like

circle and it's basically all the steps in which someone goes through before they buy your game when they buy your game and then afterwards because you want to think about afterwards because hopefully you'll be making another game and you'll want them to buy that game as well and or just be loyal fans of you and you know do the word of mouth thing so a lot of people get stuck in the awareness phase they're like oh and that's my game have a trailer tweet about it and then they're done they're like okay people know about it now but you know like theirs was it last week 170 games came out on Steam so in all that time where they first hear about your game and this time you need to spend developing it they forgot about it ready there's already another game coming up I mean 10 times out right now and it sounds amazing and I'm excited about it and then you know every everyone forgets about because it's always something new and exciting so the next phase that you have to think about in kind of the circle is the consideration phase and that's kind of when people do research and kind of keep discovering your game so this can

be anything like reviews or you taking your your game to a convention and basically nailing down like no this game is still happening it exists it's interesting and here's why you should really think about this game and then throughout that time you eventually get to the purchase phase which is finally making them purchase the game and again that's through other things like big press releases streams or an AMA it's kind of like there's a lot of different marketing strategies throughout this thing and you just have to find the one that works for you and then after that and the one that people forget about the most I think is kind of the post purchase experience which is when you want people to care about your game and care about your studio and make sure they're kind of fans for life afterwards is there a particular runway in between these phases like a time frame that you feel is appropriate for each of this because that I think that's one of the biggest mystery with a lot of developers is like when do I start marketing when is too soon when it's too late when do I move to the next phase before they

forget about me is there like a rough estimate that you feel is like the magic formula but that seems to work for pretty much all development if there was then that would be fantastic everyone would do it but there's not there's not because I mean what we can say that a game is coming out in 2021 and then suddenly all the delays happen and then oh shoot now you have to think of more marketing material while you're busy actually making the game right so there's always gonna be kind of different variables so I don't think there's a magical timeline because some games have found a lot of success by doing things really slowly and it depends on your game like is it coming out in early access is it something that people can play a lot or is it like a narrative game that's easily spoiled so that's going to determine kind of when you should announce and when you should release and also like when our other games coming out will you be competing with big triple-a titles for news coverage is it the holidays where no one is really paying attention so I can't say there's an actual

timeframe but I will say you should start thinking about marketing like when you're researching your game and thinking of the next prototype oh the hook in sentences and like the sea of games out there are one of the biggest problems and challenges licit challenges right but a lot of games have when when they're talking about it right we're always talking about the one sentence marketing well the one sentence marketing sentence right that helps developers kind of kind of give the message and be able to play the telephone game that people can keep talking and hopefully create the buzz what's the main problem with that thing I think with in your article you were talking about how how a lot of this one sentences can be exchangeable between different games because it's too generic do you have any key advice to kind of

help change that yeah so kind of talking about that one sentence thing a lot of what I noticed when I was doing like games marketing and stuff is that we love gaming jargon like we love roguelikes we like rogue lights like Metroidvania x' you know like all those things that to us kind of makes sense sort of I still don't really know what a Metroidvania is if I'm being like a thousand percent honest but it's a lot of things where it's like if someone who isn't in game development or to read that they would have would have kind of no idea what that meant or it would mean nothing to them and other things so I think the example I gave was like if you could put so in a sentence so blank is a fast-paced 2d action adventure with challenging combat a rich story and gorgeous art you could put any number of games in that and it would completely make sentence still right so boyfriend dungeon hollow knight dead cells the messenger they're all games that fit into that

because it's such a generic sounding name I'm in one of the ways that you can combat this is actually is to remove your game name from the sentence or hook that you've made and put in a competitor's name if it basically sounds indistinguishable then it probably means that you need to make a better hook and it's one of those things where I try to also describe my game without using any of the gaming jargon that we have so things like story driven puzzle narrative mystery action Metroidvania roguelike if you can describe your game in as simple terms as possible and make it easy enough for a non gamer to understand and kind of create a feeling of excitement still then you have a much better hook one of the other things that you hopefully can kind of lend some knowledge for is the like the the minimum amount of energy that a developer should put into marketing

obviously the best route if you have the budget if you are planning correctly you should have professional such as yourself kind of handling that but what do you feel a developer just to be just just to have some kind of giving in to the process and not be completely blank walking to the table and just say here you go you know just figure it out and tell me back and come back with some strategy like how involved you would would you advise developers to be before they even approach a marketing department to handle their games I mean I think every game developer has their own comfort level with marketing and I honestly highly encourage everyone to do their own marketing so they can honestly know how to pitch the game and figure it out really well and have a marketing person come in and help them out with that and you know kind of tweak the pitch you can be as involved as you want I think it's always more exciting and fun and better

for the marketer if you were to be involved in the process and give feedback and ultimate ultimately you know trust the marketer knows what they're doing and you don't need a micromanager them or anything but it's one of those things where we you're excited about your game for a very special reason and the more you tell us about that and the more you communicate that with us the better we can align your message with basically the consumers I guess it's the way we would put it and speaking of this micromanagement our developers kind of just really trying to overwrite your input I I find that a lot when it comes to talking to the bar because I'm sure that's annoying on your site but what are the main problems that you see that developers just don't understand and it just takes a while to kind of wrangle them and kind of set them in the right direction [Music] probably so it's it's so basically game

developers and I mean look we're all game developers it's fine we all love it is that they so you when you work on a game for years and for hours and for most of your life you stop losing you stop seeing what's particularly exciting about it from the outside or you know you get sick of it you're tired you're burnt out hopefully you're not crunching intent wink wink but when you're working on something for so long it can be really difficult to see what's exciting about it and when a marketer comes in and says oh this is really exciting you're like no it's definitely this other really complicated mechanic that people don't actually care about I think I was talking to the community developer at no more robots and she was telling me that at first they were marketing descenders which is like a bike riding game I guess obviously I haven't picked their game before and basically they were say they

were saying it's a procedurally generated biking experience and you can do all these like crazy things and it's just and that's what they thought was really fun about it but when they showed it at conventions and stuffs and to different people they discovered oh no what actually people found exciting about it was that they just want to ride downhill really fast that was it that was like the main pull of it not like the procedural generation about anything else it was just that part so I think when developers are talking to marketers about the stuff it's to understand that as cool as the thing you're working on is there's probably some other aspect that you're missing and when targeted these developers about well I mean tunnel vision is very real thing right especially when they're involved with the project and they feel like oh well this is the best thing about our game and getting that outside perspective like you mentioned is always the best way to kind of approach new a new audience right it's more authentic I

kind of want to circle back to also I'm sure you you've been plenty involved with projects that have been financed but also have you been involved with the pitching part of it as well the before process and how differently that could be no I didn't like have I pitched a project well just helping a team kind of like finding the hook before the financing you know it's great once they get like the financial stuff in there but like the before it's just important it's like kind of circling in on what's called the essence of your game mm-hmm ish so it's kind of I've been slightly involved with kind of both ends I would say probably more in the latter half but when you're creating like the hook for your game and finding out what's interesting about it you're hopefully doing a lot of market research beforehand right so you're checking out your competitors you're seeing what they're saying you're seeing which ones were successful but also which ones

weren't and seeing like you know what kind of hooks and descriptions were used and if they were successful why if not why not the pricing the kind of gap in the market space that you could occupy yourself and also doing like the strengths weaknesses the SWOT thing that's very that's very technical marketing but yeah this this SWOT analysis if you can do that and seeing basically how your game fits into the ecosystem because there are so many games out there as we said and it's not necessarily something where you have to create this entirely new unique game concept because I think that's almost impossible now but you basically need to be able to talk about your game like it is the most unique thing in the world doesn't actually need to be unique you just need to convince other people that it is the reason why I'm asking about this is because I've been very interested in the before process of developing game and have always been thinking about how

marketing can be a pivotal part at the beginning process just seeing if the game is going to be even viable in a couple years the relativity of it how much does statistics play into developing or pitching a new game like where someone's like hey I'm going to do a sci-fi AI kind of takes over and plays against you it's like you know that's been done before and at least in two years just looking at the entertainment landscape through movies books or whatever people are gonna be worn out by the time this game is coming out like how have you been have you come across this type of situations where you gotta like have to backpedal or or at least think outlet or within yourself like that's not a good idea because of this the statistic portion of it yeah yeah I mean that's such a difficult question to answer because there's so many variables in it

and I think it's also sort of it's part marketing part business strategy which is not really my field of expertise but I will say that when we were dreaming up boyfriend dungeon let's say I'm sorry captain Tania X short she was doing some market research for that and also figuring out the business strategy and time the viability of the product and at the time the most like popular dating Sims let's say were hatoful boyfriend and honeypot which are two very different things and most of the dating Sims that were on Steam were like not-safe-for-work 18 plus and geared towards her very certain audience so it didn't really seem like boyfriend dungeon was viable but it it was that thing where there had to be like there's definitely a gap in the market for this and that might mean that it doesn't sell well at all in which case we just narrow down our scope or we I work on it and we do the Kickstarter for it and we see how it goes and the Kickstarter went really well and a great

thing also was that dream daddy in between some time we were prototyping the game came out and dream daddy did really well so that kind of indicated to us it's like oh there is kind of a market for this but I can't say necessarily like the entire strategy behind it paint a picture where Kickstarter is now because it feels like you had like a huge high in terms of buzz whenever a game gets a lot of excitement and then the website and and the people over there are really helping kind of push that through but now it seems at least to me and correct me if I'm wrong it seems like at least self driven you gotta have to bring your own audience into it and it's just literally just a platform for people to kind of you know donate and and get support a game mm-hmm no I'm I think so yeah Kickstarter itself hasn't been a newsworthy topic as much anymore unless I guess you somehow raise millions and millions of dollars in like 24 hours but Kix having a

Kickstarter game within itself isn't newsworthy that's why when we were doing the boyfriend dungeon one we had to pair it up with different things so we first we announced a new trailer and it featured the cat which was really weird and exciting for people we you know press just about the trailer and not necessarily like the Kickstarter we're like oh on the side look it's also on Kickstarter how interesting so you have to be able to kind of market it in a way that's exciting that isn't just hey we're on Kickstarter now that's it okay bye right so you probably have like a whole marketing strategy for this Kickstarter and you and you need to kind of keep quiet about certain things until you're ready to launch the Kickstarter in order for it to be newsworthy and to be something that people want to talk about and there's certain projects that do well on Kickstarter right so the more interesting ones like boyfriend dungeon which is weird and kind of quirky like that does very well and for other games

that are more complicated or harder to kind of market at first glance I would say maybe that's not the perfect Kickstarter game again text-dependent but that's sort of how Kickstarter works and that you want it to be very like exciting at first glance but I think Kickstarter is still a really wonderful platform for a lot of games to get funded on I mean boyfriend dungeon did super well on it and I've seen a lot of other games do really well in it and it's just I think people forget about how many games get funded by Kickstarter for sure yeah definitely uh I always constantly look at other mediums like the movie entertainment business and looking at the game business of how differently we use data I mean the movie business is a lot more open with how much movies being made how much movie how much money it makes because there's no way around it the theater is kind of release the numbers like day of and stuff yeah and so you're able to kind of track that and kind of guess which movies which timeframe would be best for this

particular project that you have but games don't really have that type of thing yeah the steam thing used to be what was going to steam data or something that was dumb right steam spy yeah what's dumb through a third party but they shut that down but that was our best kind of measure before so I'm wondering with all the Kickstarter data and all the Kickstarter projects that had been greenlit has there been a pretty good formula so far to kind of guess like before we even start a Kickstarter campaign this the likelihood of this being success is based on the interest that we buzzed before we even start the count off I would I mean sort of again it like I hate answers they're like oh it depends but it does depend because some people will announce their game and launch it with a Kickstarter and say they wouldn't have any like

community beforehand or they wouldn't have any marketing or like revealed marketing beforehand until the Kickstarter launched this which was different from boyfriend dungeon because we had we've released other games before I was hyping up boyfriend dungeon for a few months before the Kickstarter so it's really hard say whether or not we'll be a success like we figured it would be but we weren't sure and I think being able to account for okay if this game fails on Kickstarter where we got to do and if it does really well on Kickstarter what are we going to do I think it's one of those things where you just it's hard to say and it again depends on the game and how much marketing you have if you have a dedicated marketing person and also the budget you're asking for mm-hmm and to get kind of the buzz going before during and after is it through the use of what what kind of facilities are you guys using is it their social media is it a lot of interviews is like

there's so many outlets now it can be overbearing but I feel like a marketer such as yourself or you know like your industry definitely has the the the the the things stacked to to kind of go to the right places and know how to utilize yeah so there's a lot of different avenues in which we try to get news and kind of just hope and sometimes it works out sometimes it doesn't but one again it's really helpful that Kitfox itself has made games before and we have a community from that and we have press contacts from that but kind of the ways we built them is yep so one we use social media mainly Twitter and discord newsletter doesn't count as social media so we do email marketing we also go to a lot of conventions we do press interviews and we do interviews like whenever we can no matter what usually

we do panels we do talks we share our knowledge we do trailers and yet we and we specifically like time exclusives for press just so it becomes a more attractive thing for them to cover because when you give press something that's really exclusive then you know they're more excited about and they're more willing to talk about it versus if you've already talked about it and spilled everything before it's a little bit less exciting and then we also work with streamers and influencers and all that kind of stuff and obviously so much of the work is also word-of-mouth through our community which are the best and I love them so much and I think that's kind of the best marketing you can get when it's just people in your community and fans be telling their friends that oh this projects really cool or oh I really like the studio you should support them that's kind of where we built it and it's something that takes a lot of time it's nothing that can be rushed like a lot of people like oh how do I immediately get discord people and might discord participating and being my fans

for life and I'm like oh that's gonna take a while once it go hot second yeah I mean you you're mentioning to social media platforms Facebook is still one of those that I'm starting to understand that people don't do anymore especially with the end of developing leverage guy right it's dead is it officially dead where it's just like algorithms so whack that there's just no hope into telling anybody on there anymore what's what's your stance on them well I hate Facebook you can probably tell from me like whispering it and I hope Facebook's not listening and somehow does something about this but it's fine bye anyways yeah so Facebook is annoying in many ways but one of the main reasons it's annoying to like a lot of indie developer honestly to developers in general is that when you post something on Facebook unless you pay for them to push your posts they won't actually send it out to everyone who likes your page so unlike Twitter or

discord or like literally any other social media platform when you post something if you know your followers were to scroll back far enough or whatever it would eventually show up on their timeline or whatever with Facebook it will not show it until you pay so which is again not great especially when you're an indie with a budget and I don't know if actually you've seen the stats that I think it was epic games put out about their social media following and it was like they had like a million followers on every single page except Facebook which had like a few thousand I mean had more than a few thousand but much less than millions of followers so it's kind of those things where I think it is sort of dying and whatnot so if it's something that you don't have time for don't use it that's definitely what I'm seeing we have a lot of indie developers that come on here and whenever I ask them about what they're utilizing for social media they just talk about Twitter and then discordantly I'm very behind I still

have a face like I'm holding on to that and but I it is one of those things that you know it's so unpredictable as a platform it is it's it's just and it because it begins to kind of creep into my personal I used to because the post is not even really being displayed as you would imagine it which is recently right but this kind of leads into the next phase of our topic which I kind of want to ask you about so the way we utilize press or the way we tell about our project has changed dramatically alas three well five years to be honest where it used to be when you have a project getting some an article under Kotaku or all these traditional press sites would be the be-all end-all right not so much anymore I mean it's a nice to have but it seems like you says mean kind of or prioritize

with streamers or other outlets that connect directly to gamers right where they're more likely to purchase than reading an article from kotaku so oh this is nice knowledge but I'm not going to click on the Buy Now button on Amazon what is your perspective on that being so different nowadays I mean with the event of any I think new kind of media forum we're all still trying to figure it out and I wouldn't necessarily say that streamers are better than press or that presses by then streamers it depends on your game and it depends on where it works right so there's been a lot of times and I've talked to a lot of community developers where a huge streamer like with millions of followers will play their game and they're super excited because you're like yes we're going to get visibility it's going to be great and then they look in the back end and they've sold like five copies from

that so the thing is is that some people like will watch streamers for like yet the gameplay and they'll want to buy the game or they're just watching it because they like the streamer and they're not necessarily interested in actually purchasing your game especially if it's a game that's narrative and it's spoiled and you play it once and then what's the point of playing it again and obviously some fans are really great and you know they want us to help support the indie devs and all that and it's not like it's the streamers fault if they don't have a fan nothing by the game but it's one of those things where just because you get views or you know follower numbers that doesn't always translate into sales and that's what you want you want the sales to survive and make your next game so I think press is still really important especially when it's like reviews that's kind of part of the consideration phase and the purchase phase when people are looking at your game and when they want to buy your game they're gonna look up reviews about they're gonna see like okay like in general when I google let's say boyfriend dungeon it's not out yet but

let's say Google boyfriend dungeon and I see the scores like okay it's like 80 percent or it's 60 percent like that's gonna influence whether or not I decide to buy it right now or if I wait until a sale or if I decide not to buy it at all and then there's other things we're like yeah if the game does change sort of every time and I see a stream or play it I'll be like oh that's really exciting I'm gonna watch the stream or later I'm gonna buy the game first try it out myself so it's really difficult to say I think it's good to cast your net out test what works for your game and then track the analytics track the stats behind that and kind of go with it depending on what works for your game because it's such a such a changing like landscape for games marketing and games in general that it's hard to nail down something so again use what works for you and hopefully you succeed in that yeah I definitely agree like just being able to kind of use all facets because you don't know who exactly you're gonna be reaching and who you're gonna be

appealing to and you just have to really do your research to see what what is grabbing the most attention and it does seem like what lucky said it you're able to funnel them to take the extra step to follow you through twitter or disk Kord I mean that's a better metric than just hoping that people will buy they won right yeah aside from that though when it comes to spreading the word like how effective is oh how do I say this it's like how much effort well what is the main priority when it comes to you like putting the word out when it in terms of like these outlets so you're saying right again you're you're talking the press is kind of like the age-old thing to do is like let's talk to the press they have this much people this many people let's get some brand awareness going secondly what like you

said I've heard many times like streamers used to be the the used to be the place where people like well if a lot of people are watching therefore mathematically this many people will buy that's not true right it's completely a crapshoot as well the appeal is there but you know you never know because the the product is a lot with the streamer and not with what they're displaying the third aspect a lot of what I've been seeing and I kind of want to kind of get your commentary on this is a lot of developers kind of taking it in their own hands right there they're doing dem Diaries which is really popular but a lot of what you talk about is like well if you're telling everything from day one what your game is about when it comes to ready to be announced using all these traditional presses and stuff what are you sharing exclusively that makes it newsworthy I mean everybody have already know exactly and there might be a chance of fatigue on your brand so

what's your warning on when it comes to that just day one just record all the topics let your competitors know exactly how you're designing a game from day one and have like this tremendous resource like is there a cautionary tale to that is there a better way to doing that and and not just go full-out detailing everything [Music] yeah I mean if your game is something that can be easily spoiled I would say maybe hold back or if you're new and it's not necessarily something that's it's harder to capture the process attention then yeah I would keep things back like you can still talk about your game quite a bit it's still gonna be difficult if you're hiding things obviously but like for example there's a boyfriend dungeon things that I'm really excited about we're probably gonna save it for a trailer but I can still mentions like oh we are revising the combat system or there will be combos or there'll be this and then maybe attach

like a really vague screenshot or something but no actual gameplay let's say so it's one of those things where you kind of have to and kind of this when you have your marketing person or your community manager come along you need to be able to talk about your game in kind of a vague way that still is exciting and I know that's not super helpful when I just say it like that but there's basically you want to be able to give updates and if there's anything silly or fun that you can share definitely do that but major press speeds you need to plan those you need to be like okay so the first every time someone is going to see combat like actual combat in the game like you have a screenshot of like a character with a sword whatever but like seeing like a character used combos and stuff that's the the first time press people will see that is during the trailer and I'm going to send press that a week early so they have time to write about the trailer or something like that or like oh the first ever dating scene you're ever going to get or the first ever weapon transformation people are gonna see

again that's safe for press because that's like a major thing that you can show and looks exciting what other minor things like who you can customize your character so it has pink hair is something that you can probably just share with the community it's not necessarily something that's like newsworthy right so you need to be able to plan and strategically time out your what you're going to update people on and what you're going to give to press and then you know once you give it to press then you can announce it and use it again and again for the general public I would say so partnerships is something that I I'm always curious about especially between indie developers it seems like something so natural because any developers aren't really competing with each other in a way we're threatening but the advantages of kind of getting smaller groups together and being able to kind of cross promote is something I feel like hasn't been done too often like I would expect every indie studio to have like a coalition by now and be

able to come like monthly talk about each other's game and just really have that huge momentum behind him because these games like he said are not the traditional $60 game were just like a life decision right when purchasing have you seen any movement towards that have you yourself been partnering with other studios like in what ways is effective and a way to for our listeners and audience out there to consider for their own projects yeah I think teaming up with other indie Studios is supernatural and actually a lot of indie Studios do it just probably not I think in the grand scale that a lot of people are expecting because it takes time and we're all already strapped for time trying to make our actual game there's been instances like in our game moon hunters we have Mina from battle shaft Brigade in our game and then vice versa in battle chef brigade one of our characters is in their game and it's

kind of like a cute nod towards like Oh different indie games and friendship and also I'm in many different discord groups or just friendly like indie group so it's like hey we have an announcement coming up on this day if you help us retreat it that'd be really appreciated or hey I'm doing a Kickstarter then can can you like help me signal boost it and it's sort of those things where it's like small miner asks where it's like hey is it ok if you help me with this usually indie say yes or unlike the developments I like if there's a program in question an art question usually people are more than happy to help and for example like for the boyfriend dungeon Kickstarter I was going to have an exclusive discord just for Kickstarter backers but I realized how do I get like 6000 names into this discord without going crazy and I realized that the devs that temp them had done it before so I emailed them randomly out of the blue and was like hey you don't know me but I kind of need help how did you do that and then they

basically just gave me the bot that they used to integrate their discord backers with their Kickstarter emails and it was really great and I'm super grateful for them and if they ever need help I would definitely help them for sure so it's one of those things where I think a lot of indie devs are in it together you just need to reach out and ask yeah it definitely makes sense because um you know I come from the traditional trip of a baron and a lot of it from day one we're not just thinking about the single game but we're thinking about three games ahead so from the foundation up our engines kind of built in that way so that you know we're saving money in the long run a lot of indie developers don't do that they're kind of dead oh yeah no we're just like winging it are you weighing it because it makes sense because everyone like you said is strapped for time so they're just trying to win it with their current project and then if there's a second project but they're super happy but then again they usually restart the process they don't kind of build on top of the well I mean it's shady foundation

at that point right so I'm glad to hear that there are like movements in that way and that all like developers are able to reach out and in my experience have always been very gracious and and lending help I would love to kind of just seed more that on an official label because there's no like like I said they're like here here's the website if you're an indie developer here's the coalition of indie devs here's how you can put your project through and get everyone to blast at the same time you know if your respectable it can't just be everyone right so this this part is pretty important so we talked about I guess we go in through several phrases of going through awareness and just getting people to know but grabbing on and engaging the community like people are now in your Twitter people are now part of discord people are now at par get a newsletter and this is a chance to

kind of keep them interested but also completely turning them away all right so what is the correct way of engaging your audience without making it feel like they're reading just promotion after promotion after promotion and there's no like there's no two-way street there when it comes to nudge yeah so kind of the main way that you should think about this it's kind of like that 8020 rule I guess it's kind of the 80% you're giving something 20% you're asking for something whether or not it's via Twitter or discord or whatever if you want to have a relationship or connection with the people in your community and you need to give them things so you can't keep asking them like hey buy my game hey buy my game hey it's on sale buy my game right it doesn't it doesn't do anything for them you have to give them something whether that's just like something simple like hey join the discord and we'll just chat

with you and if you have any questions let us know or just be there to help just be a friendly face in the community like already that's so much of the work of building you know a relationship with your fan base and also things like if you want to track them to places like your newsletter or your Twitter your discord give them a reason to write so you need something exclusive or exciting about it what's exciting about discord usually is that you can talk to the developers directly and you can have a fun time with them there or on the newsletter you can have like Oh an exclusive digital art book download and it's something just for them and you write them updates and you tell them kind of stories within the studio that they wouldn't get elsewhere or on Twitter Mary I'm like oh I can swear I'm not gonna surround the podcast but you know on Twitter you can post really silly stupid stuff that they can connect with and just have fun tweeting at you with it's how you want to use it and how you mark it what's so special about your

studio because every studio has something different right you don't need to be funny in order to be on Twitter but maybe your game has really beautiful and gorgeous art and that's what you share or maybe your studio does I don't know programming really well and you share programming tips it's one of those things where I think every studio has their own kind Clara and the way you work that into your social media channels is going to make the community fall in love with you and want to support you so the last few years we've seen like a huge shift with why I mean like more than a few years the digital marketplace being a well the barrier just gets removed with that right now developers can sell directly to the customers using steam and we're seeing all out of the console makers opening up that market with the digital marketplace letting you new developers in so it's been a very happy place but also invites kind of what we're seeing

with the Apple Store right it's just a lot of entry you were mentioning last month you know we had 170 new new titles kind of I think that's last week last week that was one week yeah yeah I think if you fall I co-partners newsletter they I think every week they release how many games came out that week and it changes but it's usually like a hundred something yeah so that's that's a huge amount of people releasing games on a weekly basis right I mean all the points that you you you were giving before are extremely helpful but I'm like I'm wondering what the next couple of years looked like with a lot of these marketplaces like the console makers in particular stadia do you see any effect with any developers with that new digital work digital marketplace

allowing subscription-based services and a chance for people who usually wouldn't click on a title to finally try it out because it's part of it it's part of the package now yeah it makes me so like in complete honesty and I could be totally wrong about this because you know as I'm sure people at Google and stuff have done a lot of business development but as an indie developer subscription services make me very nervous very nervous because subscription games like one how are they paid and two like how do developers get money is it by how long someone has played your game in which case it would incentivize games like games to be made that make you like you don't want to keep playing the game or like it will create a very different type of game right now you know like how many times can you play one narrative game if it's the same storyline like no

you're probably going to need like a lot of action a lot of like procedural generation all that stuff which is fine but it's it's one of those things where I think it really shifts what kind of game you can make to be successful on subscription-based platforms and also just like when we think about things like Spotify and Netflix and all those other streaming subscription-based services it's always like the indie people like you know that indie music makers are the indie movie makers or they're like okay well I made like 30 cents off of that so that's great so it makes me nervous but I I mean look it's gonna world will move on we're gonna have to adapt or gain a really nice community that will be loyal to you and then also still have steam and have all these other store pages that we can work with and just see no I definitely agree with you there the marketplace is well new marketplaces

are gonna always pop up but it always falls back to the marketing strategies like getting people to kind of fall you're within your own community and have that brand awareness and loyalty to kind of just have these places to buy it from and not so much of relying on them but it is something that I'm you know I'm always curious about because as it's developing with Google stadia especially a lot of people early backers are pretty disappointed with it I've seen a lot of those yeah did I buy he's like well you bought something buy something more which was confusing to me but I feel like the PlayStation the Xbox who's been in the game no pun intended longer haha has better idea of how to treat us so I think they will have a better handle on things but yeah the the the worry is still the same like how our developers are being paid it's very iffy if there is some kind of part of the equation

where the hours played is how you get paid out yeah that does restrict a lot of narrative driven games that are shorter so it doesn't really work on the platform and out of all the streaming services I agree like Netflix is probably the more upfront about things it's like they pay you before I even go stream dental paper streaming they just pay for the project which we hope everybody does but most don't most must do the Spotify YouTube thing where it's just like purview or whatever so yeah it's a it's a scary it's scary to think that that will be a marketplace I even with all the constant makers that I've named like they have their own version of it but I think you won't have any effect on how indie developer has an idea and be able to sell that project mm-hmm just sharing my thoughts there but so the newsletter is another thing

so like I can't want to compare the three different platforms here the main three that I totally agree with you have been the most engaging the newsletter the discord and Twitter right what are the techniques to kind of utilize each of those differently because each of those require a different way to kind of share or engage yeah I mean yeah so it like I mentioned before each social platform does the newsletter count newsletters in the can as a social platform each platform you need to give someone a reason for joining it and then and then they'll join it or be a part of it right but there's obviously you're competing with a lot of different people on discord there's so many people who just joined discourse and then lurk in them like me there's people who just follow Twitter accounts and then it kind of never engage with them there if you

sign up for newsletters and never open your email that's gonna happen that's very normal it's okay if you have all these people you're like why is no one talking or why is no one doing this that's fine but the point is is that you need to be able to figure out a strategy with it and figure out your goals with it um I think a lot of people kind of just create a Twitter or discord or a newsletter and they're like okay people are doing this so I'm gonna do it too and then they don't really know why it's useful or why it's special or why it's something that people want to join right so if you're gonna have a discord and you're not actually on it and participating and trying to make active conversation and answering questions as soon as possible during work hours on discord while you can then why be there right why join this discord or if you're on Twitter and all you're doing is retweeting stuff and sometimes really occasionally like tweeting out a screenshot and there's nothing really happening and there's no like link or

way to track the metrics to see if you're actually doing well then why are you on Twitter and same thing with newsletter like is there why would I read your game development update over someone else's so for an example for this is that boyfriend dungeons newsletter updates aren't honestly they don't really update you much on the game's progress at all but they are written like love letters and those can get real spicy and they're really fun to write and sometimes they're just ridiculous and it's a fun thing to have in your email inbox sometimes so it's kind of finding again and just like how your game has a hook I think your social media platforms need to have their own hook and it doesn't need to be as explicit but it needs to be something that you think about and don't just blindly do well thank you for that I mean that totally makes sense to me now that explain like if you don't want to be a part of it or at least engage why are you asking people to do it exactly yeah and each of the community like you said has its own unique space for it you

know people just you know joining your discord they want that real-time Activity Twitter they want to be aware but like I think the biggest thing like you and is that it's not necessary selling the game I mean by that time they're engaged there's a certain likeness or a certain amount of mediums that you guys feel have a similarity to right and so speaking to that can really extend the conversation pass just project updates because you can do a few of those but that can get very bored and really quickly but like what is the essence of why we're here together it's like well we like something enough to kind of commerce say let's just expand on that and the love letters like you said it's like another creative way where you know you know your audience and you're just really tailoring towards and that totally makes sense to me so I want to thank you we are at the hour of the

podcasting and Victoria you've been an amazing guest and of course you know you're saving money in our pockets even though it's a click no a lot of what you're saying totally you can do right now without spending a cent I feel like that's the most common estate a lot of developers do they don't really utilize the full resources of what's free out there before they kind of spend a heavy dose of money and what's worse is that not knowing the essence of the games the audience they're just spending money in the wrong places anyways so I think a lot of your article kind of speaks to that and what you've been talking and sharing with us today our tips that I feel like will beat stadia beat all these subscription services like it's gonna be very helpful I don't know zero dollar marking is gonna beat the million my stamp on it it's gonna totally beat it I'll just turn off the camera at that

time so I'm gonna turn the mic over to you and so you can give attention to a shout-out or a thank you to anybody out there the the floor is yours oh well first then thank you for having me on it was fun yeah so I guess as a low wrap-up if you're interested in any of the Kitfox games you can find us obviously on twitter or discord and SCOR GG / Kitfox games or twitter.com slash kid fox games you can also find us on Facebook but I just talked about how much I hated it but if you're on there it's fine I won't judge you or sign up for a newsletter all the links I'm sure if you google it will be really easy to find they're all there and if you want to follow me on Twitter where I write about marketing things and sometimes occasional really silly things I'm at the V Tran on Twitter and thank you so much it was fun well thank you so much well that is the end of our podcast thank you for everyone for joining and

Victoria all the links and everything that you share will be under the podcasts and video description and that's it that is our our I want to thank you everybody for joining and listening and see you guys next [Music] you [Music]