I review our viewer's game marketing emails

[@StakGamess]

Thank you so much for reviewing *Blocktopia* on your channel! We are truly delighted that you enjoyed our email style. Your feedback is incredibly valuable to us and serves as a great source of motivation to further improve the game. : ) We’re planning to release the demo for *Blocktopia* very soon. We would love to share it with you in our next follow-up email! Thank you again for taking the time and for your valuable insights. We hope you’ll continue to enjoy following our updates as we move forward.

[@KummoDeveloper]

Holy moly - at 1st i thought this was random commentor making fun of the games generally on that video. Then i was like "wait wasn't blocktopia on the video, is this the dev".. then i go back in that video to see the email again and indeed the email and this account matches. Well done Stak. This is top tier interaction. Embrace the joke! I love that kinda humor! I wish your game and dev career good luck.

[@wdavis81x]

Y'all did good on the email. Looks great. Game looks pretty good too. Good luck on your launch!

[@LoftyRobot]

So emoji title that catches your attention, short sweet about why its interesting presented in a way that creates your youtube title for you, personal, with gifs of actual interesting gameplay, and a key, followed by links to site, store page, and press kit

[@VyvyanTheGreat]

As someone about to launch into 1.0 with a big marketing push ahead of me - extremely helpful video! Thank you!

[@regalx1]

@11:34 "If you don't care as much about me, I'm not going to care as much about you" That's literally the number one thing that I hear when it comes to marketing, and yes it does sound unfair if you're forced to cold mailing 100+ people. But the irony is that the Influencers literally *have to do the same thing for their viewers* . The KZbin algorithm basically killed subscriber loyalty. Everybody is forced now to provide upfront value to their customer with every piece of content or they get shanked by the algorithm. But what sucks the most is that the quality of the marketing has nothing to do with the quality of the individual or their game's content, but it will still get buried in a sea of "pick me"s regardless.

[@wdavis81x]

This was a really informative video. Thanks Marnix. I've been gathering creator emails to prepare to do just what you talk about here. Minus the whole..."i have a demo thing". I was more interested in reaching out to start building some trust between myself and the creators and to see if what I am working on piques their interest enough to have these later discussions. I'm not sure I could provide enough content for them to do anything more besides "In these top 10 indie games to watch for, William comes in at number 11 for working on Age of the Deep for 200 days this year!" I'm more in the early community building phase while I work on everything. So I've held off on sending any emails besides the one I sent to Debug. Will be exciting to start building everything out towards an early behind the scenes demo next year. Maybe something like that will be something I share with creators.

[@michaelslattery2273]

1:06 lol. the honesty is so casual, love it.

[@Noodle_Google]

The BEST email format contains no links and a steam key redeem code in the email. That creates A HUGE amount of trust.

[@terrylandess6072]

I'm fine with KZbinrs and other reviewers showing a complete game. I see early access most of the time with content creators always wanting to be 'first' at everything. Then when the game finally releases complete - it's old news and no one cares like they should. Things may or may not have changed - more content added - all to crickets. That's less than optimal.

[@libertarianterminator]

Broooo, your name really is Marnix? Wow! I thought it was an online persona nickname. I can't believe it's real. You should also use the other one. Being called Wyns is crazy. Hi, my name is Wyns and my game studio always wins!

[@creytive7350]

very interesting video, thank you marnik !

[@tabientertainment]

Thanks for the feedback; we appreciate it!

[@RogueWolf_Dev]

Very useful and actionable info!

[@harneetsingh9420]

There is always something to learn, Many thanks marnix for sharing your thoughts on this.

[@adventuretuna]

2:54 Personally, I avoid name-dropping titles like these for marketing, unless otherwise the other party brought it up during discussion. My reasoning is that, as he says in the video, these titles are often well-known names and have their own cult following. By putting your game next to these names, you're setting your game up for unrealistic expectations from the other party. Oh you say your game is inspired by Bloodborne? You better make sure it'll be as good as Bloodborne, because these guys will compare your game to it (spoiler: your game isn't Bloodborne and is, therefore, bad). If you told them outright that your game is similar to another game, they will look for ways to compare your game to that other game and eventually be let down because your game isn't exactly like the other game or is missing things from that other game. But if you let them figure out where you drew the inspiration from, they are less inclined to compare your games 1:1, and will be more inclined to talk about what makes your game different than the other game.

[@eibriel]

Wow, learned a lot. Thanks!

[@ruf256]

Awesome video! watched it till the end.

[@mattc9598]

but its 2 minutes old and 24 minutes long

[@TheGonzaDev]

SMii7Y played your game in a video! if you could mention in a future vid how much of an impact this had in sales it would be cool to watch

[@bitemegames]

So far it directly made us $320 in 16 hours. This is the first big English KZbinr to cover the game though, so hopefully we can get a similar content creator snowball effect as we had in Japan. -M

[@doneFG]

If Solo Indie or Small Indie and only made a one or a few games. I think its also pretty hard to know how many Keys to request from Steam to give to Content Creators. I mean lets say you request 100 keys and send it out but only 2 Creators would play, you might waste 98 keys that could have been used other places. Maybe its lack of understanding how it works with Steam Keys but I understand that you request Steam to provide keys xx amounts, not like you can get like 5000 keys I expect so you might sell them off elsewhere... So adding Keys in First Email is it good or bad idea?

[@KummoDeveloper]

For full release games (early access = full release for steam algorithm and for keys purpose) devs can get 5000 keys generated no questions asked. Unless you want to have 3rd party store page somewhere (like ur own website) you don't really need these keys. So getting 1000 for an email round can be a good idea. And cuz you can get 5000 keys you can do FIVE rounds without anykinda request. And if you need keys for you to be able to share them at live events then have less email rounds and print the keys to paper. It is really hard for small indie to "waste" keys since 5000 is A LOT. (Why i mention 1000 instead of 100... is cuz "steam guru" Chris laughs every time he hears an indie dev crying about how "no one played my game, i did the marketing, i sent 100-300 emails, tweeted and made reddit post".... his suggestion is 1000 emails minimum because "it is a numbers game"). Also before full release you can generate 2500 "beta package keys" (also called "release state override"). These are meant for small beta tests and press/influencer access. Steam really dislikes if you sell these keys - they are meant to be shared for free. (There is also steams "playtest feature" which then adds teh "request access" button on your steam page - this way you don't need keys). 98 or 980 keys unused wouldn't make you bankcrupt. The influencers who skip your game wouldn't had bought the game anyway. Most of your purchases will most likely be from steam even if you have your own little internet store somewhere. Thus nothing really was lost unless you really really REALLY needed those keys later for other purposes (and for this case you can request more keys from steam - you have to explain why you need more than 5000 keys... they may allow more or they may deny. Also note that if you do have 3rd party store then steam has quite strict rules to follow especially for pricing your game but also also somewhere in EU and/or brittain officials are having legal fights about steams dominance so maybe in near future you can price your game freely outside of steam).

[@faraguay3d]

email sent! :)

[@seamusoblainn]

Gotta get a witty comment in here quick

[@gont1553]

🖤

[@AvexFuddle]

Writing the email now... I want your hate.

[@AlexKolakowski]

You could make your name easier to find, it's not on the website for example. Not in the descriptions of the videos. Sometimes it is spoken in the videos itself but often times you do not introduce yourself in the videos.

[@maryword4165]

First Google search gives Marnix’s name 💀

[@Naveed22666]

I am making a 3d horror platformer game for steam (my first release). Does this game idea sound interesting or does it sound boring? 🤔

[@lukasfletcher4732]

That's too vague and it heavily depends on the execution

[@suspecm6316]

I'd definitely not include the fact it's your first release. At best it's a neutral statement, at worst it makes the reader think it's not worth their time because it's going to be a very amateur game. As the guy above me said, it's very vague. What's the setting? What type of horror game this is (Phasmaphobia clone, Lethal company clone, Fnaf clone, first person, third person, more akin to Resident Evil 4 or Resident Evil 2? etc etc, also I'm not using clone as a derogatory way here)? The horror platformer definitely caught my eye but famously 3D platformers are very janky (with the exception of the industry giants like Mario).

[@Naveed22666]

@@lukasfletcher4732 Think of it like Only Up but after getting to some height, you are presented with platforms with monsters that you gotta avoid, find keys to escape from that specific platform and go even higher.

[@Naveed22666]

The game is similar to Only Up but with survival gameplay. After the player reaches a little height, he is presented with a big platform (closed platform) where there are monsters waiting to hunt the player. The player needs to hide and find keys to get out of that specific monster platform and go even higher. I was thinking of adding multiple platforms with monsters which the player encounters as he goes higher. And if the player drops then like any platformer, the player will have to climb back up, run from those monsters again until he reaches the top

[@Naveed22666]

@@suspecm6316 Yeah makes sense. I wouldn't go around telling everyone that it's my first game release 😅