Marketing is NOT Why Most Indie Games Fail

[@wukerplank]

"Most aspiring indie devs only have a very consumer level knowledge of their genre" - that one hit hard 😅

[@raze2012_]

I imagine most devs who are not yet devs or are starting out as devs will be passionate consumers. So it makes sense. Gamers aren't very good at expresing why they like or especially hate a game. You gotta be in the right dev circle and figure out the nuances of the genre, the small decisions a designer makes that can make or break the feel of a game. Never be ashamed of being a novice. We gotta start somewhere.

[@JenMaxon]

It's a good comment - makes you think

[@phosspatharios9680]

Guilty as charged! ✋️

[@joel6376]

For anyone involved in gaming communities this also applies. Gamers love telling devs how to improve their game, how to "balance" it, what should be done etc. Being involved in the new unreal tournament community was frustrating circular discussions of topics the general community had been discussing for the better part of two decades. A lot of gamedev is likely a continuation of this.

[@wesleytoone9479]

I was a beta tester for Stardocks Galactic Civilizations 3. There was an instance on the beta forums, where people started arguing about a very late game tech one civ had that some people said was game breaking and others said wouldn't matter. The main post about the tech exploded, having hundreds of replies in a beta that didnt really include very many active people, in just two days. Finally the owner of stardock chimed in with a post that basically said "You guys realize you have spent two days arguing about a small feature that 99% of the people who purchase this game will never even see, right?" That has kind of stuck with me ever since then as a great example of how we as gamers can look at a game and get hung up on things that we think are important, and demand the developers fix/change, when in all reality it has basically no bearing on how well a game will sell or how popular it will be.

[@acgumut]

Sometimes lucky things happen that will gain traction for your game without any marketing. For example I have been developing a simulation game called Coffee Shop Simulator for almost 2 years and I only had about a little over 300 wishlists. Recently a game called Supermarket Simulator launched and it became very successfully due to low price and high streamer interest. The part that did benefit me in this situation was the fact that my game also featured in the "products similar to this" page of Supermarket Simulator. Since the launch of that game I gained over 1.2k wishlists within a week without doing anything extra.

[@alxxei]

Congrats! Hope the trend continues

[@JakeBirkett]

amazing!

[@n8tehgr8est]

You could say you chose a niche that was due for interest, and you reaped the rewards of that.

[@PHeMoX]

...and how many sales though? Wishlists mean nothing.

[@kromeboy]

Supermarket Simulator is somethin very odd. As a youtuber I had watched a 10+ episode series from a youtuber of my size to try understand why that game as so much appeal to the viewers while all the gameplay showed is the same repetitive tasks. I have also noticed that my series about "Turmoil" somewhat got some raving fans that watch every episode in full while the gameplay loop of turmoil is always the same. A lot of the time people surprise me.

[@SimonSlav-GameMakingJourney]

Most polite way of saying " You're game is just not good enough " I've seen

[@raze2012_]

I guess. if "youre not marketable compared to Hollow Knight" is the lesson to take away from this I guess we should all quit gamedev.

[@SkylerFoxx-GameDev]

@@raze2012_ That's a very pessimistic take to arrive at from this video. The take away is clearly "improve your game and strive to make it look as good as your inspirations," not "just give up loser."

[@lucidstation]

@@raze2012_ I think you're missing the point. Hollow Knight made $200M dollars. If your GOAL is to make that much money, then you're correct, that's your quality competition. But if say your goal is to make $100K, then you need to look up games that made that much and use that level of quality as a benchmark to aim for. This video is not saying you can't find success, but by making a game of a certain quality, then you're significantly more likely to hit your goal

[@raze2012_]

@@lucidstationThe very beginning of the video said "you need to compare to the best game in your genre". I'm sure the best in all but the most niche under-served niches have games that made $100m. That's why they are "the best". Not simply "very good". I've seen a lot of "very good" games end up making a few thousand dollars, but I wouldn't say they were less than a millionth as good as "the best". That's just how market forces work. And it's a magnitude of scale. Even if I made a perfect hollow knight clone, I wouldn't make $200m. So you don't look up what makes $100k if you wanna make 100k, you look up what makes 1m and pray you hit 1% of the audience. Can you make a million dollar game with your team? I guess that's up to your talent and how they are paid to figure out.

[@raze2012_]

​@@SkylerFoxx-GameDev I'm sure most games "strive to look as good as their inspiration". Strive isn't everything.

[@JustDaveIsFine]

I've seen it called curb appeal, like selling a house. Some games have such a good premise, great style, or interesting hook that you're already looking before they've done any marketing.

[@eastshadestudios8335]

That's a great term!

[@mandisaw]

It's that classic "elevator pitch" from film & TV. If people's eyes don't light up after 5-10sec, then either 1- your idea doesn't have the spark, or 2- you aren't pitching to the right people. If you can't explain your own game in under 10sec, then you have a bigger problem.

[@635574]

If the screenshots, the banner art or the trailers dont show anything unique or interesting of course it will flop. Games survive based on intrigue.

[@Yora21]

Isn't that also the "one unique thing"?

[@mandisaw]

@@Yora21 Related, not identical. Unique thing, aka unique selling proposition (USP), is/are those key elements that make you stand out in the genre. Curb appeal usually does include that, but also elements that aren't unique, but which you might do well. Like having checkpoints in a Metroidvania isn't unique. But having screenshots on those checkpoints means you're doing it better than others. Make sense?

[@richardrothkugel8131]

A common story I think about when considering marketing is Slay the Spire. It launched with no marketing and only made 1000 sales in the first year, before it was picked up by a popular streamer / influencer. After that other streamers picked it up and it rocketed to one of the most popular roguelikes in the genre and launched the deckbuilding subgenre as a recognisable property. Marketing does matter, but so does the quality of the game. I read endless post mortems about indie devs who complain about not becoming a hit on steam, only to review their game to discover the most boring, by-the-numbers, uninspired slop. It's like they lack complete self-awareness and understanding of what they are competing with and why their game is actually bad. Great video with fantastic insights. You've earned my sub and I look forward to your future videos.

[@raze2012_]

I feel hyperfocusing on factors like this is indeed a road to uninspired , by the numbers slop. It may make money but I doubt it'll truly resonate with your buyers.

[@richardrothkugel8131]

@@raze2012_ and players can feel and see that. Truly passionate devs that love their games and want to develop the best product possible will be infinitely more marketable than someone who just wants to flip games or use them as a platform for their youtube channel.

[@picleus]

Slay the Spire falls into that same category as Among Us and Vampire Survivors. It was a very early game in the genre and was IMO a no-contest best-in-genre for multiple years. It's the first to market effect. I'd bet a slightly worse game could have had the same success if it had came out first.

[@richardbrooks5899]

Are you sure about that? There's a sea of low effort slop on steam that sells well.@@richardrothkugel8131

[@lennic]

genre defining indie tbh

[@CodeMonkeyUnity]

Great video! The concept/hook is indeed the most important part to making a successful game (depending on what success means to you) All the marketing tips are simply multipliers on that base number, a game with a compelling concept is so much easier to market.

[@Pulstar232]

huh, that actually made it make a lot more sense to me. Marketing is a multiplicative buff applied to the base game. REALLY good marketing can make even a terrible game go boom(The Day Before). I guess another multiplier so to speak would be "what people want but don't realize they want thing" that Minecraft did.

[@Odisseia-hh2td]

@CodeMonkeyUnity: all the GameDev yutubers in this chat 👀

[@a-google-user07]

monke

[@the_elder_gamer]

An adjunct point, via the quote I've probably posted more often than any other, nearly a decade old now, from a talk given by Tynan Sylvester, creator/lead dev of RimWorld: "The markets people know about are saturated, because people know about them. A big piece of advice I'd give is: look at the market and try to figure out where the _under-served parts_ are. [my emphasis] What kinds of games do players want but can't get? Entering an already-saturated genre is a recipe for death. I think I could make a decent military shooter FPS, but I'd make like no money off it even if it was objectively fun, because that market is utterly saturated by big hyper-polished AAA releases. [note - this is from 2015/6] RimWorld was really deliberately targeted at a market that had a need that wasn't filled. I know there are other markets like that. _So the real first challenge might not be making the game at all._ [my emphasis] It's very carefully and deeply inspecting and understanding the market to see where the need is."

[@0lionheart]

100%. Make the kind of games you want to play, that aren't being made. If you make a "me too" game you're doomed from the start imo.

[@Bronze_Age_Sea_Person]

@@0lionheart My example will be silly, but that's exactly the reason I've decided to make my own game. I play lots of eroges and hentai games in general, but one thing I've found to be severely under-served are yuri games, that is, games about lesbian intercourse. Also, most games with a female protagonist in these genres are either too rapey or it's a reverse harem sort of game. You don't see at all female protagonist picking up other girls in these games all that often. So, I said: "I'll do it one myself." Don't care if it's gonna be popular, and I plan to make it free as well since it is just a pet project of mine, not something I'm looking for regarding profit, but it's definitely a game I wanna play, on an under-served genre.

[@the_elder_gamer]

@@Bronze_Age_Sea_Person It's not silly, I'm sure you're not the only person to wants this. Good luck! The only thing I'd add is that if you're making a commercial quality game, you should consider monetizing it somehow, even if it's just a dollar or two, and even if you pledge giving all your _profits_ away to a thematically appropriate charity. I'm a big proponent of people getting paid for their time. Work is work even when you're the one choosing to do it and that deserves compensation.

[@richardbrooks5899]

So: Guess and get lucky.

[@the_elder_gamer]

@@richardbrooks5899 Please clarify.

[@CoolExcite]

I think farming sims are the best example of this. There are so many games in that genre where you can look at 5 seconds of a trailer (or often just 1 screenshot) and that's enough to conclude that it is exactly like every other farming game except with stiffer controls and a more generic art style. I'm not saying every game needs to reinvent the wheel, but if you don't do anything unique from the other games, and you don't do anything better than the other games, then I have no reason to bother

[@Pmurder3]

I feel this is true for every game genre not just farming sims. Gaming became very stale in the last couple of years.

[@aiacfrosti1772]

"I'm not saying every game needs to reinvent the wheel, [but every game needs to invent *something*]"

[@Zectifin]

@@Pmurder3 its just especially apparent in farming sims. they don't have fast action combat to keep you entertained and since things are snapped to a grid it probably looks like an easy first game for a lot of new game devs. Farming sims are popular and all we have to do is make a growing grid and the same vegetables everyone else has so why not just make a farming sim? The problem is the same with a roguelike though, most people aren't playing to see a short 8-10 hour story and then move on to the next one. most farm sims don't have much of a story besides "you're trying to bring the town back from its poor state" or even just "escape from society and become friends with some small town people". People want to play it for hours and hours and maybe replay it over and over, so the actual gameplay has to be really good, otherwise they will just go back to Stardew again, especially when you can just install some mods to make the gameplay in that fresh. So you gotta do something different. put in monster taming and combat. put in good ARPG combat, or something else nobody has thought of. That or just make the best damn farming sim that blows stardew out of the water. Theres tons of them coming out everyweek and most are pretty subpar, so if someone is making a mid farming sim, its gonna fail big time right now. People aren't starved for choice.

[@SmartCreeper]

Farming games have so much potential. Could easily make a Lovecraftin farming sim and the unique atmosphere will do well for sales.

[@Sweepy_Games]

I mean, the things you're discussing are basically marketing. Making a product that's "easy to sell" is part of marketing, and market research falls under that umbrella too. BUT!!!! Im very thankfull for encouraging indies to do their marketing and market analysis. Us indies need voices like yours! Great insight! And while video is easy to watch, it's also super informative!

[@eastshadestudios8335]

Thanks for the feedback! And thanks for watching! I'm glad you found it informative! The market analysis part is certainly a marketing thing. I'd say the product quality part is a production problem, not a marketing problem. For instance if your game looks ugly, hiring an excellent marketing person will not help you fix that. Hiring an excellent production artist might though. And I do think for most indies its the production related skills that are the bottleneck, not any lack of know-how on the marketing front, or even lack of market research. But at least market research will help folks know where the quality benchmark actually is, so they can have the right expectations.

[@nianight]

Let me introduce you to Product Design & Management. Those are actually the people who will either make it or kill it 😅

[@Cythil]

I think the problem is that game developers often have an idealistic view that you make your game first, and then market it. But marketing need to be there from the start. (But hay. With a fail faster approach, you can still do fast development circles to see if some of your ideas seem viable and then do the market research to see if they also have a market viability. Just remember, your little demo should be as dirt cheep to develop as possible if you do go that route. You are experimenting, and quality has a quality of it own in that case. Then at least it will feel you started out with a game idea and not with market research to guide you what to make.)

[@chaosmkmk]

Knowing what quality you need to reach (which a significant amount of this video was focused on) is not a marketing issue. Marketing is 1. Putting a product in view, and 2. Making sure it's a good view. If your production is bad, there's only so much polish you can do. Most indies put barely any polish on games with barely any effort. If you doubt me, look at the worst sellers on Steam (literally 10,000s of games that you would never play).

[@CharlesPhillips-pu7ri]

I agree, apart from the positive comments. What actionable advice is there in this video? Half of it is marketing advice, which is supposedly not the problem, and the other half is completely abstract "make your game better". Duh?

[@RealCoachMustafa]

2:00 I've seen people say games like Celeste and Hollow Knight are hidden gems or under appreciated.

[@JakeBirkett]

haha

[@igorthelight]

For casuals who only play AAA games they may look like hidden gems ;-) But objectively speaking - of course they are not!

[@tiacool7978]

Which is funny. When I finally made the switch to pc gaming, I saw Hollow Knight advertised a lot. I simply chose to ignore it, since it was in a genre I wasn't interested in. I did finally take the plunge, and I don't regret it.

[@ry6554]

Under appreciated to the vast 8 billion population on the planet Earth is probably what they mean. Ask a random guy on the street about Celeste and there's realistically only a 0.5% chance they're passionate about it. Which is still pretty dang high; that's an estimated 40 million people.

[@pierregravel-primeau702]

When you make 1 million, you are sad because you could have make 2 millions, but if you make 2 millions you are sad because you want to make 4 millions... And that explain why living is hell in the US...

[@ZabawneGierki-ot3ts]

I think a good question to ask yourself is if you would buy your game yourself and at what price.

[@perfectlyroundcircle]

Or if you'd actually really want to play it in the first place.

[@ItsMeChillTyme]

Some people like to get high on their farts so much they'll convince themselves perceived effort means higher price.

[@freelancerthe2561]

@@perfectlyroundcircle Some devs have more fun making a game then playing it. Especially in the high skill cap games. Whenever someone says "the devs don't play their own game", they assume the devs are in the same skill bracket as they are. They usually aren't. Dwarf Fortress and the Adams brothers are an interesting case study. its one of those rare cases where the skills required to play the game are largely aligned with the skills needed to design/make it; yet Tarn's attitude toward development is largely governed by the amount of external forces in the process. His attitude and idea about the game has remained the same; but hes noticeably more stressed now that KitFox is in the mix, and how his work on Classic is the bottleneck for Steam Edition.

[@perfectlyroundcircle]

@@freelancerthe2561 I would definitely say that devs should play games more often in general. Not necessarily their own games, but they need to understand better the mindset of a player and what makes a game great/fun. This trend of developers not being gamers is not good, because they tend to create boring games a lot of the times.

[@andrewgreeb916]

​@@perfectlyroundcircle part of why people like Gabe Newell is that he is a gamer and he knows when things in games aren't good, because he plays them.

[@mr_clean575]

I took an advertising class and one of the first things we learned is that the best form of advertising is having a good product.

[@TheMeanArena]

Good is subjective, especially when it comes to games, movies, music, art etc.

[@robosergTV]

@@TheMeanArena wrong. Good is objective on a statistical level

[@Kobaaming090]

@@TheMeanArena what you like is subjective. What's good or not is objective

[@TheMeanArena]

@@robosergTV Subjective = "based on personal opinions and feelings rather than on facts". When someone says something is good or not, that is subjective because that is your personal opinion / feelings about it.

[@squirrelsyrup1921]

No, becauase it's entirely possible for a person to be categoritcally, totally wrong when they think something is good. A bad, fragile product isn't good until it breaks and is revealed as bad. It's always bad, regardless of whether the person believes it is good at first. Good is therefore objective. Good can be judged only with sufficient knowledge.

[@mothdust1634]

Honestly, I feel like this advice is gold for industries outside of gaming as well. One that comes to mind is writers. The advice is always "just write" but without knowing the market you are writing into you will likely end up with a flop that goes nowhere.

[@mandisaw]

Most commercial writers who have successfully published say the same, actually. Similar deal in TV & film when deciding what ideas to pursue to pilot/pitch. You need to gauge the market, since both preferences and minimum expectations change over time, even in "stable" genres.

[@nicapp984]

Most writing communities I’ve been in also share the same problem of “Lol it’s all marketing” instead of actually encouraging others to improve their craft.

[@R3GARnator]

I mean, his message here is the message behind "the customer is always right", which is misinterpreted as being a customer service related thing, when it's not.

[@dycedargselderbrother5353]

"Just write" seems like good 101 type advice that needs refining at later stages. That is, once you figure out the types of things you can write, what of that subset is marketable? A variation I've heard is "just write what you know" with the implication that you're writing about yourself but that assumes there is something particularly interesting about you. Taken to the extreme this sort of advice leads to stories where all of the characters are basically the author and everybody speaks in the same voice.

[@noFate_games2]

Your point about not looking like some "student project" is spot on. I ran a successful painting business for years and one thing I know for sure, whenever I went to sell a job to a customer, I know they thought my business was larger than just 2 guys. I never said it was, but they assumed this because I would come in with a hat/shirt with a logo, look the part, and I had a clipboard in hand. And it also helped that the name of the business wasn't something like "Joe's painting". A lot of things are just presentation. Take fancy restaurants, most of it is just great presentation and atmosphere, while the food isn't much different than anywhere else. If you look and act the part, you will be treated accordingly. The problem is, most people have imposter syndrome with most things in life. It's not a good place to be, you gotta spread your wings and fly.

[@IndieGameClinic]

They also think casting themselves as the “little guy” will make people pity-buy their product.

[@Mukar]

This is 100% true. I like to think of this methodology as "match and surpass." Match the quality and features, and then surpass the reference with your own unique features and ideas. Bit of a strange comparison, but MANY companies have tried their hand at creating a Roblox competitor...and all except for Fortnite (so far) have failed. Unsurprisingly it all comes down to the fact that none of their products were able to match Roblox in terms of features and abilities. At the end of the day...who really wants to play the inferior game?

[@aiacfrosti1772]

The number of companies willing to put out retrosuperannuated products is too great. Though, in this case 1 is too many: the advantage of releasing later is being able to identify and improve upon your competition's faults, and to throw that away is asinine.

[@hiiambarney4489]

I tell you who plays the inferior game. The person that has no option to. That's why Deckbuilding (Roguelike or not) is currently such a no brainer to start with. Low saturation with high demand.

[@noob_jr_2sjrkc]

I think this entire argument rests heavily on there being a strong correlation between game quality and revenue, and through that website I can confirm that games I consider "hidden gems" are indeed underperformers. Dodgeball Academia was a great sports RPG, both Freedom Planets are the best action platformers I've ever played and Chicory is the best Zelda I've ever played, with story/music that rivals Undertale. The only "hidden gem" I saw claw its way out of relative obscurity was CrossCode. "Marketing" for indies is weird because it largely comes down to youtubers making content, which has complex variables like the algorithm, social media shareability, genre saturation and whatnot. Some games overshadow the entire indie scene because every game design channel will cover them. Genres like 2D platformers are so saturated in the eyes of the public that you need a crazy art style like Pizza Tower to demand attention, while the niche genre of level makers is monopolized by Mario Maker because creators have negative incentive to branch out. I think there's an interesting discussion surrounding what makes games "attention-grabbing" or "shareable" or "mainstream" or what makes a fertile subgenre like "Megaman-likes", where fans still look for new titles despite the broader apathy towards 2D platformers. There are definitely games that have all the ingredients of a "higher bracket" yet failed to reach that audience, and I think recommendation algorithms have a much bigger indirect impact on that than people realize.

[@NIMPAK1]

"Nah, your game just sucks. Just make a deckbuilding roguelite. Platformers and action games with a focus on level design are objectively bad, procedurally generated skinner boxes are the way of the future."

[@Dave-rd6sp]

Agreed that the argument that there's no hidden gems is absolutely absurd. I've played some amazing games on Steam, far better than some runaway successes, and I was the first reviewer after it was sitting there for 6 months.

[@eastshadestudios8335]

That's wild! What game!?

[@cathygrandstaff1957]

Yeah one of the issues with KZbin marketing is it’s partly dependent on the game having gameplay that’s going to be entertaining to an audience. Like I love turn based RPGs and farming games but recognize that the gameplay is actually really boring to watch so those games don’t typically get picked up by the KZbinrs that are doing it for entertainment and generally stay in the niche sphere of KZbinrs who review those types of games. On the other hand games like Lethal Company and FNAF that don’t appeal to me from a gameplay perspective blew up on KZbin because watching people play them was entertaining.

[@Jonas-Seiler]

@@Dave-rd6sp maybe your standards just aren’t that high? jokes aside, I have certainly played games before that I thought deserved way more attention, but a (not brand new obviously) game even with just decent quality that doesn’t at least have it’s fair share of fans is pretty much unheard of for me.

[@wtfihavetoregister]

Lots of gamers are sort of arrogant - "It does not appleal to ME, so it appealing to lots of other people has to have explanation that does nothing with quality of game. Hmm, marketing..." and also "It appeals to me, why does it appeal to only small group of people? My taste is impeccable, so there needs to be rational explanation. Hmm, marketing..."

[@ItsMeChillTyme]

Its just narcissistic. "I'm so awesome and awesomeness is key to success!" In their head their life is an exciting video game with the story arc of the underdog.

[@Kobaaming090]

Main reason I don't really interact with the gaming community anymore. Talking about games just isn't fun anymore

[@LibertyMonk]

​@@Kobaaming090hate to break it to you, but this isn't a phenomenon limited to gamers, it's universal. Everybody thinks they're above average, and half of them are wrong. A lot of people think they're outliers of excellence, and basically all of them are wrong.

[@Kobaaming090]

@@LibertyMonk you're right but the gaming community was where I saw it the most. I kinda got sick of it as I was being older cuz I felt like everyone was like that

[@Secret_Moon]

@@LibertyMonk Appealing to the crowd isn't a sign of excellence. Millions of people like Despacito, those who appreciate Chopin are few. That doesn't mean Despacito is way better than Chopin. But yes, when you want to sell something, obviously appealing to the crowd is key.

[@tinalava68]

I've seen people complaining that selling a game successfully is down to luck. It's cool to see someone saying otherwise. I guess that luck might factor in, but I believe the effort and decisions made by the developers play a much bigger role. Having control over the outcome feels more empowering and motivating, instead of everything being down to some luck you might get or not.

[@raze2012_]

Luck is a bigger factor than portrayed here. Some things are out of your control and some things can be made up for with money (tho, most people don't have that kinda money to burn lol)

[@loopuleasa]

Luck is a big factor still. We are hearing from someone that put in the work and experienced decent luck.

[@tinalava68]

@@loopuleasaIf you call beginning a project with industry experience, extensive market research and spending several years on making a game people want to play, working on it full time, during all this - working on the promotion of the game yourself and hiring a pr company... If you call this luck, then sure. I myself see this as experienced people putting in deliberate effort towards a specific goal, and having resources to do so.

[@loopuleasa]

@@tinalava68it's the same in the restaurant business. you need SKILL AND LUCK. You need both. Luck alone is not enough, but you do need it. Veritasium has a good video on luck vs success if you want to be educated on how reality works.

[@raze2012_]

@@tinalava68 You can have all the talent and research in the world and you might just launch at a bad time, next to a huge behemoth, Or just be screwed by algorithms beyond your control. Your ads may be well made but not actually reach your audience. Your PR might resonate with people who will proceed to not wishlist nor buy your game. You might even get screwed by Valve itself depending on vague rulings that mean your game never actually gets to the store because some employee has a bias or a bad day. God help you if you hit that pain point and you realize how Valve can truly be to people behind the scenes. There's plenty of good luck as well, but Ignoring luck as a factor and just saying "well make a good game" can blow up in your face for reasons beyond your control. That's life, as Captain Picard would say

[@DanielKlein23]

The reason you can't see how to reproduce the success of games like Among Us and Vampire Survivors is that you're only looking at art (and maybe sound?) production values. There is, in fact, such a thing as good and bad game design, and you can look at that. Vampire Survivors revolutionized the twin stick / roguelite genre to give us the Horde Survivors genre and did so in ways that were immediately engaging and addictive. Among Us mechanized the social play of games like Werewolf and while it took a while to find its audience, the first time I saw someone stream it I immediately said, oh shit, this is incredible. I do think you're right in that production value in visuals matters most for getting eyeballs on your game in the first place, but it only takes you so far. A game with revolutionary game design like the two you cite only takes one semi well known streamer to discover. Once it starts spreading, it doesn't stop. Also note that high visual production games are often flash in a pan successes while games that succeed on great gameplay are long burners. Look at the continuing success of games like Vampire Survivors or Valheim (both game design driven, not the greatest production values) vs games like Wolcen or Bright Memory (both indie hits driven primarily by incredible production value on top of pretty unremarkable gameplay). just my 2 cents

[@eastshadestudios8335]

I'm looking at a lot more than art. Scope, features, reviews, and store assets to name a few. In order to say it was the game design that propelled these games into incredible sales, one would have to play hundreds of games that didn't sell well. I haven't done that so I'm not going to say I have any data oriented perspective on that. I also am not sure if "game design so novel and incredible it goes viral" is reproducible. But all the things I mentioned very much are. I personally dont see much value in guessing at things from my gut with conviction. That makes me only as credible as all the "marketing experts" in the comments of this video, who have given me at least 20 contradicting reasons Undertale succeeded, for instance. I only want to offer a data backed perspective.

[@egoalter1276]

Among Us is not the first digitized version of Town of Salem/Secret Hitler/Whatever. Similarly, Vampire Survivors is far from the first top down hord shooter, that predigious honour would go to the little known Atari arcade game from the 1970s called Asteroids...

[@DanielKlein23]

@@egoalter1276 Ah! You just activated my trap card! Horde Survivors are very much my special interest, and I've spent way too long thinking about them. You're absolutely right that the "two stick shooter" has been around forever (even though Asteroids was played with a SINGLE stick, but that's neither here nor there). But that's like saying "DOTA isn't new, there've been RTS games forever" or "PUBG isn't new, there've been FPS games forever". I firmly believe that Vampire Survivors POPULARIZED a new genre (and I could have said this more clearly in my original comment: I meant to say "it EVOLVED the twin stick / roguelite genre to POPULARIZE Horde Survivors"). I would however respectfully disagree with you on Asteroids falling into that genre. Asteroids is a top down shooter, sure, or a twin stick whatever you wanna call it, but it is NOT roguelite and it is DEFINITELY not horde survivor. Best I can tell that honor goes to the mobile game "Magic Survival" (2019), which the developer of Vampire Survivors explicitly cited numerous times as the inspiration for VS. You can trace the lineage further back to the various 10 Tons games (Tesla v. Lovecraft or the OG 10 Tons game, Crimsonland). I'd argue there's a few main differentiators for Horde Survival: enemy density (the "horde" of it all), session length (20-30 mins tops, endless modes notwithstanding, while a run of say Binding of Isaac can easily go multi-hour), very toned down or entirely absent level geo (this is where the Asteroids DNA comes in; obviously non-horde top-down roguelites like Isaac have very important level geo; VS eventually added it with the ice map but most horde survivors just plunk down a few non-pathable rocks and call it a day), and most importantly the nature of scaling. Crimsonland introduced (to my knowledge) random perks to the game (and carried forward the temporary powerup pickups that made it to Horde Survivors in the form of for instance the NFT in VS), Magic Survival added the concept of leveling up your guns and changing their outputs fundamentally (more bullets, different effects at higher levels, bigger missiles, etc). And while even roguelite games like Binding of Isaac COULD sometimes end in ridiculous "broken game" states where your attacks filled the screen and killed everything immediately, the big difference with Horde Survivors is that this is no longer the exception, but the rule. If you live long enough in any modern Horde Survivor, you will paint the screen with your bullets. There's other design differences like enemy waves vs levels, the lack of importance of enemy projectiles, and that your skill really is mostly in picking options rather than EXECUTING (that is to say, dodging / aiming / enemy prioritization), but this comment is already long enough. Sorry! This IS my special interest. But TLDR: there's innovating within a genre and there's spinning off a new genre, and while VS wasn't the FIRST to spin off Horde Survivors, it was the first broadly accessible version of a very young genre (that wasn't even a genre before VS came along)

[@egoalter1276]

@@DanielKlein23 These games definitely originate from SHMUPs, specifically ones with free movement, that were admittedly much more rare than the ones with fixed orientation. The first commercial game I have personally played that was exactly like vampire survivors was Nova Drift, which left early access in 2019, but very similar games mostly in the Flash Game scene existed since the mid 2000s. Stuff like gungeon Isaac and Nuclear Throne ar too obvious, and not quiet so much a horde shooter. I do agree that combining Serious sam/painkiller style arena horde shooters with top down twinstick roguelike was an underserved nieche, but it certainly wasnt invented by Vampire.

[@SkylerFoxx-GameDev]

Honestly when I saw the title and thumbnail I thought "Hmm... not sure about that, but I'm curious to hear his take" and yeah, I get your distinction between "marketing" and "marketable," it definitely makes sense. I'd still probably say that qualifies as "marketing", but I get the point you're making. Throwing a lot of money into ads and marketing for a game that doesn't present well visually won't get you far. It's one of the reasons why I think one of the biggest lies spread throughout the gaming community is the narrative that "graphics don't matter." They 100% do, *everything* about a game matters.

[@arcanep]

yeah but what I saw recently as making a horror game in unreal with 4k textures mostly is that it doesnt mattet much mote succesful games are done with less graphic quality not the game quality but it was a dumb idea to make it so realistic by me 😂

[@runakovacs4759]

Well, graphics matter in a general audience setting. In niche audiences, graphics matter less. Visuals do remain important: readable UI, the like. However, relying on niche communities doesn't always work out given small numbers and accessibility.

[@kptmaci4979]

@@arcanep realistic games are not uncommon. Its easy to make them in unreal, especially with ton of free assets available in marketplace. Stylized games, if the art is good - will always catch your eye more. There are many realisticly lit and looking games, especially those made in unreal. They all look similiar and its hard to make something to stand out in that bracket. Its possible, just hard to do. Wish you best

[@wtfihavetoregister]

Graphics not mattering is often about using bledding edge techniques. You do not have to have raytraced realistic graphics if you have strong well executed art style. Using great engine is pointless if your assets are mess.

[@FaridCG]

PUBG, many millitary shooters, Among us, Vampire Survivors didn't have great graphics and looked worse that many projects, but they succedd.

[@hawshimagical]

one if the most overlooked issues i see is "how do i make something i care about successful?" as in, what do you do, if you just dont enjoy "marketable games"? nearly all of the biggest hits are just so unfun in my opinion, indie or not. people are giving such vague solutions like "just make good game" but i think the real answer to maximizing rate of success is to consistently open yourself up to feedback and earn early fans. most peoples creative vision of a great game just cant get as many peoples attention as undertale or stardew valley.

[@sussyjagras]

how are you so sure if you've never made it? stardew was just him making the game he cared about if you just follow your taste, at worst you'll make a game you actually really like, and at best you become a millionaire with it

[@hawshimagical]

@@sussyjagras you picked a good time to ask me this, after i found a video about that game. the dev of stardew valley came from a supportive family, and his wife actually paid all the bills while he just went goblin mode working on the game and barely even interacted with her for years. she also urged him to continue whenever he thought about quitting. stardew valley's developer worked very hard, but he had a safety net. for most other people, working that hard on a game only for it to not succeed would ruin their lives, its very scary.

[@battlefrontantics5248]

Since I started my indie project I have convinced myself of a couple of things: I will know if I have made a good product, and if I make a good product it will (somewhat) sell itself. Great video, a nice break from everyone screaming promotion promotion. I had some revenue goals in mind, and now I know the tools to use to see what I need to shoot for. Thanks!

[@JakeBirkett]

Gotta be careful with the "just make a good game" mindset. I do think it's really important but it's gotta be a good game that fits the platform e.g. Steam and has a sizeable market, and it has to be REALLY good, which may be beyond some people's technical abilities, artistic skills, and/or budget! Marketing is then a multiplier on top of this as a great game launched into a void won't sell itself (I realised you sensibly said "somewhat".)

[@Ghorda9]

@@JakeBirkett tags, title and thumbnail are perhaps the most important for catching eyes, when browsing i tend to skim over things that don't look remarkable or relevant to me.

[@philbertius]

It’s not just about making a good game, but a _marketable_ game. You can make the best chess simulator ever, but that doesn’t mean there’s a huge market for it.

[@cyberneticbutterfly8506]

"I will know if I have made a good product" wasn't the entire point that we don't and we can't evaluate our own ability and the quality of our own work and when it fails we rationalize it by blaming marketing?

[@ginnyo.9283]

I played your game through on my channel and enjoyed every minute of it. And your marketing was on point and what the game was like. What I see with some game devs is they start marketing the game before they have any idea of what final game is going to be like. They don't have a product, they have an idea. I'd rather see a trailer which has the final game play and wait for it, than see yet another trailer of a game "in process" where the final game looks nothing or acts nothing like that trailer. Or so help me, teasers. And you're correct. Most don't do market research. They have "I want this, b/c I'm a fan of this!" So right now in the horse game community we have 7 to 8 horse simulation racing games going and the only one that might succeed is the Ranch of Rivershine but you BETTER love horse sims. Because it is the same thing as every other horse sim lacking a story or anything meaningful that attracts players to say... Star Shine Legacy (and it's child Star Stable Online.) But it feels like none of the devs looked at other horse games from the past or what is in development right now. They just want to make a horse game.

[@joel6376]

His marketing is on point with this video too, very clever ;)

[@noob_jr_2sjrkc]

I think Mario Maker's monopoly of the "level creation" genre is an interesting case because it's not actually a great creator experience. Nintendo is horrible at community/online features, leading to players wading through garbage and creators being frustrated that their levels get no plays or get randomly deleted. And yet, content creators are motivated to stay on that game because nothing else will ever get as many views as Mario. That creates a large group of people who don't actually like the game, they just like watching it. It also means that by using Mario Maker as a standard for this genre means you have a very low bar for a creator experience, resulting in many UGC games repeating its mistakes, and since nothing else will replace it the genre will remain stagnant.

[@Dave-rd6sp]

This is why there's a lot of hidden gems in the maker game category, many of which have tight controls and better, easy to use, and more powerful level editors than Mario Maker. It's frustrating seeing video after video about Mario Maker wishlists, while indie games that have the features on those wishlists are completely ignored. There's even been Mario fan games with big communities that completely vanished when they changed nothing but swapping out Mario for a unique character sprite.

[@TrulyAtrocious]

Kid named Geometry Dash:

[@Alibaba-id4dw]

...Monopoly? Quake, Warcraft 3, Knytt Stories, Teeworlds, romhacking, every single game or game engine with level editor say otherwise.

[@hiiambarney4489]

I think the company that made Little Big Planet had the monopoly on UGE. Until they made Dreams and (I think) vanished. So far I haven't heard from Media Molecule since 2020

[@asmosisyup2557]

05:50 often the Dev's who make these games don't fully know why they were so unbelievably successful, as evidenced by sequels that perform comparatively very poorly (not failures, but only hitting lower-mid bracket when the first was top).

[@FaridCG]

This is great video and at the same time i want to say that many of indie games that I played are great at art, but very bad on technical level and usability. Many of indie platformers don't have proper jump system and I always stuck on some levels there. Many indie FPS shooters are good in shooting mechanics, but are bad in level design. I didn't see failed project that has everything in solid shape, I see mainly that failed projects has only one thing good and it's never gameplay.

[@raze2012_]

I've seen games with good gameplay bu rough graphics that hold it back. Especially in genres where you need to tech some nuanced or deep mechanics. It can be REALLY fun once you get it, but the game does no favors helping you really get it. That's what many cult classics have in common; great gameplay but clunky execution in one or more other areas.

[@0lionheart]

Boy, that last part sure describes indie tactical shooters right now. They nail weapon customisation and character controllers, but AI & level + encounter design are like a 90's NovaLogic game..

[@lemoncakeslemonade5430]

This describes the farming simulator/cozy game sector of gaming so well- cute art, really bad game design.

[@SenorZorros]

@@raze2012_ This is my feeling about the entire Mount and Blade series. Conceptually the medieval sanbox-rts-rpg build your own fiefdom game is perfect for me. But by god I wish it was made by a studio that was more competent. But since they are the only game in town I guess I'll accept the disaster graphics, repetitive gameplay and lack of depth because at the core it is still the perfect game for me.

[@gameclips5734]

Couldn't agree more, it's a bit similar to how people on KZbin complain about their videos not going viral because the algorithm didn't bless them for some reason, rather than having the self awareness that maybe their video wasn't as interesting as they thought.

[@ObiWineKenobi]

Sorry i couldn’t hear what you were saying because of your music, so my game failed.

[@Games-stats]

Hi! This is the developer of games-stats. Thanks for the great video! It's nice to see how indie developers use our services and get results. You have clearly shown the use of filters and tags, we hope it will be useful to many. Please tell us what features would you like to see in the service to make the research even better? We will try to implement them. And please send your email that you used in the service, I will make you a gift!

[@eastshadestudios8335]

Hey thanks for the comment! Hah features are already so good honestly I'm left wanting nothing! My email is djweinbaum(at)gmail.com

[@Games-stats]

@@eastshadestudios8335 It's good to hear! If you have any ideas, we will always be glad to hear them. Thanks for the video again. We have made you PRO access forever! I hope it will help you make more top games! The only thing is, if the money is debited, it will be possible to cancel the payment, access will remain.

[@eastshadestudios8335]

@@Games-stats Oh my goodness that's amazing! Thank you so much! That really is a very wonderful gift!!!

[@dam_ly]

Is this site working? I've tried several times since this video and all i get is a 'Site not reached' page.

[@luluskuy]

I love this conversation 😻

[@teaandtachyons]

I've been a branding and marketing strategist since 2008 and have just started my game dev journey, and I LOVE your take on this! I haven't marketed for game creators (except ttrpg creators), but the first principles are the same. Most people ask me how many times they should post on social media to sell their service or product, but they haven't done the most basic research (or if they did research, it was passively reading posts, not strategic critical analysis). Anyway, as a total marketing geek, I really appreciate that you shared your process (not just the fluffy ideas) for specifically game creators. I'm going RIGHT NOW to bookmark the game stats site 😻😻 (And maybe play more than just Dark Souls and Runescape for the millionth time lol)

[@ZarHakkar]

Personally my game is a success if I finish it and I'm happy with it. If it makes money and other people like it? That's just a bonus, not necessarily the expectation. That's the answer to your lightning in a bottle.

[@eastshadestudios8335]

That's beautiful! I am speaking to folks who want to make money from indie dev. I personally do this full-time and I'd like to keep doing it so it's important for me and my company to compete at the highest levels. We pour our hearts into our games. So much so that we will have nothing to eat if they don't make us some money.

[@ZarHakkar]

@@eastshadestudios8335 Of course. The world isn't ideal like that where we can't work towards our dreams unburdened. It is ironic though. Money may make the world go round, but it will never make the world more fulfilling. The greatest successes in art are often the ones the least financially motivated.

[@Madmonkeman]

The part about a lot people calling something a "hidden gem" when it's not very hidden at all is so true.

[@perasha]

As someone who also has a passive interest in selling tabletop games this also absolutely applies! Thank you so much for this video 😊

[@AurelUrban]

You're right it does feel very freeing. The fact that there aren't any games on steam that are of the same quality as the top sellers but aren't performing well, means that if we simply make a game that can compete with the top of the bracket, we can get to the top of the bracket. And if the only barrier is quality, then the only thing left to do is work. No point in hesitating.

[@aartemiswhite]

Great video but please tone down the music a bit (or a lot). It's quite loud and annoying.

[@pichuelanewman7135]

Fr i can barely hear him speak 😂

[@skaruts]

A lot, please! 🙏

[@123Windigo]

Watching it on my phone on 40% volume and had no issues hearing him clearly.

[@eastshadestudios8335]

Thank you for the feedback! Sorry about the music volume. I really thought it was low enough but the comments prove otherwise. Devastating mistake on my part!

[@InfinityBladeRecollection]

@@eastshadestudios8335the music volume never bothered me. Going back after seeing this comment it could be turned down a bit but I don’t think it is too bad as is

[@ghostratsarah]

A lot of games that sell well in the primary genres I play (female oriented visual novels and cozy farming sims) are free, but they make an impressive amount of money by having artbooks, sound tracks, offsite 18+ DLC patches, merch, Koffi's and other ways to donate. Their marketing is telling the bloggers in the community that they exist, the rest of their traffic is from "games we think you'd like", "similar to games you've played", and the search bar on steam. They tag their games accurately, so they're easy to discover by typing in relevant words. Not a game dev, but those are my tips as a gamer. Most influential one up there is telling bloggers you exist. I guarantee for every category your game may fall into there is a dedicated base salivating in the corner, waiting for the bloggers to add to the database of related games. If your game is fairly generic, find a way to squeeze in at least one niche aspect, so you are guaranteed to have a handful of people test it out with enthusiasm.

[@forslos8756]

tbh marketing done wrong would just make ppl hate it instead, like you know the social media site that already having bloated of ads, ppl first reaction seeing any sort of ads is block it immediate or ad-block it.

[@FlamespeedyAMV]

Most ads nowadays are propaganda, some are just of garbage products and most are uninspired and boring adverts. I've only ever seen a few that made me purchase a product

[@CornerstoneMinistry316]

Well good thing i plan on putting my game out for free and i don't want to make money making games

[@eastshadestudios8335]

And that's a beautiful thing! Happy deving my friend!

[@LorenceTFT]

Amazing video! I work with UX and these topics are amazing to cover. My mantra is that the best, highest quality peogram in CS is borderline useless if nobody likes/feels comfortable USING the rnd product. On that note though, are you able to turn down the music to about 70-80% of what it is currently lol. It was incredibly distracting to me

[@NeptuneIV]

In all my years this is the best and most helpful video I've seen on the topic with practical advice and a very honest way of figuring out "here's how to know if your game is good enough for what you want". Thank you so much for making this

[@eastshadestudios8335]

Hooray! Warms my heart to hear! Thanks for the kind words and good luck on your project!

[@jinchoung]

daaaaaaaaayum.... you didn't need to tell it like it is. basically, the question is - can you compete at the highest level? for the vast majority of people in ANY field or endeavor, the answer is NO.

[@developerdeveloper67]

Massive YES! I can't tell you how often I hear this BS of "many hidden gems". Almost as much if not more often than I hear the "make 10 small games" BS. The GAME is what matters. 💯

[@will_of_europa]

TL;DR Marketing can't save a shitty game. Hollow Knight had very little marketing yet became the Metroid Killer almost overnight. It won Best Platformer 2017. Why did I buy it? It was on the nintendo eshop and it being a metroidvania with some actual art polish got me to try it out. Beating the False night sealed the deal. Had the false knight not been that rewarding to play, I would have deleted it from my console.

[@endorsedbryce]

The tragedy of art in general is that there will always be more passionate creative people than an audience can sustain. Any creative marketplace is oversaturated with competition. Doesn't matter if it's creative wrighting, painting, music, dancing, film, online influencer, ect. Every great creative success, will inspire a thousand others to fail in their footsteps....

[@olaf5929]

Meanwhile 99% of the time you see copycat products that fail to replicate production value, features or success of what they intend to imitate.

[@YoutuberZer0]

So cool to see you doing vids sharing you experience that goes beyond your Dev logs. It's great to be getting so much interesting content from you.

[@bingobangobonjo]

I'm working on a 3d parkour platformer with 2 friends in our spare time. We're mainly making the game for ourselves but I decided to spend a day looking into other games on the stats website you suggested. It's actually really helped with motivation! Of course, gotta do more research, but so far it seems we're clearly NOT in the low-range end of things. Currently in the mid-range but the high-range seems attainable with enough time. I'm talking about level of polish and visuals. We'll keep striving for more because it's really a passion project and we wanna make something that we're proud of! No guarantees but this has been a really nice motivation booster and its really great to hear advice from someone with experience!

[@danielmalinen6337]

One big problem is growing competition and player boredom. There is game fatigue in the world due to the flood of new games in the last ten years. I'm starting to see people saying "Why do we need new games when the old ones exist" and "Has anyone asked for new games." It should be resolved somehow.

[@markobucevic8991]

Nah, people are getting tired of mediocre and boring games, the worst type of games. Aka they work but have nothing interesting or grabbing

[@Andy_Wells]

Loved this video! I found the narration hard to hear over the very loud music. Otherwise, a great vid 🎉

[@eastshadestudios8335]

Thank you! I'm really very devastated about the music volume. I'm pretty sensitive to that myself but I felt i had pushed the music volume down enough to where the narration was totally dominant. I guess not! And youtube videos are so unbelievably permanent there is just nothing I can do now :/. It's brutal

[@GSXP]

I think it might be that guy's levels, cause it sounds just fine to me. I can lower the volume and stoll hear the narration loud and clear.

[@alberteinstein5421]

@@GSXP it's also how sensitive someone is to background noise. And I have to say, after 1 minute of listening I started to get annoyed as well (and hoped this was just intro music, which some videos do)

[@DietChugg]

Note that free to play with in App purchases are not taken into account on game stats. They mark all of them as $0 of sales and as a failure for that reason. This makes some categories like multiplayer and coop which heavily use those features look disproportionately like they will be failures.

[@JohnAmanar]

Great video! I can agree that the quality if the product that patters the most. I didn't do any marketing for my game and it get discovered by Steam. People are finding it organically and social media posts, online magazines posting about it, KZbinrs playing it, having physical presentations on meetups all contribute very little compared to how it's discovered via just Steam alone. Also it had lots of refunds after release, but a few months of patching and updating resulted in basically zero refunds and positive reviews. I also see that huge updates with small sales give a boost to the numbers and I feel success directly correlates to the quality of the game.

[@crispypear8183]

Undertale looks bad but has amazing music, which is why it started selling. Music sells games, don't sleep on sound

[@raze2012_]

Undertale had a brand and a kickstarter as well. Toby didn't just one day spin some yarn and suddenly blow up. He's spent decades making music, even for modding projects. he had a small following before he ever started making the game. Honestly, if you have the time/passion, you can get a decent audience by making fanart. I'm a bit too bitter with how the modding scene (aka "fanart" for programmers) works to do it, but it's worth considering if you are making a similar game one day.

[@irisnegro]

Art is subjective... To you it looks bad, to other people it looks good, also beyond the music there is also the gameplay and the story, and how all the elements mix together, also Toby already had a following when Undertale was released.

[@Dave-rd6sp]

@@raze2012_ Having a following is like a cheat code for indie dev. You could crap on a plate and if you have a large following, it will sell. And if you make something good your chance of success is very high. Look at GMTK and his magnet game. If that game was being made by some obscure indie dev with no following no one would care about it.

[@TulipsinAntartica]

Undertale started selling because Toby got a free fandom from working on homestuck.

[@Zectifin]

it also started selling because it was one of the first games that was bringing back the feel of Earthbound/Mother 2 when ton of people were still waiting for Mother 3 hoping it would get a western release. Now there are a ton of games who are definitely inspired by Earthbound or Undertale because of Undertale's success.

[@adamkonig3753]

I think you tweeted something about this a few years ago and how indie dev is not inherently "risky" or a "crapshoot" if you just fairly judge your product with other successes in its category and that stuck with me massively in the past few years. Thank you for making a larger video on the topic, I think it's SUPER useful!

[@buckrodgers1162]

I seem to remember hearing somewhere that; "You have about 30 seconds, more or less, to catch a potential buyers attention with your trailer. After that, it's all up to chance." Now I don't know if I heard that somewhere, or if that quote is even worded by me accurately; But it seems to make sense.

[@Martinit0]

30 seconds? You must be kidding. I think it's more like 3-5 seconds - which are too often wasted on displaying logos.

[@buckrodgers1162]

@@Martinit0, Sadly, that may be true. But it sure don't make it any better.

[@AtelierMcMuttonArt]

Even then, potential buyers even *seeing* your trailer is up to chance

[@infinitygames7997]

Nice to hear someone say this out loud. My understanding of the matter has been the same for a long time. You can't sell junk by putting silver frames on it.

[@historiasaoluar3997]

My first game sold like 100 dolars and to be honest it was well deserved in some aspects, i made a really poor marketing plan and maybe the capsule of the game wasn't ideal, as an artist i couldn'r change the gameplay, but i don't blame it, the game play was simple and nice, but when i see the whole cake i notice that the 100 bucks was what i deserved.

[@S-we2gp]

I’ve learned this lesson in many areas of life. Things aren’t magic. Work hard, become very skilled at your craft, then make something of high quality and you will find success. I really believe success is proportional to the work you put in, or rather that being highly competent will eventually give you success. I think it’s a multi year thing

[@tomnullpointer]

I love the way that this video is also actually marketing for the dev/studio and upcoming game :) Nothing like saying everyone should make the best product they can, to also imply you are making the best product you can! (i don't mean this in a snarky way, it makes sense!)

[@MrJabbothehut]

The game that this video reminds me of is Manor Lords. It started with a simple trailer that showed off just enough of what the premise of the game would be and the very high attention to detail and quality. It then snowballed into one of the most wishlisted games of all time on Steam and the dev now has a publisher and releases a trickle of content in the form of screenshots and trailers (but sparingly). The product's apparent quality is what got people hyped and excited and then marketing did the rest.

[@andre20026]

I saw someone playing manor lords, the quality was so high it stuck with me ever since, not my type of game so probably not a buy but everything in that games visual was so appealing and flawless, simple things like building roads looked amazing

[@ZefugiLive]

Thank you!! I think your perspective is correct, and I added links and insights to my own to-do. If you have more quality nuggets like this video, highly loaded with concrete analytic workflows, please share. ..also: I appreciate that you share the workflow of making the analysis, and not just the result that you arrived at.

[@vimel923]

This is such good advice. As an outsider looking in on not only game development but artists trying to make money off their creativity, it seems like a lot of people only consider what they would want to make and play, but ignore almost entirely that IF you want to make money, you have to be solving a problem and or giving the audience something they’d deem worthwhile. You can make stick figure games all day, that won’t make your art bad inherently, but if it’s not something others want to see or play, you’re probably not going to get the viral success you were looking for. It’s running a business!

[@eastshadestudios8335]

Thanks for watching! I would argue most indies WOULD NOT play their own games. And if you look at their steam libraries they're filled with big and medium budget games. It seems like many indies throw all their own consumer sensibilities and standards out the window the moment they come to face how hard gamedev is.

[@HunnysPlaylists]

@@eastshadestudios8335 That includes the big ones too, so people playing their own games is meaningless. Happens all the time in music as well, because music and indie games are ultimately a lifestyle signifier and little else. "Success" is based on marketing solely, it's just you are obfuscating the most important marketing: signaling to very specific people that your product is a ticket to status or subculture. Why do you do this? Because you are trying to rationalize your own success as "Well I just AM that Good!" not "Well I only have what I do because of tricks." Same reason why marvel heads were demanding oscars years ago. they had the money, but not "legitimacy" and they demanded both. you trade in-group invitations through your media, and the idea is that you use that to catapult yourself into a different in-group.

[@dancingdoormanable]

Very important video as it restores the belief in game quality having a monetary return. It would help if there where clear markers for quality, instead of it being intuitively known. Although compared to the Hollywood screenplay system the lowest bar is having used the right font and layout easiest achieved with using FinalDraft or CeltX. For the gamedev that could translate to using Unity or Unreal, but I hope gamedev wont become that stale. Intuitive judging for screenplays is done by by professional readers among others working in that system, but they can often also be hired to give feedback on a screenplay, so you know how good it is and for some extra coaching hours they tell you what they think could be better. Is such a service available for gamedev? Could gamedev's stand their game being criticized and even paid for the privilege? I feel quality isn't really that much of an issue with gamedev's, but I might be wrong. I do see the opposite trend in that gamejams are very popular and they cater to the fun of creating a game without the long and hard work of polishing it until it shines. Long hard work aiming for quality can't every be a guaranty for success in a creative endeavor, but it can sure give you an edge over the competition who didn't invest as much.

[@DctrBread]

what a great video, particularly liked the line of "consumer-level knowledge" Reflects to me how a lot of indie games are in a highly saturated genre and essentially a minor iteration on an existing classic. Extra painful when these titles aren't even created with full passion-project levels of creative freedom, and they naively try to target mass market appeal and approachability. You dont need to make compromises to approachability when your game is already familiar to an existing audience(or wont make money anyway)

[@fluffy6923]

I agree. Usually when I voice same opinion on r/GameDev I get downvoted into oblivion.

[@flamart9703]

Seems there you are like an elephant in a room of porcelain dreams. Step carefully! :)

[@eastshadestudios8335]

I just posted this video there. I'm preparing for the shitstorm lol

[@secretsofshadowsgame]

this was such a helpful perspective. I definitely fell into the camp of thinking marketing was harder than making the game, but this video was super inspiring and made me realize i was going about marketing completely like a noob

[@InfinityBladeRecollection]

Great video! It’s so cool and insightful to see videos by an indie dev about topics like this. I never would have known so much about indie game marketing. Keep up the great work. Going back to watch your witch rpg dev logs now

[@Xaltotun]

I remember when Stardew Valley arrived I just saw a friend of mine was playing it a lot (the Steam thing goes up when he starts playing) and I looked at it, saw that it looked fun and bought it for $5. No marketing, just a great game.

[@tarunr1949]

Purely listening to you speak is inspiring for some reason

[@hogandromgool2062]

Good products always sell; even through adversity. I've watched around 400 hours of KZbin game dev logs and the main thing I've noticed is a lot of their games just aren't good enough. They have very little to offer and little to no replay ability. A few of the channels I was watching were doing really well until for some reason they crunched an arbitrary deadline and rushed their game to completion then made videos on why game dev is a bad idea and the idea of becoming profitable is all luck.

[@ImpreccablePony]

As someone who is always on the lookout for new games to play I have to say this is correct even if it hurts: most indie games don't deserve my time as a gamer. They are simply bad. But the funny thing is: what you see as top sellers are also not the best games, they are just marginally better. We just don't know how to build good games I think. It makes me sad.

[@egoalter1276]

Game design is on the general horrible. And the professionals charged with it even at the industtry leading studios, usually barely grasp the basics, which tends to lead to extremely barebones design documents for any game coming out of a big studio, as that will at least remain safely within the confines of what they understand as good design.

[@Dark_sparky]

My Prof suggested I play Eastshade for reference for my student capstone project last year, that is how you got my purchase. My project was also deemed one of the best in the program by the university faculty so thanks for the solid information and insight.

[@adamtilinger2005]

While I find the video informative, I think the title is a bit misleading. Maybe we have a different definition of marketing, for me market research, making your game marketable is a part of marketing.

[@fxgspartan]

I had always kinda assumed that the reason most indie games fail is because they suck. It's the hard truth but the obvious one. This is the one thing that gives me hope, as it means success is not random. That said, I don't even know how to create an object in Godot...

[@iTzMeLaur]

Hi! I wanted to give you an update regarding my comment from a few days ago. I started to try something in Godot, and all I've got so far is basic movement and some textures. And I agree with most things you said about marketing, people don't fathom the amount of things you are supposed to do (coming from a management student). And it's not only related to research...

[@fjcat637]

You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar! I've been struggling with marketing a lot lately and you opened my eyes to something that now looks so evident. This video is a genuine gem. I can now take a whole new direction with my current project. Thanks a bunch

[@v-alfred]

If your pure purpose of making game is money, this video is right for you. If you have other purpose than just money, then don't watch this video. Make game you'd like to play.

[@CrazyRiverOtter]

I'd much rather play a game someone made because they wanted to play it rather than a game someone made for money

[@v-alfred]

@@CrazyRiverOtter well yeah, Devs gotta becareful tho, their "taste" need to be refined so its not like narcissist.

[@advancenine]

Love this take and really cool to hear someone of your skill level and experience set us all straight. I learned alot from this vid and I really appreciate you taking the time to educate us mortals...

[@yufeng1707]

Hidden Gems: Card Games: Quantum Protocol Puzzle: Paquerette Down the Bunburrows, Hook 1 & 2, Patrick's Parabox Roguelike: Warriors of the Nile, Vivid Knight Metroidvania: Yoku's Island Express Incremental: Orb of Creation, (the) Gnorp Apologue Farming Sim: Immortal Life RPG's: Turnip Boy series, Sacred Earth series Survival: Return from Core

[@MyChunkyGoose]

This is an awesomely informative video! This gives me a great starting point and understanding of how I can market my current and future games, I thank you for that .

[@anon_y_mousse]

I'm probably alone in this, but I feel like only those with a passion for the game they're making should try to make games. If one of your primary goals is to make money, then you risk going down that route of using predatory game designs that addict people and empty their wallets. Sure you'd make a lot of money that way, but it would be wrong. Granted this probably sounds like an all or nothing argument, which it's not, but it's not too far off because games are really an industry that exists outside the realm of reality, in more ways than one.

[@violax3735]

Interesting and thought-provoking video. And you can do so many things right and still kill a good game with some poor decisions. In particular, this video made me think of this really cute indie Chinese puzzle game called Bright bird (came out in 2020). It's gorgeously drawn (seriously, one of the most beautiful games I've ever seen), it's atmospheric, the puzzles are smart, fun and imaginative, it's got a very intriguing story (with multiple endings from what I've heard), it's very cheap for the hours and hours of content... and it's been largely forgotten, with only 16 reviews since January 2023. By revenue, it's ranked 976th on the game-stats Steam puzzle list, making about $140,000 - if you look at how the sales went over time, it saw quite a bit of success at launch and then quickly plummeted. It was an obvious underperformance given all the work and heart that clearly went into the game. So why did it "fail"? If you look at the reviews, a few people complained about clunky controls, which IMO were fine but whatever - but the bigger issue is, the game never really reached much of the English-speaking audience, and it's easy to see why. It's only playable in English and Chinese, which is already a fail for a game that's rich with story and limiting your audience by not-investing in translating to more languages. Worse, whoever did the English translations didn't put enough effort into it - sometimes, the phrasing was kind of awkward, and occasionally, the text would not fit into the "text bubbles" of the characters and you'd lose the last word or three of the text. The game's title with Chinese characters (pictograms, letters) in it probably didn't help matters either. Then you have the fact that some puzzles could apparently become bugged, and there was no way to reset the puzzles as far as I could tell - so, if you were *really* unlucky, you could lose your entire gameplay if you ran into one of those bugs. For a final bad decision, at the beginning of the game, the landscape is lightly obscured by a fog - which has clear story reasons and the fog disappears later on, but it diminishes the beautiful graphics that really shine through in remaining 90+% of the gameplay, and if Steam has a "free-return policy" of 2 hours, starting in foggy settings probably wasn't smart... It's a damn shame - I honestly think with just a bit more effort, the game could have been so much more successful. Instead, it faded into obscurity.

[@wintermute5974]

Looking at both of these games the problem is pretty obvious - neither of them clearly convey what they're about or present an immediate hook to grab potential audiences. Bright Bird gives no indication about it's objective, story, themes or mechanics beyond being a side scrolling puzzle game. All it shows us is that it has a very pretty and distinctive art style, but there's already a glut of side scrolling puzzle games that look beautiful. Virgo Vs the Zodiac is better, since I actually walk away with some idea of what the premise and mechanics involve, but it's still not good. The stakes and motivation behind the narrative aren't conveyed, and while 'dethrone the zodiacs' is a pretty cool premise, it doesn't mean much if we have no sense of what their siginificance is or how they fit into the world. While the game looks pretty, Indie JRPGs are another genre where there's a lot of games with attractive, distinctive aesthetics. It isn't enough to stand out. Finally they've chosen review quotes that make the game seem more generic, rather than hyping it up or praising it's distinctiveness.

[@mangotronics_games]

I didn't truly understand what it meant to pick a good tag/genre, even after reading and watching countless advice pieces on this exact topic. I wish I knew this before publishing. Thank you!

[@raze2012_]

No point picking a "good" tag in a genre you don't understand, nor care about. If you want to offer your talent regardless of the game itself you make way more consistent money being in the industry. I'll never make a Boomer Shooter, but I've been paid to work on FPS's before, so I technically have the talent for that.

[@R3GARnator]

It's more like, UNDERSTAND your tag/genre correctly.

[@mangotronics_games]

@@R3GARnator 💯

[@WyrmyrGames]

Super helpful information for making my first commercial game. Thank you! I’ll be diving into game-stats TODAY

[@Games-stats]

Use it to your advantage! Let us know what we can improve and what features to implement. With love to the developers! The Games-stats team

[@Noideagsd0]

Dude, this is amazing knowledge. Market research is something almost no one talks about, but its so insanely important. Definitely going to check out game-stats!!!

[@AndrewBrownK]

Some interesting tags: - Moddable: 48% >$100k, 26% >$1M - Games Workshop: 58% > $100K, 36% >$1M

[@gedeuchnixan3830]

I´m just 22 seconds in and my thoughts are: marketing probably is the most easiest part by far thanks to social media and the meme is missing the really hard part. The real hard part is between idea and development, because an idea doesn´t make a story for a complete game, that´s the hard part. Thanks to Sweet Baby Inc I have an awsome idea for an indie game and just due to the situation, only thing I´m missing is the knowlage to make the game. Game is suppose to be simple (easy to run), genre is very popular, the little story needed basically writes itself and advertising would take very little effort at this point, just a few posts under the right accounts using the right buzz words and they will come flogging in; I just don´t know how to make a game.

[@jonwatte4293]

So, you are saying that market research is part of marketing? I have a feeling you're right ! In fact, I think business school teaches this, too, so you just saved us all a hundred thousand dollars of an MBA 🙂 It's still marketing, of course, and it's still hard. Because if it were easy, everybody would be doing it, and the bar would go up...

[@eastshadestudios8335]

The thesis of my video is that most indies do not produce something substantial enough to compete. I see this as a production problem, not a market research problem. But market research can help indies guage their products, or better size up if they will even be able to compete with their funds and/or skills.

[@jonwatte4293]

@@eastshadestudios8335 I'm thinking that's two sides of the same coin! But you're of course right that the bar is high, and "my baby isn't ugly" is a tough fallacy to dispel... Love the look of your game, too :-)

[@eastshadestudios8335]

​@@jonwatte4293 maybe so! Haha yes absolutely. In as nice as possible way, I was hoping to guide folks towards understanding how to look at their games more objectively. And hey thanks for the kind words!

[@vidvad]

There's so much to grasp in this video. I agree that market research and prototyping is the most important part of making a game. Unfortunately, most devs (myself included) get very very excited to start building the game that we underestimate how much it could help us. We just want to open up Unity or Godot and start building our dream game.

[@eastshadestudios8335]

That's what we mostly do too. We haven't historically used revenue trends in genre selection. But market research is still important to know what quality of game you need to achieve to expect x amount of revenue, so you can plan accordingly.

[@vidvad]

@@eastshadestudios8335 Totally! I like that you found a passion with analyzing the market, it makes this process a lot more fun :)

[@melainekerfaou8418]

That's the first sensible take I've seen on indie game marketing. Thanks for instilling some measure of rationality (and professionalism) in the debate.

[@MrDavidCollins]

I'm making a game with expressive, hand animated characters and shaded pixel art. Tons of items, fusable, including a procedural loot system. And an infinite world map. That you can build permanent upgrades on. And delve the random dungeons with a VAST variety of combat and objective mechanics. I know I will not fail, because I know I have something amazing forming that can not only compete, but OUTcompete. I will spare no effort and will never give up.

[@Agiranto]

As my marketing chief said - "if you have a turd, no amount of good pr and marketing will make it not a turd"

[@Surkk2960]

Looking at mainstream media, you can't sell turds but I think manure is in high demand right now.

[@lux3512]

Thanks for this video, it's really nice to hear an alternative to 'it's all about the marketing'. I find art, music, writing and the more creative side of development easy and though I love coding I am very slow at it. Therefore I chose the hidden object genre for my first game since it showcases all my art and is relatively simple when it comes to code. I am aiming to match or exceed Hidden Folks in quality as I fell that if I can do that my game will be a moderate success at least.

[@NoneNullAnd0]

Bro, Vampire Survivors and Undertale are mechanically revolutionary games. You should be able to know that without post-release information. I could see some skepticism about Vampire Survivors since its success is based in incredible simplicity, but Undertale?!?! I don't even like Undertale that much, but I can't deny its wide range of unique aspects. Graphics can carry your game, but genuinely unique mechanics and design are much more important.

[@tymondabrowski12]

Unique aspects are not exactly always helpful though. Your game can be uniquely bad, for example, with a uniquely bad composition if unique mechanics. It also won't work if players won't understand it or if things you mixed up clash instead of supporting each other.

[@eastshadestudios8335]

Hey all I said was I don't know how to reproduce that kind of success. I agreed those games are fantastic titles. So if you want to know how to reliably predict an undertale kind of success you'll need to find a different KZbin video haha. If you could see undertale before it released and at a glance recognize it was going to be a top seller, you clearly have much better intuition about this industry than me, and maybe vaster knowledge and better understanding of the data. I don't deal in hindsight though the way most consumers do. I deal in future sight, and test myself regularly. And I can only be honest in saying I wouldn't have the slightest idea those games were going to hit. So I'm not going to sit here and pretend I would have. I'm just sharing the things which I've found to be relatively reliable indicators.

[@Dave-rd6sp]

Vampire Survivors was a clone of several other games. It just happened to get picked up by KZbinrs.

[@egoalter1276]

Undertale's quality is not readily appearent, and its success is in part thanks to Toby Fox's reputation, its excellent music, which honestly carries the entire presentation on its back, and the at the time relative scarcity of quirky Erthbound innspired Indie JRPGs. (Really, the only one around was South Park: The Stick of Truth). Undertale very likely wouldnt succeed today, without some significant goodwill marketing through people already familiar with Tobies romhacks.

[@Dave-rd6sp]

@@egoalter1276 It's amazing how many indie games are successful solely because of the reputation of the creator and/or timing. So many good indie games sit unplayed because they never had that snowball moment.

[@jimbothefuzzy]

Just stumbled across this and wanted to share something I'd read written by the founder of Arcen Games about his experiences with marketing their games. He said that there was a window of about 3-6 months after you started marketing where you HAD to launch. If you took less than three months, there wasn't enough time for a sufficient level of interest to build up. But interest also peaked sometime in that window, and was on a downward trend after six months. That doesn't mean you can't start marketing more than three months before your game comes out. Talking with potential customers early and doing some level of early access can help get that hype simmering. That 3-6 months is for your serious marketing campaign. Where you're attending conventions and spreading beyond your die-hard fans and into the public perception. I don't know how that applies to other studios, but it seemed to be reasonable advice. Especially since they said it seemed to apply regardless of genre. It also means that you shouldn't expect a game that you develop in 3 months to sell very well. In their case, that was Starward Rogue. And the $50k they got for it being included in the Humble Monthly thing was a VERY significant boost to their revenue from the game at that point in time.

[@grindalfgames]

This kind of helps but also not very much. I'm making an Ocarina of Time style adventure game(but with cats) but what I've found is that its a hard genre to put a tag to. I'm getting roguelites, terraria and all sorts of other very different games popping up in my searches(but maybe thats my own fault for choosing this style of game) I also looked at JRPG(the genre I'm thinking of doing next) and the amount of rpgmaker games with default graphics that have made way more money than they deserve is shocking. I saw other peoples videos about how marketing didnt help them at all and I think you hit the nail on the head with that because if I saw their advertisement I would not click the link because their game did not look high enough quality to make me want to play it. Makes me wonder about the quality of my own graphics.......

[@mandisaw]

Genre is generally in the eye of the customer. So maybe show your game (or your design) to various types of players and ask what they would classify it as.

[@grindalfgames]

@@mandisaw Thats a pretty good idea

[@harm991]

Adventure Game. And the guy is right. Probably the game is just not that good / polished / unique / interesting / beautiful /

[@grindalfgames]

@@harm991I was not commenting on my game not getting wishlists. I was commenting on comparing my game against others in the same genre. If I use the tag adventure then I am seeing red dead redemption, terraria and other games that are nothing like my game. adventure is to broad but nothing else describes it

[@harm991]

@@grindalfgames "my game is special!!!" Stray is a 2022 adventure game

[@ThatSpazamataz]

Agree with everything but with a caveat. In some of the genres which don’t earn so well on average I have definitely seen games that deserved to make a lot of money (high quality, amazing original idea, appealing art and art style, fun to play) but didn’t just because there is rarely mass appeal for the genre as a whole. I say this as someone who did a lot of market research into the 2D puzzle genre. Unfortunately because puzzle games generally aren’t social media/streamer friendly (with many obvious exceptions) I found many games that I was shocked I had never heard of with their level of polish and ideas. While instead i know about 100’s of successful far more mediocre (comparatively) vampire survivor style game clones just because there was a gold rush in that genre. Agree at the extremes though. If a game truly deserves to make a million it usually will and if it deserves to make nothing it almost certainly will. It’s more so that if a game deserves to make $10-50,000 it might still only make $1000 and marketing really comes into play there.

[@Greedshot]

I agree with this video, I myself study advertising and marketing, but I have never seen a successful game that had no advertising at all, but only a page on steam. Many good games already have a decent amount of advertising outside of the Steam.

[@brodriguez11000]

There's reputation. For example Coffee Stain Studio did two previous games that built up their reputation so when Satisfactory came out people kind of knew what to expect.

[@alicivrilify]

The most realistic, honest evaluation of the market: You need to do your best to make a good product first. Here is another tip discovered by capitalists: In order to win, you have to be the best, or you have to be the first. Look at the games cloning other famous hits. They mostly fail. If you cannot do both of these, just do your best at all levels, as the video points out.

[@gijane2cantwaittoseeyou203]

You can never predict how well a new product will do, not even big firms can. Just follow your heart and be very critical of yourself, and hope for the best.

[@arturkarabekov1920]

THANK YOU, I always tell people that, specifically in r/gamedev people always complain how "look I have this game, its good, didn't get money" and I look at the game and just from the steam page and trailer, I don't want to buy it. The look is always either bad, or generic in a sense I can find multiple games that copy a similar style as well, all the Celeste and Hollow Knight clones for example. And in that specific subreddit everybody just says the same thing "unlucky mate" or "you didn't put into marketing enough" like no, its just doesn't look fun or new. I am yet to release my first commercial game yet, and when I decided to do that I did the research you are talking about now (though in much smaller scale) and I have come to the conclusion that presentation is very important as its the first impression, and same for sound, unlike all the indie game developers say, I somehow managed to ignore them and will put a lot of effort into art and music when polishing. At the end of the day, the consumer(player) just looks at the steam page, if it looks fun, he will buy it, so just make something that can look fun, unique, for yourself too, if the game doesn't have anything unique in it and it only resembles any other game made, I won't play it.

[@bahamutdragons]

I've had a game which couldn't pick up any traction until I signed with a publisher, at which point I got featured in different publications, covered by influencers with the exact same marketing material I was using prior, and directly contributed to its success. Sometimes marketing makes or breaks your game, point blank.

[@eastshadestudios8335]

Hey that'd be a great case study for me! Can you share the game?

[@egoalter1276]

I suspect the correct formulation of the thesis is not that marketing doesnt matter. Its that marketing only has a chance to matter if what you make is already great. And most indy games are just not particularly great.