How to Market this game?

After about a year, I've just finished and released my first game called Air Guardians. Now I am trying to get the game out there and marketed. Although its turning out to be quit a challenge, and I'm looking for suggestions on what to do.

Steam page
http://store.steampowered.com/app/342230/

*Update*

I have my game on Steam now, the initial release was a bit disappointing, I only made about 100-300 bucks and was left a couple bad reviews. I fixed some of the problems they were having. Now I'm sending emails to game review sites and youtubers.


I was able to get a lets play of my game from BlueDrake42 yesterday. With 54,000 subscribers. The video has since gotten over 3,500 views.

I was shocked to notice that this did not result in ANY spike in sales. Sales were exactly the same as it was the previous day. There was literally no difference!

 

sounds like you need to sort out your upload problem... id be getting it on steam asap if I had teh option, and pulling all stops to figure out why I couldnt upload.

 

As would I. A quick glance looks great, by the way!

 

Wow!
Looks cool!
I just checked out the screen shot pics.
Looking good!

What's the Twitter account for this game?

 

Congrats on the game. Here is a few tips from a web dev.

I think you should add social media links on your website and vice versa. Also adding more text can help with SEO.

For twitter you should follow people. You should post more often on twitter and facebook.

Once the game is out you can give away download codes to popular reviewers and let's play people. I don't know if this is effective but its one of the things I plan on doing when I finish my first game.

 

Thanks for the replies.

Your right, but steam does not let publishers get in contact with them. They direct people to the developer forums, which seems to be down right now or non existent.

Here is the twitter page. There's not much activity going on right now. I don't really have a strategy on how the game is going to get popular on twitter, I just created it so I would not miss an obvious marketing suggestion like "create a twitter page"
https://twitter.com/AirGuardians

 

Send it to PewDiePie!!
He is one of the reasons why Flappy Bird is soooooooooooo popular!

Ahhhh!
Thanks for the Twitter link dude!
I shall follow your account!

 

flicked you another follow

see if you can find a site thats dedicated to advertising your game... you might need to pay something for it.. not sure when it comes to non-device advertising..

thats a lie, i dont know f'all about device advertising either. lols

 

Hey congratulations on the release.

I don't have much to input other than a mere' website from PixelProspector about marketing.
http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-marketing-guide-for-game-developers/

I do like the section about Contacting The Press. I would also like to add that MANY small youtubers are VERY interested in making videos about your game, so find some youtubers and contact them.

Huge list of some youtubers you may want to get into contact with..

http://videogamecaster.com/
One of my favorites is RockLeeSmile
https://www.youtube.com/user/RockLeeSmile/featured
He's got a series call Indie Impressions.

 

Did you make the game in Unity?

If so, why is it only available for Windows?

Maybe you could monetize it by putting it in the Mac App Store?

 

Here's the best marketing strategy I've heard in all my years.

"If you build it, they will come"...

That's the best solid...................... I mean, failed advice LOL.
Question I want to ask is, how did you go about getting Green Lighted? I heard it's hard to get Green Lit.

 

There is truth in this statement. Get it in front of as many youtubers as possible.

 

Customers have to be earned, reminded that you exist and occasionally patted on the head.

The website could be imptoved... a proper logotype at the top would be a good start. Maybe you can a few more images and descriptions that give visitors a better idea of the game mechanics? It says that we will play over six levels, is that the same as six missions? Are they huge? How many hours of gameplay (don't state X hours, give them an impression through words and images)? Replayability?

Many webisites stick to the coolest stuff on the landing page and have a separate "about" page or something similar for more detailed description about the game.

The layout could also do with some work... The header and footer on the website but the content is left aligned (I am viewing it from Chrome in case this or anything else appear differently to you). That looks a bit off and the whole footer for the website is disappearing and changing height depending on which page I visit. Remember that the website gives the visitor the first impression of the quality behind your work, issues like doesn't reflect well on you.

A good idea is to connect everything together... post something on the website and it automatically appear in different ways in other feeds. Maybe just the topic appear on Twitter with a link to the post while Facebook viewers get a short introduction to the complete post. A news section on the website will also help to show that you are actively supporting the game.

The list can go on

 

lmao

/true

 

Upload with Chrome or Firefox if Safari or IE is causing trouble for you.

It seems you've spent a lot of money on the game already outside what it cost to create the game itself. You can go to ZoHo.com for free hosting with templates, they can host your domain too.

Think of this way - who might searching for that genre of game you made? Folks that have played flight simulators and similar games in the past...

So I'd stop wasting money on google ads and find websites that are dedicated to flight simulator games and such and buy advertising exclusively at those places.

You are not selling corn flakes here, google ads hardly ever makes sense to buy.

 

That's a great site for finding game reviewers, thanks! I have not contacted game reviewers yet, I am uncertain whether I should hold off until I get the game on steam.

I am not very confident in releasing the game on Macs. I've only tested on one mac machine. I guess I still could. The install folders with the mac build did not seem as straight forward in order to run the game, and the game does not come with an installer, so I was concerned I would get more complaints on how to install and play the game.

Deon Cadme - The website can be better. I am just using a wordpress template right now. It's hard to juggle all these things at once. First making and designing the game, then marketing it. Then building trailers, press releases, social media, steam setup, game reviewers, adwords, etc....

goat - I am already targeting very specific audiances with the adwords campaign. But you have a point, I should try advertising on flight simulator websites. Google ads lets you advertise on websites that have ads enabled. But you have to be willing to pay the highest price.

 

I see a problem with trust. I wouldn't buy a game from "some guy on the internet" that doesn't have a well-known brand, etc. What if you just steal my credit card info or whatever? (I know you are not gonna do that, but still). What if you stop selling the game, can't I download it anymore? Etc.
Try to get into Steam (best case scenario), or try Desura, GOG, or Indiegamestand, or get into an indie humble-bundle type, etc. These are all will increase people's trust in you, because that means that SOMEONE already checked your game and found it worthy.
Also I am not exactly a marketing expert, these are just my thoughts

 

I've finally released my game on steam yesterday. They had me on the top pages for the initial release for a few hours. I got a couple bad reviews because of a mouse sensitivity bug and no joystick support. I worked through the night to get the bug fixed, and I was even able to add basic joystick support, along with fixing dozens of other smaller issues.

I did not make a ton of money yet ( about 200-300 dollars). And that was on the first day with first page ranking. I'm expecting sales to go down even further after awhile. So I need to get on the press release very soon and try to market the game myself.

Here it is
http://store.steampowered.com/app/342230/

 

Congrats on your release, but did you even think of getting a proper beta test before release??

I'm sure those issues and feedback would have been raised during a beta test.

 

It's actually very hard to find people who will give you feedback. I hired a few people from fivver to play the game and give thoughts about it awhile ago. Then one personnel friend played the game. Then a few forum members left comments after playing a sample.


I would of liked a full flegged beta test with dozens of people giving feedback but its not as easy as it seems to setup.

 

There are companies that offer this as a professional service, some of them are very cost effective. Like a couple of hundred dollars for a full QA pass, beta test and feedback session, on many different PC's and devices etc.

A small price to pay when you've spent so much time on your game.

 

What are some companies that offer game testers? When I search I mostly find businesses that are more about general software testing or app testing.

 

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=game+qa+service

 

Doesn't really surprise me. I barely play flight simulators, being limited mostly to Microsoft Flight Sim X, but even I won't play one without a basic joystick.

 

I think I hired two guys on Fiverr to beta test my game. Five bucks each.

 

You can find people to test your game for free on Reddit. No need to pay anyone on Fiverr.

But if you want proper, professional testing, and proper, professional feedback, you'll need to pay for it.

 

So now I'm sending a bunch of emails to gaming sites and youtubers, wish me luck .

 

Well almost two weeks after release i've sent more than 50 emails to gaming websites and roughly 300 emails to youtube game reviewers and lets players. I've only received several replies.

4 of the youtubers have prominent subscribers, but they have not made a video yet.

I was expecting a better outcome, but this just seems to be the reality.

Non of my marketing efforts has made an effect yet. This is just the beginning though, I will continue to promote the game for a few months.

 

Sorry to say it, but perhaps your game just isn't gathering enough interest due to the quality/gameplay.

Reviewers will want to review something that is fun to review that they find fun to play. If you're having poor sales and poor/no feedback from reviewers, then you need to look at making your game better and more attractive.

And remember, these guys are being sent tons of games to review, yours really needs to stand out nowadays, and this goes for the game industry in general, so don't take it personally. It's not easy.

 

If I increase the quality of the game, it would mean more months working on the game and less time learning about marketing. I dont want to end up spending 3-4 years of my youth making the best game, only to release it and find out I know nothing about marketing, and it fails.

I am looking at this from a business perspective, not from a teens perspective who wants to make the next mmorpg. There is the teen in me that wants to spend 20 years making the most awesome game, but i've grounded myself in reality. I've already spent 6-12 months working on this game, that should be well enough time to make a minimum viable product.

That's said, I dont think the game is that bad. It's not the next ace combat or battlefield, but I think its worth 5.00. Maybe its not worth 5.00, maybe its worth 2.00. Doesn't hurt my feelings. Whatever makes the most sense for its quality and the market.

I am also continually patching the game and making improvements based on customer feedback, so I'm not completely ignoring its flaws and peoples complaints. I also did not know about those beta testing services you provided to me in a recent post, I was searching under the wrong term for beta testing companies. If I would have known about those I probably would have hired a company to test my game before release. There's so many things to learn with making a game. Good thing I'm not making these mistakes with a game I've spent 10 years on.

 

I've had my first honest attempt at game marketing in the past few weeks. It's definitely not easy to get attention by sending a few emails to reviewers, or even a few hundred emails.

Gamershell posted a little anouncment about my game, and I've got one review from indie game reviewer, but its nothing major. One youtuber made a review about the game, but he gave it a bad review .

I am going to offer money to youtubers to make videos about my game. Just sending them emails begging them to make a video is not a professional way to go about business. I wont necessarily pay them for good reviews unless they really like the game.

 

I think you have the right view and the right approach. Just make something decent and get it out there. Use it only as a means to learn marketing and don't expect great success. All of this stuff is a learning process. Your next game will do better. The one after that better still. So long as you keep learning and improving and find out what works and what does not. Do more of what works and less of what does not. First you have to test to find out which things work and which do not.

 

Yeah, that's my reason for making this game. I am expecting to get some success from this before I dive into another project. I need to validate the market before making more games.

 

Hey man. I think you're first mistake was picking such a large first time project. Looks like you did a great job though, despite that. The issue here is that first titles are where we get all of our skeletons in our closets exposed. Things we didn't polish cause we don't know how or overlooked it are going to get nitpicked to death. So you really want to put something out on the market, let it get ripped to shreds and take 100% of that feedback to your next title. That's why people are always ranting about having your first title be quick and easy. It's likely going to fail miserably, and that's just part of the journey. First time I built something out of wood it was pure s$@#. But I learned and moved on. Same thing here.

You've already released this title and the reviews are in. I read them. First impressions are almost everything. The majority of your first time players won't come back from a bad experience. So, if you touched on 100% of the market with this title and 75% didn't like it, then updates are only going to be exposed to 25%, because the other 75% won't look back. So every minute you spend further on this project is basically valued at 4 minutes on a new project, even in the same market space.

Learn from this one, move on, and have fun. I know letting go of a year+ of work is hard. Trust me.

 

Yeah I should have made a project that was a lot smaller. The thing is I thought it would only take me 3 months to build the game, but I did not know how much work would be involved.

But I was targeting the Steam marketplace, so it wasn't like I could put up a low quality game and have it greenlit easily.

I don't think 100% of the market has seen my game. Only the small handful of people browsing games on steam. There is much more opportunity for the game to get noticed.

 

This may be true, but reviews have been left, and you're still going to get a lot of people who will read the reviews and thought, "Eh, I'll throw my $5 elsewhere." On the flip side, now that you've learned a lot and have a better understanding of time requirements you could probably make a game now that actually takes you 3 months, and be at a similar quality.

Not to mention that fact that the very core of your next game will be built upon the lessons you learned in your first. And the fact that you would have a fresh, un-reviewed product out there still stands. It's up to you, man. I would abandon it though and go for round 2 if it were me.

 

The game really has not bee marketed yet. Like I said, most of the people who has seen my game are just the handful of steam users. There is still not a whole lot about my game anywhere else.

I have spent the last few years learning how to build games, I only spent the last few weeks learning how to market them. So I don't want to spend even more time learning how to build games on another project when I've already spent enough time on that so far.

 

Congrats on getting on steam. Email Totalbiscuit he does a 15 minute series for less well known steam games.

Id buy your game if you had a mac build.

 

I was able to get a lets play of my game from BlueDrake42 yesterday. With 54,000 subscribers. The video has since gotten over 3,500 views.

I was shocked to notice that this did not result in ANY spike in sales. Sales were exactly the same as it was the previous day. There was literally no difference.

 

Props to you for fixing the issues on the reviews and being responsive to your players, try doing the TB and sale thing Aiu2k suggested.

 

Yeah total biscuits video gets 200k views, whereas that guy only got 3k. Total biscuit is more a reviewer and that guy is an LPer (his viewers will be more interested in watching him play games then playing games themselves).

 

I have tried TB. Although its hard to get big reviewers attention as you would expect. I'm going to try talking to the people who left bad reviews to see if they will change their review, then put it on sale.

The bad reviews might be making a much bigger difference then I would expect.

 

I bought the game. Polish it up some more!

 

Thanks!

 

It really just needs more finishing. More content to see in screenshots. More details and stuff going on in areas, etc.

 

Try giving your friend some keys and telling them to downvote that not recommended comment and upvote a more positive one.

 

I'd buy it out of pity if it was for Mac. Lazy Bum Games, lol.

The voice acting is absolutely atrocious. Obviously you got some of your friends to do it. If you won't hire voice actors, at least apply filters to the voices so you can't hear that they're annoying teenagers. Hearing those voices in the trailers sounds very jarring.

Also need color correction on top of those graphics. They look pretty washed out in screenshots. Tried some color correction in Photoshop.


Yellow fighter could be shiny! I can only apply it on top of everything, but you get the idea.

And the typography looks pretty bad too. Use some prettier fonts like http://www.awwwards.com/100-greatest-free-fonts-collection.html their Prime http://fontfabric.com/prime-free-font/ might work.

And then the story is Global Force attacks the Yellow guys? Story is important for marketing, especially when gameplay is rehashed.

Don't try to market this without polishing. When you release something unpolished you use people's time, they don't give it the best reviews, you don't get a lot of likes on those reviews and you can't take it back. You have to run it by small numbers of people for critique first. People that released games, work as designers or artists, not random friends.

Maybe you could make $3K with more polishing, one can dream. Or make it worse and have it be comically bad.

 

Keep in mind that many (most?) of those fonts are not free for commercial use. For that Prime font for example, there is no mention of a license so it's probably prohibited.

This implies that Prime is not free for commercial use.
EDIT: Good news, I'm wrong. The License is included in the download and it is free for commercial use. (I didn't want to download it since you had to enter your email, but it turned up in my download folder without me entering my email.. somehow)

You can use this link, all of these fonts are (supposedly, check the license to make sure) 100% free.
http://www.dafont.com/top.php?l[]=10&l[]=1

 

I know a guy who does amazing voice acting for very good prices. He did it for the guy in the below video(Unity4).

 

I've already added a lot of new features to the game after release. Such as full controller support, tons of new sound effects, and explosion effects. I dont know. If this game is still considered bad after 8-12 months of pure hard work, plus all of the patches, I might give up on being a indie game developer. I'm 23 and have been living in my parents house not going to work this whole time. And I dont have any friends or girlfriend. So I literally spend my whole time working on this game. And its still not good enough??? Alright, maybe I will spend another year in my parents house making the game better. Or accept that I cant fix all of these loose ends and have a life.