Marketing is NOT Why Most Indie Games Fail

marketing

Most aspiring Indies already know that they need it to have a successful game, but many feel like they don't know how to do it. I've even seen memes like this that imply that

marketing

the game is harder than creating it, as it seems. Like many Indians, they have the idea that discovering the skill is the only thing standing in the way of their game being a bestseller, they say to themselves: Well, I know I can make a game, the problem is that I just don't know how to do it. Market it, they lament the low success rate of

indie

games

, and sometimes even feel that success is a roll of the dice with low odds, as if some

games

just go viral.

My experience as a full-time freelance developer with a small studio for over a decade. The way I see it, I couldn't be further from this, it's not that

most

Indies

fail

to market their product, it's that

most

Indies

fail

to make a product that is marketable, its value and scope of production does not They are competitive with the best of their genre, so all their marketing efforts are not gaining traction and in fact, they are not selling as the best of their genre now. I don't just speak from my gut. I'm a Steam student. I have done extensive research on this topic.

I was one of the first to vent and analyze revenue trends, labels, and genres; In fact, many have gone on to use my data set in their own marketing research tools, although I don't recommend it because there are much better data sets available now created by much smarter people. I search tocom gamestats for fun and dive into the depths of steam every day at all income levels. It's a bit of a strange hobby for me. I'm also a reasonably successful freelancer, having shipped a bestseller and am currently in production. in a game that will probably wipe the floor with our last session on over 880,000 pre-release wishlists, without festivals, so I like to think I have some credibility here and I'll tell you if you want to make and sell games for a Para live, you have to know what the benchmark of quality is, you have to know what kind of things sell in your genre.

Most aspiring Indies make the mistake of only having what I would call a consumer-level knowledge of their genre. I really only know the best titles. Too often I see a gamer or developer think that a particular game is a hidden gem when it's usually a bestseller. You have to know more than that. You have to know about half. level successes too and failures too, you have to know what a $1 million revenue game is like as well as a $100,000 game and exactly how good a game can look and still make virtually nothing, you have to develop an intuition of what a mid-level hit in your genre looks like so you can make good decisions about the viability of your own product, let's learn how to find your quality benchmark for your genre, so here I am at gamestats dcom, which is a site that uses review counts to estimate revenue.

This is the most common way to estimate revenue with Steam and I believe it is accurate enough for market research. Good advice if you want Game Dev in easy mode to create a game in a tag with a medium-high income and If you want a game developer in hard mode, create a game in a tag with a medium-low income or, better yet, use these percentages in the income group statistics, choosing the type of game you make is without a doubt the most important marketing decision about your game. and obviously this happens before you even start production, choose a tag that you think represents your game or you can even cross-reference some tags.

I like to filter out things that were released more than 3 years ago, say, because the market is always changing alongside you. If you want to choose the income range you would need to make your game a success, here is your competition list. I'm not going to highlight any unsuspecting games here, but you should spend a lot of time researching these titles. Check out their trailers and screenshots. the quality of your product the graphics the art style the user interface the performance the features the scope the content the reviews better yet buy the game and play for a few hours ideally you want every aspect of your game to be competitive with the best look The titles in their income group they don't just find a title that somehow snuck in there and use that as a benchmark and hope that works.

If they want to sell like these games, they have to hold these games for Real right now. This part is really motivating for me, believe me when I say that I haven't found many hidden gems in quotes on Steam. I haven't found many games that look like they should have been in a higher revenue range based on their apparent production value at the beginning. On the face of it, maybe I find a game that I feel like should have raised a million and ended up raising 300,000, but I never find a game that looks like it should have raised a million and only raised $200.

I find the opposite actually, all time games I can't even believe how much money they made, so now that you know how to do market research let me get back to the topic of how difficult it is to market an

indie

game. I can't tell you how much easier marketing becomes when you have a product that interests people at first glance and I can't tell you how impossible marketing becomes when you have a product that falls short of that. It's the difference between everything you try to make work to some extent, and sometimes it works spectacularly, versus everything you try. approaching zero engagement and being a complete waste of time by now we've all heard of games that seem pretty ordinary at first glance but somehow manage to go viral anyway.

I'm talking about your uses among your vampire survivors, maybe even as the fairy tale of the last era now I'm not saying they are bad games, they are obviously fantastic games, but it's not immediately obvious that they are above some of the titles lower-performing, mainly due to its apparent graphic art styles and production values, if that's the type. of success you are looking for, then I have nothing to say about it. I don't know anything about how to reproduce that kind of success in my opinion, it's like lightning in a bottle and very difficult to reproduce reliably.

I watch those games. as cultural phenomena, but I'm here to tell you that that's not the kind of success common in the world of premium games. Steam has a veritable ocean of games that most players have never heard of and that generate hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. most of those games don't look like Among Us, they are polished looking games with solid art styles and solid production values, well executed products that have found their market, they are often made by studios with some experience, but not always and They usually did a reasonable marketing campaign, but not necessarily viral posts or widespread coverage.

Sometimes they have a unique selling point, but honestly, sometimes they don't. They are simply a solid title backed by commercially serious production competence and an effort in a high-demand genre on Steam. Really strong on this, the reliable way to sell as the top of a genre is to compete at all levels, as the top of the genre, ignore the outliers and Giga hits, find the income level you want to be at and Start doing case studies on games that sell it like this if you find a game that performs better than yours in many different ways and underperforms at your desired revenue level, which should scare you now.

I'm not saying marketing doesn't matter, it clearly does, and virtually every company is willing to do it. Substantial capital in your game would be foolish not to honor the product with a marketing campaign worthy of the production budget, but the idea that marketing is the main thing missing from most indie efforts where the only reason why something like Cyberpunk 2077 selling like hot cakes is because of the AAA marketing machine, well that's simply not true, so when you're analyzing games, by all means evaluate the scope of their marketing efforts, review all their assets of marketing, look at your store copy, track your social media accounts and see what posts.

They did what kind of Beats they had, they made a big announcement, they did some content marketing, and if so, what kind and how much they produced. Lastly, look for any existing brand equity they may have already had and keep that in mind. Considering that their income is okay, then I said that to sell as the best of a genre, you have to compete on all levels with games at the top of that genre. In fact, I find that this fact freeing up the games market is still largely rational in the sense that if you build something substantial, you can probably compete if your product can live up to the best of your genre in all levels and I mean all levels, when people think about product quality, they usually think about gameplay, but I'm talking about all the graphics and trailers matter, okay?

They are not just a showcase, they are the first sign of game quality that they can see when they see your game for the first time. If it looks like a student project, people will assume that every part of your game is like a student project, but if you can hit the quality benchmark in every facet, chances are you can sell it as the best of yours. gender. The quality bar is right in front of us. If you want to sell games, look at games in your desired income range. and make sure to compete with them at all levels.