10 things to promote your indie game (from most effective to almost useless) – Part 1: Next Fest, Festivals, Content creators

(8 minute read)

 

In this 4 parts article, we’ll talk about 10 marketing actions to answer the question « how to promote my indie game ? », ranging from super effective and trendy to less effective, wishlists and sales wise (but they have other qualities). Here’s part 1 where we’ll dive into Steam next fest, gaming festivals and content creators.

Have a good read, and I’m here if you need a marketing professional to promote your indie game, we’ll get back to that.

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Hello everyone, this is my first blog on this new website, yay!

 

This is far from my first blog post ever (probably written around 2007 on a long forgotten Half life 2 modding website in my teenage years) but maybe it’s the first you read from me. If so, welcome!

 

If you feel like contacting me for questions or anything marketing related, please do after you read this advice list. I’ll introduce myself shortly after, but with no further ado, let’s start this 10 things to promote your indie game list first.

 

DISCLAIMER: This marketing 101, for those who have almost no idea on how to market a game. If you’re advanced in marketing, this article might be boring. If you’re average, you may learn a couple of things there. And if you’re an absolute beginner, you will learn a lot.

 

How to promote your indie game answer #1 : Steam next fest

Be careful : this event is one of the most effective today, but it’s how to start promoting an indie game. Taking part in Steam Next Fest (let’s refer to it as “SNF”) takes lots of preparation beforehand to truly become a tremendous wishlist orgy for your game.

 

But in a few words, and just in case you never looked at steam’s homepage in the past 3 years or you’re not a PC/steam gamer, what’s Steam next fest? In a nutshell, it’s a demo festival where players can test thousands of demos from developers around the world of all durations and qualities. It’s held twice a year and here’s some advice on how to take part in decently.

 

First, you can only take part in ONE SNF for your game. Don’t worry if you blew it, there are plenty of other opportunities, but this one’s dead. So you better take care of your demo before it goes out there because this event is one of the most effective ways to get wishlists, in 2024. You don’t want to have too much bugs in your build, or player will get bored and skip your game quickly.

 

Then, the word is out and SNF gets more and more crowded every semester, so get there when you’re ready, but maybe it won’t be as effective when you get in.

 

Chris Zuckowski from How To Market a Game has the follower count to analyze good data regarding this event, and I can only recommend his work on the matter. Here’s a bullet point list of some advice he gives in his blogs:

 

“SNF should not be the first time players have access to your game”

 

Create alpha, beta, any greek letter versions of your game before sending your demo to the next fest. And make it test by your fellows and also complete strangers. You have ways to reach them, we’ll go back to that later.

 

“You can’t tweet yourself to success”

 

In a nutshell, sharing news about your game on your social accounts is useful, but most often it’s not how you will promote your indie game to the top. You have to find other people with greater audiences to talk about your game. We’ll talk about content creators, media and festivals later on, but you can also reach other similar small devs for cross promotion, post in genre specific subreddits (an article would be required about how to post on reddit though) and share your game in discord servers. You know, this huge list of servers that you never post in? You have a reason to do so now!

 

“More wishlists leads to more wishlists”

 

This sentence might seem logical, but it’s not. Actually, more wishlists leads less to more wishlists than before. Following me ?

If you have a lot of wishlists before SNF, chances are you’ll get pushed by the Steam algorithm. That said, Steam’s algorithm has been nerfed to promote less the big shots. So back to Chris’ advice number one: prepare beforehand and choose your moment wisely.

 

Also, if you’re wondering why I make publicity for a fellow marketer: I kinda admire him and he might be one of the finest in the field. But I’m not bad either and he only has limited time. He’s probably crazy busy and I’m all ears for your project, so why wait for contacting me?

 

How to promote your indie game answer #2 : gaming content creators

Note : Starting here, these actions may have more or less great action on your wishlists depending on your game and how you do it. Don’t worry buddy, I’ll tell you when it gets less interesting.

 

I’m referring to content creators here because “streamers” doesn’t technically include youtubers and other types of content creation media and influencers sounds like a rude word to them knowing what influence might sound like. And well, I like using the right terms and not insulting people.

 

This article is set to be long enough, so I’ll limit my advice on 3 things that seem important to me regarding content creators:

 

Looking for content creators and gathering data is tedious… But it’s 50% of the job

You’d think copy pasting a couple of numbers and links into a spreadsheet would take you 30 minutes tops? Oh boy. You have to browse through channel pages, double check you’ve got the right number of followers, see if said creator has played relevant games, sometimes watch videos to be sure this 18+ channel is not too trashy, do captchas to gather emails that eventually won’t work anymore (Ah, youtube… And I’m talking about the captchas, not emails here) et cetera et cetera. You don’t know what you’re going to face. But with the right tools and techniques (see below) and some training, it will get better.

 

Practice makes perfect… But it needs the right tools & techniques

To identify which content creator suits your needs, you need to know what they are playing at. You probably already watch some indie streamers, start with that. You can get names of renown creators of your genre through google, reddit or your favourite geeky discord channel. If not, look for indie streamers, youtubers, you name it. Now that you have a list of creators big and small, let’s see if their taste fits with your game.

 

Streamers

For streamers, Twitchtracker offers a graphical view of that and details which games have been played more, when and what percentage this playtime represents relatively to the rest. If you’re making a roguelite deckbuilder and that 80% of the streamer playtime is Slay the spire, it’s a hard bet but you could try your luck. Because there are chances he would like your game theoretically, but the odds are that he only streams his favourite game. If you’re making a solo FPS, they most probably won’t react at all. But in general, for indie and variety streamers, the more games the better. And if they got at least 200 other games played representing at least 40% of their playtime, go for it. They are curious and you’ve got your chance.