Green Glasses Girl wrote:Some handy LSF reading material:
@Admin staff: Is there a way a post like this can sticky'd? It seems to be a question that comes up about twice a month.
Thank you for the quick answer. I've searched through the forums and most topics were more focused on marketing and commercial use.
If theories were as easy as reality, everyone would be popular by now. After reading these threads I came to a few conclusions for this topic.
Be (socially) active
I realized that merely being active will give you a fanbase or at least interest. Just by spreading your presence, people are likely to trust you more.
The problem is time. How do people manage their projects + frequently update + broad their networks + reply to feedbacks? So far I've had difficulties to balance my activity and social network. I don't know what's the best way to manage all of them.
Social media
While spreading awareness about your game doesn't mean it reaches the right audience. In the past years I've focused so much on other social media that I've totally neglected lemmasoft. Obviously, all developers and gamers gather here and this is the perfect place to start off. I want to thank the community just for being here.
Quite some posts are old and the traffic has changed over the past years. Recently I've seen many mentions about Facebook dropping down and Instagram being the most popular social media. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I don't see a reason why game developers should use Instagram (maybe this is only popular in a different community lol). My opinion on twitter and facebook is that the posts get burried quickly. Sometimes I find messages from months ago which I yet have to reply. The opinions I encountered about Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight is that they are mostly for commercial purposes. This is not the goal for my game, so I drop these ideas.
Skill and dedication
Somewhere in the replies I found an interesting video about advertising
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuOo5BvOsPw
This guy talks about how merely 'likes' and 'shares' don't work. I don't think there is a magical formula to make someone popular. Popularity comes after your efforts. For my game, I wasn't aiming to be popular or earn a lot of money. I wanted to bring a quality product which shares my thoughts and creativity. For the past 2 years I've thrown myself into improving art- and writing skills, English and programming. On the other side, I can relate to people that don't get recognition no matter how much efforts they put.
I'm not sure this is a good idea. It strikes me that information like this has a shelf-life, with new things coming around all the time.
An overview on this topic could be useful.
firecat wrote:Green Glasses Girl wrote:@Admin staff: Is there a way a post like this can sticky'd? It seems to be a question that comes up about twice a month.
dont forget that the articles are written by users that are like you and me, using it has a guide to answer questions will not help fill-in the truth about what it really takes to build a fanbase.
OP: kickstarter is to "help" a project, making a demo does help but everyone is already getting sick of being bomb with ads from reddit VN section, some people ignore KS projects in this forum, and you're too new to be taken seriously.
anyone can past greenlight, fail once you can try again without paying. You will be facing competitors who might have an edge over you but none of that matters since anyone can pass greenlight.
social media does somewhat help, never to the point where you gain 1 million followers, you might want to interact with the community to gain followers rather than thinking that we need to help you.
I haven't seen a lot replies on these topics and most are only theories. While it sounds logical, it may not apply to a long term. Gah, subjective topics are hard to discuss, especially when it does not work for everyone.
Honestly, I'm tired of seeing so many KS projects out of nowhere. I believe many of these groups are new and aim for too large goals.
I haven't released anything so far. My game was mentioned on Visual Novel database before but it got deleted. Probably they didn't trust me anymore lol.
It may be logical because I made the first update 2 years ago. Besides, I'm still working alone. I can only blame myself for this reputation.
By writing this topic and reply, I am interacting xD I want to hear more opinons on this matter as I can't figure it out by myself. Since everyone is doing it differently, I may discover new methods.
Kate wrote:Release to let's players. Or release certain parts. Like, hey, free copy to test, and you can play it for your channel- an original! Some smaller channels with still a decent number of subs may have viewers that will take the bait and buy the game for themselves. I just recently bought a game after seeing Markiplier play exactly one 20 min episode of it... this also works GREAT for games with a lot of user choice. If the player can do something different that the LP'er didn't do, they may itch even more to buy the game and try the alternates.
^ This may not work for everyone, but this may be a good idea for some.
Thank you! You just reminded me of this. While I do watch Let's Play! videos, it never crossed my mind to suggest my own game. Are visual novels doing well on youtube? I'm always afraid that I don't reach the right audience with this. Most games featured look interactive or are very bad. I hope mine doesn't fall into the last category lol. By any chance, do you know youtubers into visual novels?
Chibi Subaru wrote:I would try to find a Facebook fan group for the game genre that is similar to your game's. Since my game is an otome game, I've joined into general otome fan groups on Facebook and talked to other fans of the fandom. After making some friends and depending on the group's rules, you can inform people that you're working on a game and tell them about it.
This has helped me get connected with a fanbase and gain fans that want to support us in different formats. We have a Facebook page, Twitter, and Tumblr as our main social medias. We share the posts we make in them with the Facebook groups we're in and it has helped us a lot.
For donations, we use both Patreon and GoFundMe... we plan to do Kickstarter after we think we've promoted enough. We haven't had much luck on donations yet other than close friends and family members.
Thank you for the suggestions. I've tried out facebook groups before and there was only a few to zero feedback. Maybe I'm expecting too much from it, but I shall continue with trying. Patreon always seems tricky to me after hearing negative reviews like: cheating on rewards, a chunck of fees, a lot time to manage and so on. I'm glad that your close friends and family members are so supportive. Good luck on your project!