How to Raise Awareness For Your Game?

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HiddenCreature
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How to Raise Awareness For Your Game?

#1 Post by HiddenCreature »

Hi,

The game I'm working on, you can find in my signature.

An inevitable step for our game will be to launch a kickstarter. But as I've read from multiple sources on kickstarter advice, it's important to raise awareness for your game before the kickstarter, not after. Many stress the importance of establishing a fan base.

Unfortunately, when I search, "how to build a fan base," I get irrelevant results. They all focus on music or YouTube channels for some reason.

The only recommendation I've found is to post on indie game forums. But as you can already guess from the way forums work, not even half the people that view it will actually respond (most viewers are guests or lurkers), and not every commenter is a new fan gained, they're just a commenter. So the number of potential fans you can get from this direction really isn't great.

Any advice?

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Re: How to Raise Awareness For Your Game?

#2 Post by Quelcezot »

My team is facing similar tribulations with our project. Properly utilizing social media is a big one though from what I can tell.

Setting up a tumblr, following, faffing around and retweeting things hoping for a reciprocal response, properly tagging, once you have a presence anywhere I imagine it's easier to establish your presence on other sites as well by directing your existing followers.

You have a twitter already, and you're following millions of people and doing things.

The only other thing I can begin to know where to start with is in finding an effective way to convey what you feel are the best and most unique qualities of your vn. What I immediately get about your project when I look at it is that it's got vampires and blood and gothness in it. All great stuff.

Perhaps others will come along and fill this thread with surefire methods to get around this frustrating vagueness of social media manipulation anarchy.
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Re: How to Raise Awareness For Your Game?

#3 Post by fleet »

Post a demo at here at lemmasoft. If nothing else, the post will get a lot of views.
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Re: How to Raise Awareness For Your Game?

#4 Post by firecat »

one thing to understand about people and money is that you cant force them to give you money. if you can get one fan many others might follow but not all of them are willing to pay money. the reason to ever start a kickstarter is to "help" your game, its never a way to fund the game into 0% progress into a 100% finnish product. another thing you need to know is that some people get greedy so they want something in your favor, a way to award them for donating if your game ever gets ruin like many other kickstarters.

social media is a tool to communicate with people, they don't like ads, they don't like robot twitters/facebook/reddit, and they really dont like how you never reply back to answer questions. just because people can see your post doesn't mean that people will go and donate $1000 to build it. always expect negative views but at the same time always look at the positive views, even if your game does indeed fit in the chiche area. reviewers like youtubers, bloggers, freelancers, and people will always or sometime tell the same thing about your game.

lastly welcome to the real world, you're not the only one with a game idea.
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Re: How to Raise Awareness For Your Game?

#5 Post by HiddenCreature »

@firecat

Maybe that wasn't your intention, but the tone of your comment was pretty rude, especially the last sentence.

Plus, I already knew all of that, I mentioned I read about kickstarter preparation. I was asking for advice on how to help build fans.

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Re: How to Raise Awareness For Your Game?

#6 Post by trooper6 »

How to build fans?

Here are some things that have worked to make me a fan of people:
1) They produced a number of free games. Those free games gave me a sense of loyalty to the game makers and make me more likely to buy their later games or donate to a Kickstarter.
2) They do excellent work
3) They do work that isn't like all the other work out there
4) People who have really made me a fan are people who have games that are feminist, feature people of color, feature queer people, care about social justice
5) They use artwork that isn't anime style...something new excites me
6) They have gotten positive reviews from some of the sites I frequent: rockpapershotgun, borderhouseblog. VNsNow reviews have also gotten me to check out games
7) The game makers are active participants in the lemmasoft community. If they create cookbook recipes, if they often answer questions in the Questions and Answer sections, if I have positive interactions with them in the forums, I am more likely to check out their work.
8 ) It the work is really smart that will make me fan as well.
9) Oh, like #4 this one is idiosyncratic to me. I don't like it when creators come onto the boards and ask what everybody else wants in a VN. And I don't like it when it seems like the VN is pandering, or indulging in fan service, or generically recreating tropes that are thought to be what everybody wants to see. I want a strong creative and authorial voice from the maker. So unique voice and taking a creative stance is also likely to make me a fan.

Those are things that have made me fans of VN creators.
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Re: How to Raise Awareness For Your Game?

#7 Post by Green Glasses Girl »

Did you use the forum search? There are few threads on the same topic:

- What would you say to first time game creators?
- Networking: Making your project popular?
- What visual novel's get more attention?
- How to build a fanbase

Dealing with profit/money:
- Fanbase before or after demo release? Or after Kickstarter?
- What makes a Kickstarter successful?
- Making some money with a commercial VN - is it possible?
- Making A Living off of VNs: What should I do?

And everything trooper6 listed stands true.
Also! If you have a sig, don't just post a link - post an image/logo with it! It's more likely to catch someone's attention.

Don't forget to use tumblr, twitter, Facebook, deviantART, reddit, etc. - social media and sites in general.
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Re: How to Raise Awareness For Your Game?

#8 Post by HiddenCreature »

@Green Glasses Girl

Thanks for taking the time to make those links, much appreciated!

As for the sig, we're still working on a proper logo to use at the moment. Believe me, if I had it, I would use it, lol. Thanks again.

@trooper6

Thanks for the advice as well :)

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Re: How to Raise Awareness For Your Game?

#9 Post by Green Glasses Girl »

@HiddenCreature: No problem! As for social media links, I posted on another thread of places to advertise: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 70#p324933
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Re: How to Raise Awareness For Your Game?

#10 Post by Kailoto »

trooper6 wrote:How to build fans?

Here are some things that have worked to make me a fan of people:
1) They produced a number of free games. Those free games gave me a sense of loyalty to the game makers and make me more likely to buy their later games or donate to a Kickstarter.
2) They do excellent work
3) They do work that isn't like all the other work out there
4) People who have really made me a fan are people who have games that are feminist, feature people of color, feature queer people, care about social justice
5) They use artwork that isn't anime style...something new excites me
6) They have gotten positive reviews from some of the sites I frequent: rockpapershotgun, borderhouseblog. VNsNow reviews have also gotten me to check out games
7) The game makers are active participants in the lemmasoft community. If they create cookbook recipes, if they often answer questions in the Questions and Answer sections, if I have positive interactions with them in the forums, I am more likely to check out their work.
8 ) It the work is really smart that will make me fan as well.
9) Oh, like #4 this one is idiosyncratic to me. I don't like it when creators come onto the boards and ask what everybody else wants in a VN. And I don't like it when it seems like the VN is pandering, or indulging in fan service, or generically recreating tropes that are thought to be what everybody wants to see. I want a strong creative and authorial voice from the maker. So unique voice and taking a creative stance is also likely to make me a fan.

Those are things that have made me fans of VN creators.
Pretty much everything listed here. I prefer creators that are passionate, honest, and confident. Basically, if a game is good then I'm a fan of the game, but if the person making the game has an identity and that identity clicks with me, then I'll follow the creator, regardless of specific releases. So it's less branding a certain product than fostering a reputation that gets me on board for the long run.

To use an example, Klei Entertainment has made individual games that I like, but because I like how their company is run and how they interact with their fans, it's also a group that I'll continue to look for updates and new releases from. And it probably also results in me being more forgiving in my critique, as that's what bias does.

So yeah, you can always raise awareness for a specific game, but I think one of the most sustainable approaches is to build a reputation as a creator. It is a bit more involved though.
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Re: How to Raise Awareness For Your Game?

#11 Post by Katy133 »

Mike Falzone made a nice inspirational video about raising awareness for your work.

It takes time to "build a fanbase" for your work.
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Re: How to Raise Awareness For Your Game?

#12 Post by Auro-Cyanide »

There are a couple things you could do to raise your exposure and increase the likelihood of getting funding. Fanbases usually take time to build up as well, the longer you are at it the stronger the core base is.

- Have a demo. And not just any demo, a strong one that is as close to the final presentation as you can get. Not only does this upgrade your stance from 'ideas guy' to 'creator' in people's minds, it also gives them something to give feedback on. It beats concepts by a long shot. A bonus is it gives you finalised content to show off.

- You need to find your key selling points and then figure out where online people who would be interested are located. Maybe buy out some advertising on those sites, start threads etc.

- Create content, regularly. The more regular the better. This keeps people engaged and you can carve out a little niche in their mind through repeated exposure. Keep a blog if you can. Also make sure to create places where you can interact with people, they could potentially be new fans.

- Big bonus points if you release a short game, especially if it's in a similar genre. You can convert fans of that game into fans of your next, and thus your Kickstarter.

- Connect with other Devs and associated players. Even if they don't personally like your work, if you have a good relationship with them then they may be inclined to share your work with /their/ fanbase, just by virtue of understanding what it's like to be a dev. Twitter is a good place to start, don't be afraid of striking up conversations.

- Have a good product, preferably with strong visuals. This is easier said then done, but competition is stiff out there so the better your work the easier time you will have attracting people. Visuals especially are important since they communicate faster and are literally eye-catching. They can give you a foot in the door for people caring enough to start reading your content and /really/ getting into your work. People, especially online, are lazy with short attention spans. We hate reading unless we already have invested interest in the topic.

I don't even follow all these rules, but from my experience these seem to be core reasons for some people succeeding.

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Re: How to Raise Awareness For Your Game?

#13 Post by Lishy »

Just wanna chime in and say that the advice people are giving here, is awesome. Keep being awesome, Lemmasoft! (b'_')b
Green Glasses Girl wrote:Did you use the forum search? There are few threads on the same topic:

- What would you say to first time game creators?
- Networking: Making your project popular?
- What visual novel's get more attention?
- How to build a fanbase

Dealing with profit/money:
- Fanbase before or after demo release? Or after Kickstarter?
- What makes a Kickstarter successful?
- Making some money with a commercial VN - is it possible?
- Making A Living off of VNs: What should I do?

And everything trooper6 listed stands true.
Also! If you have a sig, don't just post a link - post an image/logo with it! It's more likely to catch someone's attention.

Don't forget to use tumblr, twitter, Facebook, deviantART, reddit, etc. - social media and sites in general.

Oh hey, some of those are my threads! *embarrassment*
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