Lemma Soft Forums

Hey!

I'm a long-ish time solo dev who has mostly released free games but has also tried a couple of commercial projects.
I was thinking lately about what went right and what went wrong with my first commercial project, and I was wondering what others' experiences have been.

The TL;DR of that essay I link above is basically that traditional marketing techniques like press releases seemed to have little impact (at least if you're too small for larger publications/streamers to notice), but well-timed sales and a well-designed storefront can both be significant.

Based on my own admittedly limited experience, it seems like random interest spikes (i.e., a big streamer happens to find your game) are possible, maybe even probable if you keep at it long enough and keep releasing games -- but they're also not anything you have much control over. I also suspect the corresponding sales spike is smaller for narrative-driven games than it is for something more interactive, like Among Us, although I don't really have data to back that up.

What about everyone else? Have you had a similar experience or totally different? Anything you wish you knew starting out?

I'd agree with your belief that press releases seem to have little impact. Unless they somehow interest a reviewer enough to review the game, I don't think they do much.

I did have a fair amount of luck with sending Steam Keys out to reviewers. Not ALL reviewed the game, but at least *some* did, which meant that my game, at least, had a few reviews (which assumedly went out to their followers). It also means that my game ended up with at least *some* content on its community page, which felt nice.

Now, to be fair, I released my game for free (so it's hard to gauge how well it would have done if it had cost something). But as far as "getting people to play the thing" went, I felt like getting reviews (even from not very well known people) was fairly useful in gaining at least *some* interest/community interaction. (Weirdly, I keep getting requests for keys even though the game is free. I guess Indie game reviewers just like to feel special? )

Another thing which I think *might* have helped would be to team with other Indie Devs to put out a bundle or somesuch and try to leverage potential interest in other, similar games. I haven't tried doing that, yet, though, so unsure how it would work in practice.

I've definitely had a similar experience. My first commercial game had a very weak launch, but subsequent sales were pretty effective. (By now outweighing "50% of your total sales will be from the first month" or whatever other numbers are going around.)

People always say that the VN market is getting saturated, and that you need to do something different to stand out. But the truth is that doing something different is much more likely to backfire (if you don't already have a large fanbase), because people prefer to stick to things they know and trust.

I also want to note that good visuals aren't everything. I'd say my first commercial game (Deep Sea Valentine) is quite pleasing to look at, but that wasn't enough to make it an easy sell. I unfortunately had a negative review at the top of my list for a very long time, so that probably contributed to it.
In general, I underestimated the power of reviews. Once you get your first 10 reviews and achieve a "Positive" rating, things get a lot easier, so my best advice would be to do everything in your power to get those 10 reviews. (This is easier said than done, because reviews by people who get a free game key don't count.)
Not only does Steam straight up give your game more traffic, but customers are much more likely to trust (and buy) it.

When it comes to pricing, people usually expect $1 >= 1 hour of gameplay. When you price your game higher than that, there will be some people who complain, but that shouldn't stop you from respecting your own efforts.

Also, add achievements! People on Steam love achievements, and my second game even had some random stranger publishing a complete "100% achievements guide" within 1 hour of me publishing the game.

Thanks for sharing this! I'm interested to find out a bit more about your experience with press releases. When you say it didn't work, do you mean:

1) The media outlets did not respond, or
2) You earned some previews and articles, but they did not direct any significant traffic to your distribution pages?

From my own experience, I found my press kits useful as they earned me some media mentions and favorable reviews, which I guess gave my VN Gloom and Doom enough credibility to get picked up by a few publishers.

That said, the majority of my sales came in during discount seasons - and an appearance on Steam's Tokyo Game Show Online page definitely helps as well (even though I'm all the way at the very bottom).

droo_radley wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 04, 2021 12:10 am

Thanks for sharing this! I'm interested to find out a bit more about your experience with press releases. When you say it didn't work, do you mean:

1) The media outlets did not respond, or
2) You earned some previews and articles, but they did not direct any significant traffic to your distribution pages?

What I found was that media outlets either didn't respond, or responded with a polite, "This sounds great, but we don't have time to review". (Which makes sense! There are a lot of indie games out there!)

In the one case where I did get a review, I didn't see any especial traction from that site. (I think fewer than 10 directs were from it. Although, to be fair, it was a small site. I suspect things might have been different had the game made a "best of indies" list on Kotaku or something.)

Which doesn't necessarily mean that press reviews are worthless, but considering that the game had something like 10k downloads, the directs from my (one) review were pretty minimal all in all.

I do think that if you can garner interest from a large site that you can potentially gain some real traction...but I wasn't able to do that. (And I'm not sure how you do it - probably a GREAT press release combined with some luck.)

At least for me, what seemed to be most useful were sending out review keys. If I had to do it over, I'd also probably make the game hook-ier from the beginning. (I think average time playing the game was all of 10 minutes - ow! - which means that it didn't grab people as well as it should have. I think had I made the game open with the hook, it would have done significantly better and sometimes debate re-releasing it that way.)

Mutive wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 29, 2021 11:27 am

I did have a fair amount of luck with sending Steam Keys out to reviewers. Not ALL reviewed the game, but at least *some* did, which meant that my game, at least, had a few reviews (which assumedly went out to their followers). It also means that my game ended up with at least *some* content on its community page, which felt nice.

Interesting... Yeah, I hadn't launched a game on Steam until recently, so I do think the advice is skewed toward smaller platforms like itch.io. Not sure why I waited so long to try Steam, but you really do notice the effects of the vastly larger userbase. Kinda sad, because I really like itch.io, but that's how it goes!

1) The media outlets did not respond, or
2) You earned some previews and articles, but they did not direct any significant traffic to your distribution pages?

A little of both. Mostly nonresponses, but a few from smaller outlets. No significant traffic related to the latter, but in hindsight, I do think maybe they help build "legitimacy" for any future potential buyers who try to Google your game. If I do another big project, I'm definitely still including press releases as part of the strategy, just not banking on them as a major factor.

I also want to note that good visuals aren't everything. I'd say my first commercial game (Deep Sea Valentine) is quite pleasing to look at, but that wasn't enough to make it an easy sell. I unfortunately had a negative review at the top of my list for a very long time, so that probably contributed to it.
In general, I underestimated the power of reviews. Once you get your first 10 reviews and achieve a "Positive" rating, things get a lot easier, so my best advice would be to do everything in your power to get those 10 reviews. (This is easier said than done, because reviews by people who get a free game key don't count.)

Yeah, this about reviews 100%. When your sales are on the low end, literally one review can be enough to cause a significant bump in traffic. You definitely are to some extent at the mercy of which internet randos find you on the algorithm first.

YossarianIII wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 05, 2021 9:35 pm

Interesting... Yeah, I hadn't launched a game on Steam until recently, so I do think the advice is skewed toward smaller platforms like itch.io. Not sure why I waited so long to try Steam, but you really do notice the effects of the vastly larger userbase. Kinda sad, because I really like itch.io, but that's how it goes!

Well, to be fair, it does cost money (which is just one more expense you'll never recoup if it's a free game...and one you may not recoup if it's a paid game...) and it can be a real PITA. (There are a ton of steps and a lot of material that needs to be created to set up the storefront.) So I get why people don't do it. With that said, downloads on Steam are something like 50-100xs more than those in itch.io (at least for my one released game), as are reviews, community interaction, etc.

In my mind, it's worth it if it's a game that you've put a fair amount of time and effort into your project. (I wouldn't go to the effort for something I was just fooling around with, though.)

A little of both. Mostly nonresponses, but a few from smaller outlets. No significant traffic related to the latter, but in hindsight, I do think maybe they help build "legitimacy" for any future potential buyers who try to Google your game. If I do another big project, I'm definitely still including press releases as part of the strategy, just not banking on them as a major factor.

I think it may, although I'm not really sure. I've yet to be able to turn up the one review on Google. (Although I *have* been able to turn up the Steam storefront.) And the one person who did a Let's Play had something like 25 views of his video. (Ouch.) I'm not sure any of it screams "legitimacy". With that said, you never know. The game premise may just catch the eye of a someone who is highly influential!

Mutive wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 06, 2021 11:16 am

I think it may, although I'm not really sure. I've yet to be able to turn up the one review on Google. (Although I *have* been able to turn up the Steam storefront.) And the one person who did a Let's Play had something like 25 views of his video. (Ouch.) I'm not sure any of it screams "legitimacy". With that said, you never know. The game premise may just catch the eye of a someone who is highly influential!

Yeah, I actually noticed that one of the unintended side effects of uploading to Steam is that it bumps down reviews/Let's Plays from smaller creators in Google and instead bumps up empty MetaCritic pages / weird Russian dealtracker sites to the top of the search, lol.

I definitely agree that the cost (both in time and money) really only makes Steam worthwhile for more serious projects.

My experience is also kinda skewed because my only Steam release so far is more or less a re-release of a previously available game. I'm kinda curious to see if a simultaneous itch/Steam release would synergize to boost traffic overall, or if Steam would just eat some of the itch.io sales. Based on your experience, it kinda sounds like it might be the latter, though I'm sure it varies from release to release.

YossarianIII wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 06, 2021 4:21 pm

My experience is also kinda skewed because my only Steam release so far is more or less a re-release of a previously available game. I'm kinda curious to see if a simultaneous itch/Steam release would synergize to boost traffic overall, or if Steam would just eat some of the itch.io sales. Based on your experience, it kinda sounds like it might be the latter, though I'm sure it varies from release to release.

I suspect they're reasonably different markets and that, to the extent that Steam is "eating" my itch.io share, it's pretty minimal.

I've released maybe 4 games on itch, and aside from one, all have under 1000 downloads. (And seem to have a reasonably similar #s to each other.) Steam has in the tens of thousands, which makes me think it's just a MUCH larger market (that probably isn't stealing much from itch.io) I also released first on itch, and saw a decrease similar to that of other games (where there's a spike on release then a quick dwindling), with no major decline when the game appeared on Steam a bit later.

Now, to be fair, probably at least a person or two has seen that the game is available both places and gone with Steam. (I find Steam more convenient as a user, so when given the choice...) But I suspect that the vast majority of the Steam downloads wouldn't have happened had I not released there.

Thanks for the article! Our experience was similar... We release simultaneously on Steam and itch.io and slightly later on Google Play. We had way more purchases on Steam, but I like itch.io and it's easy to use so I was happy with releasing both places at once. It is hard to get something the gives momentum... but like you said, instead of trying to figure that out, I'd rather make more games!