Marketing is NOT Why Most Indie Games Fail

Sometimes I live stream development at:

[SimonSlav-GameMakingJourney]

Most polite way of saying " You're game is just not good enough " I've seen

[wukerplank]

"Most aspiring indie devs only have a very consumer level knowledge of their genre" – that one hit hard 😅

[acgumut]

Sometimes lucky things happen that will gain traction for your game without any marketing. For example I have been developing a simulation game called Coffee Shop Simulator for almost 2 years and I only had about a little over 300 wishlists. Recently a game called Supermarket Simulator launched and it became very successfully due to low price and high streamer interest. The part that did benefit me in this situation was the fact that my game also featured in the "products similar to this" page of Supermarket Simulator. Since the launch of that game I gained over 1.2k wishlists within a week without doing anything extra.

[JustDaveIsFine]

I've seen it called curb appeal, like selling a house. Some games have such a good premise, great style, or interesting hook that you're already looking before they've done any marketing.

[richardrothkugel]

A common story I think about when considering marketing is Slay the Spire. It launched with no marketing and only made 1000 sales in the first year, before it was picked up by a popular streamer / influencer. After that other streamers picked it up and it rocketed to one of the most popular roguelikes in the genre and launched the deckbuilding subgenre as a recognisable property.

Marketing does matter, but so does the quality of the game. I read endless post mortems about indie devs who complain about not becoming a hit on steam, only to review their game to discover the most boring, by-the-numbers, uninspired slop. It's like they lack complete self-awareness and understanding of what they are competing with and why their game is actually bad.

Great video with fantastic insights. You've earned my sub and I look forward to your future videos.

[ZabawneGierki-otts]

I think a good question to ask yourself is if you would buy your game yourself and at what price.

[mr_clean]

I took an advertising class and one of the first things we learned is that the best form of advertising is having a good product.

[CodeMonkeyUnity]

Great video!
The concept/hook is indeed the most important part to making a successful game (depending on what success means to you)
All the marketing tips are simply multipliers on that base number, a game with a compelling concept is so much easier to market.

[the_elder_gamer]

An adjunct point, via the quote I've probably posted more often than any other, nearly a decade old now, from a talk given by Tynan Sylvester, creator/lead dev of RimWorld:

"The markets people know about are saturated, because people know about them. A big piece of advice I'd give is: look at the market and try to figure out where the _under-served parts_ are. [my emphasis] What kinds of games do players want but can't get? Entering an already-saturated genre is a recipe for death. I think I could make a decent military shooter FPS, but I'd make like no money off it even if it was objectively fun, because that market is utterly saturated by big hyper-polished AAA releases. [note - this is from 2015/6] RimWorld was really deliberately targeted at a market that had a need that wasn't filled. I know there are other markets like that. _So the real first challenge might not be making the game at all._ [my emphasis] It's very carefully and deeply inspecting and understanding the market to see where the need is."

[CoolExcite]

I think farming sims are the best example of this. There are so many games in that genre where you can look at 5 seconds of a trailer (or often just 1 screenshot) and that's enough to conclude that it is exactly like every other farming game except with stiffer controls and a more generic art style. I'm not saying every game needs to reinvent the wheel, but if you don't do anything unique from the other games, and you don't do anything better than the other games, then I have no reason to bother

[argylemanni]

But why should I listen to you, a successful indie game developer who doesn't hide his name or his numbers, when I can listen to the anonymous guy who posts every single day in /r/gamedev who makes it sound utterly impossible to plan for success and execute on that plan? Maybe I'll find out after I make Tetris and make Pong. In all seriousness you're underappreciated for what you do. It's just a breath of fresh air to see an indie dev who does the right things intentionally and actually talks about it. So many stumbled into success and so many others just quietly make their millions and never talk about it. Then there's the ones who aren't even real game devs, they just show up to all the events and get speaking fees...

[mothdust]

Honestly, I feel like this advice is gold for industries outside of gaming as well. One that comes to mind is writers. The advice is always "just write" but without knowing the market you are writing into you will likely end up with a flop that goes nowhere.

[Sweepy_Games]

I mean, the things you're discussing are basically marketing. Making a product that's "easy to sell" is part of marketing, and market research falls under that umbrella too. BUT!!!! Im very thankfull for encouraging indies to do their marketing and market analysis. Us indies need voices like yours! Great insight! And while video is easy to watch, it's also super informative!

[hawshimagical]

one if the most overlooked issues i see is "how do i make something i care about successful?" as in, what do you do, if you just dont enjoy "marketable games"? nearly all of the biggest hits are just so unfun in my opinion, indie or not. people are giving such vague solutions like "just make good game" but i think the real answer to maximizing rate of success is to consistently open yourself up to feedback and earn early fans. most peoples creative vision of a great game just cant get as many peoples attention as undertale or stardew valley.

[RealCoachMustafa]

2:00 I've seen people say games like Celeste and Hollow Knight are hidden gems or under appreciated.

[tinalava]

I've seen people complaining that selling a game successfully is down to luck. It's cool to see someone saying otherwise. I guess that luck might factor in, but I believe the effort and decisions made by the developers play a much bigger role. Having control over the outcome feels more empowering and motivating, instead of everything being down to some luck you might get or not.

[wtfihavetoregister]

Lots of gamers are sort of arrogant - "It does not appleal to ME, so it appealing to lots of other people has to have explanation that does nothing with quality of game. Hmm, marketing..." and also "It appeals to me, why does it appeal to only small group of people? My taste is impeccable, so there needs to be rational explanation. Hmm, marketing..."

[noFate_games]

Your point about not looking like some "student project" is spot on. I ran a successful painting business for years and one thing I know for sure, whenever I went to sell a job to a customer, I know they thought my business was larger than just 2 guys. I never said it was, but they assumed this because I would come in with a hat/shirt with a logo, look the part, and I had a clipboard in hand. And it also helped that the name of the business wasn't something like "Joe's painting". A lot of things are just presentation. Take fancy restaurants, most of it is just great presentation and atmosphere, while the food isn't much different than anywhere else. If you look and act the part, you will be treated accordingly.

The problem is, most people have imposter syndrome with most things in life. It's not a good place to be, you gotta spread your wings and fly.

[Mukar]

This is 100% true. I like to think of this methodology as "match and surpass." Match the quality and features, and then surpass the reference with your own unique features and ideas. Bit of a strange comparison, but MANY companies have tried their hand at creating a Roblox competitor...and all except for Fortnite (so far) have failed. Unsurprisingly it all comes down to the fact that none of their products were able to match Roblox in terms of features and abilities. At the end of the day...who really wants to play the inferior game?

[noob_jr_sjrkc]

I think this entire argument rests heavily on there being a strong correlation between game quality and revenue, and through that website I can confirm that games I consider "hidden gems" are indeed underperformers. Dodgeball Academia was a great sports RPG, both Freedom Planets are the best action platformers I've ever played and Chicory is the best Zelda I've ever played, with story/music that rivals Undertale. The only "hidden gem" I saw claw its way out of relative obscurity was CrossCode.

"Marketing" for indies is weird because it largely comes down to youtubers making content, which has complex variables like the algorithm, social media shareability, genre saturation and whatnot. Some games overshadow the entire indie scene because every game design channel will cover them. Genres like 2D platformers are so saturated in the eyes of the public that you need a crazy art style like Pizza Tower to demand attention, while the niche genre of level makers is monopolized by Mario Maker because creators have negative incentive to branch out.

I think there's an interesting discussion surrounding what makes games "attention-grabbing" or "shareable" or "mainstream" or what makes a fertile subgenre like "Megaman-likes", where fans still look for new titles despite the broader apathy towards 2D platformers. There are definitely games that have all the ingredients of a "higher bracket" yet failed to reach that audience, and I think recommendation algorithms have a much bigger indirect impact on that than people realize.