How to Market Your Game on Steam

Can experts Derek Lieu & Chris Zukowski help Danny fix up Stunt Derby's Steam page? The answer is hopefully yes by the end of this video.

Noclip's work is 100% crowdfunded.

Produced by Danny O'Dwyer

0:00 - This Project
2:13 - Steam Page 101
5:02 - Trailer Tips
7:57 - Steam Graphic Design
9:56 - Fixing our Steam Page
11:20 - PHYSICS!
15:57 - Game Improvements
17:05 - Our New Steam Page
18:06 - The Trailer
20:00 - Outro

[Nurolight]

To me, the trailer feels like it's missing a 'protagonist car' for us to follow. What was being said about forming a narrative for the trailer. Going from the starting line to the finish line. Cut away to other cars, sure but ultimately pull it back to focus on your main car. Like a very condensed episode of Wacky Races.

[wigglebot]

The steam page improvements really made this look a lot more approachable, great job

[Nurolight]

I feel like the natural next step for the cars is to have crumple-models. In a vein similar to Wreckfest. No matter what condition your car is in, you can keep going. Even if it's a cube.

[AbbreviatedReviews]

I know it's probably too early, but I think even a rudimentary damage modeling system would go a long way in a game with so many collisions.

It's also kind of wild how accurate that guy was in describing my Steam interactions. From the moment he mentioned all the quirks of spotting an asset flip to the priority I assign to each aspect of the presentation. It's weird to think people have such common tendencies even in isolation.

[restlessfrager]

At 10:32 I instantly got the whole NES cartridge feel, it hit me in my gut and made me say out loud "Oh this is fucking lit". It's crazy how a professionally made capsule does a whole lot to make your game stand out as a passion project instead of an instant cash grab.

[MaJuV]

Duuuude. From what I'm catching from this (and your previous) video, it seems like you're making a spiritual successor to Stunts, but as a physics party game? That's awesome!
As a kid I loved Stunts. I didn't have many games growing up, but Stunts on my old 486DX was the favorite game of not just me, but all of my friends and family who came over and wanted to play games. I think I spent hundreds in it. So call me invested in what you're trying to achieve here.
And yes, I totally get you having lots of fun while playing this game together, as we had tons of fun playing it back in the days.
I could give tons of suggestions of what to do based on my experience, but I don't want you guys to make a Stunts clone, but your own game. But still, based on my time with the OG Stunts, I can only suggest you may want to put focus on a few things in the future:
- The replay functionality. I already see you're working on that. Replaying your wins, but even more so your spectacular crashes was one of the most fun things in Stunts.
- Intro music. Making a good intro for your game probably deserves a video on its own. But it can be important. The Stunts theme music is stuck in my head for a reason after playing it for so long. Each time I see your cars drive in these two videos my memory triggers me with the OG theme song.
- The win/loss animations of the opponent avatars. I have absolutely no idea if this can work in what you're trying to build. But part of the fun of OG stunts were those enemy avatars. It felt good to beat the smug jerk or see the diva cry in tears. It triggered you to replay if they were boasting about how they beat you.
- The difference in terrain to drive on. I couldn't see if this was already present in your existing track builder, but OG Stunts had 3 types of track to drive on: regular road, icy road (white) and dirt road (brown). Each had a different interaction between car and road and could provide for interesting or weird shenanigans in your "modern physics" reincarnation.
Anyway, I will be putting this on my Steam wishlist. I will be looking forward to your progress.

[casedistorted]

It’s putting a game on a sale that triggers a “maybe I’ll buy this to try it” mentality.

Btw I love that 80’s stunt derby capsule at 10:35, reminds me of old Commodore 64 games

[eoghanmaguire]

I love the idea of the boxes allowing for a long jump style track!

[graefx]

Ngl I love the classical music slow mo trailer but maybe as a secondary trailer.
The 80s cart illustrated capsule art looks fantastic. Even if you didn't grow up with it, you can immediately feel what it invokes. Thanks 80s nostalgia media

[hikaruyoroi]

Ahhh, I completely misunderstood the title.

I thought the focus of the video was a discussion about marketing strategies focused on "Steam Sales" (i.e discounts)

But this was actually a discussion on setting up your game to get sales on Steam.

Great content nonetheless.

[TankorSmash]

For the trailer, showing a few seconds of map creation and then playing the map, and then showing off the replay feature of that map could help. I did that in Roguebreaker and has a little bump.

[GardinerAlan]

Definitely need a Noclip x GMTK crossover at some point.
Both of you are doing game dev process series' that are very different but equally interesting and fun.

[sharky]

Seeing grey cubes being hit still kind of give of vibes of the low effort asset flip. Maybe making a few more physics objects like cardboard boxes, rubber tires, beach balls, or even silly things like rubber ducks would be pretty easy to create and add a huge amount of value to the presentation of the game.

[katanano]

Here to let you know the trailer doesn't suck!

But since you asked for feedback here's my take. In terms of 'genre' like Chris said, I can't tell from the trailer if the game is supposed to be more like Trackmania or Gangbeasts. The realistic car physics and behind the back viewpoint evoke Trackmania and racing games that have crazy tracks but are otherwise pretty serious, but the cars going off-road and backwards and into boxes and into each other with different camera angles feels like the chaos of Human Fall Flat or Fall Guys.

If it's going to be more like a realistic racer, it doesn't look unique from the trailer. Other racing games have physics, and I don't see how this game's physics make it any different, even with loop de loop tracks. If it's going to be about weapons and damaging other vehicles, well that's not in yet so it's understandable.

From the trailer what would make me want to buy the game the most is if it was more of a party game to screw around in. Something like Mario Kart's battle mode, but with realistic cars where you do short driving challenges to pick up weapons (like a loop de loop, or sharp turn without a rail, or hit a tiny hoop off a ramp) .

In any case, it would be nice to show car customization. Showing some cars with some dumb looking paint jobs or physics objects glued on that react to all of the collisions and turns (like streamers or something on a spring on top of the car) would make the game look much more appealing, even if the cosmetics were very basic looking. If I'm playing a party game with my friends, we all want to pick the most ridiculous character options possible. Showing the drivers getting flung out of cars would be neat too, although I realize it's much easier to say all of these ideas than to implement them.

Thanks for the videos!

[LuminothLumi]

To me the trailer fails to convey the multiplayer magic, which seems to be the core fun aspect of your game. I would have gone for one of those "mic effect" trailers where you can hear people's excitement to play with friends, screw around and experiencing those close call wins. Basically, what you showed us all when you first pitched the game to us on this channel. It was more evocative of a fun multiplayer game. In this trailer, I could easily mistake it for a solo game with janky AI. But that's only my opinion.

[godonholiday]

It would be great to know how you are managing all of this? Jira boards? Project boards? Milestones? etc... Also I think the trailer is missing the fun from everyone laughing at funny things happening... 'no way.. hahahahaha' that type of thing. Great progress and series

[SaturnMemories]

I can attest to the accuracy of what your marketing guy says about associating your game with other recognizable games. Y'see, without any previous knowledge of your YouTube channel, I stumbled across Stunt Derby several weeks ago while searching Steam for upcoming racers, and what immediately caught my eye was its resemblance to Atari's Hard Drivin'. Anyway, I totally wasn't expecting to see the throwback racing game I had previously wishlisted when I clicked on this video. It was a nice little surprise, heh!

[soviut]

This game is screaming for speed boosters. Both track-mounted ones like in Wipeout as well as one you can just trigger with a button like Rocket League. I feel like that really adds some fun chaotic elements.

[timegentleman]

Great vid!
Sounds like it'll be quite easy to remake the trailer with the latest version of the game if you can use the same replay data to get updated videos and then just copy over your existing clips in the edit bin, which is really handy!

[MelodiousThunk]

I don't look at Steam pages in the way Chris described. I always look for a trailer that features in-game footage first, to get a sense of what the quality, gameplay and feel are like. If I like what I see, I check the price. If it's within my budget and I'm eager to give it a try, I'll check the comments and look for reviews or no-commentary playthroughs on YouTube (I don't really do these things in a fixed order). I don't pay much attention to the screenshots or the short description at all, although I sometimes glance at the short description while waiting for the trailer to load. That said, I only buy about 3 games per year (ignoring all the free ones I get on Epic), so I'm never really in a rush to make a decision.