Visibility absolutely feels harder than development sometimes. You can polish gameplay for months and still struggle to get eyes on it. Email lists and smart funnels matter way more than most indie devs think. I recently dug into marketing automation strategies for email campaigns, and it really changed how I look at long-term player engagement instead of chasing random spikes.

I do think visibility is an excuse. The solution is to make a good game. That leads to people leaving a good review and recommending the game to other people, which then pushes your game up further on websites, to get more people to see the game, and do the same thing. I personally haven't had this happen, but I have been reading this blog (howtomarketagame.com, do know that it's more targeted to Steam), and that is a very important thing that he talks about. Also, if you want to get a ton of people to play your game, go on Steam, because that's where all the players are, and therefore the money. Here is an article about traffic and visibility on itch.io, though. https://howtomarketagame.com/2025/05/12/benchmark-itch-io-traffic/.

At first I thought it was a struggle for visibility, but I live in a populated area and so i made QR Codes for my game and then went to every cafe in the area and asked if they had a community board I could post on. Worked great and gave me a way to talk to people in real life about my game. Also, if you participate in any clubs I'm sure your bound to find someone that also enjoys playing video games.

Honestly, you’re hitting on the exact thing that keeps most indies up at night. It’s definitely not just an excuse—it’s a massive structural shift in the industry. We’re in an era where 'Good' is the baseline, but 'Visible' is the actual hurdle.

I've seen so many talented devs treat marketing as an afterthought, but in reality, if you aren't a 'Content Creator' for your own game, you're essentially launching into a black hole. It’s exhausting because it requires a totally different brain than coding does.

One thing I’ve noticed helping people lately—especially those who hate the 'fake it 'til you make it' social media grind—is actually treating the business side like a skill tree. Instead of just guessing, some devs have been using platforms like