So for a long time now I am trying to sell of my game: https://uniprimesoftware.itch.io/universe-prime
I have no idea what is a good way to do it. I created around 1000+ posts on twitter and tons of posts on reddit and some other forums.
If anyone has some tip please give it, I am trying to make some money with a quality game, but maybe the way I present it is bad I have no idea...
The same thing is happening to my game: https://ofihombre.itch.io/randy-manilla
I released it in early access, and nobody is buying it. Despite the demos to try.
A demo is not a guarantee for having commercially success.
But having no demo on itch, and only a paid game is almost a guarantee for having no commercial success.
At least this is my opinion on the matter.
You would need to be an established creator of games that people would buy from you without trying before. And even there, I have had bad experiences with buying sequels and such.
Maybe some very good game play videos or other forms of marketing.
I imagine two scenarios:
1. Someone finding your project by marketing. Word of mouth. Have previously played your games. Youtube. Seeing someone play it. Whatever. The point is, the user knows what to expect. And might be inclined to buy, before even visting the page.
2. Someone finds the project by chance. No knowledge. A paywall is a hurdle. A demo version lowers that hurdle. A web playable version or demo version lowers it even more.
But they already know me a little because I made fangames and other smaller games, and yet they don't even bother to have interest in the latest project. The first scenario is already in process, only now it has not given the necessary impact, and the second, my game has alrealy demos from previous versions, but it seems a little contradictory to me that at the beginning you say that a demo is not a guarantee of success, and at the end you say that it helps reduce that hurdle.
Sorry, that is semantical and basically a part of math, so my language skills are lacking here to express myself. Also, it is art and without a huge marketing budget, it is also luck based.
Hmm. What would be an example to show by other topic, what I meant. I can only think of not quite good enough examples. Maybe this one:
If you wear a seat belt while driving your car, you increase your chance of survival in a crash. But this will not mean, just because you wear a seat belt, have an airbag, drive safely, etc, that you will have a crash - or survive said crash. Other people might have a crash without trying and even survive without buckling up.
If you have a demo version of your game, you increase the chance, a potential buyer will check out your game. But this will not mean, just because you have a demo, a good desription, nice screenshots, and adverstise yourself on youtube and social media, you will attract (paying) players. Other games might go viral without trying and even have commercial succes without advertisment or demo versions.
(Driving reckless would be a marketing budget. As I said, the analogy is not good. ;-) )
Also, this is only my opinion. Maybe look at top-sellers on itch, if you see any patterns. My first impression was, that the current top sellers went viral on youtube.
For your game, it might be as simple as people not wanting to buy it in early access. You have more ratings than some games that are here and on steam and are moderatly successfull on steam. Or maybe the people that previously followed you, were looking for other things or are more interested in free games.
tl;dr reducing a hurdle does not mean that people will run the track to begin with
You talk about this game? I read about it for a whole half minute and believe that your situation is not comparable.
It is like asking, why you can't cross the sea in a barrel, because barrels float and ocean liners float too and they can cross the ocean.
The floating is not the cause, it is just a helpful thing. Same as it is not the early access that gives success. Same as having a demo version gives not success. But take away the floating or the demo version, and you gonna have a hard time.
Early access is a money grab with usefull side effects. You either satisfy demand for a game that was advertised or you use it for extended beta testing and to get some money. Also, free marketing. And releasing in "early access" gives excuse to have even more bugs in a game that people would be angry about, if it were regular release. And that palworld marketed for a about three years before going early access and we talk about a game with a budget of around 10 million dollars.
The play time is another such thing. Just because you inflate your play time to 15 hours does not make a game successful. But on the other hand, very short games are deemed by some players not worth the purchase. But it depends a lot on the genre. For a crafting game, 15 hours is a bit on the low end. Those can easily have 100+ hours of play time. And if you do it wrong, people might detest the grinding.
Now, there is a bit of wisdom in the play time. But you need to view it backwards. If you managed to make a game that people want to play for 10+ hours, that is probably a good game and might have commerical success. So if you only look at the commercially successful games, you will notice that there are many games with a play time of 10-20 hours - and might jump to the conclusion that the play time is a cause. It is not. It is an effect or maybe only a side effect. Because you do not take into account all the other games that have this play time and are unsuccessful.
And that is my conclusion about all this. There is survivor bias at work. We notice the games that are successful and see things they have in common, but that statistic will not tell us, what is cause, what is effect, what is correlation. And the marketing budget is often forgotten.
You Know? For every long paragraph you make, you are right. The success of the game doesn't always come from investing a lot in marketing or its quality, but in an unpredictable way and it is the consumer who decides to buy or not, among other factors.
Many so-called marketing experts or even the developers themselves have the mistaken idea that to be successful, you have to superficially follow trends without understanding them.
Before moving it to Early Access, it was only the alpha and beta demos with free donations, but I realize that even with that model it didn't work much. All this boils down to is that it's not the kind of game that people want?
I may not be right, but I try to argue soundly. The thing with the demo version I advised for, was because of observation. I noticed games with paid only content having less ratings and followers and comments than pay what you want games. This still might be a fluke, because of what games I did browse. Maybe there are paid only games that fare better, because they are paid.
Having success as an indie game developer is a bit like having success as an indie musician/singer. There are just so many people trying it. It is hard. Even if you do everything "correct", you might still not have success and frustratingly see projects that did many things wrong yet still are more successful.
Oh, and you observed first hand what a demo version could have as an effect. People posted videos on youtube while playing your demo version. Maybe you got some followers due to that.
SOME BASIC TIPS:
Quality of promotional material and the game itself is #1. The game has to look good enough to persuade buyers to download or buy, and then actually be good.
Graphics are important to a lot of people, and visual interest is crucial to making any sales.
Not that it needs to be photoreal or anything, it can be pixel art or very stylized, but there must be appeal there, and a certain stylistic consistency that is effective in communicating the game's play. Some titles have done will with very simple graphics (eg. Baba is You) because they had a creative concept in game design, and that is important too, but it is the visual look of the game that will offer a first impression, and the gameplay that follows will be the retention factor post purchase that makes the game spread via word of mouth. But to manage the first few purchases, you need to make the players interested in playing, which usually will be an uphill battle if the game doesn't look interesting visually. Pricing is also a challenge - even a single dollar of price is a psychological barrier for many people so as others have stated, demos help in letting people try the thing and see that it runs and is fun, and once they've gotten to the point where they like that demo they are likely to buy the full thing. The less friction is involved in that upgrade the better - it's best if the free demo includes an easy link back to the page where the full version can be bought!
Visibility. That is letting people know your work exists. Social media is one avenue but if you're posting on a single social platform and not multiple that's not great, and you need to engage with communities interested in the type of thing you are doing. [Related gaming fanbases for your genre] and create links back to your game as you do so. Think about visual media as images will grab attention faster than text, and animation even better still. Pinterest, Instagram are social platforms focused on visual media and they can be worth using. Also, as stated earlier, sending info of your game to relevant streamers/YouTubers who play indie games is good but don't expect more than 5-10% best case to respond. It is not enough to message one or two people, you've got to have a whole list of YT people to message and also maybe some game review sites, gaming blogs. This will of course work best if your game's good! Also, a trailer (YouTube video, 90 seconds or so) highlighting the game is a good move. It should show the game's look and play, it should sound good too, and get across the appeal of it without needing to cover absolutely everything that is there. It should have a note on where and when the game is releasing - on the end screen. That leaves interested people with some indication of what to do next. A big link in the description back to the Steam page, game website is best. (You ought to have a webpage and domain for it ideally)
Accessibility. 80% of PC game purchases roughly are on Steam. If you're serious about reaching players and racking up sales on a game you made that actually is of quality, SERIOUSLY consider Steam as a venue. The $100 entry price is a challenge but also may be worth it if you believe the game is not a little personal experiment but an actual potential success that can sell dozens, hundreds, even thousands of copies. That will - again - only happen if it's fairly good.
But if you have one flagship title and can get it onto Steam, its revenue may be enough to pay the fees for all the subsequent stuff made after that. Seeing as in most genres on Steam the median sales value is $1000-7000. That is, if you can be in the middle of the pack in quality and interest, you'll be netting a thousand dollars or more there. My target on many of my projects is be slightly above the average in quality with a specific quirk of aesthetics or structure that sets my game apart from the genre and subgenre it's part of. And if I am there and I make $2000 per game that's about the threshold where it's worth it. As that is about how much I spent on the average game of mine, so at least there I'm not losing money. Some titles with handmade visuals are the most expensive ones of mine. Miniature Minigolf {Minigolf courses all done in mini with stop-motion, etc), Miniature Multiverse (Myst-like first person puzzler set in a mass of fairly large scale miniature environments carefully handcrafted) and sometimes I've hired people to solve specific weak spots - a coder to figure out a particularly difficult code interaction, a couple of musicians who composed music tracks...) A lot of this is funded by revenue from my Etsy shop which is way more successful than anything I've done on itch.io. (I sell original art and print services and papercraft designs on Etsy)
WHY SHOULD ANYONE LISTEN TO ME?:
I actually am taking this seriously and working hard on a handful of indie titles (various game dev projects with varying but appealing art styles from hand drawn to miniature art and painterly, 3d and 2d... ) and I've yet to release a lot of what is in the works but I have netted $200+ in sales on itch all the same simply selling game asset packs. There are 3000+ asset files available across a bunch of different collections on my itch.io profile, likely 5000+ will be there by end of year. The range of stuff all just keeps expanding as I keep going on it. Mostly textures (seamless, photography-based PBR texture packs built from real-world sources and materials I photographed myself) and 3d assets (models efficiently UV mapped, collections of them with low polycount, but reasonable levels of realism and in .FBX, .OBJ formats that are widely used.)
There's no shortcut to success here as with most things. It takes a ton of time and skill and persistence. Indie dev is not a 'quick buck' thing but takes a long time to build to the point where your work is so solid and intriguing and compelling that people actually want to buy it. Most of the hobbyists who try will fail but those who are driven primarily by creative passion and the process and a desire to actually offer value to the gaming and game dev community and not simply rip them off, are the ones who will persevere and work hard and long enough to end up making things that do, ultimately, eventually succeed.
Extensive analysis. Nice to see someone post in those threads that actually did the deed and knows from experience.
I would want to add to this point something
Pricing is also a challenge - even a single dollar of price is a psychological barrier for many people
Know your audience and know your platform.
A single dollar game on Steam is actually a double barrier and being free on Steam is also a barrier. If it is on Steam, why does it not cost some 10 or 20 bucks. Indie titles that look like they have some production value usually have that price range.
Of course you should not overprice your game; Steam has a defacto no questions asked refunds policy within 2 hours playtime, and people will use it, if they think the game delivers not what was promised. Also, negative reviews. And they are public.
One could mirror the pay what you want from Itch to some extent by having a free game on Steam with a few bonus dlc, like the buy-me-a-coffee artwork collection and, give-me-more-money-because-you-liked-the-game soundtrack.
And of course you can have a free demo on Steam as well. But I do not see many games using that feature.
But I for one also get suspicous about 1 dollar games on Itch. Did the publisher not grasp the benefits of pay what you want? If you set a minimum price, I think it wiser to have the price be 5 or 10 bucks and make a sale at the usual sale times around the year, even down to 1 dollar, instead of setting minimum to 1.
This all assumes of course that we talk about a game that is worth a couple bucks in comparison to all the other games, and not only because friends and family told the developer how good the game is.
