🕯 This Is All That Matters About Games Marketing

Making games is hard. And as we know, marketing is S-Tier.

With thousands of articles, books, talks, and more to consume, what are we to do? We small teams and solo game developers are too busy to worry about all this.

Fortunately, there are just 3 things you need to know about marketing your game:

1. 🎮 It's all about your game.
2. 🎁 The packaging is important.
3. 📢 Influencers need to love it.

Let's dive in:

🎮 It's all about your game

If there's any guaranteed magic formula for success, it's in your game itself.

Nothing else matters as much as this.

If your game isn't exciting to players then it's not going to be a runaway success.

Does your game have "the magic" or doesn't it?

I like Chris Zukowski's analogy of a feather versus a bowling ball. A bowling ball is heavy, hard to market. A feather just lifts into the air effortlessly.

Most of us have probably worked on our fair share of bowling balls. We've felt their weight; when we talk about them, nobody listens. When we post about them, few like it. Our wishlist numbers sloooooooowly crawl up.

I haven't been fortunate enough to work on a "feather" game, but you and I have seen them, haven't we? They're everywhere! Minecraft, Dead Cells, Untitled Goose Game, Hades, Oxygen Not Included, ASTRONEER, Dave the Diver ...

... Cuphead, Undertale, Terraria, Hollow Knight, Inscryption. These games have "the magic" and players gobble them up without needing much convincing.

Does your game have The Magic?

So which one is your game? A bowling ball or a feather? Somewhere in the middle? To find out, you can compare your numbers against Chris Z's benchmarks, or:

🔭 Watch people play your game.

What happens when people play? Do their eyes light up? Do they make a happy sound? Are they drawn in? Does the rest of the world melt away? Do they forget you exist? Do they finish and immediately ask for more?

Or do they look confused, bored, eager to stop playing?

Basically, do they love the game or not?

Look, the answer is usually no. I've worked on a lotta games, and so many of them haven't had whatever magical quality it takes to be a feather. This is true for many of us, much of the time. It's OK; we press on.

Rate your game

As a "fun" little experiment, give your game a "magic" rating, then assume that all of your marketing efforts will have a multiplier, in the form of either a nerf or a buff:

📉 Low magic? Maybe that's like 10% marketing effectiveness. Yikes! You'd have to promote your game 10x harder just to reach a standard baseline.

📈 High magic? Maybe that's like a 1000% marketing effectiveness. Whoa! This could be what makes your business sustainable.

🎁 The packaging is important

Most people who encounter your game will only ever experience your packaging. They'll see your key art, a screenshot, a trailer, and maybe a video or a livestream.

You know what I'm talking about. You see a capsule on a Steam page and scroll right by. Or a thumbnail of a new video from a YouTuber you like. Maybe you've seen the game pop up on your radar a few times now, but you can barely remember what it's called (and you certainly haven't played it).

You've entered what's called the marketing funnel, at the "attention" stage.

Your game's packaging is usually what folks see first, which gets their attention. If they like what they see, then you've got their interest. Continue down the funnel and if your game is cool enough, you've got yourself a new fan!

It all starts with the packaging.

Some elements of good packaging

1. Enticing name
2. Gorgeous key art
3. Convincing gameplay trailer(s)
4. Attractive, diverse screenshots
5. Excellent press kit

An enticing name is definitely helpful, but not completely necessary. My advice is to come up with a name that is unique, memorable, easy to spell, simple to pronounce, and describes the game a bit. That's a lot to take on!

You'll sometimes see hit games with bizarre names, so what do I know? It's all black magic (really this just emphasizes: it's all about the game).

Gorgeous key art helps set the stage that your game is high quality. It's no secret that people like to look at pretty pictures. When your key art is much higher quality than your game's visuals, or in a different art style entirely, it makes your game feel bigger. It creates multiple ways to take in the mood of your game.

Convincing gameplay trailers seem mandatory, don't they? I'd have a hard time finding a hit game without one or a series of trailers to support it.

Attractive, diverse screenshots are necessary. From what I've seen & heard, folks tend to check out the screenshots before the trailers, since looking at a few images takes less time. With your select few screenshots, you want to dazzle & showcase your game's diversity.

Lastly, a press kit is crucial for growth. I think most of us think of press kits as kind of dry & boring, but guess who finds them super important?

Streamers & YouTubers! They need press kits. I'll explain why next.

📢 Influencers need to love it

Us indies don't have big marketing budgets. We might not have any marketing budget at all! It's impossible for us to reach the massive audiences of huge game studios on our own, so we need to enlist the help of our players.

Sometimes you fight hard to earn a fan. You spend time with them, time on their complaints or requests, time focused directly on one person. And that's it. That person may even go on to write a negative review, and never play (or talk about) your game again. Oof.

That's just how it goes for us sometimes. Energy spent, little gained. If that's how we had to get every sale we'd never survive.

To stay in the game, we need that 10x, 100x, 1000x multiplier. We can afford to spend that time & attention sometimes, so long as the return on investment is there. Streamers & YouTubers have the ability to broadcast your game to huge audiences, and we need that amplifier. We need it!

Since they're so critical, and could have such a big impact, we can afford to spend extra time appealing to YouTubers & streamers.

Streamers & YouTubers love press kits

Now that we understand why Streamers & YouTubers need to love your game, let's support them. These content creators need high-quality, high-resolution, transparent images that they can use in their thumbnails.

Remember when I said earlier that packaging is important? Streamers & YouTubers know this too! Most viewers will only ever see their thumbnails, scrolling by in a huge list. The more enticing that thumbnail, the more likely the viewer will click the video ... the more likely the viewer will see more of your game.

See how this works?

So get your amazing key art, packaged up in your press kit, ready to be used in thumbnails for Twitch, YouTube, and wherever else. Everybody's got press kits, but maybe yours is packed full of useful stuff like transparent images!

Contact the right people

To love your game, streamers & YouTubers first need to know about your game!

Instead of just telling everyone on the planet, find the folks that would actually dig your game. Do the research to find out who would like to play your game specifically, based on what they've already played & enjoyed.

Here's how to do that:

1. Get a huge list of YouTubers etc. (If you have lists please post in the Discord.)
2. Filter down to just the ones that like the type of game you're making.
3. Find/extract their email addresses.
4. Email the game directly to them (e.g. an Itch or Steam key)

I wrote a step-by-step guide to help with this process:

Outreach tips

1. Don't be annoying – send one email, follow-up once. That's it.
2. Be brief: "Here's the game! Here's a GIF! Bye!" (maybe a lil more than that)
3. If email doesn't work, try asking on social media. Friendly folks might ping the people you're trying to contact, creating a conversation for you.

Summary

Marketing feels overwhelming, doesn't it? There's so much to know: have a social media presence, optimize your bio, translate to Chinese, prepare for Steam Next Fest, try TikTok, make an IndieDB page, update this, optimize that, yada yada.

When you're feeling lost, think about the small handful of things that matter most:

1. 🎮 It's all about your game.
2. 🎁 The packaging is important.
3. 📢 Influencers need to love it.

Nail all three of these and you'll have an absolutely amazing game that people can't stop talking about, with an irresistible landing page, that streamers & YouTubers love playing and spreading all over the world. Good luck!

🎧 Listen to the experts

My advice is mostly for myself, and (of course) not always applicable to what you've got goin' on. Sure I just wrote an opinionated piece stuffed with marketing advice, but I am not a marketing expert. I'm just some guy who makes games and writes books. Welcome to the Internet!

Don't listen to me; listen to yourself, do your own research, and figure out what works for you. For a deep dive with an actual marketing expert, listen to my podcast Steam Game Marketing GOLD with Chris Zukowski.

Lastly, my GDC talk is up! Content-Ready Game Development is ready for you: