๐Ÿ“ข How to find content creators to play your game

You've got a game.

You want content creators to play it!

How do you SMASH these two together, to generate happy players & lots of sales?

Lotsa ways, of course, but here's one idea (with 4 steps) โ€“

  1. ๐ŸŽฎ Know your game
  2. ๐Ÿ“‹ Compile a list of content creators
  3. ๐Ÿ–ผ๏ธ Prepare a press kit
  4. ๐Ÿ“ข Execute an outreach campaign

๐ŸŽฎ 1) Know your game

First you've gotta be aware of what kind of game you're making so you can send it to the people who actually want to play it.

So come up with an elevator pitch. Try to have 2-3 sentences ready to go. Here's my game Pixel Washer's current Steam store description:

Pixel Washer is a cozy, zen-like game where you play as a cute piggy power washing beautiful pixelated worlds. Wash sprites, upgrade your power washer, and find hidden secrets.

I'll iterate on this over time, but this version does a good enough job. It explains that the game is cozy, pixelated, and then states the verbs players will be using while playing my little game.

An even shorter, snappier elevator pitch could also be handy in certain situations. For my case, how about simply: Pig washes pixels. That might be enough to get someone's attention! You could use that in the subject line of emails or in places where space is tight such as social profile bios.

My twitter bio is pretty clear: buy my book, wishlist my game (also: I'm taken! lol)

Also know your game's genre, visual style, tags, and categories it fits into.

Right off the bat, a creator who mostly plays violent first-person shooters probably isn't going to enjoy Pixel Washer. Sure it's possible that they play a wide variety of games, but in many cases you'll find that a creator sticks to a general genre or two.

Knowing your game also entails knowing some of its comps, or comparable games. So make a list of those. My comparable games for Pixel Washer are:

  1. PowerWash Simulator (obviously)
  2. Unpacking
  3. Sticky Business
  4. A Little to the Left

So anyone who has enjoyed those games might enjoy Pixel Washer.

Influential Games slide from the Pixel Washer pitch deck.

๐Ÿ“‹ 2) Compile a list of creators

Now that we know what kind of game we're pitching, let's get a list of people who like that thing. Time to make a spreadsheet!

A little snapshot of my spreadsheet

Collect your data how you prefer; I like Google Spreadsheets for this. In my sheet I created columns for:

  • Outlet (the name of the person or company you'll be contacting)
  • Contacted (when and how you messaged them, if you have)
  • Reason Added (why they're on the list)
  • Email (their address if you have it)
  • Notes (relevant miscellaneous tidbits like language spoken)
  • URL(s) (their contact or landing page)

Include whatever else you think would be useful! I also like to sort them by sections like Contacted, Haven't Contacted Yet, Not Interested, etc.

What do we call these fine folks we want to contact?

YouTubers, Twitch streamers, TikTokkers, influencers, content creators? They have a wide variety of possible names, and many of these folks are on most or all of the major social platforms.

I don't like the word influencer. IDK why exactly โ€“ maybe it implies the person having an influence, which isn't necessarily true? Some folks don't influence much, but simply create cool videos and have an audience who loves to watch them.

I also don't love content creator because it's vague and the word content is overused. Content isn't even descriptive! Technically a book is content, but you'd probably rather someone make video content of your game.

Anyway, naming is hard, and there's no perfect label. For simplicity let's just call them creators. These are people who make gaming content and, if they cover your game, could help you move the needle towards success.

So we're calling them creators. Anyway how do we find them? There are essentially infinite ways, ranging from searching YouTube manually (slow) to knocking on doors around your neighborhood (ridiculous).

The answer: tools! Glorious tools. Let's talk about a couple.

How to find creators using Playboard

Playboard is a useful way to find YouTubers specifically. You could browse the most viewed gaming videos in your area, although let's be real, we probably can't get in touch with the very biggest channels. So let's focus on small-to-medium sized channels.

Playboard / Gaming / Most Liked / USA

We also want to focus on players of our comparable games. To do that:

  1. Search for <name of game> (e.g. "PowerWash Simulator")
  2. Click the Videos tab
  3. Change Relevance to Most viewed (or your preferred metric)
  4. Limit Views to your target amount (e.g. 10,000 -> 50,000)
Playboard / "powerwash simulator" / 10-50k / Most viewed

Feel free to poke around the software and use the data that you like best.

Click into the channels where:

  1. They'd probably like your game (they play similar games)
  2. You think they'll actually receive your message or email (not too popular)
  3. You think they can help show your game to more players (big enough audience)

From their channel pages, view the About tab to see if their email is available. If it is, great! Email is our preferred method. If their email isn't available, you can try to direct message them on YouTube, or click their social links to see if you can message them through another platform.

Just track that in your spreadsheet in a way that makes it easy to message them. Then repeat these steps for each of your comparable games.

Careful about the daily limit ๐Ÿ˜… Keep reading for a daily process idea!

How to find creators using SullyGnome

SullyGnome covers Twitch stats and analysis. There are of course many ways to use this tool, but let's try to repeat the process of finding popular(ish) creators who like to play our comparable games.

  1. In the upper-right search bar, search for <game name> (e.g. "Unpacking")
  2. Click the Most watched tab
  3. Select a time range e.g. 7 days (use whatever you like)
SullyGnome / "Unpacking" / Most watched / 7 days

From here, you can go to any creator's page by clicking the Twitch logo to the right of any row. From their page you can see what contact options they have available (if any). They might have contact details on their Home or About tab, or might have enabled direct messages. Track whatever method(s) you can use.

Honestly many Twitch pages I saw had no contact information. Sometimes there'd be an email address on the Home/About tabs, but sometimes I ended up using their YouTube link instead. Most times I was able to find an email address.

๐Ÿ’ก Here's a pro tip โ€“ if you don't see an About tab on YouTube, add "/about" to the URL to see if that gives you an About popup. This worked for me several times.

This is a lotta data work. Boring, right?

Are there better ways to do this? YES! Of course, but I like to begin with brute-force and then optimize later. (I probably picked this up from programming for so long.)

There are automation tools, scripts, and probably paid scraping services you can use to streamline this process for you, but this will work for FREE and for ANYONE. It's a good place to start; you can optimize later.

If you have a process you'd like to share, join the Valadria Discord!

Additional creator lists I had bookmarked but are aging rapidly:

๐Ÿ–ผ๏ธ 4) Prepare a press kit

A press kit (or media kit) is a collection of text, images, and other files to help journalists and similar creators make content about your game.

Press kits can be downloadable .zip files, web pages, or something between. There are no hard 'n fast rules for them, except that they should include some key things:

  1. A description of your game, when/where it will release, and who made it
  2. Logos, banners, and other images for use in thumbnails and promo images
  3. Several screenshot images in standard formats
  4. Links to your landing pages (e.g. Steam), trailers, and other important URLs
Think of your press kit as a fun gift to unwrap! Inside are the delights of gaming โ€“ poetic phrases, beautiful imagery, and the desire to entertain.

Also think of your press kit as a thumbnail creation kit. Eye-catching thumbnails are as important to a YouTuber as they are to an indie game developer! So give them what they need to make great thumbnails.

Not sure where to start with your press kit? Try presskit():

presskit() - spend time making games, not press
presskit() (pronounced โ€˜do presskitโ€™) is the completely free solution to fast, simple & beautiful press kits.

presskit() was created by Rami Ismail of indie studio Vlambeer (so you know it's good!).

Lastly, to make your press kit more exciting, you need eye-catching key art.

Like this, the Pixel Washer key art:

๐Ÿ“ข 5) Execute an outreach campaign

"Execute an outreach campaign" is just a fancy way of saying "message people".

Anyway let's message people!

Make sure your email (or message) is quick and to-the-point. These creators get loads of messages like these and are looking to scan many of them rapidly. So focus on the main points:

  1. Pixel Washer is a chill, relaxing game about power washing beautiful pixels.
  2. It looks up your alley because you played <comparable game>.
  3. Here's the Steam trailer, a link or key to play the game, and the press kit.

Write as little as possible, be as entertaining where you can, and get straight into the good parts: what your game is and how to play it. If you have any embargoes, or special rules around when you do/don't want creators to post content, be sure to include that. Otherwise, keep it simple.

Feel free to be less cringey than me.

I'll be the first to tell you that you should NOT use other games to describe your game. However, there are exceptions to every rule! In this context especially, you've likely found these folks based on what they've played before, so in some cases you know for sure that they are familiar with certain games.

In this case, I think it's fine, even preferred, to mention your comparable games.

๐Ÿšซ STOP describing your game using other games
Here are 3 reasons to describe your game itself instead of saying, โ€œItโ€™s like X meets Yโ€

You're reaching out to players of these specific games so it's fine.

Once you've got your email(s) prepared, when should you send them?

  1. Early in the week (Monday everyone's busy catching up, so shoot for Tuesday or Wednesday)
  2. First thing in the morning (e.g. 8am, and be sure to target their timezone)

Send an email (or a message or whatever), don't be shy! If you don't hear back, and haven't seen anything posted, wait an appropriate amount of time and follow-up just once. Email, wait a couple weeks, follow-up, then bow out. Don't become annoying about it, as they might be too busy or just not interested.

โฐ Pro tip: Gmail lets you schedule emails!

How to avoid getting overwhelmed

If you're like me, you like making games. What fun!

If you're even more like me, you find marketing your game draining. Not so fun!

Follow me on Twitter where I'll shower you with more game dev memes and comics.

Sometimes I'll get some random energy and bulldoze into various marketing tasks, feeling like I'll "get it all done" in one fell swoop.

However: nope! That's not how this works.

Marketing is like art, or game development, where there's no "end" where you're finished. There's infinite work to do. Every day you could learn something new, improve your craft, or make progress in a new category.

Marketing is a marathon, not a sprint.

What's worked for me is trying to spend a little bit of time on marketing each day. Check out this GDC talk No-Budget DIY Marketing for Indie Games by Michelle Lega. In it, she offers a process she came up with called the Hour A Day Marketing Plan:

Hour A Day Marketing Plan

You can use this timestamped link to jump straight into the hour a day process, but the whole video is worth watching. This process covers everything from social media to festivals, which you can tweak it to meet your needs. Just one hour per day feels doable, doesn't it?

There's essentially an infinite number of creators to find, with an accompanying infinite messages to write. It's easy to get overwhelmed, but just an hour a day can really add up over time and make a big difference for your game.

๐ŸŒŽ Summary

That's it! This work isn't nearly as fun as making games, BUT, mastering the art of finding and contacting the creators who will love your game could be what helps you and your game find success.

Here are those steps again:

  1. ๐ŸŽฎ Know your game
  2. ๐Ÿ“‹ Compile a list of creators
  3. ๐Ÿ–ผ๏ธ Prepare a press kit
  4. ๐Ÿ“ข Execute an outreach campaign

๐Ÿ› ๏ธ More Tools & Resources

  • Keymailer โ€“ a portal to connect with influencers, press and promoters
  • TwitchMetrics โ€“ Streamers and games metrics
  • Lurkit โ€“ I'm not sure what this is lol
๐Ÿ’ก