Learn The Basic Fundamentals Of Marketing Your Small Indie Game

If you're a small indie game dev, making your first commercial game, and you have no idea where to start marketing your game, then today I'm going to show you 9 simple marketing fundamentals that most small indie game devs miss.

And these are the same marketing fundamentals I learned after building 3 startups in the past 20 years. And it's the same system I use to help my clients find wishlists and customers for their games.

So here are 9 basic steps you can do to help you increase your chances of finding wishlists and customers...

Step One: Decide If This Is A Passion Project Or Commercial Project

Every project needs to start with passion. But at some point during production, this passion project will turn into a commercial project.

Unfortunately, this turning point often comes too late.

What I mean is, in classic indie game fashion, a game dev will make a game they want to make. And once they put months or years of effort, energy, and money into this passion, THEN that's when they go try to find a market for their game.

But this business strategy of retroactively looking for a market only leads to frustration because often a game dev will discover what they want isn't what the market wants.

So if you're serious about making a living developing games, then yes, start with passion. But decide early on that this is a commercial project.

And you'll soon see why this simple change in mindset can lead to commercial success, so let's keep going...

Step Two: Stop Focussing On You

If you want to market your indie game and find wishlists and customers successfully, then you need to stop asking what YOU want, and go out and figure out what the market wants too.

This is why small indie games that only focus on their passion fail because they don't bother checking if this passion is also shared by the market as well.

And part of the problem comes from the job world, too. In the job world, if you just show up, show some passion, do your work, you'll get that paycheck.

But when we start our own game studio, just because we show up, work hard, get our job done, and be passionate, doesn't mean we'll get paid like we did at our job.

Showing up and getting things done is only HALF the work.

The other half of the work is to go out there to see if what we want is what the market wants.

Let me show you how...

Step Three: Stop Focusing On Marketing Techniques For Now

Marketing isn't about game trailers, professional Steam pages, posting on Reddit or Twitter, or handing out keys to YouTubers.

Thousands of small indie devs put so much effort, time, and money into these marketing techniques, and yet they don't get wishlists or customers. All they're doing is shouting into the void while their game gets ignored on Steam.

Don't get me wrong -- these techniques are important and are required. But before you do any of these techniques, there is one fundamental strategy that most game devs miss. Let me explain...

Step Four: Do What Successful Indie Games Did BEFORE They Were Successful

On the surface it seems like good marketing techniques are the reason for indie game success.

For example, everybody talks about how Balatro's viral success was because they crafted a marketing campaign around streamers at the center.

But if you read LocalThunks blog he outlines his development in chronicle order. And you'll notice what he did BEFORE his viral success is something most small indie game dev miss.

And you'll notice that this is very similar to what Larian Studios' did with Baldur's Gate 3.

So what am I talking about? What is this fundamental marketing technique that most small indie game devs miss?

Let's talk about this next...

Step Five: Learn Directly From Customers

Remember, if you want to make a living making video games, you need to change your mindset from this being a passion project to it being a commercial project.

And part of your responsibility now is to figure out if your passion is also shared with hundreds or thousands of other people.

And how you do that is by learning directly from customers.

And that's the core fundamental marketing technique most small indie game devs miss: they don't understand the needs and wants of their customers. And they don't learn directly from customers.

They only focus on their passion. And then when they are close to finishing their game, they retroactively go find a market. But often, there is no market. And that's because a sample size of one isn't a good indicator if an idea is good or not. So a game dev needs to test their ideas with a bigger sample size, get feedback, iterate, and produce a game that they want to make AND a game the market wants.

And this is exactly what LocalThunk did with Balatro. If you read his blog post, you'll see that before the game went viral, LocalThunk spent a lot of time playtesting his game. Yes, he started with passion. But at one point he knew that if he wanted to make a commercial game that was successful, he had to listen to his market's wants and needs.

This is also what Larian Studios' did too... they spent almost 3 years playtesting the game, and learning directly from customers.

And as a personal note, before my first startup success, I spent 4 years working on passion projects that all failed because I had no idea what the market wanted. But once I started to listen to what my customers wanted and needed, and crafted my business around that, it's when I first saw my first huge financial success. And I used this same lesson when I built my other two startups.

Ok, so how do you exactly learn directly from customers so that you make a game the market wants? Let's do that next...

Step Six: Begin Your Player-Focused Development Strategy

It's important to follow your vision and your passion.

But if you truly want to make a commercial game that will be profitable, you have to test your ideas and assumptions against the market. You need to face some resistance if you want to grow. Just like a muscle, or brain, it needs resistance to grow.

So forget about wishlists, or YouTubers or streamers for now. Your only purpose right now is to see if what you want is what the market wants.

Again, the idea is to not make a game then retroactively see if there is a market. The idea is to produce a game AROUND what the market wants and needs -- and at the same time following your own vision and passion.

And to make a game the market wants and needs, you need to test your game prototype or beta build against your market and learn what they have to say.

And this step is VERY hard because rejection sucks. And this fear of rejection is why most game devs skip this fundamental marketing technique. They rather work on their prototype and perfect it before having others judge it. And I get it -- it's very hard to hear bad things about your game. So game devs rather spend months or years perfecting their game, and then hope that the market wants it.

But business is a risk, it's not safe, and you have to face a lot of fears. So take your prototype, and let's begin your player-focused development strategy...

Step Seven: Gather Feedback From Players To Make Your Game Better

To start learning from customers, you have to figure out a way to get feedback. And the best way is, Steam has a Playtest feature where it gives developers a free, low-risk way to get feedback data for their game.

And you might be hesitant because maybe you don't have quality marketing assets like screenshots, a trailer, capsule art done for your Steam page.

But that doesn't matter. What matters is your IDEA.

Think about it this way: say you're thinking of running a hotdog stand. What is your first priority? Is it finding an artist to get you a nice logo? Is it looking for a nice stand? Is it looking for a good location? No. Your number one priority is if your hot dog tastes good. You first spend your time sourcing out ingredients, and making a tasty hotdog, and having your friends taste them, and then the public. Then once you find a good tasting hotdog that people like, then that's when you start worrying about the details like logos, stands, and location AFTER you have a good product.

It's the same with your indie game. Your first priority is how fun, engaging, and interesting your game is. Focus on that. Don't worry about the quality of your marketing assets just yet. That will improve later.

So whatever assets you have for your Steam page right now are good enough.

So go get a Steam Playtest appID. Put up the Playtest Button on your Steam page. And once you do, you will start seeing organic traffic to your Steam page. And it will go slow. That's ok. The idea here is small, incremental, organic growth.

For more info on how to get your Steam Playtest setup, here's the documentation: Steam Playtest

Step Eight: Direct Feedback To One Central Spot

On the main menu of the game, have a "Feedback" button that directs players to one central spot where you can engage directly with your audience.

This central spot could be your Steam forum, or your Discord channel.

And when you're engaging with your audience, let them know what kind of feedback you're after. Be specific. Is it game bugs? Design? Gameplay? Story? Mechanics? Art?

It's important to figure out what you want to know because asking people general questions like "what do you think", will just get you general feedback. General feedback won't help improve your game.

But if you ask specific questions like, "how do you like combat animation?". Specific questions like that will get you specific answers that you can use to improve your game.

Step Nine: Find Their Need And They Will Come To You

When you learn directly from your customers, get their feedback, use that feedback to iterate, then you're making a game that the market wants.

But if a game dev sits alone, makes a game they want to make, and maybe gets feedback from other game devs, then they will never learn what the market wants. And no amount of marketing is going to work if they got the market wrong.

But if you can discipline yourself and work on learning what the market wants, AND follow your own vision and passion, then you'll start attracting customers, influencers, YouTubers, journalists, etc.

That's because when your game fulfills a want or need in your market, people come to you.

And that's all marketing is: you create a product that the market wants and needs. And when they hear about it or see it, they say, "that's exactly what I'm looking for!".

It's all about spreading organic word-of-mouth. But it has to begin with knowing what the market wants or needs.

But when a game devs makes a game they want to make without considering if the market wants it too, then their marketing just tries to talk people into wanting it. And you want to avoid trying to talk people into something because that rarely works.

Thanks for reading. I hope you got at least one idea to help you find players for your indie game. Good luck with game dev, and talk to you soon!

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Dariusz Konrad
My Entrepreneurial Story
Work: Game devs I've helped so far