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Why Marketing Doesn't Work For Small Indie Games (And What To Do About It)

Most marketing strategies you get come from people who have never started a small business from scratch... who never struggled to find their first customer... who never sold a product or service that they funded themselves.

These people are the corporate types who studied marketing at school. Or they're marketing gurus who make money by telling people how to make money.

But if you take these same people and tell them to start something from scratch, build it, and try to sell it using their own resources and money, they will have NO idea where to start.

That's because all they know is how to take something that is already successfully running, optimize it, and make it more successful.

For example, there are a lot of posts on LinkedIn and Reddit about how Aggro Crab, the developers of the game PEAK, and how they marketed their game successfully.

And their insights are good and helpful... but...

Here's My Main Argument...

Starting something is VERY different than running something.

And there are a lot of smart people who know how to run things, and you can learn from them. But these people have no experience starting a product from scratch using their own money and resources, and getting an idea off the ground to the point where they have a fanbase and customers.

But what happens is, small indie game devs will learn about these marketing techniques, apply them, and yet their game launch is still a financial failure.

And they'll do all the right things... they will...

And despite all their marketing efforts, most game devs still won't reach their goal of a game launch that is a financial success.

And that's because all these marketing techniques I just listed above, are all about optimizing what is already working.

When you're already running something that is semi-successful, then yes, all these marketing techniques are very important to help you optimize and improve what you're doing.

But what nobody talks about is, how do you get that initial success in the first place? How do you get your game off the ground? How do you cultivate even 1,000 fans from scratch?

Well, when you're a small indie game dev, you need a different strategy.

The Solution...

The missing ingredient in almost all marketing advice is the player.

What I mean is, most marketing techniques focus on how to get the attention of a game journalist, or youtuber... or how to optimize your Steam page... or how to leverage Steam Festivals.

But if you want your small indie game to be a financial success, it all starts with connecting with like-minded people who think like you, and like what you like.

That's your focus right now: the player. It's not journalists, youtubers, streamers, Steam, Reddit, publishers, investors, etc.

It's just you and your potential fan.


Look at games like Baldur's Gate 3, Balatro, and PEAK... before these studios pushed their marketing efforts, they spent a lot of time during development reaching out to potential fans, getting their feedback, and iterating their game so that they made something that the market wants.

But what most indie game studios do is, they work on a game for months or years... and when they are ready to show something, that's when they start reaching out to potential fans... and this often happens 3 months before launch.

The key is to start approaching people one-on-one early, and telling them about your game, and getting their feedback, and getting them to playtest your game, and getting more feedback.

And if you ask any small business owner who has no connections or millions to spend on marketing, it all starts like this. The growth of any small business starts with finding a small niche, reaching out to that niche, making something for that niche, getting them to use it, getting feedback, and going back and iterating your product.

And yes, this is HARD. This is tedious. This is boring business stuff.

But This Is Your Advantage...

Most game devs don't focus on the player. They all try to focus on platforms, youtubers, influencers, game journalists, and publishers. And they will rarely reach out to players one-on-one because they think it's a waste of time.

So your best bet is to not do what everybody is doing, and focus all your energies on connecting with a potential fan, one-on-one.

Start reaching out to potential fans as early as you can, and show them what you have so far. Start building your fans now because that's how you get your small game off the ground. And then when you have a small following, that's when you start using those marketing techniques I talked about.

Also, there will be a point where your small community that you cultivated yourself will start spreading word-of-mouth for you. And success begets success... if you build a community who is spreading word-of-mouth for you, then influencers and journalists and publishers will start coming to you because you have what they want: an audience.

But it all starts with reaching out, one-on-one.

Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is...

It's easy to sit here and tell you you need to do this and that... but harder to prove.

So, in the new year (2026), I'm going to be building a new startup. My goal is to build a platform that solves a problem for thousands of people. And I will be documenting everything I do in a blog, so you can see...

I'll keep you posted once I have that blog up.

Anyway, I hope you got atleast one insight to help you take action so that your game becomes a financial success.

Thanks for reading.

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