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Articles

40+ Game Dev Social Media Post Ideas

arimia
One thing I frequently get asked is “what do I post to social media? How do I keep it active? I don’t have any art!” and I always send them a long list of ideas on what to post but I never consolidate it anywhere. So, it’s about time I do that.

 

Below are a list of ideas on what to post to social media- ones in bold are ones I very much recommend for being high in engagement / eye-catching. Don’t forget to check out my Game Dev Social Media Calendar and my Twitter Guide!
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  1. Post a screenshot
  2. Post a WIP screenshot
  3. Post a progression screenshot (post an old WIP screenshot and then show how far its come)
  4. Post a gif
  5. Post a video/trailer
  6. Post concept art
  7. Post finished sprites
  8. Post finished full art
  9. Post a funny expression from your character sprites
  10. Post a snippet of music
  11. Post a full piece of music
  12. Post a playlist that you listen to while working
  13. Share (and credit) a piece of art that inspires you
  14. Share a piece of fanart
  15. Post a snippet of writing / a funny quote
  16. Post a snippet of code
  17. Post a picture of animals in the office
  18. Post a picture of your workspace
  19. Talk about your daily work routine
  20. Give a review for a piece of equipment/software you use for work
  21. Ask for feedback on something (piece of art, dialogue, etc)
  22. Run a poll (ask what people’s favorite game is, what their favorite x is, etc.)
  23. Do a Q&A session
  24. Talk about where you got the idea for your game
  25. Talk about the game itself
    1. The lore of the game
    2. The process for making a part of the game
    3. How you concepted different areas
  26. Talk about future projects you’d like to do
  27. Interview your staff / introduce them
  28. Talk about what your dream merch for the game would be
  29. Make a mood board / aesthetic board for the game
  30. Post something inspirational for #MotivationMonday
  31. Write an editorial to help other game devs
  32. Post a link to an editorial you found helpful
  33. Post a small preview of something upcoming
  34. Do a giveaway of a previous game or merch
  35. Post a progression shot of how your game’s art has changed
  36. Thank your followers and highlight some of them
  37. Link a Let’s Play of one of your games
  38. Talk about a game that inspired yours but what you’d change about it
  39. Post a drawing of a girl from your game and tag it #CutieSaturday
  40. Post a meme about your game
  41. Post links to where people can find your other social media (Discord, devlog, etc.)
  42. Post a funny chat log from your Discord
  43. Post a picture of you showing the game off at a convention / booth
  44. Post a survey to find more about your consumers and what they like
  45. …And more!

Here’s a few examples of me doing these ideas on my studio Twitter:

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Opinion- Why You Should Run Game Dev as a Business

arimia
Rather than an editorial, I want to preface this as being mostly opinion, as this is something that I have argued with people about before. I also want to preface this by saying I only mean this about games planning being/on Kickstarter and commercial games– games made just as a hobby are not what I mean by this article. I don’t want any accusations that I’m against hobby dev- after all, that’s how I got in the industry. Now with that out of the way, let’s begin.

Game Dev as a Business- What Does that Mean?

“Game dev as a business” means just that- it means looking at how you build games and refining that process from a business perspective, making decisions that are business oriented rather than fully game developer oriented. Again, let’s get some disclaimers out of the way.

  • This does not mean making every single decision from a business perspective, throwing all creative freedoms out the window in favor for more business-savvy choices
  • This does not mean becoming a full-on business person and taking courses in running a business
  • Again, this only applies to developers making games for Kickstarter and/or commercial games

So, in a more liberal sense, what does “game dev as a business” mean?

It means taking a step back every once in a while and looking at your game objectively- seeing it as something besides just your baby and evaluating if you’re making smart decisions for the game that consumers want. It means making tweaks to the game that consumers will enjoy- after all, you’re taking their money, so they should be happy with the product. It means not slacking on all the fields (namely marketing) while in development so your company can stay afloat after launch and make it to another launch.

On a smaller scale, it means adding more choices to a visual novel to make players who want a bit more interactivity happy. On a larger scale, it means changing the art style to be more appealing to a wider audience while also refining it to look more polished. On any scale, it means keeping marketing strong through the process rather than waiting till the last minute.
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Why Should I?

​Game dev is an artistic medium, and allow a lot of creative liberties with it. However, when you start taking people’s money for said games (aside from donations), you are now producing games for said consumer, and they must have some sort of input in the game. You are giving them a product and taking their money for it- therefore, you should refine some details of said product to be tailored for the consumer. As I stated before, this doesn’t mean making a game completely based off of consumer feedback and lacking in creativity- it ​means changing smaller parts of the game to make it overall more polished.
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Specific Examples


​Here’s a few specific examples from my own games:

  1. That Which Binds Us: I didn’t do this before launch, and I regret it- I wish I had added more choices to the game. There are long stretches without any choices, and all the choices in the first playthrough of the game are basically meaningless. Adding more choices would have increased interactivity as well as replay value. I also had a cool phone CG that should have been used more to increase the unique style.
  2. Asterism: The art style was not good. Don’t get me wrong, I like my own art style- but it wasn’t what I wanted for the game, and people agreed with me. It took me what felt like hundreds of times (it was at least 50) to edit and reshade the sprite for Kotachi, but I eventually got him to a style I really like for the game. It’s more anime but it’s also much more polished than before.
For a good amount of months, I was fine with the 2018 version until I realized that people (including myself) didn’t like it.

Why Should I? Part 2

Making more business-oriented decisions can help keep your studio afloat from one launch to another- it can mean the difference between actually making it to that next launch. Delaying a game release in order to properly market can lead to lots of sales that you would have missed otherwise had you waited until after launch to market the game. Adding some more interactivity can bring in new customers who would have otherwise been put off by the lack of gameplay. Basically, making business decisions for the game can bring in new customers and/or satisfy current ones.

When you start taking money for games, you must begin thinking of it like a business.

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Why Game Jams Matter

arimia

Often we think of game jams as small, random events that game developers enter just for fun and bragging rights- but, they give developers so much more than we bargained for.

Game Jams are events held every single day across the world and online with thousands of different themes and time constraints. Some last 2 months; some last a train ride; and some last an hour. Some have thousands in prizes and some have nothing more than bragging rights. But still, why do we enter them besides fun? What’s the point if you’re already working on a fulltime project? There’s a lot of reasons why.
1) Having a Finished ProductThis is a bragging right of course but it’s also tangible evidence that you can deliver a product you made from start to finish. It’s something you can share to prospective employers. It’s something you can use to market yourself with and gain a fanbase. It’s something you can use as a starting base for a bigger/expanded project. But most of all, it’s something you finished.

Most game jam games aren’t perfect. Hell, most of them haven’t even gotten close to being polished. But they’re still mostly playable and in a “finished” (but not polished) state. These games can be proof of concepts for future projects or your abilities.

2) Cutting Scope

A vital part of finishing and shipping any project is being able to make a reasonable scope and cutting it when needed. A scope that’s to large is the biggest killer of projects- they just can’t handle all the work and the game never gets done. “What if we added this feature here?” “How about there’s this mechanic for this section of the game?” “Let’s add a new character to this scene.” It’s things like this that add up over time- some are more obvious than others. The ability to take a scope and cut it in half is a seriously undervalued skill of project management.

3) Networking

After doing a game jam you typically end up afterwards rating and playing other entries- this is a great time to make friends and network with them. In layman’s terms, networking is basically creating contacts by making friends with people. That’s it. Play games and give feedback on them, let people know who you are.

4) Game Dev Experience

Working on a game will teach you some mechanics, but finishing a game will help solidify them- not only do you know how to work in an engine enough to get things moving, but you understand them enough to make a complete project. You’ll learn about all the assets that it takes to make a finished product. It’s hard to fully realize how many assets go into a game until you’re trying to wrap everything up and oh no there’s no sound effects and also the main menu barely works.

Game jams are a lot more important than people think, and are a great way to get started in game dev by finishing a small project. I always try to tell new devs to do a game jam first before jumping headfirst into a long term project, and I hope this article goes over why.
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Yes, You Can Start Marketing Too Late

arimia

Marketing is something you should be doing constantly while a game is in development- but at what point is it too late to start?

If you remember one thing from my articles, remember this- marketing should be seen as an integral part of game dev, much like programming and visuals, and should be done all during and after development. However, there will always be cases where people didn’t market their games or crowdfunding projects enough- as sad as these are, a lot of times they simply won’t be able to recover from that loss of a major amount of sales on launch. So, at what point does it become too late to start marketing and it become better to delay a launch?

Let’s look at crowdfunding first. Most people who’ve looked into Kickstarter have probably heard that you need to get 30% of your goal in the first 48 hours, and a recent study has found that to be pretty true. So what does that mean? It means that the biggest push of pledges needs to be at launch. Therefore, starting to market after the Kickstarter launch would be extremely detrimental to the campaign.

Picture 

A graph from Kickstarter themselves in 2011.
​Your game launch isn’t much different. According to a Gamasutra post by Jake Birkett, the average amount of sales on Steam is around 58% of your wishlist numbers- what this means is that if you have 200 wishlists then you can expect to sell around 100 units on launch week. As Simon Carless went over recently in his own Gamasutra post, wishlist counts have become an exceedingly reliable way of telling how well a game will sell after launch.
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“If your game has 1,000 wishlists on launch, it may sell 500 copies in your first week and 2,500 copies in your first year on Steam.”

What does this tell us? It tells us that collecting wishlists (for games being sold on Steam) is a good way to not only get people to be notified about the game on launch but is also a good indicator of how well the game will sell. This also means that we need to focus on driving wishlists (or maybe newsletter subscriptions for a non-Steam platform) before the game releases.
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Make it a goal to gain wishlists months before launch.

Let’s do some further math. At the time of writing this (yes, I just checked), Asterism gets around 4-6~ wishlists a day on Steam.

  • Asterism does not have a demo out yet
  • Asterism is not 100% being actively promoted (2 other games are sharing promotion time with it)

With this context, we can reasonably assume that the amount of passive daily wishlists will increase once there’s a demo released (which will lead to let’s plays and journal coverage) and the project is being worked on more frequently.

Each week Asterism currently gets around 36~ wishlists. This means that, if it kept up this rate, in a year…

36 x 52 = 1872
…Asterism would have an additional 1800~ wishlists. Not great, considering the game (hopefully!) won’t take that long to complete and when you see the results from the Gamasutra articles. But like I said, this number should increase with more coverage, a demo, etc.Let’s say that each week Asterism will gain around 50 wishlists. If this is the average rate, then in a year…

50 x 52 = 2600
…Asterism would have around an additional 2600~ wishlists. It’s looking somewhat better, but not by too much again considering the game most likely won’t be sitting there raking in wishlists for another year.So what does this tell us? Put Steam pages / Newsletter signups when you can. Start gaining those leads early and collecting them over the entire development process.
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What point is too late to start marketing?

Games have different development cycles and time lengths- I’ve released games that took 48 hours and some that took 8 months. Therefore, I find it hard to give a sure timeframe in months or such, but I’d say you should stop what you’re doing if you’re 2/3rds of the way through development and have not set up store pages, social media, etc.​If your game will take you about 8 months to develop, you should consider halting progress to give time to properly market the game if you’re 2 months from launch and haven’t started at all- sometimes slowing a project in order to get the word out about the project.

In recap… start collecting wishlists early and give yourself time to tell the world about your game!

Wishlist my game on Steam!

Asterism

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Why Marketing Your Indie Game is Important

arimia

Marketing is rapidly becoming more and more necessary as part of game dev- but why?

​Designing an indie game to be unique while also having a defined aesthetic is growing increasingly more important as time goes on, as the indie game market (and game market in general) is constantly expanding at a seemingly exponential rate. It has become more necessary than ever to create eye-catching games, games that instantly attract eyes (and hopefully the eyes of buyers) towards your product. Your product is unique, and you must like it- why else would you be spending so much time to make it if not? Then, it stands to reason that you should want more and more people to notice your game. While maybe not immediately recognizable, good game design has striking correlations to good marketing- another essential piece of game dev that is sadly overlooked too often. According to Polygon, 2,964 games were released on Steam in 2015. That number increased to 4,207 games that were released in 2016. That number again jumped to 7,672 games being released in 2017 just for Steam. Each year it seems the number is almost doubling, meaning it is absolutely becoming harder and harder for consumers to find your game and it is absolutely necessary to make that first impression count- and if it doesn’t, then you need to rely on good, heavy marketing to make sure you get more than just one impression from people.

Why is My Marketing Not Helping?

Indie games typically fail at marketing for a number of reasons, ranging from “somewhat avoidable through research” to “do you even know what game dev means?”:

  • Not targeting the right audience
  • Not reaching enough eyes
  • Not marketing long enough before and after release
  • Failing to market before release (the common “my game is releasing tomorrow and I forgot to market it!”)

Now, let’s go over briefly some of these.

Not targeting the right audience- you just can’t market enough to sell decently if you’re not marketing to the right audience. If you’re making a mobile mystery point and click game, then your main audience is going to be middle aged women. If you’re making a side swiping action game like Temple Run, then your main audience is going to be bored middle and high school students. Marketing outside of these ranges can work, but you should already be seeing the vast differences in some gaming genres. With the addition of mobile gaming to the market, more and more “non traditional gamers” are now adding money to the market, meaning the market is expanding even in these ways.

Not reaching enough eyes- posting a couple tweets every few weeks and maybe tagging them isn’t going to suffice even if you’re Ubisoft or EA. Some surveys have said that it takes three impressions before consumers build an idea and recognize a brand– this means that effective marketing consists of posting frequently and posting in multiple places. It is for this very reason that more prolific indie game companies hire people just for marketing, as it truly is a full-time job. Those emails don’t send themselves, and a lot of times people don’t have a good grasp on what effective marketing consists of.

Not marketing long enough before and after release- this point is a bit more controversial, as some people will have differing opinions on this. Some will say you should start posting and announcing your game the moment you have any shred of assets to show off, whether it be an extreme prototype screenshot or a concept art sketch. Some will say you should wait until you have a good collection of assets ready to share, such as a trailer or even a demo. Personally, I believe there is a nice middle ground that can be found that changes for each game. As an artist, I always start with the art, so I can make art assets as needed. However, for companies such as those run by friends who are programmers and writers instead of artists, they have to depend more on their artists for when they can announce their projects and might lean more towards mock screenshots. Whenever you feel comfortable that you have enough assets and a good idea of what your game is, start marketing.
But what does this have to do with marketing enough after release? Well, let’s say you magically get your game out there. Congrats, you gave all your personal info to Valve and now it’s on Steam. Do you just go to your next game? Do you move on? …Somewhat. You should definitely move on, yes, but you should also try to not drop the game and run. There will be bugs. That’s inevitable, no matter how much proofreading, beta testing, and sleepless nights. There will always be people in your genre who don’t know about your game. Tweetdeck is a great tool for post-release marketing, as you just schedule tweets and leave. Try to check social media accounts frequently though, as people like being replied to.

Failing to market before release- whenever someone says “my game is releasing tomorrow and I forgot to market it”, a marketer dies on the inside. As previously said, marketing should be viewed as a natural and necessary step in the game development and publishing process, so it is absolutely mind boggling to hear of people who release a game and then decide to dip their toes into marketing, despite the fact that they should already be waist deep into marketing by the time of release, if not neck high. If you want to even try to make your deposit back on your game, you must begin marketing months before release. Most games won’t make their budget back, let alone get in the green money-wise, but that’s another story.
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So… How do I “Market”?

​That’s a good question we’d all like to know! …But let’s go over some basics.Be active on social media- if you make a social media account for your company and/or game, try to keep it up to date. There are plenty of scheduling websites that can help you queue posts so you don’t have to remember to post daily. As well as being active on social media, you should also aim to make sure you’re using the websites to your full advantage, as each site functions a bit differently.

Start marketing as soon as you have enough to show and keep at it- start marketing once you have a fair amount to show and know what your game is. Graphics are the best way to catch people’s eyes, of course.

Contacting reviewers- game news sites and blogs are a great way to further reach people who are potentially interested. Don’t worry about being declined- 9/10 they’ll ignore/not reply to your email instead of sending one back saying why they don’t want to review it. Of course, don’t target sites that review only android games in the hopes that they’ll review your Steam release- don’t waste your time like that. Try to find as many sites as you can to email that allow devs to email them, as for the most part you won’t get responses back. These sites get a lot of emails every day, and they have to pick what to and what not to cover.

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In an essence, marketing is getting people who want to buy your game to know about your game. You definitely want to hone in on your audience and make sure they know what your game is, but in general the goal of marketing is spreading the word about your game. 

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Finding Your Game’s Audience

arimia

You’re far enough into development to start marketing your game fully- great! …But who are you going to market it to?

Sometimes when people are sad that a game didn’t do well, they mention “it was marketed well”, yet it didn’t do good. The sad truth is, more often than not if a game doesn’t do well, it actually wasn’t marketed well. Marketing frequently is a good start- but if you don’t know who to market to, then you’ll force yourself to do way more marketing just to make up.​So, who do you market to? How do you figure out your audience that will buy your game?
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1. Who will play your game?

This is a seemingly basic question but is actually a difficult and precise question, and in order to market efficiently, you must answer it as best you can. The answer shouldn’t be something generic such as “teenagers” or “visual novel fans”- instead, it should be rather detailed so you know where best to spend your time marketing. Because this answer varies wildly per game, let’s go over some examples with made-up games as well as some of mine own towards the end.
Sherlock Holmes – Finding the Clues
Description: A woman finds herself in London on a work trip when she uncovers the beginnings of a mystery. This is a point and click hidden objects game, with semi-realistic art.

So, in our first example we have a point and click hidden objects game. Let’s think about the typical playerbase for these types of games- they’re usually middle aged women. A female protagonist, semi-realistic art, all of these are further bonus points for this playerbase as that’s what the typical game type that this playerbase plays has.

Rocket Rapid Relay
Description: A multiplayer fast-paced action racing game with a stylized art style.

For our second example we have a racing game with an interesting style, but with a catch- it’s multiplayer. On this fact alone, your fanbase will consist of mostly multiplayer fans of racing games. The mood will help narrow down the age group- if it’s more corny with low realistic violence, kids can be the target market; if it’s more crude, adult humor with higher amounts of realistic violence, adults can be the target market.

With made-up game examples we can only get so far, so now I’ll delve into two of my own games and how I figured out the audience for each.

That Which Binds Us
Description: A young woman down on her luck meets a man who can change it all. It’s a romance & modern fantasy visual novel with an anime semi-realistic art style.

At first, I thought my target audience was otome fans and called it a day. That was easy! …No, it’s not that easy, because my audience wasn’t otome fans. Otome fans are used to anime styled dating sims with multiple love interests- that wasn’t my game. Mine only has one love interest and isn’t fully anime style, so just targeting otome fans wasn’t the approach I should have taken. Instead, I should have targeted visual novel fans who like GxB romance with a solid story. This shifts my audience into more of a ven diagram- some otome fans are still targeted but now I’m targeting many other people.

I Saw Him Today
Description: A short kinetic novel (a visual novel without choices) about dealing with the after affects of suicide.

With this game I was able to get creative with my marketing (and I would have been able to get much more creative had I put in choices, but I did not as a narrative design choice). I didn’t tell the story in a typical VN format as there’s no sprites and only CGs, so I could mask it as a “”full game”” easier (and again, I would have had an even easier time doing so if there were choices in it). I marketed it more as an “emotional experience” which suddenly sounds more interesting to a lot of more typical gamers than “sad visual novel”.
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2. How do I know who will play my game?

Alright, let’s say you read through those examples above but you still don’t understand how to find your target market. Never fear, this editorial isn’t done yet! There are a couple more ways to figure out who to market to.
1. Find games similar to yours.
This is probably one of the easier ways to find a market for your game- find games similar to yours and see who’s playing them. For That Which Binds Us, I looked around for people who played more indie otomes rather than just Japanese otomes, as most JP otomes have multiple love interests and thus wouldn’t quite be my target market. This is also a great research tool for finding reviewers for your games- find people who have played and liked games similar to yours and bam.

2. Look around in your genre.
Hopefully if you’re far enough into development that you’re ready to start fully marketing you’re also in a few dev circles for your genre- in that case, ask and look around. This is similar to the above step but less detailed and works if you really can’t figure out any games similar to yours.

And that’s about it! Marketing to the right audience helps relieve a lot of stress caused by throwing a lot of marketing out there and hoping it stick, since the more niche your game is the less effective that will be. However, finding your right niche fanbase will not only help your current game but will help your games in the future and make marketing easier.