my various projects and thoughts
While I talk about concepts and ideas for marketing indie games a lot, I rarely see talks on what to use to market indie games. Today I want to briefly go over tools I use weekly for indie game marketing.
There’s also a brief bonus section on additional websites that are cool for social media marketing. Alright, let’s get started!
Yesterday (June 25th) was the 3rd anniversary of my first commercial game, That Which Binds Us, which was a commercial failure. After it released to little fanfare, I realized I was missing something- marketing. Yadda yadda, 3 years later I’m sitting here trying to teach others how to market their visual novels. Over those 3 years, I’ve been asked a lot of questions on marketing VNs. Today I want to answer some of those for future VN devs.
Some of these questions are ones I’ve heard over and over while others are questions I’ve received in my VN marketing channel (feel free to join us and ask any questions or share insights!).
Visual novels are a great form of media- they combine game mechanics with an emphasis on narratives and strong visuals. They can be used to tell horror stories, high school slice of life, and so much more. But how do you market visual novels?
I’m Arimia, the lead developer at Crystal Game Works and marketing lead at Studio Élan. Marketing visual novels is a bit of a passion project for me- I like learning more about what people like and how they think. I’ve compiled a bunch of concepts I’ve learned over the years while marketing visual novels so you can get more eyes on your games.
Last updated November 2024.
Continue reading “How to Market Visual Novels”
It feels like every couple of months I’m either entering a game jam or hosting one. Well, it’s probably true- after all, game jams are going on at every moment nowadays! A couple years ago there were around 20 or so jams happening at any given time. Now, it seems like there’s 50+ happening concurrently.
If you’re newer to game jams and want to see what I’m talking about, you can see a comprehensive list of basically every online game jam happening on itch.io’s calendar here. Finding a game jam to enter has never been easier, but finding a team is still a struggle for some. Today we’re going to talk through the process of finding a team.
Continue reading “How to Find Game Jam Teams”
As of 2019 Twitter has over 81.7 million users, according to Statista. Over 55% of Twitter users as of July 2020 are between 18-34 years old. This is the site you’ll see recommended again and again to indie devs, and for good reason- it’s easy to pick up, there’s a wide array of indie devs on the site, and you can easily link things.
Today we’re going to look at how to compose your tweets and different tips & tricks for indie game marketing on Twitter.
Continue reading “Social Media Marketing for Indie Games – Twitter 2021 Guide”
This month I was struck by a lot of upcoming marketing campaigns- that is to say, I had to do a lot of planning! I’m also in the middle of writing several different articles which are near completion… but this month I also made a few infographics. First I have a custom marketing funnel that shows the steps of the buyer’s journey. Second I have a quick social media marketing plan template for indie games. I hope these’ll be of some help!
Continue reading “Social Media Marketing Plan Template + Marketing Funnel”