Discoverability is probably the second biggest hurdle when it comes to developing a game (the first is actually having something to publish)
So, title question. I know I could try to throw money at Instagram, TikTok and Youtube (know your target audience), but I think using their built-in advertising is more likely to miss than hit. Youtube is even more problematic, as a significant portion of people smartly avoid their ads (either with extensions or watching from piped or invidious).
Maybe paying to be on top of itch.io might work somewhat? I’d like to know from someone who did that, what was the turnout (number of sales/downloads per number of clicks)
One thing I think about is getting in contact with a number of small-ish (2k or less followers) content creators and work out a deal - free copy of the game, make a video being honest about it, leave a referral link for viewers to buy.
A problem of mine that I’m aware of is that I don’t have much of a social media presence, not even Discord servers, thus I completely lack any sort of “organic digital voice”.
I really want to know what are some decent strategies that a solo person could attempt to get some attention for their own game, and maybe the prices/budgets needed.
I have an unshakable gut feeling that the “I mostly enjoy watching people play games on streaming sites” and “I actually spend a significant amount of time/money playing games myself” are after different types of content to consume. Seems like the twitch chat regular is mostly a “social” AAA content consumer and way less likely to actually be interested in purchasing and playing an indie game than someone who regularly has a budget for them instead of donation emoticons, and actively peruses steam with that time instead
Among Us took off because of streamers
that’s a highly social game and certainly in the streamer watchers wheelhouse as I described them. I wonder how common that would be for a non social-deduction game space, however.
I would love to hear Chris zukowski’s thoughts on this.