THIS is Why Most Indie Games Fail

if we want our games to succeed we have to Market them as any developers we know this it's pounded into US constantly and as developing games continues to get more accessible there is a flood of developers posting blogs devlogs Tik toks screenshots all over the internet all vying for some shred of attention and the reality is a lot of them are not going to get where they want to go their games are not going to make the huge Splash that they are hoping for and this is for one very simple reason to properly understand what this reason is we are going to go on a little Adventure we are going to delve into steam's top wishlisted game page to see if we can pick out why some people want to play certain games more than others here we go so we are on steam's top wish list page and we are filtering to only include Indie titles and I'd rather look at something a little less known than some of these top ones now I swear when I was prepping for this video I saw light no fire in the number four spot and I clicked on it I didn't know anything about it I had never heard of it before and look at this a multiplayer Earth you got three human looking characters and a bunny but they're overlook this gorgeous landscape I feel like this has taken a page out of breath of the Wild's opening shot where you emerge from the cave and the camera pans over all of Hyrule for the first time it really made you want to explore that's what this is doing a procedural Earth okay I'm getting some strong no man Sky Vibes here a fantasy Earth an unexplored earth all footage ingame multiplayer I thought this was a little dig at the No Man's sky devs here but the joke is on me because only after watching the trailer for this game I went back to the page and saw that it was made by Hello Games who are the developers behind no man sky so this game is obviously gorgeous and to top it off it's fantasy themed which I love so much I'm seeing dragons in some of the footage it even looks like you can ride them so this is a game about surviving building and exploring a procedural world with your friends to me after looking at this game there is no mystery of why this is number four on the top wish listed List It clearly deserves that spot I saw it for the first time today and I want to buy it every nook and cranny in this trailer looked fun and beautiful and it made me want to EXP explore this procedural world now as of 2020 Hello Games had 26 employees so I'm sure it's more now so this kind of scope for a game would not be realistic for a small team or for a solo Dev so let's look at something a little smaller number six on the list tiny Glade this is the only game featured in this video that I had already heard of prior to writing this script this is a game made by two developers and if you don't know anything about this game there's no combat there's no Resource Management there's no timers no stress basically this is the epitome me of what a cozy game is you turn it on you press play and you make something beautiful their description says just kick back and turn forgotten Meadows into lovable diaramas and their screenshots show it every image of this game could be a background on my computer so again obviously really gorgeous art style I'm guessing it's using some variation of the wave function collapse algorithm to make their levels this way that's just a guess but if you know how they're accomplishing what they're doing here let me know down in the comments I really want to know but everything about this game is not only easy to look at but it's also easy to listen to the sound design impresses me just as much as the art style just listen for a [Music] second I love that this game is so high on the most wishlisted list because the scope of this game is obviously so much smaller than a game like light no fire it's a very small and cozy gaming experience it knows what it wants to do and it does not go beyond that it would have been so easy to take with what they have now as a base and turn it into like a real- Time Strategy game where you're defending your base but nope they just stopped at make something pretty let's do another one Mouse and by the way if you're enjoying the video then thank you if you leave a like or a comment so these guys did what cuphead did with art style but turned it into a firstperson shooter I cannot get over how amazing this game looks it's somehow vibrant and full of life even though it's black and white it's not Mickey Mouse characters but like it's Mickey Mouse characters in a firstperson shooter game basically it's incredible it also looks really fun regardless of the art style I'm not really sure how well I could handle the 1930s Jazz track the whole time I was playing a game but that's just my personal thing it's definitely staying true to its style I'm having a really hard time looking beyond the art style for this one cuz it looks so good but you've got a variety of different weapons and consumables a melee attack sniper scope and explosives all with really juicy and funl looking animations you can't look at this game and be surprised that it's one of the most wish listed games on Steam right now number 11 on the list solar Punk it's got a nice bright thumbnail which makes it stand out compared to the ones above and below it and right when you enter their steam page blue sky and bright and vibrant bright and vibrant so they're setting the mood before the video even starts playing we've got some really nice relaxing music with these beautiful floating islands in the background this is pre-alpha footage so I'm sure it's only going to get better with time cute little watering mechanic adorable farm animals and you get a really nice feel for the graphics in this sh sh they're simple but very pretty the whole art Direction reminds me a little bit of breath of the wild or tears of the Kingdom but with less cell shading you can even ride these cool blimp things to take you to the floating islands okay it's not always sunny here but this game is oozing with charm and look they're on Kickstarter so again obviously after watching this trailer This Game Belongs on this spot every little detail I saw was nailed down to Perfection it's a survival game focused heavily on exploration and what's going to make you want to explore more than taking a blimp to some floating islands off in the distance and because of how pristine this game looked and the feelings I felt when I watched the trailer I was not at all surprised to see that this game made 10 times beyond their goal on Kickstarter if you dig through the most wishlisted games on Steam what you will notice is that not a single game on there feels out of place there's no games where you're like what the heck is this doing here this looks like garbage there's nothing like that every single game on this page deserves its spot at the beginning I said a lot of aspiring developers marketing efforts will not get them where they want to go for one very simple reason hopefully after seeing some of these pieces of art on Steam it's a little bit more clear why marketing only really works if the product is marketable selling something that has immediate appeal is so much easier than trying to convince people to buy something that they're not sure the like there's a big difference between a functional game that works and a game that has appeal or makes people instantly feel something what makes a game appealing is difficult to put into words but it's very very easy to experience when I was writing the script for this video I randomly just chose games from Steam based on the thumbnail that appealed to me and I walked away wanting to buy every single one of them solar Punk blowing their Kickstarter goal out of the water does not surprise me at all because within the first 5 Seconds of watching their trailer I instantly knew that that game would give me an amazing experience and it's the same with all the rest we looked at so the obvious takeaway from this is to make your game good on every front possible because it will pay P off it will make marketing your game much easier make it beautiful give it the soundtrack it deserves give it crunchy sound effects put thought into the story ensure that the game play is tight put your best work into every aspect of the game because it shows marketing is obviously very very important but marketing a game that is marketable is going to exponentially increase your marketing efforts no game is ever going to be perfect but your game should be as polished as possible and ideally the game that you're working on is going to play to your strengths especially if you're a solo developer or on a small team that's all I got bye

Channel: Sasquatch B Studios

Views: 29,561

Keywords: game development, game dev, indie game dev, indie game development, game developer, unity game development, indie developer, gamedev, game dev life, game dev inspiration, sasquatch b studios, game dev tips, indie dev tips, game dev tips for beginners, indie dev, game dev interview, samurado, indie dev revenue, game dev marketing, game dev 2024, game development for beginners, how to make games, indie game dev tips, indie game dev advice, game dev success, indie dev success

Id: LDhbJg_-Fh0

Length: 7min 35sec (455 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 25 2024