Let’s just cut to the chase: In 1 week the small team at Red Nexus Games (2 coders, an artist, and a musician) sold 80204 units of their self-published game Peglin on Steam at $17.99 each. Before Steam’s cut that is $1,049,413. Here are the details for their first week Continue Reading
Elon Musk bought Twitter?! What should indie game developers do now?
Let’s talk about what is happening at Twitter… Elon Musk is buying it and taking it private. For many indie game developers, marketing is synonymous with Twitter. So this change in ownership might seem Earth shattering! What will I do with my following? Should I move them to TikTok? How Continue Reading
What genres are popular on Steam in 2022
The moment you say “We are going to make a game that is a <genre> with <art-style> graphics” and commit to developing that game you have made about 90% of your marketing decisions for your game. At that moment in the multiverse of potential outcomes for your game, hundreds of Continue Reading
How Journalists play your show demo
I followed journalist Stephen Totilo as he explored the GDC expo floor and the MIX event. I recorded him interacting with developers and booths and I have some thoughts…. But first, this leads into my broader topic surrounding my study of how journalists play your game… Introducing my Spring lecture Continue Reading
Independent Games Summit: Building The ‘SkateBIRD’ Brand In Layers
This was a talk by Megan Fox. Game is SkateBIRD Description: A single-person game and, based on community response, gradually scoped it up to a larger game- all the while laying down deals and picking marketing venues so that we knew we’d launch already profitable. Half SkateBIRD post-mortem, half hopefully Continue Reading
Classic Game Postmortem: ‘Wolfenstein 3D’ (Achtung!)
Designer / Developer John Romero walks us through In this retrospective of the classic PC game Wolfenstein 3D CZ Side note Wolfenstein 3D was the very first PC Shareware game that I bought. It is also the first FPS I ever played. One night My dad brought home a generic Continue Reading
Community Management Summit: Was This Review Helpful? Translating Feedback into Priorities for Production
Link to the talk description CZ Intro: So this is my favorite talk so far. It was so cool what this team does with data to get sentiment about their game. Now both of the speakers work for big companies that have games where they earn hundreds of reviews a Continue Reading
If you build it they won’t come: marketing fallacies and missed opportunities
Session link. In this talk Derek Lieu and Dana Trebella ran through some of the most common fallacies they encounter when marketing games. Fallacy: A well-made trailer will automatically get a lot of views False and most don’t go viral Same exactly trailers were posted on two spots and did Continue Reading
Episode 2: What’s wrong with your publishing contract?
This talk was given by a lawyer. Don’t ask me anything about this. The speaker gave a disclaimer that this was not legal advice. Hire a lawyer. I am not a lawyer. I don’t anything about this either so don’t ask me. Hire a lawyer! link to talk description Speaker: Continue Reading
GDC 2022 – Day 0
I write this from a hotel room 1 day before the start of GDC. I am in person, giving a talk on making demos and another secret soapbox rant. Every talk that I attend I am going to write up and post here on this blog. A super mini user Continue Reading