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How To Market A Game

Feel Confident marketing your game

14 Reasons why every indie game developer should make at least one horror game

Posted On October 2, 2023December 4, 2023 By zukalous

Look, indie game development is hard. Really, really hard. We get 0 visibility and they are very hard to make. So I am making a plea to all indie game developers who want to do this full time, please please please make at least 1 horror game.  I know! I Continue Reading

The missing middle in game development

Posted On September 28, 2023September 28, 2023 By zukalous

What is the Missing Middle? Other than he is my total hero, and he was born and he was raised in my hometown, I wanted to interview John Romero to try and solve the modern indie game development paradox.  The paradox goes like this… When John Romero was making games Continue Reading

John Romero on his book Doom Guy and developing games at a small scale

Posted On September 25, 2023September 26, 2023 By zukalous

I think the biggest reason so many indie games “fail” is that teams enter into making huge, overly ambitious projects that take years to release before they are ready. Indie teams do not spend enough time making smaller (and less profitable) games first before transitioning to multi-year projects.  I know Continue Reading

Early Access Tips Part 3

Posted On September 19, 2023September 19, 2023 By zukalous

This is my 3rd and Final Early access data deep dive where I look at the games that have had an early access release on Steam. Here is part 1 where I wondered how many games participate in EA and part 2 where I estimated how well you will do Continue Reading

Three inspiring marketing success stories

Posted On September 11, 2023September 11, 2023 By zukalous

Indie game development is hard and at times it seems like nothing works or everything that used to work no longer does any more.  In today’s post I wanted to show off 3 games and 3 marketing campaigns that achieved huge successes in terms of wishlists or sales. Best of Continue Reading

Killing the myths behind Steam’s visibility

Posted On September 4, 2023September 11, 2023 By zukalous

Steam has been rolling out a new presentation trying to dispel some more myths that people keep spouting about visibility, wishlists, sales, and “the algorithm.” They actually posted the new presentation slides here which you can read and download here.  I heard the presentation and I wanted to provide some Continue Reading

What is the Discovery Queue?

Posted On August 28, 2023January 1, 2024 By zukalous

How games get real visibility One of the negative side effects about my writing about amazing success is that developers who are just starting out can see games getting 100s of wishlists a day (that is not hyperbole) while they are stuck getting 1-3 per day. To a new developer Continue Reading

Estimating Early Access success

Posted On August 21, 2023August 21, 2023 By zukalous

A couple weeks ago I presented a very high level look at Early access. What I found was that for some games it was actually better to release in Early Access (and go full 1.0) that it was to just launch in full you can read the full analysis here. Continue Reading

Frequently asked questions about Steam Next Fest

Posted On August 16, 2023May 14, 2024 By zukalous

I just left a Zoom call for Valve’s 3-times-a-year pre-Next-Fest Q&A. It is a great service Valve does to support developers before before the big show (Next Fest starts in October 9th) and I would recommend you attend them if you can. I have been to just about every one Continue Reading

How to get wishlists using Twitter game aggregators

Posted On August 7, 2023August 7, 2023 By zukalous

So everyone knows the CanYouPetTheDog twitter account. However, from multiple developers, I have heard that getting tweeted by them doesn’t really move wishlist numbers (well not enough to justify the hours it takes to add the code and art assets necessary for a pet-able dog). However, recently, multiple developers have Continue Reading

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