[Music] [Music] [Music] what's up everybody my name is Indie and that gentleman next to me is Jay Powell from pow Group Consulting and welcome welcome to another amazing episode of indie game business and today we've got our special guest Chris zakowski from how to Market agame.com t with the golden microphone the golden voice and the golden microphone and uh we're not going to do the whole tell us how you got in the game industry thing because if you want to know that just look up Chris akowski on our YouTube videos he's been on this will be the fifth time oh no he's got to be more than five we'll Google it we'll look it up but yes yeah you're one of our esteemed guests but yeah so the way all of this is going to work today Chris has got a whole thing he's going to run through on 30 question or 30 mistakes that you're gonna not hopefully make on your launch and then afterwards we'll do questions but if you have questions in the meantime or during the talk or whatever post them in chat and we will address them later but yeah with that let's Dan let's make our job easier and just put Chris in charge yeah and also so it's not on Discord because there's a visual presentation so yeah you got faked out it's not on Discord no bring it to where it's real right here on video all right so I promised 30 minutes so here's my timer I'm gonna I'm gonna try and do it 30 minutes 30 mistakes let's get to it here now I have uh I've seen a lot of qas I do a lot of Q&A I'm doing one right after this and uh there's always a question what is the number one mistake you see indies's doing and there is no one mistake there's 30 mistakes so we're going to do it in 30 minutes this is me Chris owski from howto Market agame.com um that's me I uh I write a weekly blog and I counted it up last year and said like how much did I actually write it's 90,000 words and I was like how much is 90,000 words and then I looked up how long novels are and they're about 90,000 words so every year I write a novel about Steam and I've been doing this for five years so I've written five novels for steam About Steam and indie game development um and do it for free like I write this blog for free so how tomarket agame.com free is where you get it uh that's how you subscribe to my uh one novel per year About Steam and I'm I've known this long enough I'm starting to show up in game credits now this is a tiny Glade they just reached a million wish lists and I got placed right under their moms so it's like their moms they thank their moms and then they thanked me so I was like this is too cute this is too cool and I I know I should be cool about this but I'm not I'm just gonna I'm like so Overjoyed I'm like my eyes are watering I'm so I was in luck and be a landlord uh Chris zcas has to be broken onto two lines it's a it's a long name luckily he didn't say Christopher Zukowski but I me like be a landlord that is such a cool game I'm I'm just over the moon like I know I should be cool about this but I'm not I'm a total Fanboy so there it is this is how to get my five novels per year or five novels over five years novel per year about how to do steam so um I'm going to talk about a lot of mistakes you probably made some I know I have uh so just realize that a mistake is just a lesson you haven't learned yet so hopefully let's learn a bunch of lessons today and then you don't have to make those mistakes all right I broke this into five parts or four parts I I always have problems with the Roman numerals um four parts mistakes you can't take back and we all know we've made some of those uh steam page mistakes communication mistakes business mistakes all these covered today in uh how much time do I have left how many minutes do I have left we got two minutes I've already spent two minutes talking about myself so let's go part one mistakes you can't take back all right you launched into Early Access to get some feedback that is not too good I did some analysis Early Access is your launch when you go into Early Access once somebody can lay money down and get your game the the die is cast the concrete is set everything is there you can't go back um steam makes a big judgment about your game everybody does once your game goes on sale so if you just casually drop into Early Access that's your launch and I did some analysis I looked at every Early Access game that has done early access and then 1.0 in their translation you know their transition between the two and I looked at the first month of Early Access and the first month of their 1.0 launch and I found that if you have 10 reviews in your first month 10 to 50 reviews you have a 0.1% a 1% chance of actually succeeding and success in my definition is a thousand views by 1.0 it is very hard to come out of an early access launch that is soft even if you get 250 reviews in the first month of Early Access you still only have about a 30% chance 35% chance to then turn that into a 1,000 review launch Early Access is your launch don't treat it as getting feedback okay if you want feedback on your game do an imperson play test Remote Play test do a beta put your game up on H like a sliver of it this is how you get feed back not Early Access that's don't do it for Early Access okay mistake number two is finishing your game and then doing some marketing at the end we all know this one um but steam um valve put out this data and they found that if your game Steam page is up at least six months you do so much better than if you just put it out after a short marketing period you need a long Runway to do this stuff and people always say well if I put it out for too long then my wish so go bad people will get tired of me Gamers will get tired wish lists aren't milk I did some analysis on this game that I consulted for zero seert over the years their wish lists do not age out this is somebody who wish listed it at this time they converted just as well as somebody who wishlisted it like a couple months just before launch so wish list don't get old get that steam page up do some marketing even a game that was out for three and a half years this is their conversion rate by the date that they originally wishlisted it it is steady as a rock right here this is how long those wish lists have aged they do not age poorly it is not all right number three is waiting until the last minute to launch your steam page there a big mistake that I see some IND make um they get into a big festival or like they've got some big promotion coming and like the last step I got to do is just get that steam page reviewed don't wait on this okay it can be last minute stuff there's a whole checklist of stuff you have to do to get approved by Valve before you put your page up live your coming soon page get all that done get that approved because you don't have to launch immediately you can get your page approved months in advance and then just before the big you know like announce maybe you got some big promotion coming up like you're going to be in the PC gaming show you want that steam Page live for that thing and you know you have to keep it under wraps just don't push that last button okay just don't push the launch button just get through all this get it approved by Valve because they always find something they're like oh well you did this wrong and then you got to go fix it and that could take weeks and weeks so don't wait till the last minute number four is talking to your talking about your game without a steam page or a mailing list or Discord ready Cosmo mentioned them long Runway they did fine very good game but they just put their game up on itch free just for fun and a uh Blitz G did a a live stream of their game on hiio 458,000 views they didn't have a steam page up I can't even imagine how many wish list that would have brought in that's kind of sad but don't feel too bad they did fine but what you got to do is even if you're not ready for a steam page even if you're just doing some marketing maybe just posting some like some little prototype up on Steam have a mailing list ready just have it in the back pocket so that if it does go viral like oh and wish list it oh I can't wish list it yet uh here do the do the mailing list have something ready to catch them mailing list is best Discord is second best don't even don't say just follow me on Twitter you never know what's going to happen with Twitter don't use this as your catchall use a mailing list and maybe Discord all right number five is not updating your release date in Steam this is a big one I always get emails about this one okay so you can set your launch date the exact date that you launch down to the hour you have to set this in Steam it's a requirement okay this determines when your game will appear in popular upcoming this is a very very good list that you get appear in if you get enough wish lists and you're just about to launch however you can only be here one time and a lot of Indies forget to update their date you know marketing or uh production slips and you got to delay your game and they forgot to update that date and all of a sudden their game pops up on popular upcoming this sucks you can't go back and say we weren't ready I thought we didn't we had the wrong dates steam valve says too bad we don't care and that's it that's it so make sure you whitelist you favorite this email address this is the email address that Val send you because this happens so often they have started a couple weeks before you launch date sending this email this is what the email looks like you'll get this in your inbox and they're like hey your schedule to go live on this date are you still doing it this is their warning so you can't yell at them later make sure you whitelist this make sure you sign up with your real email address some people like oh yeah I signed up for steam with this like account that I never check anymore don't do that sign up with the account you check every day and whitel list favorite do everything you can to check this in fact search this this email subject line in your email make sure you haven't gotten it because this is their warning like if you don't change that date you're going to show up on the front page of steam and if you're not ready you're not ready okay you can't take it back we are now in phase two these are steam page mistakes mistakes I always see launching with a steam page without a trailer do it people always say do I really need a trailer yes this is your announc just do it it could be short as 30 seconds it doesn't have to be perfect just do it okay number seven for getting gameplay in your primary trailer this one you got to put gameplay in there folks okay steam uses the first slot on your steam page for everything so whenever you hover over something it plays a clip I got a little section here see this when you hover over lost Arc this is what it looks like see you see all these little Clips it pulls these clips these are called the micro trailer from your first trailer and your first slot if your trailer is really boring and it doesn't have gameplay you get weird things like box quotes like who needs box quotes in their little thing you want gameplay in here you want gameplay in this hover over okay so put gameplay in your trailer when people watch your trailer this is actual footage of a real gamer that I paid to say like hey can I watch you shop on Steam they don't watch trailers this how they watch trailers they skip ahead they just Skip Skip Skip Skip Skip see him watch watch his little mouse clicking on he's like God this is such a boring trailer because it was all cinematics Gamers on Steam don't want to watch cinematics they want to watch gameplay so your first trailer should have gameplay gameplay gameplay cut all this stuff out of your trailer the first one the first Gameplay trailer Studio logos slow pans of an environment remove the words like in a world you know it's like will you find the seven keys of M tler all that stuff cut that out anything that isn't gameplay cut it out gameplay gameplay gameplay for your first trailer on Steam that's the way it goes that's what you got to do number eight is obscuring your games genre this is a typical steam Shopper they actually like to know the genre they don't want to see a totally original game they're like oh this looks like game X and Game Y ah yes I like that that's what it is I love these two genres okay you are too close to your game ask a stranger stranger who you have never met it's a def a strange just somebody strange just ask somebody strange what kind of game you think it is and they will tell you and if they get the wrong choice it's time to fix your steam page because they don't know what type of game you have okay screenshots without UI don't do it I pulled the screenshot from Ste what game is this what type of game is this this is a first-person shooter RPG tactical game what is this it's just a bunch of guys standing around looking at a glowing thing there's no idea what kind of game this is developers you need to put gameplay put gameplay UI Shoppers are trying to figure out the genre of your game because they like some genres and not if they see this they're like I don't know it's kind of cool but what genre is this what genre is this you know look it's got a bunch of guns over here you got a big gun in the front you got a reticle is obviously a first-person shooter what you what is this the UI tells you it is a fighting game UI is very important I know it doesn't look as good doesn't look as Majestic but Gamers don't want Majestic they want to know what type of game they're going to buy and that's what this tells you put UI in your screenshots too much lore in your marketing you can have too much lore in your game but people when they're buying games they don't want lore lore obscures the genre gameplay which is what Shoppers are looking for uh this is a short description the world Teeters on the verge of Destruction as the Cold War Titans its icy grip Easter West trust no one question everything that's a short description what genre is this is this RPG RTS s FPS what is it nobody knows you need to put genre in your description not lore not lore number 11 accidentally looking like an asset Flip Game um I just pulled this random asset off the unity store I just found it it looks pretty but if all your screenshots look like this it's obvious that you are just beginning game development and you bought one asset pack and you just took a bunch of screenshots in your one environment that you built and then slapped it up there steam shoppers are very very smart they know when it's an eslp like I could see the same window dressed flowers here here over here I could tell everybody can tell that it is one asset you took five minutes went around the environment took some pictures that's not going to work the other thing I often see too is watch the UI among screenshots I can tell that a lot of developers just went into god mode and they just took screenshots for five minutes and the UI is the same in all of them they like always have this much health or they always have this much magic they always have this many hearts they're always using the sword vary it up you should have different weapons because you've progressed in the game your health meter should have like one heart in the beginning and then like 10 Hearts towards the final boss your UI should look like real UI not the same UI all the time okay and the reason this is is steam Shoppers want depth in their gameplay if you have all the same environments you have like one really cool asset that you've taken pictures of from multiple angles they can tell and they're like oh this this kid just bought one asset off the asset store and they're calling it a game nope you got to show that depth you got to show like we've got so many artists we've got so many environments different environment show the water levels the lava levels the desert levels show variety it shows that you have invested in your game and your game is deep okay all right having a quiet steam page this is what I call a quiet steam page this is not a quiet steam page actually this a very Lively one it has beautiful gifts and notice they put the little they put the little edges the little borders on the gifts that looks so so good that means you have an artist who knows how to mask off an a JPEG or a gif I don't know how to do that that means I didn't get an artist if I don't have that but you should figure it out and you should put those little borders on there and these beautiful gifts it is beautiful look at this you got to post these events because these events fill up your page they make it graphical they make it beautiful so always post post an event once every month if you don't post one for I think about two months valve just hides this widget and doesn't do it until you post event so post events put gifts just fill up your steam page so it looks nice and Lively like you've got an artist on staff even if you don't but you just want your page to look nice number 13 not cross promoting from your old games this is a big sad moment I did some analysis uh from a client who had three games uh they were releasing their third game and they had two previous and I just looked at just a random s-day period valve sends more traffic to old games than it does to new games three times as much this is their old game this is the game they're currently working on in marketing and it kind of makes sense because valve can't make money on this game they're just taking a bet that you will eventually make money every time they send somebody to this page there's a some percentage chance that that person's going to buy the game so they're going to be much more likely to send traffic to the old games not your new one use this power to your advantage and from your old games cross link to your new one say hey if you're interested in this game yeah buy it but also check out our new one so this you should always be trying to redirect traffic from your old games to your new ones and uh look at like a game like nimbatus um the St straon people are super smart about this stuff you'll notice they always put these little um capsules this is all you do is you put the URL in your steam page like in any one of those boxes and steam automatically generates this wish list widget here I zoomed in because it's really tiny but this is their steam page just right in the middle they just link to their new game they say try out our new game see it check out our new game right there um you can also create a cross promotion event basically you just create an event you title it a Cross promo and then just puts it right there in the news feed and you just say hey we launched a new game we just announced it go check it out to every single previous game even if the genre isn't quite as the same as you new one who cares let them decide whether they want the game or not not you okay the other thing you can do and you should do is create what's called a franchise list for your whole back catalog all it does is it puts this little widget above the more like this thing but it's all filled with your games look it up it's kind of complicated to do it's on Steam just search Steamworks franchise list and it'll tell you how to do it you should do this for every game that you own that you've made okay number 14 not having your publisher cross promote you I love this one this one's really funny all right so the whole reason you get a publisher is because they will take their back catalog that is similar to you their their whole fan base and then they will take their fan base and say hey everybody look at this new game most developers most players actually think that the Publishers make the games and so they think your game is a new game from that same developer it's not that we know but most fans don't okay so a good publisher will take all their old games and then create that Cross promo link to your game that's why you get a publisher so make sure that go look at the back catalog of your publisher and say like you know what the our game's very similar to this one check their page if there's no cross link like knock on your Publishers door phone them up and say hey let's do a Cross promo why why isn't this game linking my n my game they're the same come on let's do this what what am I paying you for get on those Publishers get on them okay this is why you give them the 30% okay whatever hopefully it's not just 30% hope hope it's 30% you know not the 50 or 70s all right here's the other thing letting your publisher link to their page instead of yours this one I really love this one actually kind of really makes me mad all right so there's this box right here tells you who the developer is who the publisher is on Steam all right see this thing this is a developer of this game click that thing go up there go onto your page if you're getting published by a publisher click your name where does it go does it go to your page or does it go to the publisher devolver did this to this port like if you click that guy's name try it right now I tried it just before this called just to make sure it still worked click that name where's it go devolver stole his credit what are they doing oh this makes me mad that that should go to the developers page that they created so developers create your own page try it on your publisher see if it works if they link to themselves get that phone up call them old school phone hey I want that publisher on the phone and get them get those Publishers all right don't let them push you around guys make them earn that 50 30 70% whatever it is make them earn it all right this is what this is how you do it search developer homepage Creator Page search it on YouTube or on on um on Google you'll find it it it's kind of a complicated step this is what it looks like it just looks like this see but you can make one for yourself for you just being a little tiny developer so create it number 15 is not translating your steam page you should translate your steam page okay I did some analysis I just said hey everybody send me your s resting rate which is seven days not when you're doing a big promotion how much traffic do you get the blue people translated the page the red people did not I know that's not perfect data so I here's another story um this right here well let me show you why because every single widget here has a different localization so when you are right at launch time and you start appearing these widgets they will not show you in the Chinese coming soon or the German coming soon if your page is not translated and you're saying your game's not translated that is not cool um chill aquarium an awesome game that is fully translated they were appeared in the capitalism and economy Fest and during that thing they did awesome they got 53,000 wish lists from this Festival that is awesome and they did some backwards analysis and they realized only 38% of those wish lists came from English speakers it is no longer sufficient to just translate to English we got to do all the languages as many as you can so do it and if somebody's ask I know some will ask do the Asian languages first then Portuguese then the uh figs languages from um from Europe those that's the order you should do it okay number 16 not keeping your tags up to date just check them you know once a month go through the tagging wizard I always see weird tags people can add tags it gets weird um like fans can just add their own tags that's that's bad it's just like weeding your garden like once a month just go in there pull out anything that's not there just do the tagging wizard all right number 17 making your own capsule don't make your own capsule please folks hire a professional artist here's why YouTubers use our art our art that we spend a lot of money on to make their thumbnails thumbnails on YouTube are the reason why some take off and some don't it is the most critical factor that it's all that YouTubers obsess about so they need a good capsule if your capsule is boring they don't like your game and if you say hey could you play my game on your stream they're going to look at your capsule like H this thing not cool um I can't do much with this it's going to be a lot of work to make this look cool and get views to my channel because that's all they want they don't want you to play your game they want views to their channel so this is Clan folk their old capsule I love this game but their old capsule kind of looked like a pizza uh I don't know I don't know what is going on here but then they got a really nice one at launch this one's beautiful good job on them well splatter cat played the game with both capsules they he thankfully played it when it looked like a pizza and it only had 74,000 views only I say only but then they they had them replay it for the the updated capsule look at this 174,000 views this is how important a capsule is it's the same game same streamer just a lot more traffic because people like beautiful thumbnails and streamers need our art to do their thumbnails so if you have a crappy homemade thumbnail streamers are going to want to cover you you've got to pay money for this stuff it's a it's worth it it is totally worth it to pay for a capsule okay this transition to communication mistakes and I'm going to go to the next one here not including your capsule in PSD format in a pressit this is very related to the previous one if you didn't notice streamers love to do this face they love it they love that face and what they need to do is they need to do that face on top of your capsule so what they need look at how different the different capsules are but it's pretty much the same art they just like to kind of Photoshop it in their own style so they need your capsule in different format and they need to be able to move pieces around so that they can put their face in different ways okay so your press kit should include the Photoshop file layers game logo with transparency everything should be transparent throw it in a Google Drive Dropbox and say in your pitch when you contact streamers hey I've got this game I think you're going to like it here's the thumbnail full transparency full PSD so you can customize it how you want they're gonna love it they're going to love it look at how look at how much see see how the logo changes the logo's here then the logo is here then the logo down here they need your logo in transparent mode so they can move it how they want it doesn't look weird all right number 19 forgetting to announce your game this one stresses me out you should always announce your game all it is it's a tweet or a message anything and you just include the trailer that's it all you say is super excited to announce your new game that's it that's all you got to do that's this tweet here's another one here's stwn doing theirs for wandering Village see all you say happen you to announce our game you always have to do emotion announce and then a description of your game genre Focus okay that's all you do that's how you announce your game here it is announcing your upcoming game ba and it's just a trailer all right then your trailer because you're GNA announce your game with a trailer remember I told you the 30 second trailer when you upload to Youtube you just call it announce trailer you have to put this magic keyword in here announce trailer okay um I I looked back on several developers who had huge Twitter followings their announce tweet was the source of their biggest follower increase for some reason when you just tweet your game and say announce it goes more viral I think it's because all your friends and the community is like oh this is an announce this is news I got to share this so you have to do the announce tweet and you have to do the announce YouTube video the the trailer just put announce or reveal in your trailer when you upload it to YouTube and you just magically get new that's newsworthy it gets just more visibility everywhere number 20 skipping streams during a steam Festival just do it everybody's like do I need to do this do I really need to yes you can make it looping you get Robo streamer all you do is upload a video just do it just do it just don't ask questions okay just please just do it it's not hard they don't yell at you you just need to do it all right 21 inconsistent content updates okay you should be doing an update every three weeks you just do an update you just say hey here's the latest thing about our game it just proves to people one to makes your steam Page look better because you get this little thing it just proves to people that you're still alive you're still doing stuff so every day every three weeks just post it to your steam page you could just post it to your newsletter it doesn't take much and here's what you want to post okay everybody always ask what do I do every three weeks okay post content about your game I know it sounds obvious I I hate this update I see this update all the time like we went to packs we went to Gamescom that's your games update and then and the people who like your game fans they didn't go there they're just like okay so you got a cool trip why do I care it has to be about your game it's if you don't it's like watching somebody else's vacation photos okay those are boring so what you do instead of we went to backs it's just right about your game and what I like to do is look at old instruction books from old Nintendo games these are perfect Updates this is what your update should look like on Steam to your newsletter all that kind of stuff just describe your game like what's this boss that's a skeleton what's this what's this monster that's a skeleton and just describe that skeleton what are his weaknesses what are his powers just pick one element about your game like pick three enemies write about them this is a perfect update for every three weeks just it doesn't have to be compated just like one paragraph just do that it's your game you know it better than anybody just you probably do it off the top of your head all right number 23 messaging only on the day your game launches so anytime you have anything to do an update for you got to wind up for it no more robots they used to they don't post as much anymore on Twitter but uh they used to do the best updates look at how the updates are they go six days to release you know then they do they count it down announcing a game tomorrow and then they do the thing they never just say this thing they always tease it for days in advance okay so if you're doing any announcement countd down to it so if your thing happens on this date okay this is what you do you do one week in advance three days until it tomorrow we're going to have a big announce then you announce a thing and then you're like hey we announced this big thing three days ago hey final reminder that we did this big thing don't forget and then the sale ends or whatever it is this is how a typical update you got to do a lot of leadup before the thing happens and then you have to remind people that the thing happened that's just the way it is too many people just do this one thing all right you got to do all of them they won't think you're spammers they like the announcements nobody ever misses this stuff this one really makes me sad forgetting the call to action always have a call to action you have to tell people what to do they don't know I know you know what to do but they don't and it's really simple to write a call to action verb direct object wishlist our game join our mailing list play the demo so many people forget this this is it you can just steal this you can just copy off me whatever you want to do just remember there's a big button on any update that you do that says do this thing whatever you want them to do and pick one you can save the next one for the next thing that you want to do okay and I know Tik Tok they're like that's so cringe you just had you tell me to go do something that's so cringe who cares who cares this is your life that's on the line this is your dream post everything on Tik Tok sure link to it link to something have a call to action even if it's cringe who cares about those kids all right number part three or is this four I always forget my Roman numeral it's four business mistakes number 25 quitting after your first game fails I don't know why they always say Fails Like if you look if you just search the word fail on Reddit there's so many fails um here's I did some analysis the number of Studios that release one and only one game is 38,000 the number of Studios that released two games is all the way down to 7,920 you need to release more games I did some analysis of uh the first two weeks when the games announced how many wish list did they get guess who had the most wish list people who had multiple games a previous game part of this is because they're very good studio and because releasing multiple games Survivor should buyas I know but they also can cross promote and they have fans from their old games and all this other stuff that they can direct to their new game so your marketing just becomes stronger when you have old games see every red line here is somebody who had a previous game the blue bars are people who did not have previous games notice how many big red bars are up at the front you have to release more games that's just how it works okay don't expect to fund a game off a studio off of one game it's impossible um here's this is publicly financial data that devolver had to publish because they're publicly traded notice that in 2020 61% of their profits came from the back catalog if devolver can't fund themselves just on their new games how are you most Studios get their profits M fund their games from their back catalog you just need more games all right now not bundling with developers this is sad there's this really free feature all you do is you pick a friend and you say hey would you like to bundle together one of you launches the game and the other game gets all this visibility it's free money um these two games bundled together when pegin launched now pegin was a huge game with a huge launch pegin earned $122,000 just from the bundle this game they bundled with their friend got $70,000 just from the bundle okay if you were not bundling with somebody you were stealing $770,000 from them that's a huge missed opportunity you should be doing it all right not discounting your game every opportunity you can you just have to discount it every chance you can discount your game don't wait I can look at your graphs on steamdb and see if you're doing it and you better do it all right if you get 20% discount or more an email goes out to your wish list followers so I always say at least 20% when you're doing these discounts number 29 is discounting too deep too fast see this game they discounted so deeply right away um what you want to do is a slow stair step down check is there any deal every everybody wants to know when the lowest discount is and if you discount too deep you just gave away your game to everybody some people would buy your game at like 25% off but they don't so you just got to do it if you just go all the way to 70% off you just undercut yourself with the people who would have bought your game at 25% off so always stair step your discounts down keep it at this level unless steam gives you a deal like sometimes steam will knock on your door and say can we do a daily deal you just have to discount it to 30% if they do that do it say yes steam we will do that because you're going to get so much money but if they don't come knocking after a year just slowly tick it down don't do this for quite a while that's the discounting all right these are the daily deals sometimes steam will say hey we will give you a daily deal featuring this is super good featuring for like a new historic low 35% off or some number that's when you do that that uh deep discounting okay final one underpricing your game this one makes me very mad I looked at all the games that have released over time over the years and I said what's the price now AAA used to be just the same price as indie games and then triaa woke up and they were like wait a lot of people are buying our games on Steam let's rais the prices so in 2012 they started raising their prices and they've been raising them raising them raising them raising them Indie Games have actually gone down they've been flat flat flat even down down down and they'll up a little bit raise your prices Indies just raise your prices for goodness sakes look at what Triple A can get away with why can't we so what I recommend is find a game that's similar to yours that's sold pretty well do a spreadsheet look at all these similar games what is their price and then whatever price they did at 20% we got to get these numbers up those are rookie numbers let's bounce them up and the only way we're going to do that is slowly incrementing the price so just add 20% to what most games find because Indies are underpricing their games the end here's how to find my novels that I write every year every year you're going to get a novel parsed out one chapter at a time I'm here for questions to answer them to help you um to console you if we will one of those mistakes again it is not a problem if you made one of those mistakes but I'm here for you so with that please drop the questions I'm ready for you I'm gonna you know what happened it's 33 minutes I kind of I kind of lied look at that 33 33 I missed it but I'm sorry I'm gonna make answer as many questions as I can to hopefully make up for my air I'll stay three minutes longer than a half an hour okay I'm I'm sitting here you know giving you hell for being three hour three minutes late and I'm muted so no one gets to hear me rant um I will say number 30 is a pet peeve of mine like so bad but it's not just developers because we do this analysis for Publishers as well a lot of Indie Publishers underpriced their stuff too and we have shown them it's not that it sounds basic to say if you raise the price you're gonna make more money but if you raise the price you're actually going to sell more units because marketing price dictates quality it says hey we're a quality game we have a higher price so yes get it the best way to get more money is just to raise your prices like it's not to raise more products it is so easy if you want to get a raise remember how when you're like if you work for somebody you're like hey can I get a raise you know and they're like I don't know let's look at your year end analysis let's see if you deserve it you know what you're in business for yourself you just like I'm just gonna raise my price price because I'm the boss so everybody raise your prices all right so Fernando from YouTube says uh I don't have a question I'm just piping in to say thanks I owe both Chris and the igb crew a bunch I've learned so much from your content thank you very much Fernando you are very welcome that's why we do this all right so we have a batch of questions and we're going to get through as many of them as we can so first question from Papa tube on YouTube how much time ahead can you change your launch date without affecting it I think it's that two it changes but I think it's that email it's kind of the last warning so I think the email goes out three weeks for before that thing um the 3 weeks before the the date and then you have till two weeks in advance but I'll Tell You Folks they really really pay attention to that if you blow past that date they are unforgiving so really folks change it now just go in right now while you're waiting on this call go change your date even if you don't know what it is change it to the year 2099 or something okay you don't want to blow through that date you can always change it back to a date you know in other words like if you know oh we're going to release on September 21st or something then you can change it but if you blow past that date there's nothing you can do basically take the date that you think it's G to be and add six months to it and it doesn't like just add like 10 years to it there is something to be said for having at least a year that's realistic well here's the way it works in Steam is that number is hidden that's just a number for the metadata on the steam algorithm now I do agree with you Jay that you should put a date like you could put this year or coming at the end of it you can actually there's a text field where you could write anything you want in there and that's what I recommend is change the metad date to the year 2099 or something don't forget to change it when it is time to launch but that you can add a custom text field to say like coming in the year 2025 or whatever it is uh but and keep that cryptic but at least put a year I agree with you Jay that you should at least say like seriously we have a year at least there there is some sort of plan here um Albert on YouTube says when publishing a trailer what are the best ways to get eyeballs on it festivals tend to want a demo or require sign up months ahead big presswise how do we get their attention yeah okay so what you got to do is you got to prove that your game's good so I would tease you know how I said you get your mailing list ready before your steam page is ready you want to start doing some social media around your game just like it doesn't have to even announce the Game's name name just like the what the characters bouncing around in an environment or something it was something cool looking right started doing that on Twitter and Tik Tok just getting it out there okay if any of those times you go viral you can go to IGN or gam spot but 's the bigger one with your trailer and you say you knock on their door and say hey we went viral with this tweet we've got a hot game here can we get excl you want the exclusive access to our announced trailer here's the trailer and you put on the trailer all over place not for rebroadcast this is just a preview type of thing and then if they're like yeah we'll we'll take that exclusive and then you kind of work with them on a date and you say hey this is GNA be the date that is the best way to kick off a trailers with that the other thing you can do is when you apply for those festivals not all festivals want a demo and if you go to how tomarket agame.com festivals we curate a spreadsheet that has all the upcoming festivals apply to that festival and in the Box they always say is there anything special you want to talk about when we when you apply and say hey we're going to announce game so time it with a festival or with IGN pick one of those things it's most of the time it's somebody else that's going to be doing the promoting for your trailer your game the other one is it's just got to be a good trailer that looks cool and it has to be a good game concept if it's not a cool game concept and it's not pretty art and it's not interesting that's the that's the number one thing so first step make a very cool game Second Step contact iGun because you're you're going to hit what what is it Michael Jordan or who over the no it was um Wayne Gretzky you you miss 100% of the shots you don't take so if you don't ask you're never going to get these things um worst case scenario they say no or they ignore you who cares whatever um next question from Andre what to do if you get stuck on around 6,000 wish lists and you get wish lists only at festivals only about 40 wish lists per week but you don't really have anything new to show at the moment um I do you have a demo out get that demo out reach out to streamers that's a good source um and then that's just kind of it like you have to have a big burst of traffic festivals are great they're great source of traffic but you really need some external thing and one of the best ways is streamers streamers just play games so make sure you get that demo out as soon as you can and keep that demo out and just keep reaching out to streamers like 300 streamers make a list of 300 streamers and contact all of them that's the that's kind of the best way from andisa does Steamworks allow for checking widgets outside your own relig region or language um I don't know what that I'm not sure what that means exactly I don't know what that means um you can create a widget there's a there's an iform widget that you can create on some page I can't remember but you can put it on any website I think that's what you mean maybe I I I don't know if I understand that question repost a question out of a few more details and I'll answer it if we come around to it next one how do I translate my game do I have to hire someone yes you probably should it depends on you like some games don't have a lot of text and text isn't as important some sometimes you might be able to use some machine translation but it doesn't always turn out right like you got know language you know like sound effects you don't translate sound effects the word sound effects into Japanese the word sound effects in Japanese is sfx so you would like if you just went to Google and you search trans if you tried to translate sound effects Google would translate it to Japanese some word for Japanese but really in the lexicom of video games you would just say sfx so you have to kind of know the culture like if you're a super starving Indie sure you could just translate it through Google or some AI thing um but you really should pay somebody but for your steam page why not when you're posting it just do a machine learning translation why not try that while you're kind of building up the hype and then uh for the full game now if your game's like a visual novel with like where text is very important in characters you got to pay for somebody to do that and part of the thing is like uh you got to in the beginning maybe make games that aren't so text heavy so that you know the translation's cheaper you got to make some you got to make some sacrifices when you're small Indie so that's kind of my general advice for translation but it is super critical to translate your game all right I'm I'm gonna disagree with Chris always always hire somebody do not ever use machine machine learning it if you're if you're a dirt poor Indie if you're a dirt poor you have scrub together but yes I agree with Jay for most dirt poor you're releasing in English or whatever your native language is I've done enough localizations over the last 25 years for a good game now if your game is sucks then there's no helping it anyway but for a good game you will never lose money on a localization because it will always when you start selling it in that's an excellent way to think about Jay listen to everything Jay says yes the one of the few times I get to actually you know counter Chris in other words other times I'm just sitting here nodding my head going yeah yeah yeah um all right so is there any specific marketing or monetization advice for small games such as games from new developers oh man that's my whole blog go to how tomarket agame.com and just spend the afternoon reading that's well and the other side of that too is this is I mean we weren't joking you've been on here like eight times there's a whole litany of talks on our YouTube page which I can tell from statistics you're basically all on right now um just look for Chris's name just Google just put his name in the search for when you're on the indie game business YouTube page and seriously go back and listen to these things because they are 100% worth it um and sign up for the blog how toket sign up for the blogfree every week you get something wonderful in your box that tells you specific advice how to Market your game can I get a signed version of the book I mean have you done physical copy sh I want an autograph version um should Indies consider the JC Penny effect for those of you outside of America and even some of the younger folks in America you may not know what that is um setting your initial price 15% higher and then offering a 10 to 20% discount occasionally yeah you should do it that I I the JayZ Penny effect is okay so what happened with the JC Penney effect it's a discount store and what they did they JC Penney every month or every day basically we're like oh it's a two for one day hey come today for two day for one day and then the next day you're like it's 50% off day and you're like that's the same thing they're like it's 50% off you know so everything was a discount and then some uh smart uh consultant came in was like hey let's just set the prices the same all the time we'll just set it to the new Baseline we won't do these fun sales and stuff we'll just set the new Baseline and everybody was like all the all the people were like although Shoppers were like no way and their sales dropped like JC Penney's sales tank and and everybody's like we want the discounts and they're like no that that is the discount we just discounted our price and they're like no we want the fun of two for one day we want two for one day we want 50% off day and the consultant's like you idiots it's the same day it's the same thing it's the same base price and they're like no that's not fun that's the JC Penney effect so I think the I think the question might be saying hey aren't you worried about always discounting no because the JC Penny effect is that thing is like people want the fun of like man I'm getting a deal like whether we want it or not steam Shoppers love deals we just came out of the thing so you have to like that the JC Penny effect says this is what we should be doing we should be setting a high price and then having discounts all the time that's a JC Penney effect and so it's just the culture like that's the culture of steam steam has um this the culture of JC Penney was we are always going to run a sale we're going to set a high price and then discount and so all the Shoppers became accustomed to that is that bad not necessarily I know it sounds we're smart you know we're like oh you know it's actually the discount but shopping is fun it is fun to do the discounts and to feel like you got a deal that is part of the fun and we we have to accept it I know we're all analytical computer scientists and stuff but sometimes hey have a little fun you know and it's like discounts are fun people love it if you just go and Reddit people always like post these memes of like discount numbers they like 50% off look I got this tripa game for 5 per. people love that stuff it's fun and so have fun everybody that's my thing is like have them fun moral of story is uh JC pen is also gone now I mean so it's it's it well there's lots of reasons for that being gone but it's not the pricing necessarily so yes always always higher price more more discounts um is it good to use AI generated capsule photos don't do it hire people know and there's a real stigma against it hire an artist just hire an artist I know it's expensive but that's what people that's see here's the thing is like the stuff I was saying with the um um you know multiple views and people can tell people on Steam know when they are looking at a air like they or if they find it they're going to start pointing it out these are things where you need to stand this is how you stand out from the crowd for the crowd is doing like asset packs AI art and you have to stand out and say I'm expensive invested in this game I know it's expensive to to hire an artist it's typically like 100 to 500 to a th000 you could go up but typically expect to spend like up to 500 bucks on a capsule but by investing in that you are proving hey I am high quality I am I'm investing in this game and then Shoppers are like this is a high quality product this is somebody who's invested in the thing and so that's what you're doing and so yes but it's a business investment if you're and now I'm talking to business who want to do this for a living like you should invest in your business to do this stuff so I don't like the AI art you want to stand out it people are starting to be able to tell what AR art looks like is it okay to do steam post just in English uh steam post that just what is it okay to do steam posts or updates they say in English but I'm guessing they mean just in English um I don't know but I mean here's the thing is those updates don't do very the thing is the updates themselves don't do that amazing uh like numbers wise they just kind of show that you're still there so I don't know try it for English try translating one of them do do some translation I don't know but you test it out tell me what what you find out you test it and then you tell me what happened should a demo be released in a perfect state or as soon as it demonstrates what the game is about this is there's a lot in that text like perfect State versus everything else there's so many gradients there test it this is what I do is there's a ba like here's what I would do um progression wise do a small play test with your biggest fans in other words everybody who joined the main list or the Discord say hey I'm going to do very close beta don't tell anybody just send it to them get feedback you're G to find a lot of bugs patch those bugs then do a public beta do that find a bunch of bugs patch it find out then build up to releasing a demo and so I can't tell I don't know what your perfect is versus everything else but come on get get the move on let's get this game out let's get this game out is what I'm saying but test it first before you know um you have all the bugs you the the thing you don't want is a buggy demo that the streamer plays and is like oh God this is janky this is broken this is awful and thousands of people are watching that happen so that's why I say do the betas do the preest launching a demo uh you should already know what's going wrong with your game or what's right and you find that from beta's play tests all that other stuff all right we got 10 minutes so we're going to go rapid fire mode and anything are I mean you're are you on the Discord Chris you're on the Discord you I'm on the Discord so we may shunt some of these over to the marketing section on the Discord so when you have time later today you can okay see if I can get through them yeah all right what would you recommend if the first game you did was well hold on a second if your first game did poorly and you're afraid people lost trust in you as a developer that's everybody everybody does poorly on their first game that's welcome to the club um no they don't people have a short memory span attention span memory on Steam unless you did something like very mean and cruel or like you turned out to be a secret Bitcoin miner or something like unless you really did something a which has happened yes unless you did something awful um people don't remember and you can chalk it up like hey I'm learning so no people rarely play realize what the old games are if develop able to do got it if a developer is able to do other forms of content such as making music should that be used in the marketing of their game like in another words say music by me I I don't know should do whatever you got you whatever you've got put it in there do it see if it and if nobody cares take it out I mean that's that's testing an iteration if you do a post no one relates to it then just don't do that post again yeah how do I Market my game after launch um unfortunately if your game did not do well and what I say well is in the eyes of steam this is the eyes of steam everybody who releases the game you are a genius it is so hard to launch a game Steam and the alve algorithms they really like it if you're in my experience they don't they won't tell you this if you asking this but this is my experience if you make about1 $150,000 within the first six months valve considers that worth their time because really the steam algorithms and all that stuff they are what promotes your game and what they do is they if your game hat is worth it for their time and if you get about that $150,000 in six months you can start phoning up and say hey can I get a daily deal can I do this stuff can I get this promotion and they'll go yeah yeah well and they'll give you stuff if you don't have that $150,000 in six months I am very sorry it's probably not going to happen there's not much you can do all you can do is like if you call them up and say Hey can I have a daily deal they like thanks for playing but no um the the thing that you got to do that from then on out is just every month or every whenever you can just regularly discount your game apply for every Festival that allows release games not all festivals do it but they do how Market a game.com festivals has that um patch the game a few things a few times do some updates just to show that you're a good Dev steam players love good devs who do frequent updates but don't spend too much time trying to update the game to make it perfect if you didn't do it in that first six months I'm sorry it's very very very unlikely to happen for you take the lessons you learned move on to your second game I'm sorry but you just you got to move on the games I know everybody's like well what about among us there it the reason everybody says what about Among Us is there was one game that pulled it off okay very very very very few games can do it have done it where they just didn't have that great launch and then they go from there so uh try those things but if it doesn't work start on your next game all right so I've got the clarification on the question from earlier can you check what is in the new and popular list in other languages yeah I think you can um set um you well I think you can even VPN in I think you can change the language there's a language drop down and I think if you change the language you get it or just go on a friendly Discord and say like hey can somebody send me if somebody from Germany send me your popular upcoming try that I'm not sure that's a good question that's a good question where can I get a gold microphone Amazon Amazon's got everything or or I should have made it a mystery I had to go into the caves and find the dragon and steal the gold microphone from Theon no it's just Amazon oh all right lost my spot here we go um where do you keep a press kit for smaller streamers that you didn't email is there a place in Steam where you can upload it where do streamers go to get it the link that you send them just make a folder on Dropbox and then contact a streamer and say Here's my presskit and then on your website just have a big button that says presskit and then it just links to your Dropbox all you got to do is Dropbox or Google Drive just a folder with a p pile of files screenshots logo and transparent your capsule with PSD so that they can rearrange the things and put the face on um that's all you do it's not hard it's not complicated speaking of prices are there any break points that we need to be aware of for example is being in the under $10 category beneficial I don't think it is as much as as people think it is it doesn't I don't think it matters as much as people do again it's the bigger thing is just look at your competition like look at the other games with you you got to set the vibe like if you've got to like if you're trying to sell your game for $30 and your game looks like a $ five doll game I'm sorry I know I said bump your prices up but that's not going to work you can't do that you have to look at where the pack is and just compare there's no like magic number I don't think I know there's a widget that says under $10 under five I don't think that that significantly gives you that boost on top of just keeping your price a little bit all right is there a time frame from developers is there a time frame developers should aim for when creating a steam page to have a playable demo at what point do you need to put your steam page up related to your demo um well I like okay steam page I like of this as soon as you have and these are my three things I'll do this real rapid fire I think there's four things it changed so you have four environment three environments that you can show like three very different environments you've got a trailer you have a professional capsule you know what genre you're definitely sure the genre and the art style is going to be those are locked in put your steam page up after that after you got all those things as soon as you can keep that steam page up some games are beautiful games like you just show them and they go viral just by showing a picture of it that's a very rare thing if that happens you don't probably need a demo the demo is good if you're like ah my game doesn't look great I can't go viral on social media in that case you got to get the demo out the demo is like most games are only you only find out they fun to play by playing the game and you can get streamer coverage so I usually call in the demo when after you realize your game just isn't a pretty game that can go viral on social media most games are that and so that's why I say try I always tell people plan to have that demo out earlier you want that demo nice and early because most games are not beautiful viral hits here's a good one you talk about genre on Steam a lot are there any stats on games with specific settings or themes instead of genre um I did hmarket game.com I do every year a Roundup where I look at um genres and well like art Styles um uh the number one art style is what I call simulator style and it's that blank style like if you look up any playway games it's that blank style that has like it's just they look like mannequins almost but they're like simulation games you know like Supermarket simulator uh house renovator house flipper 2 those kind of things um that's like the most popular style and that's because the genre is simulator and simulator is very hot and so that's the style um whome is a very hot sub genre and it has its own kind of visual style I think that's a very popular one horror is a very popular genre and that is basically simulator style and then just splash a coat of blood on everything and then you got the horror style so are very good um fantasy is always is hot um one thing I see a lot and I don't know if this is because I'm an American I'm in the Arizona like in the west I see a lot of games coming out that are western themed I don't think the Western theme is as hot I think a lot of Europeans make western game like games like with a with a they're much more popular in Europe and especially in Germany than they are here for whatever reason yeah and I don't see many Western games doing very well and I call I say that from the West like I am in the west I am I am a day drive from the Grand Canyon um and um I just don't think they're as popular as uh some Europeans think that they are so I wouldn't make a a Cowboy game or something like that just I don't get it I don't know I even like watching western movies but uh I think a lot of that is because of red did I mean it is so hard to compete with that game it's like what are you really really going to do in a game that you can't already do in that series and and I think that's part of the reason because years ago before Red Dead came out there were many more Western games but there just aren't anymore um all right we are out of time so I'm G to try to shove one or two more questions in here um you have a lot of you have analyzed a lot or have you analyzed a lot of steam demo play times and do you have any indications on what a good medium playtime is for a demo go to how tomarket a game.com benchmarks I published a study on a median playtime for a demo median play time is about 25 minutes or above is good it's even better if you're an hour not average median play time is best like I see games that do very very well have 45 minutes or more median play time if you are less than 25 minutes you got some problems you got to work out something's wrong with the game something's not engaging something's not clicking with people you should fix that um aim for 30 minutes to an hour for your demo your playable demo I actually have been playing demos um I upload them to my premium site I have a premium site um where I upload playtimes of demo I'm just playing demos just to see like how do they work how do they gate the content how do they include ex things so check that out that's what I'd recommend all right last one and I lost it hold on I had one I couldn't get any social attraction or festivals I want to reach out to Publishers in late August should I launch a steam page now or wait I'm worried about their opinion on a low wish list game um yeah well launch a steam P like have you here's what I would do is if you couldn't get traction on social join the club nobody does well on social there's like 1% of games that do well on social media um but that's not a dead end here's what I do is do the pitch do the publisher pitching just do it do it don't tell them you said should I launch a steam page but then you said I have low wish list counts or something I don't I don't remember what it was do the pitch to Publishers try set a timeline say one month I'm G to give them one month if the Publishers don't bite like nobody's signing you after that one month publish a steam page publish that demo because we know that it doesn't do well on social media publish that demo do that thing that I was talking about how you announce your game with a trailer do that then see if you take off from that if still nothing if you don't go viral from that then publish a demo see if you can go out to streamers and Festival streamers and Festival streamers and Festival see if you can go f viral with that um um Publishers are at the stage now where they only want to sign games that have proven to have that hit in other words they they have a huge um influx of wish lists okay and so with that uh you got to prove it and if you can't prove it then you're not going to get published it just that's just the rule of it that's just the how the market is now everybody knows oh wish list are a very good indicator of potential success um here's the thing and that the question you might be asking was like well if I release a demo and I announced my steam page uh then the the cat's out of the bag um and Publishers won't want me if you have a hot game I know games that have like the Publishers ignored forever and then they had a huge wish list Spike and guess who all of a sudden showed up in their inbox they're like oh well we see you doing some very good stuff around here they're like you just rejected me like six months ago where were were you back six months ago oh we're so I like yeah so don't worry if your game's hot the Publishers will forget all the little rules they have about publishing um and they'll sign you so uh that's that's the way it is and if you still can't get wish list even after the demo just release your game and move on to your next one you got you got to release a lot of games folks release a lot of small games make smaller games that's my final analysis it's just like lots of small games don't make your dream game for your first game please God don't do that make lots make your dream game your 10th game release lots of small ones that don't even need a publisher they're so small and so cheap get them out learn the process your first time on a bike did you ride no you fell down game making is harder than riding a bike so what makes you think you're going to be able to do well the first time you make a game you're not you gotta release a lot of games just like it took a lot of times before you finally were able to ride a two-wheeler so that's my final advice sign up how to Market a game.com free get a free book of marketing every year just doled out every week um thank you so much Jay for having me you have a great audience well for those of you who didn't get your questions answered go over to the Discord discord.gg IND game business drop them in the marketing section and we'll get we'll get them answered as Chris has time please make the questions very short so I don't want to read a paragraph I can't I can't do that I'm gonna answer the shortest question first that's the secret awesome thank you Chris always appreciated Dan yes sir thank you so much that was awesome we should have like a quick fire how to Market your game session that's the whole point is just quick and see how many questions we can get through I think that would be awesome we just did it not not not nearly all of them I the questions though this time I wasn't counting the questions I I know I bet you we went through at least 50 questions though that was awesome thank you so much Chris and thank you everybody remember discord.gg indam business also just check out our site indie game business.com also get some you know what you just can never have enough merch right see how Chris has got his how to Market any game shirt we have any game business shirts and hats and hoodies and all that good stuff so check out some of that too sign up for our mailing list it has Publishers or it you get publisher list and you also get the investor list so sign up for that thank you all for joining us and have an amazing uh rest of your weekend thanks everybody