Getting the word out there, your projects and the public.

A few months ago I attended the Indie Game Business Sessions: Winter 2020, an online conference, that focuses is on the business side of the Indie development scene. However, outside of the standard announcements and game mechanic breakdowns, I was shocked to learn just how much of a large portion of the conferences dedicated to methodologies surrounding exposure. Talks concerning how to make your game popular on Steam talks concerning how to effectively use YouTube with your game’s marketing, topics concerning influencers and how they Showcase game. Throughout the three days where the conference it became very clear just how necessary and difficult it is for indie devs to get the word out.

Realistically even a small campaign can be the difference between and a thousand game sales and none, the capabilities however that a single-person developer is able to manage a media blitz is practically zero.

So what methods are available to us to rectify this?

Resume & cover letters

while probably not the most successful strategy early on, writing an effective cover letter and crafting an engaging resume can be essential to demonstrate your skills to others. Your documents should always be focused on quality and not quantity, meaning instead of writing a 3-page resume detailing every bit of work you’ve ever done, try to develop a 1-page document that succinctly displayed your skills.

Social media responsibly

When it comes to marketing yourself social media is your greatest friend and your biggest obstacle, oftentimes social media can be used to effectively demonstrate your work to a large audience of individuals. However, it can just as easily you can get buried under the hundreds of thousands of other posts and forgotten.

When it comes to larger sites such as Facebook and Twitter it can sometimes seem like a gamble. One method of tipping the odds is with prolonged engagement, which can often add credence to developers making it easier to engage with your audience. It’s also important to note some of the smaller social media and the niches that they could provide for you, such as Linkedin’s more professional atmosphere, Instagram’s focus on photos and video images, or even Reddit and its more community-driven social aspects. ultimately there is no secret sauce to the social media landscape however it’s important to note that your efforts within the social media sphere should never overshadow your efforts into the development sphere, social media is a tool to be used to market ourselves and our products, not the product itself.

In the end, it’s very much possible that the games we make or the products we develop actually catch on in the mainstream, ultimately it takes talent, patients and a little luck to break into the mainstream.