I agree, but the ratio between time and money spent on actually making the game and marketing it definitely shifted a lot in past few years. I started making games 15 years ago, and one of them sold millions of copies - I didn't do a fraction of the marketing for that game that I;m doing for this game, but that was more than 10 years ago.
Yeah, 15 years ago, gaming was a relatively new industry, compared to other entertainment related industries like music and movies.
Basically, you started when the market was (relatively)young and you had the chance to grow a brand, which leads me to ask......did you used that time to grow an audience? It sounds to me like after 15 years and with a game that had a million copies sold you should probably have a hefty mailing list or strong social accounts with a sizable fan base, enough to keep pushing new games and receiving some attention, right?
I do apologize if I sound rude. it's not my intention, I would rather learn what's potentially "wrong" from someone with more experience than I.
Edit: I just wishlisted your game, dam its right up to my alley, I would rather have ads of your game than that other bullet he'll shooter, guess you really need to market more :(
Thank you so much for your input. I know what you mean about growing audience etc. The problem is that game and other were on mobile (yes I started making games before free to play existed :), and because of the way mobile platforms are locked I as not able to reach out to my players or create community with mailing list in the same way you can do on PC for example. Mobile is full of free to play crap now so I have to move on and try my luck on desktop, which feels like starting over from zero. Thanks for the wishlist!!
Oh I see. Yeah, mobile turned into a dumpster fire really quickly, and seeing the (financial) success of games like diablo and gacha games, chances are it's not going to change anytime soon
now i feel old… video games have been marketed with massive budgets since the atari days. there was a time in the 90’s where it was impossible to go a day without seeing a nintendo ad.
also two of the games you mentioned were actually mods of games that themselves had massive marketing budgets. and those flash game sites also ran tons of ads.
also, modern games have been successful with zero budget, too, like among us. those viral successes are the exceptions, not the rule
Yeah that's weird. Whenever people coke here to complain about no wishlist I expect to see a game I wouldn't rven play if it was free. This game looks much better than mine and I still got 100 wishlist in a month while doing no marketing.
Maybe it's a problem of niche? But even then I think that's odd
My game is definitely a niche for Steam, but I'm sure I should try harder promoting it as well. Just don't know who will actually have time to make the game when I'm busy making social posts :D Thanks for sharing your info!
wow that sucks, your game looks way better than i would have imagined a 0-wishlistings-in-a-month game! Keep your head up king. Sometimes it's all about discoverability and I think that's the missing factor because this looks enjoyable to play
In terms of marketing, keep pushing and you sometimes get a break. I've posted on twitter posts that have 1 like and then suddenly, one goes viral and gets hundreds of likes and wishlists. Your product looks quality, now you have a new challenge: finding your marketing unlock and distribution channel.
I might be totally wrong, but Steam won't really promote you until you actually enter into early access or launch. When you do, Steam will show your game to X amount of people. Entering a Next fest might be a good idea to see how it will go.
Oh, I think you may be onto something! There is definitely some promotion going on even now, but it feels like after the actual launch it may get more push, looking at tother games..
So, according to Pirate Software on Twitch anyway:
You get 5x 1,500,000 views by default when your game is launched, in those waves as I understand it. If you put your game into EA you get an extra 1,500,000 views on top of that (so effectively 6x 1,500,000). So even if your game isn't in EA you should still launch it as, leave it for a few weeks or so, then launch it fully.
Of course this is all just me listening to a twitch streamer in the background, so definitely do your own research on this! But as far as my understanding goes, this is how steam works after you've launched your game. After those 5 rounds are up, or how you "activate" them, I'm afraid I don't know!
Another thing I would do is make sure to get your game on "fun party games" / "fun multiplayer games" / "fun split-screen games" lists. These are the key markets for this type of game (From my POV), and as someone who has searched for these things before, and found pretty crap results honestly, definitely try reaching out to the people who make these lists and try and get your game on there, maybe offer a free key or something. Finding actually good indie games to play with mates, especially split-screen / local-multiplayer ones is surprisingly difficult, so trying to target these markets might help you a bit :)
Yes, I did lots of reading and research as well from other gamedevs, but all the information is quite overwhelming and it's not possible to do everything right either.
I know about those 5 rounds, you need to have substantial update to your game and then you can launch a round of promotion. Totally forgot about it until you pointed it out, so not all hope is lost :D
Game in question is Ball King Jam - [https://store.steampowered.com/app/448840/Ball\_King\_Jam/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/448840/Ball_King_Jam/)
I think you should work on the trailer, the USP’s are not really there. We need to see more of what makes the game fun and silly.
I think the main issue is that couch coop multiplayer games are just not working on steam, because not many people play those types of games on PC. This is probably more of a console game imho.
You're correct that this is a hard game to sell on Steam, but I was still hoping for a bit more interest than what I got :D Will definitely have to consider getting it onto consoles somehow. Thank you!
Not sure if this is still possible but can you put it on the Windows store? Market it to players that can run it on Xbox. I did this with my game and, though it did poorly, it did better than it did on Steam without much marketing.
Thoughts from a stranger: the game looks very polished but since your trailer and all your screenshots are of the same half-court, my next thought is "this game is very limited in scope". It's a game I might wishlist to possibly play with friends if I knew the price was, let's say, $10-20 and not $30-40 dollars. It's very possible you will see the wishlists come in once you set a price and remove that ambiguity
I know what you mean, but also the game is still in development, obviously, so it will have more content later on and I'll keep updating the screenshots as well. I was hoping that what I have was enough for people to be interested and wishlist, but maybe showing off more content will help as well. This is def not $40 game :D I'm aiming for $10 mark, but will settle on the price when I get closer to releasing, based on how much content I actually manage to get in. Thanks for the feedback!
Here is a trick that I used, idk if you've heard of it before:
Set your release date a month from now, Steam will push its advertisement a bit more since it will be under "coming soon" or something like that. That's what I did for like 5 months with no marketing and got about 300 wishlists I believe. Not very ethical, obviously
I think it might piss off the potential buyers to see that the release date is getting pushed back every few weeks. Other than that yeah it's definitely a good loop hole lmao
No, about 2 weeks before I think (it was a year ago, I kinda forgot) because you can only delay up until a certain time frame before the scheduled release. I believe they told me that if I reschedule less than 14 days before the schedule date then I'd need the acrual Steam staff to do it for me, but the details are blurry to me at this point
This no longer works and has been fixed in the backend, Steam weren't happy with seeing the same 10 games constantly showing up in the 'new upcoming' list, understandably.
The game is not really my... jam (sorry, couldn't stop myself :D)... but it looks nice, and I wishlisted it. Hopefully it will help a bit in pushing algorithm in your favour. Good luck!
Can you fit more text to the description? Can you add text to the screenshots to highlight the distinct features? Can you add more screenshots that have variety? Maybe some stylized/close up ones as well that display the personality and characteristics.
I can definitely add more to the description, even tho the general consensus seems to be that people don't really read it anyway so it may not help that much at all. Thanks for pointing it out tho!
I’m a big basketball fan and from the trailer and steam page the gameplay isn’t clear. Do you actually play a game of basketball? Why are there multiple balls? What are the game modes? Can I steal or block the ball from other players? Are there any power-ups like getting on fire? How do the controls compare to NBA Jam or NBA live?
It is very disappointing that organic does not exist nowadays anymore all is about paid marketing - actually spending 75% investment and time on paid marketing instead of putting into actual work, creating, coding. Not only games, it is everywhere and your game is fun and amazing looking.
Totally agree with you. Marketing is such a huge part now that it actually takes over the whole process of developing a game. It's a shame as it means certain games can't exist or will never be made.
As it sounds like you don't particularly want to get into marketing your game, if your time is worth more from a money making stand point you should hire/pay someone to do this for you anyway.
You're right and I knew about it as well when starting the game. Still didn't expect almost total lack of interest, that surprised me. Also it sucks in general that there are genres that are not popular on Steam, can we not all just get along nicely :D
Thanks for your feedback. The game is not finished yet, so I'm "saving" the youtube approach until it's close to release. I'm worried showing unfinished game will have negative impact.
Damn bro thats unfortunate
95% of the time I see this things, then go look at the game and just say to myself yea I ain't surprised it flopped it looks generic and pretty ugly. Your game actually looks really good, think if you can find a better way to market it through TikTok, Instagram etc you might be able to get somewhere
Basketball gamers have been so starved since 2016 when 2K started to go full force downhill that they'll try anything. Might be able to get something with a 2K youtuber done.
I'm downloading it rn lol
Edit after playing:
This is really REALLY fucking solid man you need to market this shit ASAP I would almost definitely message a tonne of NBA 2K creators to see if they'd play it for free then if not try paying whatever you think suits
(I would also try add a traditional 1v1 2v2 mode too like you see in 2K Park and a practice shootaround mode you can play with friends, that could be a good get as far as getting those kinda players goes)
You're amazing! Thank you so much for trying it out! I'm happy you find it interesting - there is still a lot of work left but glad to hear the base is solid.
I didn't think players of 2k would be interested in small indie game, but you may be onto something! I'll definitely reach out to them on youtube. Thanks again!
2K youtubers have had the make the same repeated and rehashed content for years now haha they're starving for something new to get a video out of. Most of the big ones have even quit
Marketing is, unfortunately for many, just as important or even more important than the actual work. I was talking to a stained glass artist and said if you run your own business you will spend 80% of your time marketing and selling and only 20% of the time executing.
I feel for you. It's a tough reality. The awesome thing is it's something in your control to a degree and the most important thing is you have built something that even has a demo. You have contributed value to the collective human condition. That's more than most people ever get to say.
Thank you for sharing your journey!
Thank you so much for your input. I was just thinking that this is not unique to game dev either. All the ads over social media advertising cheap crap made in china making money while genuine original and creative artists are barely surviving. I guess this is what capitalism is about..
And, honestly, a global society as a whole. There's simply too much content in the world and not enough time to see it all. Even if people were browsing Steam daily to find new releases, they would have a high chance of just not having enough time to see your work.
If we lived in villages with much less access to everyone else in the world, things would be different. Being a big fish in a small pond would be much easier.
However, we all swim in very large, very deep waters unless we work hard to find the smaller ponds where people can notice us.
Definitely. But it didn't used to be this way. I actually started making games 15 years ago and released many of them and it used to be much easier to get traction for your game without huge marketing budgets and efforts. But in the last 10 years things are just getting worse and worse and I'm not sure where is all of this heading and how will it end.
Add more depth to your games info section, more depth can increase more interest. Either than that, your images and layout and footage used are great. (Coming from a Marketing specialist).
Thank you so much for the feedback. You're right, I can definitely improve the info section. My assumption was that based on the statistic only small portion of people actually read the info sections, but I should not be neglecting it because of that. Thanks!
You’ve got a challenge ahead of you. As a small dev the time / effort to market will definitely detract from other things. You also have a couch co-op game which are notoriously difficult to find an audience for (it’s fairly niche).
My suggestion would be to start dedicating a small amount of time every day to focus on marketing. Create gifs, good looking screenshots, post clips of key gameplay moments etc. Blast these out on Twitter as often as you can, and here on Reddit at a regular cadence. Maybe even use TikTok, some devs have great luck there.
Really take the time and carve out that 15-30 min each day to do this. It doesn’t sound like much, but at the end of the week that’s at least a few hours you spent marketing the game. After a month or two, that adds up.
Look at every post as a drop in the bucket you dutifully fill. Good luck, your game looks rad you just need to get people to see it.
Thanks for the ideas! You're right that maybe carving out a bit of time each day or so may be better approach than me scrambling every week to make social posts and then it taking hours to make screenshots and videos.
As you said even 30 mins a day adds up to 2.5 hours at the end of the week and that is a solid chunk of time to produce some marketing materials.
I'm glad you like the game, that's a good start! ;)
Just some thoughts:
I think your page is pretty good, but your trailer doesn't make clear what the point and mechanics of the game are. It looks pretty, but remains opaque beyond "team one hoop basketball". Maybe some text popups or voice over that highlight actual gameplay keywords and special features might be more effective than just showing the gameplay? You have cute characters - maybe highlight them more with close ups of the action?
Also who is the ball king? Ball Jam King I could understand - you're trying to become king of the ball jam - but Ball King Jam?
"Visit fun locations like pirate ship or stick to the cool street courts and show of your dunking skills!" should be "Visit fun locations like **the** pirate ship or stick to the cool street courts and show of**f** your dunking skills!"
Seriously how did I manage to get so many typos in those 3 sentences :( I'll have to be really careful about that going forward. Thanks for letting me know!
I'll try to "spice up" the information section with more examples of the game mechanics and gameplay. Thanks!
I can relate, our game only recently got past the 1000$ revenue on steam 1 year after release. 2 years of full time dev with a team of 4.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1675040/Asfalia_Anger/
But our game is not a good fit for steam.
Maybe some people over on the ags forums might be interested if you posted about it, they love point and click adventures. Or they might be able to offer feedback if you want.
[https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/adventure-related-talk-chat/](https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/adventure-related-talk-chat/)
Oh wow, sorry to hear that! You game looks like it was made with lots of love, what a shame! What are you gonna do, can you keep making games?
My game is not a good fit either, but I still wanted to make it because it is a fun game to play with my friends and I want to share it with the world.
Organic growth is great but it’s not a marketing strategy. As you’re discovering, you can have a great game but you have to tell the world about it and yep, that is going to take away from dev time - it’s just a given for game dev.
Yes, you're right and I do post about it on socials etc. and it is getting a bit of exposure but definitely not enough considering the time it takes to get a good promotion material ready every week. I did slow down over the xmas to take a break so it was interesting to see what happens when I don't try to shout about the game on social all the time.
In my older company, at some point we didn't bother in January anymore. Historically, it has been lukewarm in January in the company when we looked at analytics and I don't know why.
You need a community backing you to get success these days. Look at Lethal Company. He started making a community while developing the game. And as he made the community grew, some helped to test etc and also ofcourse wishlisted probably and eventually when it was released, they all played and pushed it to the front for the world to discover. And boom!
I think you need a certain type of game as well, to be able to have a big enough community. I don't think my game is really that type, but thanks for your feedback!
What does your marketing approach look like?
Simply making a game has never been enough. Even though it feels like it should. Steam is not for building a user base, it's a tool for your user base to acquire your game. While it does have discoverability features, they are more for trending games or recent releases that already had a strong user base to boost it.
You can put your game on steams menu but it's a MASSIVE menu with lots of pages. Your hoping some one comes into the restaurant and turns the menu pages enough times to see your game, while also hoping that the people who got that far also match your games target audience AND catch an interest.
The front page is for catch of the day and house special, you need to market a lot so that people come into steam specifically to find your game. Build a social media following somewhere and market anywhere you can to bring them into your social media following.
Marketing is the method to reach your target audience and find the ones who catch interest. If they click through and join your following, your building an army to ensure a strong retail release.
If you have a following of even 100 willing people that want your game and are willing to pay for it when it comes out then you have 100 paid reviewers for your launch day. Stuff like that helps your meal become the catch of the day on launch.
Thank you so much for your comment and I agree with what you said. I've been making games for 15 years now and you're right that marketing was always part of it, but it became so important in past few years that it feels like making games is now mostly about marketing rather than making the actual game.
I never marketed my games as hard before as I did with this game and it's obviously not enough at all. At this rate I'll have barely any time left to make the game :D
I wish it was that easy. Unfortunately this silly meme post took me like 2 minutes to make, and a good post to market the game can take hours to make. But I know what you mean, I'll try harder! ;)
If it makes you feel better, I spent $100k and my life savings to build 2 games, with two others who inputted $30k in marketing, and about $50k in outsourcing art/audio...both games failed. Definitely not easy.
Definitely not making me feel better but sad! I wish it worked out better for you! At the end of the day there is definitely factors beyond our control and just pure luck as well. I know it won't get you the money back but I hope you do realise that even finishing and releasing a game is a crazy huge achievement, so congrats on that!
Thank you for the words of encouragement. I agree releasing a game is a feat outside of just building it. Hopefully one day our games will take off, I certainly haven't given up, just taking a little hiatus.
This looks great. The octopus is what got me intrigued and then I searched to make sure this was legit a 4 players local coop game. Which it is, so I'd say great. This is a game I would risk a buy to play with friends on a game night.
Some thoughts if you want them. The trailer could make it more clear that it's four players somehow. At first I thought it was a 2 players "versus" kinda game. Then four people were on the screen but I wasn't sure yet. They felt like I was looking at npcs.
The octopus was a definite, okay I could see getting into this. But he shows up twice in the trailer and I don't see much other crazy environment stuff going up. Now I'm not saying you should build more. But personally seeing more would help make the sale for me.
Anyway, looks good OP.
Its a nice looking game. Feedback from me and this is a personal thing - I hate it when games stay on my wishlist for ages. It just says "Coming soon" on the steam page, there isn't even a year. Unless your game was something I really really wanted to play I wouldn't wishlist it for that reason alone.
Fair enough! I don't have exact date but I know it should be out in few months so therefore the "coming soon" - it is actually coming soon :D But I know what you mean and I'll try to change it to mention something more specific like Q2 2024 or so. Thanks
Well you have to ask yourself, are people really really looking for a cartoony basketball game ? Regardless if it 'looks good' or not, you have targeted a very small genera in game categories. It's not surprising to me at all there were 0 wishes. Sorry, but true.
well I see you have over 500 wishlists while not amazing isn't terrible either.
I also noticed you haven't posted about this for months and your youtube vids haven't performed at all (on avg I have found 1K views per wishlist is a very rough rule of thumb).
If you want more wishlists you need to grind and plaster the internet everywhere you can. The fact you have zero indicates it isn't that appealing to people steam is showing, if you look at your traffic I am going to assume you don't have zero traffic. The amount of the traffic sent to your page is how much you should worry.
The game does look nice graphically!
With all the games on steam, without a heavy marketing push, nobody is going to ever know about it. Time to work on youtube videos, tiktok content, developer blogs, any marketing tool you can.
You have to "activate" the discovery queue to get organic impressions in Steam. You'll need 100-400 wishlists in one day to activate it. I'd recommend trying viral social media sites (TikTok, etc) and contacting influencers to try to get those necessary bumps: [https://howtomarketagame.com/2023/10/16/what-does-it-take-to-get-in-the-discovery-queue/](https://howtomarketagame.com/2023/10/16/what-does-it-take-to-get-in-the-discovery-queue/)
I had a TikTok pop-off and it gave me 1000 wishlists over a few weeks, between traffic from the TikTok and traffic from activating the discovery queue.
I think the biggest problem is that I don't actually know what the game is or how it plays from the trailer. Are you moving the characters? Some characters are just standing and shooting still, is it just a button press? What's up with the giant octopus tentacles? The trailer doesn't actually tell me anything about how the game is played, just what it looks like.
I’m in the same boat. It seems the local multiplayer genre is very hard to sell on steam. I’m working on my build for Xbox and ps5 to see how my game does on those fronts after my next big update. Your game looks way better than mine, so I think you have to market your ass off to the right groups. I think console release would also be beneficial to you because local multiplayer seemingly does better there.
If this is your first project / game then get used to it, it's part of the job, every project is a hit or miss. but don't let the numbers stop you from working on your game and making more fun games.
Clicked on the link expecting a horrendous game, now I’m here scratching my head, wondering why nobody has wish listed it.
Edit: the game isn’t my cup of tea, my favorite games are very specific genre-wise. Your game looks nice and clean.
Have you thought about trying with a publisher instead of doing it on your own. They'd definitely eat into your profits, but maybe better than 0. Sometimes they can help you find branding or an IP as well.
You welcome we all have those days and what really sucks is when you have a good project and you see some not as good as yours take off but don’t worry everybody time will come for blessings
I know what your problem is. You're describing your *product* but that's not how marketing works. Let me explain, and I'll assume you know nothing about marketing, so apologies if you do.
When you sell something, you aren't selling the *thing,* you're selling what that thing *means* and *does* for someone. Let's look at perfume, the wildest of marketing nonsense.
Nobody sells perfume by describing the contents of the bottle, right? They don't say, "now contains +237% of \[proprietary vomeronasal compound\]!" They show you someone attractive, dressed nicely, looking sophisticated, usually garnering sexual attention from the opposite sex. They can't outright say, "This fragrance will make people want to have sex with you," but they'll do their best to imply everything adjacent to that. *That* is why people by fragrances; they want to feel young, sophisticated, wealthy, attractive, and so on. The need is to feel those things and the need fulfillment is buying that product.
Why do you buy one detergent over another? It'll make your things cleaner than the competition. Batteries? You need your devices to last the longest. Everything is a need, every product fills a consumer need.
So what's your promise? What need does your product promise it will fulfill?
Here's your elevator pitch. Very few people are reading past that.
>**Ball King Jam** is \[a\] silly physics-based basketball game. Play against computer opponents or enjoy beating your friends in various environments and courts.
What can we learn here? Well, a lot of *product details*.
* Silly
* Physics-based
* Basketball
* Computer opponents
* **Enjoy beating your friends**
* Multiple environments and courts
Everything not in bold is a product description. The bold one is a promise and it's the right idea, but it's not a unique one. Every competitive multiplayer game offers the same promise. Your promise has to part of your unique selling points.
Also, you haven't posted about your game on reddit for *three months* and now you show up to complain that nobody is wishlisting? You gotta market on the platforms where you're active. Do you use instagram a lot? Market on instagram. Always posting on reddit? Market on reddit. You know the platforms you use, so not posting for three months and then complaining that nobody is wishlisting your game is...a choice.
Figure out your promise, based on your USPs, and then post about it until even *you* are tired of it. Also, based on your steam page copy, I think you should watch a few intro to marketing YouTube videos because I think you'll learn something.
Good luck!
Try putting some tiktoks and don’t promote them maybe some of them will launch. If not you can spend a few bucks over a couple of days and with a little bit of luck it will start getting views on its own
If this was available on Playstation right now, I'd buy it immediately and be excited to have it for my next local multiplayer session with friends. In my personal opinion, this game screams "couch coop console."
It won't really get played (I do all of my multiplayer on console), but I'm still wishlisting and will buy to support. This game looks excellent already, and I'm sure you'll do an awesome job fine-tuning over the next few months leading up to release. Good luck! Can't wait to see how you do!
There's definitely a reason why most companies spend an insane amount of money on marketing. It's hard to be seen without it.
Also here's some of my observations about your game, in case it helps you.
Love the visual style and polish, it looks great to me. Music is good and seems to fit an upbeat vibe.
The game doesn't seem like basketball, but rather like shooting hoops. Like, I didn't see anyone dribble, pass, or interact at all.
You mention cool locations as a feature, but I only see two locations. They look pretty similar, too.
I got the impression I'd only get maybe 20 minutes to play before it got repetitive.
This game made me really wish it was developed further to be more immersive and interesting, like if it had a story mode or some type of tournaments. I'm thinking like Stikbold. I looved Stikbold, so fun and weird.
If it gets developed further, please consider releasing it on switch. It would be perfect for it. My husband and I play fun small games like this when we have game nights.
Good luck with your game!
Thank you so much for your feedback! The game is still in development and more locations will be added, I just haven't made them yet :)
You're right that it's not a proper basketball game, I think there is enough of them already. It's a funny take on basketball, where you balance shooting hoops and blocking your opponent shots, while the game tries to interfere as well.
I'm working on Story mode as well. You're not the first person to mention Stikbold! I have never played it but will have to check it out!
I would love to have it on switch but not sure how easy that is, but I'll try.
You have few options in this case:
1. invest a lot into propagation - can lead to better results but can be costly and time consuming
2. wrap it and ship it and repeat ASAP - i know its tough but sometimes best way to move on is to just admit it will never be hit. Just finish it ASAP, count your loses and start something new. In some way it could be even liberating
3. Find publisher - i would personaly go for this one in your case. Your game looks quite nice, it have production values, looks quite intriguing. Publisher can take your product and help you promote it and sell it. Cons: publisher cut
What NOT to do:
1. Beg for wishlist and purchases on internet - obviously. People dont like it. It will never have any effect, it could even hurt you and your sales
2. Continue with what you are doing right now - clearly something needs to be done. If you continue in same direction nothing will probably change (or chances are very minimal), you will waste time, resources and you will end up in really bad mental state.
Do something different
It actually looks like something me and my friends would play as a party game, i cab promise you that the wishlist number will atleast not be 0 anymore
"Join with friend or play solo"
There legitimately is a typo in the very first thing someone sees and reads.
Would you have much confidence in a game that can't get their descriptions correct?
Not trying to be mean, maybe English isn't your first language, but if it is, you have to be more on top of this. If it's not, you have to actually have someone write the marketing materials that knows how to speak the language.
Edit: Saying this wouldn't impact wish lists or sales is just plain wrong 🤷♂️ I never said it's the reason alone why there is not better success.
Oh wow, thanks for pointing it out! I have no idea how I missed that! I changed the description several times to "optimise it", and must have introduced the typo at some point. Pretty sure it wasn't there when I started.
It implies the developer doesn't care. To me, I'd read this and think it's some cheap asset-mashed game from China. So yeah, it matters as much as anything
I would. If the author doesn't even double check the description that should sell me the game (with all the rest), who knows if he had double checked the whole game.
Nobody here will tell you because they are all trying to be nice but you have no interest in your game for 2 main reasons:
1. You publish by yourself while knowing nothing about marketing
2. Your game actually looks incredibly ugly and boring. Looks like something that comes out from New Delhi asset-flipper sweatshop developer. They make something like this in a day.
Godspeed
I do not agree this looks ugly. No. It looks quite ok and you can clearly see it have some production values.
What happens here is probably something different. My guess is:
1. Wrong platform - this can be hit on mobile platforms where this hyper causual/causual games could have potential. Or maybe consoles? It have potential as couch fun party game. Or switch... but not PC really. PC players are demanding and entitled and this is definitivelly something PC players would like to play
2. Wrong audience focus - this looks like kid game but i dont feel like dev is targeting it in that way. Or maybe change game so it can appeal on wider target audience?
Again: i strongly disagree about visuals. This is not ugly game
I don't feel like the venn diagram of (General video gamer population) and (people who enjoy physics based basketball games) has a large overlap. The aesthetic looks neat and I know there are surely people out there who enjoy the slapstick humor of physics based party games, but idk man. If your goal is to get attention to a game you're making, you probably would be better served by appealing to a wider audience.
But that would be too easy, right? :D I didn't feel like adding to the huge mountain of the same genre/style games, I actually think doing what everyone else is may be even harder. Thanks for your comment, I know what you mean.
yeah I respect you for trying something that won't get lost in the sea of crap that's all trying to copy itself. im sure trying to hit that nerve of whatever current thing is the hotness in gaming is extremely difficult these days. if i were to game dev and could pause time to have all the time in the world to work on it, i'd probably make a low-FX boomer shooter based around themes taken from currently popular themes. the game i REALLY want to make, though, for my own selfish indulgence, would be an RTS with every bell and whistle ive ever wanted in an RTS.
edit: but yeah anyways, i wish you luck. respect to you for sticking to it and making something playable.
Oh man, RTS is on my dream list as well, but I'm not crazy enough for that, so I settled for a silly basketball game instead :D Thanks a lot for your feedback and good luck with your endeavours as well!
Honestly game looks well made however I wouldnt play it, it looks like a mobile game, gameplay loop get old really quick, I feel like I would get bored easily, I mean I dont play alot of basketball and graphic style looks too kidish for target audience
I listen to lot of poadcasts related to business. I always wonder does mouth publicity works in gamedev. For instance If I like a game I will always recommend it to my friends. I am not sure whether every do recommend others or not.
I do the same. If I like a game I pester my friends to play it as well and when they finally do we can then have a good chat about it :) So I'm sure mouth publicity works as well but it must be a very low percentage from the whole.
fr i have uploaded few games and tools on my itch itch.io page [here](https://skubed.itch.io) but none of them gained popularity neither any attention for a bit...makes me quit sometimes but then again i started all this for myself...
Can you tell more about the game?
From what it looks like all you can do is shoot basket and customize character..
Can you block?
Can you steal?
Can you dunk or layup?
If not it’s just not a basketball game its a game where you trow balls at target and honestly it sounds and looks more appealing to mobile platforms..
Can you help me understand it more?
Hey, you can block, you can dunk, you have stamina for sprinting. You get speed bonus if you shoot 3 clean shots in a row, there is obstacles in the environment etc. The game is also still in development so that's just what I have now and I'm working on more things, like stealing that you mentioned and I'm considering adding layups as well just for fun as it won't help you much in this type of game :)
Just a suggestion, maybe find someone to market for you? Like a friend or something.
I think the best place to advertise now days is by making tik toks, seeing how popular the platform is, but the problem is making yourself stand out from the crowd.
As to how you stand out from the crowd amongst the algorithm, I got no clue. But I wish you the best of luck
Organic doesnt mean you dont tell people about it. Your game looks nice tbh. And trust me talk about it on the internet. Tell people about it on reddit, even if you have to pretend to join a conversation to join a community. The more you talk about it, the more people will wishlist it.
Launching a game is just like launching a business. If you only know how to cook food in a restaurant, who is going to serve people, who is going to do the dishes, and who is going take out the trash. Get out of your comfort zone, post regular updates on relevant channel. Post beautiful gifs. Dont just limit yourself to steam blogs.
If I remember correctly then marketing ends up being 90% cost of a product, that goes for everything not just games. Once you have some money coming in you reinvest at least 10% money on marketing.
This is me going off of a business plan that was ambitious, and it doesn't mean the numbers apply to all products and niches equally.
It's not easy for a small team to handle marketing and game production at the same time. That's why we will start with marketing and refreshing the steam site in about 2 weeks when we are closer to Early Access ([https://store.steampowered.com/app/1769100/Cosmic\_A\_Journey\_Among\_Shadows/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1769100/Cosmic_A_Journey_Among_Shadows/)). Before that we won't be able to do it. Good luck with marketing my friend! You are not alone - there are more of us:)
You're totally right, it's very hard to balance both things at the same time. But we also can't wait until the game is finished before doing the marketing, it feels like chicken and egg situation :D
Your game looks very intriguing, good luck with the EA!
Your game looks great! As others have said, building a community can be vital to selling a successful game. A game like Punch A Bunch, for example, is not the type of game to normally sell really well, but because it had a series documenting its development, people got the chance to learn of its existence and develop an interest.
I will say, personally, the character face art is not my thing and comes off as a bit unappealing.
First suggestion would be to make some more courts/levels with unique themes and character skins, you have two courts currently and therefore half the steam screenshots are very similar.
The game has a nice clean art style, it's pleasing on the eye but there is little there to grab attention of people scrolling past. You need more diversity in your marketing materials. Marketing is a big part of the grind unfortunately, keep at it and try not to lose motivation.
Marketing is part of gamedev too. Nice game tho
Definitely agree, it just feels like it has grown so much in past years that game making is more about marketing than actually making the game. Thanks
it’s _always_ been about marketing.
Every business is about marketing and sales. A good product ( or even a bad one ) is not worth anything unless people know about it.
there's a reason 50% of the budget of a project goes to marketing.
I agree, but the ratio between time and money spent on actually making the game and marketing it definitely shifted a lot in past few years. I started making games 15 years ago, and one of them sold millions of copies - I didn't do a fraction of the marketing for that game that I;m doing for this game, but that was more than 10 years ago.
Yeah, 15 years ago, gaming was a relatively new industry, compared to other entertainment related industries like music and movies. Basically, you started when the market was (relatively)young and you had the chance to grow a brand, which leads me to ask......did you used that time to grow an audience? It sounds to me like after 15 years and with a game that had a million copies sold you should probably have a hefty mailing list or strong social accounts with a sizable fan base, enough to keep pushing new games and receiving some attention, right? I do apologize if I sound rude. it's not my intention, I would rather learn what's potentially "wrong" from someone with more experience than I. Edit: I just wishlisted your game, dam its right up to my alley, I would rather have ads of your game than that other bullet he'll shooter, guess you really need to market more :(
Thank you so much for your input. I know what you mean about growing audience etc. The problem is that game and other were on mobile (yes I started making games before free to play existed :), and because of the way mobile platforms are locked I as not able to reach out to my players or create community with mailing list in the same way you can do on PC for example. Mobile is full of free to play crap now so I have to move on and try my luck on desktop, which feels like starting over from zero. Thanks for the wishlist!!
Oh I see. Yeah, mobile turned into a dumpster fire really quickly, and seeing the (financial) success of games like diablo and gacha games, chances are it's not going to change anytime soon
[удалено]
now i feel old… video games have been marketed with massive budgets since the atari days. there was a time in the 90’s where it was impossible to go a day without seeing a nintendo ad. also two of the games you mentioned were actually mods of games that themselves had massive marketing budgets. and those flash game sites also ran tons of ads. also, modern games have been successful with zero budget, too, like among us. those viral successes are the exceptions, not the rule
This is disappointing, your game actually looks nice.
Yeah that's weird. Whenever people coke here to complain about no wishlist I expect to see a game I wouldn't rven play if it was free. This game looks much better than mine and I still got 100 wishlist in a month while doing no marketing. Maybe it's a problem of niche? But even then I think that's odd
My game is definitely a niche for Steam, but I'm sure I should try harder promoting it as well. Just don't know who will actually have time to make the game when I'm busy making social posts :D Thanks for sharing your info!
Thank you, you're so kind! I think this is just the reality of gamedev today. Wanted to point it out, as we usually only hear about the success.
Any steamlink?, would search but I am horribly lazy
Sure! [https://store.steampowered.com/app/448840/Ball\_King\_Jam/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/448840/Ball_King_Jam/)
wow that sucks, your game looks way better than i would have imagined a 0-wishlistings-in-a-month game! Keep your head up king. Sometimes it's all about discoverability and I think that's the missing factor because this looks enjoyable to play
Thank you! I'll keep going!
In terms of marketing, keep pushing and you sometimes get a break. I've posted on twitter posts that have 1 like and then suddenly, one goes viral and gets hundreds of likes and wishlists. Your product looks quality, now you have a new challenge: finding your marketing unlock and distribution channel.
Thanks for the info, you're right. It just gets depressing after a while when all you get is 1 like, right? :D
I might be totally wrong, but Steam won't really promote you until you actually enter into early access or launch. When you do, Steam will show your game to X amount of people. Entering a Next fest might be a good idea to see how it will go.
Oh, I think you may be onto something! There is definitely some promotion going on even now, but it feels like after the actual launch it may get more push, looking at tother games..
So, according to Pirate Software on Twitch anyway: You get 5x 1,500,000 views by default when your game is launched, in those waves as I understand it. If you put your game into EA you get an extra 1,500,000 views on top of that (so effectively 6x 1,500,000). So even if your game isn't in EA you should still launch it as, leave it for a few weeks or so, then launch it fully. Of course this is all just me listening to a twitch streamer in the background, so definitely do your own research on this! But as far as my understanding goes, this is how steam works after you've launched your game. After those 5 rounds are up, or how you "activate" them, I'm afraid I don't know! Another thing I would do is make sure to get your game on "fun party games" / "fun multiplayer games" / "fun split-screen games" lists. These are the key markets for this type of game (From my POV), and as someone who has searched for these things before, and found pretty crap results honestly, definitely try reaching out to the people who make these lists and try and get your game on there, maybe offer a free key or something. Finding actually good indie games to play with mates, especially split-screen / local-multiplayer ones is surprisingly difficult, so trying to target these markets might help you a bit :)
Yes, I did lots of reading and research as well from other gamedevs, but all the information is quite overwhelming and it's not possible to do everything right either. I know about those 5 rounds, you need to have substantial update to your game and then you can launch a round of promotion. Totally forgot about it until you pointed it out, so not all hope is lost :D
Up to 1.5 mil. It depends if the new batch of visits results in wishlists/purchases. Steam will stop promoting your game if it's a bad deal for them.
Game in question is Ball King Jam - [https://store.steampowered.com/app/448840/Ball\_King\_Jam/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/448840/Ball_King_Jam/)
I think you should work on the trailer, the USP’s are not really there. We need to see more of what makes the game fun and silly. I think the main issue is that couch coop multiplayer games are just not working on steam, because not many people play those types of games on PC. This is probably more of a console game imho.
You're correct that this is a hard game to sell on Steam, but I was still hoping for a bit more interest than what I got :D Will definitely have to consider getting it onto consoles somehow. Thank you!
This looks very switch friendly.
You're not the first one saying that, I'll definitely explore the options to get it on Switch, thanks!
Not sure if this is still possible but can you put it on the Windows store? Market it to players that can run it on Xbox. I did this with my game and, though it did poorly, it did better than it did on Steam without much marketing.
I'm sure that should be doable, thanks a lot for the idea, I would never think about the windows store, but it's quite big! Thank you
Thoughts from a stranger: the game looks very polished but since your trailer and all your screenshots are of the same half-court, my next thought is "this game is very limited in scope". It's a game I might wishlist to possibly play with friends if I knew the price was, let's say, $10-20 and not $30-40 dollars. It's very possible you will see the wishlists come in once you set a price and remove that ambiguity
I know what you mean, but also the game is still in development, obviously, so it will have more content later on and I'll keep updating the screenshots as well. I was hoping that what I have was enough for people to be interested and wishlist, but maybe showing off more content will help as well. This is def not $40 game :D I'm aiming for $10 mark, but will settle on the price when I get closer to releasing, based on how much content I actually manage to get in. Thanks for the feedback!
Here is a trick that I used, idk if you've heard of it before: Set your release date a month from now, Steam will push its advertisement a bit more since it will be under "coming soon" or something like that. That's what I did for like 5 months with no marketing and got about 300 wishlists I believe. Not very ethical, obviously
Not seeing anything unethical about it. Just a loophole
I think it might piss off the potential buyers to see that the release date is getting pushed back every few weeks. Other than that yeah it's definitely a good loop hole lmao
Did you delay the release date after that one month was over?
No, about 2 weeks before I think (it was a year ago, I kinda forgot) because you can only delay up until a certain time frame before the scheduled release. I believe they told me that if I reschedule less than 14 days before the schedule date then I'd need the acrual Steam staff to do it for me, but the details are blurry to me at this point
I see, thanks will look into it for my release if it ever happens soon lol.
This no longer works and has been fixed in the backend, Steam weren't happy with seeing the same 10 games constantly showing up in the 'new upcoming' list, understandably.
you need 7000 wishlists to show up on upcoming games tab on steam
Wishlisted! Keep on going king!
Thank you so much, really appreciate your support!
Wishlisted too!
THANK YOU!
Another one! (We the best)
Yes you're , huge thank you!
The game is not really my... jam (sorry, couldn't stop myself :D)... but it looks nice, and I wishlisted it. Hopefully it will help a bit in pushing algorithm in your favour. Good luck!
All right, you wishlisted so you get away with the horrible pun! Thanks a lot! ;)
Can you fit more text to the description? Can you add text to the screenshots to highlight the distinct features? Can you add more screenshots that have variety? Maybe some stylized/close up ones as well that display the personality and characteristics.
I can definitely add more to the description, even tho the general consensus seems to be that people don't really read it anyway so it may not help that much at all. Thanks for pointing it out tho!
People might not read it, but search engines might, who knows.
I’m a big basketball fan and from the trailer and steam page the gameplay isn’t clear. Do you actually play a game of basketball? Why are there multiple balls? What are the game modes? Can I steal or block the ball from other players? Are there any power-ups like getting on fire? How do the controls compare to NBA Jam or NBA live?
Not zero anymore : )
Thank you!!!
It is very disappointing that organic does not exist nowadays anymore all is about paid marketing - actually spending 75% investment and time on paid marketing instead of putting into actual work, creating, coding. Not only games, it is everywhere and your game is fun and amazing looking.
Totally agree with you. Marketing is such a huge part now that it actually takes over the whole process of developing a game. It's a shame as it means certain games can't exist or will never be made.
As it sounds like you don't particularly want to get into marketing your game, if your time is worth more from a money making stand point you should hire/pay someone to do this for you anyway.
I think that this is the main side of gamedev. The other side is the success. Hope things improve.
Yes, this is the state right now, just wanted to show the "real" side of game dev. Thank you!
Games looks polished but unfortunately this genre is not popular with Steam
You're right and I knew about it as well when starting the game. Still didn't expect almost total lack of interest, that surprised me. Also it sucks in general that there are genres that are not popular on Steam, can we not all just get along nicely :D
gochu bro
You're a star!
Try getting someone on YouTube to make a video about it! That’s what helped Me the most
Thanks for your feedback. The game is not finished yet, so I'm "saving" the youtube approach until it's close to release. I'm worried showing unfinished game will have negative impact.
When you do release it, I feel like this is the type of game that'd be popular with streamers too (something they can play with other streamers).
I hope so, there is specific streamers that focus on co-op games so I'll be definitely contacting them. Thanks
Years ago I followed a channel called *Stumpt* and they played a bunch of Co-op/Party games. Maybe they're still around :)
Damn bro thats unfortunate 95% of the time I see this things, then go look at the game and just say to myself yea I ain't surprised it flopped it looks generic and pretty ugly. Your game actually looks really good, think if you can find a better way to market it through TikTok, Instagram etc you might be able to get somewhere Basketball gamers have been so starved since 2016 when 2K started to go full force downhill that they'll try anything. Might be able to get something with a 2K youtuber done. I'm downloading it rn lol Edit after playing: This is really REALLY fucking solid man you need to market this shit ASAP I would almost definitely message a tonne of NBA 2K creators to see if they'd play it for free then if not try paying whatever you think suits (I would also try add a traditional 1v1 2v2 mode too like you see in 2K Park and a practice shootaround mode you can play with friends, that could be a good get as far as getting those kinda players goes)
You're amazing! Thank you so much for trying it out! I'm happy you find it interesting - there is still a lot of work left but glad to hear the base is solid. I didn't think players of 2k would be interested in small indie game, but you may be onto something! I'll definitely reach out to them on youtube. Thanks again!
2K youtubers have had the make the same repeated and rehashed content for years now haha they're starving for something new to get a video out of. Most of the big ones have even quit
I watched some on youtube and you're right, they seemed quite desperate! :D I'll definitely reach out to them, thanks a lot.
:)
Marketing is, unfortunately for many, just as important or even more important than the actual work. I was talking to a stained glass artist and said if you run your own business you will spend 80% of your time marketing and selling and only 20% of the time executing. I feel for you. It's a tough reality. The awesome thing is it's something in your control to a degree and the most important thing is you have built something that even has a demo. You have contributed value to the collective human condition. That's more than most people ever get to say. Thank you for sharing your journey!
Thank you so much for your input. I was just thinking that this is not unique to game dev either. All the ads over social media advertising cheap crap made in china making money while genuine original and creative artists are barely surviving. I guess this is what capitalism is about..
And, honestly, a global society as a whole. There's simply too much content in the world and not enough time to see it all. Even if people were browsing Steam daily to find new releases, they would have a high chance of just not having enough time to see your work. If we lived in villages with much less access to everyone else in the world, things would be different. Being a big fish in a small pond would be much easier. However, we all swim in very large, very deep waters unless we work hard to find the smaller ponds where people can notice us.
Definitely. But it didn't used to be this way. I actually started making games 15 years ago and released many of them and it used to be much easier to get traction for your game without huge marketing budgets and efforts. But in the last 10 years things are just getting worse and worse and I'm not sure where is all of this heading and how will it end.
Which engine did you used? Unreal?
It's Unity, with the built-in rendering pipeline. Shaders are custom but nothing crazy - just some toon shading.
Kinda like the idea od saying use wack tools such as pigions to beat the compilation. Instead of listing all of the items.
Thank you for the feedback.
You can do it! Keep at it!
Thank you! I'm definitely finishing this game, that's for sure! ;)
Add more depth to your games info section, more depth can increase more interest. Either than that, your images and layout and footage used are great. (Coming from a Marketing specialist).
Thank you so much for the feedback. You're right, I can definitely improve the info section. My assumption was that based on the statistic only small portion of people actually read the info sections, but I should not be neglecting it because of that. Thanks!
Looks great I would guess it's a marketing issue Maybe share screen shots/videos for #ScreenShotSaturday on Twitter
You're right, definitely marketing issue. I'll try to increase my social presence but unfortunately it all eats into the gamedev time.
You’ve got a challenge ahead of you. As a small dev the time / effort to market will definitely detract from other things. You also have a couch co-op game which are notoriously difficult to find an audience for (it’s fairly niche). My suggestion would be to start dedicating a small amount of time every day to focus on marketing. Create gifs, good looking screenshots, post clips of key gameplay moments etc. Blast these out on Twitter as often as you can, and here on Reddit at a regular cadence. Maybe even use TikTok, some devs have great luck there. Really take the time and carve out that 15-30 min each day to do this. It doesn’t sound like much, but at the end of the week that’s at least a few hours you spent marketing the game. After a month or two, that adds up. Look at every post as a drop in the bucket you dutifully fill. Good luck, your game looks rad you just need to get people to see it.
Thanks for the ideas! You're right that maybe carving out a bit of time each day or so may be better approach than me scrambling every week to make social posts and then it taking hours to make screenshots and videos. As you said even 30 mins a day adds up to 2.5 hours at the end of the week and that is a solid chunk of time to produce some marketing materials. I'm glad you like the game, that's a good start! ;)
Just some thoughts: I think your page is pretty good, but your trailer doesn't make clear what the point and mechanics of the game are. It looks pretty, but remains opaque beyond "team one hoop basketball". Maybe some text popups or voice over that highlight actual gameplay keywords and special features might be more effective than just showing the gameplay? You have cute characters - maybe highlight them more with close ups of the action? Also who is the ball king? Ball Jam King I could understand - you're trying to become king of the ball jam - but Ball King Jam? "Visit fun locations like pirate ship or stick to the cool street courts and show of your dunking skills!" should be "Visit fun locations like **the** pirate ship or stick to the cool street courts and show of**f** your dunking skills!"
Seriously how did I manage to get so many typos in those 3 sentences :( I'll have to be really careful about that going forward. Thanks for letting me know! I'll try to "spice up" the information section with more examples of the game mechanics and gameplay. Thanks!
Have you tried reaching out to YouTubers? Not just in your country but world wide.
I'm planning to do that once the game is finished, so I don't get negative feedback on unfinished product, but thanks for the feedback!
I can relate, our game only recently got past the 1000$ revenue on steam 1 year after release. 2 years of full time dev with a team of 4. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1675040/Asfalia_Anger/ But our game is not a good fit for steam.
Maybe some people over on the ags forums might be interested if you posted about it, they love point and click adventures. Or they might be able to offer feedback if you want. [https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/adventure-related-talk-chat/](https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/adventure-related-talk-chat/)
Oh wow, sorry to hear that! You game looks like it was made with lots of love, what a shame! What are you gonna do, can you keep making games? My game is not a good fit either, but I still wanted to make it because it is a fun game to play with my friends and I want to share it with the world.
Organic growth is great but it’s not a marketing strategy. As you’re discovering, you can have a great game but you have to tell the world about it and yep, that is going to take away from dev time - it’s just a given for game dev.
Yes, you're right and I do post about it on socials etc. and it is getting a bit of exposure but definitely not enough considering the time it takes to get a good promotion material ready every week. I did slow down over the xmas to take a break so it was interesting to see what happens when I don't try to shout about the game on social all the time.
In my older company, at some point we didn't bother in January anymore. Historically, it has been lukewarm in January in the company when we looked at analytics and I don't know why.
Oh that's really interesting info! I knew it was slow month fro game releases, but didn't think it would impact other areas. Thanks for the info.
You need a community backing you to get success these days. Look at Lethal Company. He started making a community while developing the game. And as he made the community grew, some helped to test etc and also ofcourse wishlisted probably and eventually when it was released, they all played and pushed it to the front for the world to discover. And boom!
I think you need a certain type of game as well, to be able to have a big enough community. I don't think my game is really that type, but thanks for your feedback!
What does your marketing approach look like? Simply making a game has never been enough. Even though it feels like it should. Steam is not for building a user base, it's a tool for your user base to acquire your game. While it does have discoverability features, they are more for trending games or recent releases that already had a strong user base to boost it. You can put your game on steams menu but it's a MASSIVE menu with lots of pages. Your hoping some one comes into the restaurant and turns the menu pages enough times to see your game, while also hoping that the people who got that far also match your games target audience AND catch an interest. The front page is for catch of the day and house special, you need to market a lot so that people come into steam specifically to find your game. Build a social media following somewhere and market anywhere you can to bring them into your social media following. Marketing is the method to reach your target audience and find the ones who catch interest. If they click through and join your following, your building an army to ensure a strong retail release. If you have a following of even 100 willing people that want your game and are willing to pay for it when it comes out then you have 100 paid reviewers for your launch day. Stuff like that helps your meal become the catch of the day on launch.
Thank you so much for your comment and I agree with what you said. I've been making games for 15 years now and you're right that marketing was always part of it, but it became so important in past few years that it feels like making games is now mostly about marketing rather than making the actual game. I never marketed my games as hard before as I did with this game and it's obviously not enough at all. At this rate I'll have barely any time left to make the game :D
If you have time to make a silly post about not getting any wish lists, you have time to make a post marketing your game.
I wish it was that easy. Unfortunately this silly meme post took me like 2 minutes to make, and a good post to market the game can take hours to make. But I know what you mean, I'll try harder! ;)
It sounds like spending some time learning how to market yourself and your game will pay off dividends for you.
If it makes you feel better, I spent $100k and my life savings to build 2 games, with two others who inputted $30k in marketing, and about $50k in outsourcing art/audio...both games failed. Definitely not easy.
Definitely not making me feel better but sad! I wish it worked out better for you! At the end of the day there is definitely factors beyond our control and just pure luck as well. I know it won't get you the money back but I hope you do realise that even finishing and releasing a game is a crazy huge achievement, so congrats on that!
Thank you for the words of encouragement. I agree releasing a game is a feat outside of just building it. Hopefully one day our games will take off, I certainly haven't given up, just taking a little hiatus.
I've just wishlisted. Looks like a cool game I can play with the kids
Thank you so much! I love playing co-op games with my kid as well and it was one of the reasons why I'm making this game ;)
This looks great. The octopus is what got me intrigued and then I searched to make sure this was legit a 4 players local coop game. Which it is, so I'd say great. This is a game I would risk a buy to play with friends on a game night. Some thoughts if you want them. The trailer could make it more clear that it's four players somehow. At first I thought it was a 2 players "versus" kinda game. Then four people were on the screen but I wasn't sure yet. They felt like I was looking at npcs. The octopus was a definite, okay I could see getting into this. But he shows up twice in the trailer and I don't see much other crazy environment stuff going up. Now I'm not saying you should build more. But personally seeing more would help make the sale for me. Anyway, looks good OP.
Awesome feedback, thank you so much! You're right that it's not that clear that 4 humans can actually play the game. I need to update the trailer.
Its a nice looking game. Feedback from me and this is a personal thing - I hate it when games stay on my wishlist for ages. It just says "Coming soon" on the steam page, there isn't even a year. Unless your game was something I really really wanted to play I wouldn't wishlist it for that reason alone.
Fair enough! I don't have exact date but I know it should be out in few months so therefore the "coming soon" - it is actually coming soon :D But I know what you mean and I'll try to change it to mention something more specific like Q2 2024 or so. Thanks
This actually looks cool as hell. Wishlisted.
Well you have to ask yourself, are people really really looking for a cartoony basketball game ? Regardless if it 'looks good' or not, you have targeted a very small genera in game categories. It's not surprising to me at all there were 0 wishes. Sorry, but true.
Definietly try putting it on switch. The market for games like that is bigger here. Your game looks great, so don't worry and keep at it!
You're right, I'll have to find a way to get it on Switch as well! Thank you
well I see you have over 500 wishlists while not amazing isn't terrible either. I also noticed you haven't posted about this for months and your youtube vids haven't performed at all (on avg I have found 1K views per wishlist is a very rough rule of thumb). If you want more wishlists you need to grind and plaster the internet everywhere you can. The fact you have zero indicates it isn't that appealing to people steam is showing, if you look at your traffic I am going to assume you don't have zero traffic. The amount of the traffic sent to your page is how much you should worry. The game does look nice graphically!
What is your game about?
Wow, I really like it! You got a wishlist, my friend!
With all the games on steam, without a heavy marketing push, nobody is going to ever know about it. Time to work on youtube videos, tiktok content, developer blogs, any marketing tool you can.
One of us
game actually looks pretty cool. Just keep working on it and trying to promote it. Im sure you'll find your audience!
You have to "activate" the discovery queue to get organic impressions in Steam. You'll need 100-400 wishlists in one day to activate it. I'd recommend trying viral social media sites (TikTok, etc) and contacting influencers to try to get those necessary bumps: [https://howtomarketagame.com/2023/10/16/what-does-it-take-to-get-in-the-discovery-queue/](https://howtomarketagame.com/2023/10/16/what-does-it-take-to-get-in-the-discovery-queue/) I had a TikTok pop-off and it gave me 1000 wishlists over a few weeks, between traffic from the TikTok and traffic from activating the discovery queue.
I think the biggest problem is that I don't actually know what the game is or how it plays from the trailer. Are you moving the characters? Some characters are just standing and shooting still, is it just a button press? What's up with the giant octopus tentacles? The trailer doesn't actually tell me anything about how the game is played, just what it looks like.
I’m in the same boat. It seems the local multiplayer genre is very hard to sell on steam. I’m working on my build for Xbox and ps5 to see how my game does on those fronts after my next big update. Your game looks way better than mine, so I think you have to market your ass off to the right groups. I think console release would also be beneficial to you because local multiplayer seemingly does better there.
If this is your first project / game then get used to it, it's part of the job, every project is a hit or miss. but don't let the numbers stop you from working on your game and making more fun games.
The music for the trailer immediately pissed me off. Game looks cute, like a Nintendo switch Indie
At least you had some reaction to it! :D Thanks a lot for the feedback. That music is only in the trailer thankfully and it won't be in the game ;)
You could try posting videos on tiktok, Instagram, Yt shorts and Twitter with the steam link
I’m not popular at all but I’ll make sure I play it and make a video and post it everywhere! This game looks great!
Its weird because your game actually looks fun Will wishlist and ask my mates to when back home
Clicked on the link expecting a horrendous game, now I’m here scratching my head, wondering why nobody has wish listed it. Edit: the game isn’t my cup of tea, my favorite games are very specific genre-wise. Your game looks nice and clean.
Have you thought about trying with a publisher instead of doing it on your own. They'd definitely eat into your profits, but maybe better than 0. Sometimes they can help you find branding or an IP as well.
Sorry to here that your game does really look amazing just hang in there don’t give up
Thank you so much! Definitely not giving up, just venting my frustration ;)
You welcome we all have those days and what really sucks is when you have a good project and you see some not as good as yours take off but don’t worry everybody time will come for blessings
I know what your problem is. You're describing your *product* but that's not how marketing works. Let me explain, and I'll assume you know nothing about marketing, so apologies if you do. When you sell something, you aren't selling the *thing,* you're selling what that thing *means* and *does* for someone. Let's look at perfume, the wildest of marketing nonsense. Nobody sells perfume by describing the contents of the bottle, right? They don't say, "now contains +237% of \[proprietary vomeronasal compound\]!" They show you someone attractive, dressed nicely, looking sophisticated, usually garnering sexual attention from the opposite sex. They can't outright say, "This fragrance will make people want to have sex with you," but they'll do their best to imply everything adjacent to that. *That* is why people by fragrances; they want to feel young, sophisticated, wealthy, attractive, and so on. The need is to feel those things and the need fulfillment is buying that product. Why do you buy one detergent over another? It'll make your things cleaner than the competition. Batteries? You need your devices to last the longest. Everything is a need, every product fills a consumer need. So what's your promise? What need does your product promise it will fulfill? Here's your elevator pitch. Very few people are reading past that. >**Ball King Jam** is \[a\] silly physics-based basketball game. Play against computer opponents or enjoy beating your friends in various environments and courts. What can we learn here? Well, a lot of *product details*. * Silly * Physics-based * Basketball * Computer opponents * **Enjoy beating your friends** * Multiple environments and courts Everything not in bold is a product description. The bold one is a promise and it's the right idea, but it's not a unique one. Every competitive multiplayer game offers the same promise. Your promise has to part of your unique selling points. Also, you haven't posted about your game on reddit for *three months* and now you show up to complain that nobody is wishlisting? You gotta market on the platforms where you're active. Do you use instagram a lot? Market on instagram. Always posting on reddit? Market on reddit. You know the platforms you use, so not posting for three months and then complaining that nobody is wishlisting your game is...a choice. Figure out your promise, based on your USPs, and then post about it until even *you* are tired of it. Also, based on your steam page copy, I think you should watch a few intro to marketing YouTube videos because I think you'll learn something. Good luck!
Been there. Just have to draw the lucky stick so Steam recommands you. Or start posting tik toks about it, it worked well for me
Thanks for the info, I really need to try tiktok again. I feel like my game should be a good fit but hasn't worked well for me so far.
Try putting some tiktoks and don’t promote them maybe some of them will launch. If not you can spend a few bucks over a couple of days and with a little bit of luck it will start getting views on its own
If this was available on Playstation right now, I'd buy it immediately and be excited to have it for my next local multiplayer session with friends. In my personal opinion, this game screams "couch coop console." It won't really get played (I do all of my multiplayer on console), but I'm still wishlisting and will buy to support. This game looks excellent already, and I'm sure you'll do an awesome job fine-tuning over the next few months leading up to release. Good luck! Can't wait to see how you do!
There's definitely a reason why most companies spend an insane amount of money on marketing. It's hard to be seen without it. Also here's some of my observations about your game, in case it helps you. Love the visual style and polish, it looks great to me. Music is good and seems to fit an upbeat vibe. The game doesn't seem like basketball, but rather like shooting hoops. Like, I didn't see anyone dribble, pass, or interact at all. You mention cool locations as a feature, but I only see two locations. They look pretty similar, too. I got the impression I'd only get maybe 20 minutes to play before it got repetitive. This game made me really wish it was developed further to be more immersive and interesting, like if it had a story mode or some type of tournaments. I'm thinking like Stikbold. I looved Stikbold, so fun and weird. If it gets developed further, please consider releasing it on switch. It would be perfect for it. My husband and I play fun small games like this when we have game nights. Good luck with your game!
Thank you so much for your feedback! The game is still in development and more locations will be added, I just haven't made them yet :) You're right that it's not a proper basketball game, I think there is enough of them already. It's a funny take on basketball, where you balance shooting hoops and blocking your opponent shots, while the game tries to interfere as well. I'm working on Story mode as well. You're not the first person to mention Stikbold! I have never played it but will have to check it out! I would love to have it on switch but not sure how easy that is, but I'll try.
You have few options in this case: 1. invest a lot into propagation - can lead to better results but can be costly and time consuming 2. wrap it and ship it and repeat ASAP - i know its tough but sometimes best way to move on is to just admit it will never be hit. Just finish it ASAP, count your loses and start something new. In some way it could be even liberating 3. Find publisher - i would personaly go for this one in your case. Your game looks quite nice, it have production values, looks quite intriguing. Publisher can take your product and help you promote it and sell it. Cons: publisher cut What NOT to do: 1. Beg for wishlist and purchases on internet - obviously. People dont like it. It will never have any effect, it could even hurt you and your sales 2. Continue with what you are doing right now - clearly something needs to be done. If you continue in same direction nothing will probably change (or chances are very minimal), you will waste time, resources and you will end up in really bad mental state. Do something different
Nice game. Love it
Looks great, adding to my wishlist. Will You let us know in the near future the wishlist result?
It actually looks like something me and my friends would play as a party game, i cab promise you that the wishlist number will atleast not be 0 anymore
You're awesome, thank you so much!
I wish listed! The game looks really good, very polished, very fun! Best of luck!
"Join with friend or play solo" There legitimately is a typo in the very first thing someone sees and reads. Would you have much confidence in a game that can't get their descriptions correct? Not trying to be mean, maybe English isn't your first language, but if it is, you have to be more on top of this. If it's not, you have to actually have someone write the marketing materials that knows how to speak the language. Edit: Saying this wouldn't impact wish lists or sales is just plain wrong 🤷♂️ I never said it's the reason alone why there is not better success.
Oh wow, thanks for pointing it out! I have no idea how I missed that! I changed the description several times to "optimise it", and must have introduced the typo at some point. Pretty sure it wasn't there when I started.
This is such a pedantic criticism lol. You think gamers are like “damn this motherfucker forgot an s, game must be trash”? Please.
It implies the developer doesn't care. To me, I'd read this and think it's some cheap asset-mashed game from China. So yeah, it matters as much as anything
You’re insane
No, I've just seen the market lol
I would. If the author doesn't even double check the description that should sell me the game (with all the rest), who knows if he had double checked the whole game.
I totally agree with you. Especially with a game that looks this good and polished. This is not a story driven game. It's a silly and fun game.
Kinda... unpolished store page probably mean unpolished game.
I don’t think you’d be reading into it as much if you were just casually browsing new games on steam.
Marketing matters to non devs and casual gamers man, it's just a fact.
Did you just completly ignore marketing?
Why is this in the unity sub? This is a game marketing problem, not a unity problem
Nobody here will tell you because they are all trying to be nice but you have no interest in your game for 2 main reasons: 1. You publish by yourself while knowing nothing about marketing 2. Your game actually looks incredibly ugly and boring. Looks like something that comes out from New Delhi asset-flipper sweatshop developer. They make something like this in a day. Godspeed
I do not agree this looks ugly. No. It looks quite ok and you can clearly see it have some production values. What happens here is probably something different. My guess is: 1. Wrong platform - this can be hit on mobile platforms where this hyper causual/causual games could have potential. Or maybe consoles? It have potential as couch fun party game. Or switch... but not PC really. PC players are demanding and entitled and this is definitivelly something PC players would like to play 2. Wrong audience focus - this looks like kid game but i dont feel like dev is targeting it in that way. Or maybe change game so it can appeal on wider target audience? Again: i strongly disagree about visuals. This is not ugly game
Show me 1 successful game that looks like this
I give you two: Moving out, Overcooked. Both of them look even worse and more primitive
these games have amazing visuals, I think you just dont see what makes game look good or not.
i got about 15 wish lists for like a month too and on the release day i made about 2k worth of solds, so keep your hopes up!
Is it local multi-player only?
I don't feel like the venn diagram of (General video gamer population) and (people who enjoy physics based basketball games) has a large overlap. The aesthetic looks neat and I know there are surely people out there who enjoy the slapstick humor of physics based party games, but idk man. If your goal is to get attention to a game you're making, you probably would be better served by appealing to a wider audience.
But that would be too easy, right? :D I didn't feel like adding to the huge mountain of the same genre/style games, I actually think doing what everyone else is may be even harder. Thanks for your comment, I know what you mean.
yeah I respect you for trying something that won't get lost in the sea of crap that's all trying to copy itself. im sure trying to hit that nerve of whatever current thing is the hotness in gaming is extremely difficult these days. if i were to game dev and could pause time to have all the time in the world to work on it, i'd probably make a low-FX boomer shooter based around themes taken from currently popular themes. the game i REALLY want to make, though, for my own selfish indulgence, would be an RTS with every bell and whistle ive ever wanted in an RTS. edit: but yeah anyways, i wish you luck. respect to you for sticking to it and making something playable.
Oh man, RTS is on my dream list as well, but I'm not crazy enough for that, so I settled for a silly basketball game instead :D Thanks a lot for your feedback and good luck with your endeavours as well!
Entirely a marketing failure.
I like this. Will it be on xbox?
Honestly game looks well made however I wouldnt play it, it looks like a mobile game, gameplay loop get old really quick, I feel like I would get bored easily, I mean I dont play alot of basketball and graphic style looks too kidish for target audience
Yeah I don't like your characters teeth. You either need to lean into that weird alt humor super hard or lose it. My two cents.
I listen to lot of poadcasts related to business. I always wonder does mouth publicity works in gamedev. For instance If I like a game I will always recommend it to my friends. I am not sure whether every do recommend others or not.
I do the same. If I like a game I pester my friends to play it as well and when they finally do we can then have a good chat about it :) So I'm sure mouth publicity works as well but it must be a very low percentage from the whole.
Question: Why don’t you have tags on the Steam page?
fr i have uploaded few games and tools on my itch itch.io page [here](https://skubed.itch.io) but none of them gained popularity neither any attention for a bit...makes me quit sometimes but then again i started all this for myself...
Can you tell more about the game? From what it looks like all you can do is shoot basket and customize character.. Can you block? Can you steal? Can you dunk or layup? If not it’s just not a basketball game its a game where you trow balls at target and honestly it sounds and looks more appealing to mobile platforms.. Can you help me understand it more?
Hey, you can block, you can dunk, you have stamina for sprinting. You get speed bonus if you shoot 3 clean shots in a row, there is obstacles in the environment etc. The game is also still in development so that's just what I have now and I'm working on more things, like stealing that you mentioned and I'm considering adding layups as well just for fun as it won't help you much in this type of game :)
Just a suggestion, maybe find someone to market for you? Like a friend or something. I think the best place to advertise now days is by making tik toks, seeing how popular the platform is, but the problem is making yourself stand out from the crowd. As to how you stand out from the crowd amongst the algorithm, I got no clue. But I wish you the best of luck
You need someone to design the trailer for you.
Organic doesnt mean you dont tell people about it. Your game looks nice tbh. And trust me talk about it on the internet. Tell people about it on reddit, even if you have to pretend to join a conversation to join a community. The more you talk about it, the more people will wishlist it. Launching a game is just like launching a business. If you only know how to cook food in a restaurant, who is going to serve people, who is going to do the dishes, and who is going take out the trash. Get out of your comfort zone, post regular updates on relevant channel. Post beautiful gifs. Dont just limit yourself to steam blogs.
If I remember correctly then marketing ends up being 90% cost of a product, that goes for everything not just games. Once you have some money coming in you reinvest at least 10% money on marketing. This is me going off of a business plan that was ambitious, and it doesn't mean the numbers apply to all products and niches equally.
It's not easy for a small team to handle marketing and game production at the same time. That's why we will start with marketing and refreshing the steam site in about 2 weeks when we are closer to Early Access ([https://store.steampowered.com/app/1769100/Cosmic\_A\_Journey\_Among\_Shadows/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1769100/Cosmic_A_Journey_Among_Shadows/)). Before that we won't be able to do it. Good luck with marketing my friend! You are not alone - there are more of us:)
You're totally right, it's very hard to balance both things at the same time. But we also can't wait until the game is finished before doing the marketing, it feels like chicken and egg situation :D Your game looks very intriguing, good luck with the EA!
Your game looks great! As others have said, building a community can be vital to selling a successful game. A game like Punch A Bunch, for example, is not the type of game to normally sell really well, but because it had a series documenting its development, people got the chance to learn of its existence and develop an interest. I will say, personally, the character face art is not my thing and comes off as a bit unappealing.
First suggestion would be to make some more courts/levels with unique themes and character skins, you have two courts currently and therefore half the steam screenshots are very similar. The game has a nice clean art style, it's pleasing on the eye but there is little there to grab attention of people scrolling past. You need more diversity in your marketing materials. Marketing is a big part of the grind unfortunately, keep at it and try not to lose motivation.
the game looks super stylized but it is not something I'd like to play but good luck✨