Practical tips for Indie Game Developers on a budget

🇧🇷 Brazilian living in London, UK. 🇬🇧

Graduated in Social Communications, specialized in Consumer Sciences and Branding Strategy.

With over 12 years of experience in Marketing in the gaming industry, I’ve had the privilege of contributing to the success of companies such as Riot Games and Ubisoft. However, indie games have always held a special place in my heart, leading me to my current position as Product Lead at Chucklefish.

Throughout my career, I have collaborated on the launch of 13 game titles, 1 Netflix series, 1 movie, and a bazillion League of Legends patches.

Oh, well, how about facing the challenge of scaling up from 1 game to 5, keeping the team operation and the costs as if there was still only 1 game?

(now, it’s just the beginning of a wild ride)

Pretty important stuff that most teams choose to overlook.

(Until they became the elephant in the room) 🐘

(with zero budget 🙃)

Embrace the indieness

Indies have been offering memorable experiences that big companies still dream of accomplishing.

Hi!

Be reachable

You are a real person, and this makes a total difference to your audience.

Build trust

Let people be part of your game journey and show them what this project means to you.

Show how the magic happens

You’re an indie, crafting boundary-breaking experiences on your terms is your everyday life.

Everything all at once.

That’s the feeling we get when it comes to deciding which social media platform we should focus on to promote our game.

🪄 So here’s the trick: focus your resources and energy on the correct channels to reach the correct audience at the correct time.

Core Community Hubs

Discord: Create/Foster your community

Reddit: Reach new communities

Steam Blog & Forums: Share the process with your community - Dev blogs, updates, bug reporting.

Wider Community Potential

TikTok: Be you, Be indie. Be real.

Instagram: Reels - the perfect place to share your creative process.

YouTube Shorts: New content? No need to. Recycle and reuse.

YouTube: A place for hero pieces.

Twitter (can’t call it X, sorry): Updates, cross-promo, hashtags (yeah, it’s still a thing)

Don’t overlook

Facebook: Older audience, but still there.

✓ Dip your toe in the water (it’s not that deep!)

✓ Embrace the quirkiness

✓ Stay true to tour party persona

✓ Ask yourself: “How can we make it more authentic?”

✓ Surprise & Delight

An idea,

eye drops

and 121k

views on

TikTok.

-Greenheart Games

Have you ever thought you could use CAPS LOCK to promote your game and get 70K impressions in a single post?

Ensure your marketing efforts don't go down the drain!

👉Point👈 people to your game page to increase visibility and engagement and drive conversions at launch.

Meet the Fabulous Five:

1.Playable Demo

2.Official Feedback Discussions

3.Livestream Sessions

4.Hashtag Trends

5.CTA in every time you can

Never underestimate the power of events. They can be the helping hand your game needs.

Press Kit

Video footage, logos, cool screenshots, gifs, planned platforms, key info — all the visual good stuff to make it easy for people to talk about your game.

Content Creators

Reach out to content creators who share your values and may be interested in learning more about your project.

Establishing connections

No man is an island - team up with the right people. Every project has a story to tell, and people are eager to hear it and be a part of it.

Track Key Metrics

Targets to help you sense and measure your success and progression

Stay Agile

Embrace change, explore new options, and always seize opportunities to stay ahead of the curve.

A/B Tests

Improve conversion rates and maximize the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

More than numbers

Leverage your game by collecting feedback and qualitative sentiment from your audience.

So now you’re ready: you‘ve got your game, a master plan and only a 2-person team to deliver a huge list.

*SCREAMS*

QUESTIONS?