My thoughts on how to actually build a real audience for your indie game…
If you start out with the goal of reaching some arbitrarily large number of people, you’re more than likely going to fail.
It’s demoralizing as hell to do that.
If you keep thinking that you need thousands of people to play your game, it’ll paralyze you.
You probably will be even too afraid to start.
But, if you’re thinking about trying to find just one person, it suddenly becomes a hell of a lot easier.
Set smaller goals.
It’s a matter of reaching out and starting a conversation about what game you’re making, and why.
Set up a simple outreach process, and work on this every day.
Genuinely reach out to just one person who you think might care, and offer them real value.
Don’t just beg them to play your game — that never works.
But seriously when just one person cares about your game, it’s incredibly motivating.
I honestly think the biggest reason why people give up on their games is that they don’t think anyone is going to care.
They think that their work is meaningless.
And yeah, that’s the hardest thing about creative work for sure.
Heck, it used to torture me as well.
I’d spend weeks on a game and release it on Itch.io, only to get maybe two or three downloads.
It was like getting lost in a sea of other shouting voices, with no one wanting to care.
It was killing me.
I’m willing to bet that I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
Then, I came to a startling realization. It wasn’t about shouting about what I was doing…
It’s about showing one person and getting them to genuinely care.
There’s one caveat though. I know what you’re thinking.
“One person isn’t enough to let me do anything big.”
And you’re 100% right.
But remember, you’re in this for the long haul.
My company Black Shell Media didn’t ship almost 2,000,000 copies of indie games overnight. It took years.
It took months of demographics targeting, analytics tracking, conversion optimization, storyscaping, influencer marketing, and a metric ton of trial and error to get to this point.
But really, it only takes reaching out to one person to start, though.
Every day, make it a priority to reach out to just one person.
Tell them about who you are, what your game is, and explain to them why they should genuinely care.
If you do this every day for a whole month, not everyone is going to respond. Not everyone will care about what your game is (most people will ignore you).
But if even just half of the people you reach out to are interested, you’ll have 15 people who will care.
You can start with me.
I can’t promise I’ll genuinely care about your game (I’ve seen enough Flappy Bird clones in my inbox to last a lifetime).
But, I can promise a reply.
My email is daniel@blackshellmedia.com.
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About The Author
Daniel Doan is the Co-Founder & CGO of Black Shell Media and the developer of SanctuaryRPG and Overture, among dozens of unfinished game prototypes. You can connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.
