🎮 Get Chris' Masterclasses! Ending SOON! cmonkey.co/howtomarketagame

@erikm9768

2 күн бұрын

This site is blocked due to a possible security threat lol

Imagine a publisher requiring 50k wishlists to sign a deal, surely getting there alone would mean you don't need a publisher anymore

@CodeMonkeyUnity

6 күн бұрын

Good publishers can help with a lot more than just wishlists, they can help with Localization, Porting, they have contacts with Press, Streamers, they can get you in contact with Xbox/PS/Switch for events and special deals, etc. You might be able to get to 50k wishlists by yourself but might not have enough time (or contacts) to make the rest of that happen. Or you might simply need funding to finish your game. But yes definitely avoid a bad publisher that will just "post about your game" in return for 70%.

@gameworkerty

6 күн бұрын

The calculus is if you can make more money with the publisher's help at that point vs on your own. Maybe they will cost you $100,000 or more but if they pay for themselves and more then it could be worth it, such as by localizing your game to new markets or porting it to new consoles, they could net you far more than they cost at the end of the day.

@spiderspyy

5 күн бұрын

@@CodeMonkeyUnity But you can hire people to help you with the launch instead at that point.

@howtomarketagame

5 күн бұрын

Just to clarify. You don't need to get 50K to get a publisher. When you sign with a publisher they often say "Our target is to launch your game when you get 30k-50K wishlists"

@Gibon123_

Күн бұрын

Go to good publisher then u can make big deal btw if u think u be 1% indie succefule dude then weak up make good game and find good publisher if ur game doenst have HOOK then u dont sell it stop think to mouch XDD they wanna sell u course XDDD

Hi This is Chris, thanks for watching. Let me know if you have any questions. I will answer them here.

@Schizo0ol33tKazuka

6 күн бұрын

Hi Chris, great talk, I learned a lot. As someone who is making an auto battler, it's great to know the genre isn't saturated yet. A question on the steam page. When should I set a release date for it? Do I launch my page with or without a release date? Should I set a release date once I get the 7000 wishlists? Can I change my release date and would you advice this if you're short the 7000 wishlist goal?

@CodeMonkeyUnity

6 күн бұрын

Thanks for sharing all your knowledge Chris!

@MonsterHavenDev

6 күн бұрын

Hey Chris, thank for sharing your knowledge together with CodeMonkey! I found it all very insightful but at the same time I fall in the category of working on a larger project as my first game. More specifically I'm creating a JRPG called Monster Haven (most of my stuff is on Twitter for now, it's done moderately well there). While I'm happy with how the game is shaping up personally I'm now a little worried that I'm wasting my time as I have zero audience on Steam thus far. What would you suggest me or other people in a similar situation do? Should I scrap working on the whole JRPG'ish story and focus first on just releasing say an auto battler? So I at least already have a starting audience after which I can continue on the main game?

@Schizo0ol33tKazuka

6 күн бұрын

@@MonsterHavenDev I think you’re falling into the exact trap Chris is talking about. I found you quite easily on twitter, but I don’t see your steampage? I found a Reddit post from 3 years ago, so you’ve been working on this for a while, but you don’t have a steam page? How are you going to get a following on Steam without a steampage? As Chris said, you aren’t going to get much following on twitter. If you want to make money off the game, your next Steam should be building a Steam page and linking to it from twitter and everywhere else you have. You spent quite a lot of time and I can tel you already have some screenshots for the game, so making it shouldn’t be that difficult. Hope it makes sense? PS: If you don’t plan to make it a commercial project, then just keep working on it as is and enjoy the process.

@JustinHeasman

6 күн бұрын

Very informative - thanks buddy.

Chris is awesome, he's one of those rare people who actually know what they are talking about and are not just trying to sell you some scam course

@edupe6185

7 күн бұрын

*Thomas Brush wants to know your location*

@lone_luminarydev

7 күн бұрын

@@edupe6185 you just steal my words :)

@philippe6918

7 күн бұрын

​@@edupe6185 lmfao, do you think thomas brush is selling a scam course?

@Blueguy404

6 күн бұрын

​@edupe6185 Lol oh god not him. Doesn't he charge over $500 for a game dev course 😂

@edupe6185

6 күн бұрын

@@Blueguy404 exactly. He’s a scammer preying on people’s dreams

Following Chris techniques has led my game Sky Harvest to bag front page of steam for a whole week which led to an exclusive IGN Interview. This guy realllly knows what he is doing and he is soo good at it. 🙏

@zeshanmomin9678

7 күн бұрын

That's awesome!!

@CodeMonkeyUnity

6 күн бұрын

That's awesome! Congrats!

Chris is amazing. But I also want to say that Hugo is the best. I mean the questions that he asked, it was almost like I was lucky enough to have a direct conversation with Chris. This entire video is so genuinely informative that it would take someone months to gather this knowledge by themselves. Thank you so much Hugo and Chris.

@CodeMonkeyUnity

4 күн бұрын

Thanks! Yeah I tried my best to come up with questions that I thought people would want to know

recently bought his course! he's amazing thanks for this video!

@CodeMonkeyUnity

7 күн бұрын

Nice! I hope it helps you find success with BUMBI!

@studioprimitive

7 күн бұрын

It's such a good course.. I'm going through it now.

@samyam

6 күн бұрын

@@CodeMonkeyUnity Thank you :)!

Chris setup lights in that way, so i thought he was made in UE5

@martinandani

6 күн бұрын

Lol 😂

It's great to see a collab like this on the channel. I've been a fan of Chris' talks for a while now, really insightful!

This guy is a treasure. Great knowledge, great personality.

Listen guys. PLEASE, DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS ADVICE...if you also make strategy and Tycoon games and have a release date close to one of mine😅

@CodeMonkeyUnity

6 күн бұрын

heh best of luck with the release!

Damn. This was a joy to listen to this guy

Cris is the coolest indie game marketing teacher

I don't know how did 52 minutes finished so quickly , it was like a fun smooth movie. Really great and informative video , thanks Code Monkey for this collab 💝. I am looking forward to these Collab videos , as courses are just too expensive for me to buy even after discounts.

Awesome interview thank you! I've seen a lot of Chris's talks but every time I learn something new or get reminded of something I had forgotten

dude, just cuz of the content and length, here it comes my like!!! tnkssssss dude. u the best!

With those questions you asked, it shows you did your homework for this interview ! This was a very informative and knowledgeable interview.

Great having his teaching updated since most of his video was a bit old. I like his teaching because he always very positive, so I like positiviness.

You are putting out really valuable stuff on the internet. Thanks for all the work you do monkey :)

I stumbled across Chris' videos for the first time yesterday and binged all of them. So it was awesome to see this pop up in my notifications!!!! 🤣🤣🤣

What an amazing person Chris is! Thank for this great talk!❤

Amazing interview ... thank you !!!

Oh my, what a great interview. Congrats to Hugo and Chris. I learned a ton and will start reading Chris blog

Chris! What a fantastic pairing of two of my favorite game dev informers. Thanks for the great video, actual useable and applicable knowledge is so helpful.

Amazing how many points align intuitevely with mine... all makes sense. I am on my first game and I only think of it as a graduation game - no money needed now, just a proof of work and a foundation to keep building on. Amazing video guys, you help the community a lot.

Fantastic video. These tips are gold.

So cool to see you both in one video

Amazing interview!! Definitely will get the course!

Great information, thanks!

Thank You for this information 😁💯👍🏻 This is really valuable.

Thank you for all the added content like the steam pages of the games being discussed. Very well made video!

@CodeMonkeyUnity

4 күн бұрын

Thanks, I'm glad you appreciate that! This was a relatively complicated edit because I really wanted to show on screen everything we were talking about

Best colab in indie games!

@ChuckTheCanadian

7 күн бұрын

Fun story,I connect those two 🎉

@evlnu3495

6 күн бұрын

Haha! Nice :)

thankyou so much to you both for this video

This guy seems like he knows his stuff BTW, thank you Code Monkey for having him on!

GOATED! TY man, epic content

Thanks a lot for this content. There is a lot of material here. working on my first game, I'm taking lots of notes :)

About puzzles and platformers. Unless you're big into these genres, chances are that you've played only the best of the best they have to offer. We're talking games that took multiple years and multiple people to develop, and even more years the developers had to spend prior studying the genre to avoid pitfalls you'd likely never know about unless you're familiar with that particular iceberg.

Thanks Hugo for this video. It's one of the most useful one I've seen so far about this topic. 😀

One of the best videos i saw on game marketing

This is gold, i actually watch this twice.

Chris Zukowski has THE BEST GDC talks

Great video! I love Chris' insight. He's got such fantastic advice!

Thank you very much for this valuable insight! I am close to release my game Cursed Dungeon Raider in hard mode on Steam and thanks to you guys, now I know what I have to do to make my marketing, my whole presentation better. Really appreciated!

great talk, great informations, got tons of ideas, thanks guys

I think Chris has some good insights into marketing your game on Steam. Although, the part about it being impossible to be successful with your first game isn’t true. I think you should make the game you’re most passionate about but make sure your scope is within your timeline. Passion is key to finishing a project, no matter the size. My first game took 5 years to make and it was very successful.

@CodeMonkeyUnity

5 күн бұрын

It's not strictly impossible, it's just extremely difficult. You need to be either extremely talented or lucky or both. I made 40 games before I managed to make minimum wage. Congrats on your success!

@MrKingJavo

5 күн бұрын

@@CodeMonkeyUnityWere those commercially quality games or just prototype demos? From my observation, most games that don’t make it were never polished enough and fully completed, but I know it’s hard to make money from games. It’s a crystal ball, but I think the more stuff you can do to increase your chances, obviously the better. It’s a tough business that’s for sure. 😅

Hugo, thank you so much for making this video. I learned so much from Chris right here, and the things he said make a lot of sense. This video is a goldmine.

love this... I need to do all this for my game

This is absolutely gold 🤯

This video is almost like a treasure given by those gentlemen, thanks a lot

A long video, but packed with good stuff!

I always learn a lot from listening to Chris' talks. He is one of the few people teaching game marketing that is not constantly shilling his course but actually teaches valuable info without a paywall.

thank you, you the best as always🎉🎉🎉

This was great! Wish I had the means to get the course, but this was already so informative!

@CodeMonkeyUnity

4 күн бұрын

Definitely sign up for his free newsletter! And if you don't have money but you do have time then go read his entire blog archive, there's weekly posts going all the way back to 2015. If you take the time to read all of that you will gain a massive amount of knowledge!

amazing content, as ever

I launched my first game in early access, his advice mimics my exact experience lol.

Great video

oh dat is awesome gonna learn it later (now having fun first weeks of coding transporting) smashing around objects in Unity and UE so fun.

Chris got some good camera lighting right there, very sweet.

ChrisZ keeping us Tucson devs on the map!

@howtomarketagame

7 күн бұрын

520 represent!

Two of the best men in gamedev.

Ive been hovering around the game dev community a little bit lately... I'm trying to get ready to make my first game as a hobby project and an academic exercise. That said... my dream project is basically an rpg haha. So... what i take away from this is I might want to tinker in the world of game dev a little before committing to a bigger project like what I have in mind now.

This is a great video! Thank you for putting it together🔥 I love Splattercat's channel! Most of the indie games I buy come from watching him. He's been doing this for a long while.

I always wondered what the G-Man does for a living... xD

what a great video, it's simple enough for a non marketing person to understand

2 legends!

Thank you

Look at Chilla's Art. Their horror games are not that complicated, but they have some sort of a story. Their graphics style is also very unique. Like PS1 style graphics.

If you realease an early access game I 100% expect regular updates. Not necesarily code, but some sort of activity on the steam page. This is not a 'weird' position. This is the deal. You get money early to finish the product, I get to participate in the process on some level.

@CodeMonkeyUnity

7 сағат бұрын

Chris was more referring to the people that demand non-stop daily updates. Expecting the game to be finished is absolutely a valid expectation, but there are people that say "dead game" even if the last update was less than a week ago, I know I've received those comments myself despite updating my own Early Access games every 1-2 weeks.

Great content! A lot of Early Access games fall into the stigma created by big studios with 'Pre-Orders'. Very tricky step to take and agree that version 1.0 > all. Game development takes time, if you want early support - it gets hard :/

Enthralling content!

Wish I could afford it, seems like some great knowledge. Back to the school of hard knocks for me.

@CodeMonkeyUnity

4 күн бұрын

Definitely sign up for his free newsletter. All the posts are archived so if you have time definitely go through as many as you can and you will learn a lot, there are blog posts all teh way back to 2015

@Ironlionm4n

4 күн бұрын

Will do thank you for the info!

Who knew Code Monkey was GIGACHAD all along.

The last Steam Fest was brutally nerfed. It was deeper on the frontpage and was removed from the first page after the first two days of the week of the promo. So this information is kind of already outdated - no matter how new it is. I'm really sad about this change! :(

If you wanna dip into horror without necessarily liking the genre, you could try for something like Plants Vs Zombies or more of a child-like version of horror. So like certain Disney movies can have scary moments (Frollo is pretty scary) but are clearly not on the same level as Saw or Resident Evil. You could argue Zelda games have horror elements with things like ReDeads that are always terrifying even though that's not in the same class as Silent Hill.

Thanks for this collab. I actually followed your tutorial for the Steam Page. I have a question : I've been working about 1 year and a half on a city builder type of game (1st game). It's not my dream game. I'll probably need another 6 to 12 months to finish it. Would you recommend I pause it to build a couple faster games, or finish that one first ?

@CodeMonkeyUnity

4 күн бұрын

I would question if you really truly need 6-12 months more. If you're building it for 1 year I'm guessing you already have quite a lot working. If you're getting lots of traction and lots of positive feedback, then perhaps sure keep working on it for 6-12 months more. But if not, if no one seems to be engaging with the game then I would analyze the game and cut it down to the absolute essentials and get a finished game done in 1 month. Just take what you have, add a Main Menu, End Screen, some progression, and you have a completed game.

Chris has really improved his lighting, I call this look "God of Analytics"

I learned a lot from Chris’ free course and it‘s nice to see my fav Dev KZreadr collaborate with him 👀👾💪🏻 Awesome video

Thanks for making your windows? with a black frame so that I can see the subtitles clearly!

love the interview, good knowledge.. but this is basiically the meme of devs being introvert and marketing being extroverts :D

Right, the part which said "people use their game designer brains and there must be this system and that system...just make the horror game! just make it scary!". This is something I wanted to convey to people, but somehow it's super hard to tell them. I kinda understood why people started with platformers. It's because there are abundance of free tutorials on platformers. I don't know real origin, but even me started with 2D platformer for my first game. What I want people to understand is that game development sometimes could be about experimenting which Code Monkey seems to love. Sometimes it's about storytelling, sending messages, or making an artwork. You people should start asking yourselves what do you want to do in game development. For me it's just storytelling because I love working on world building. As for you, well just ask yourselves.

I wish I loved myself a tenth of how much this dude loves himself. Respct ❤️ Let me recap. I’m suggested to make a cookie toucher simulator, make 4 staged screenshots in different biomes, edit a trailer, contact the organisers of a festival and tell them they can be the first to announce my game and then open a page on steam. Anyway, will you be in Barcelona in September for that Unity stuff?

@CodeMonkeyUnity

4 күн бұрын

heh yup technically if you do that then your odds of finding success are quite a bit higher than if you were to do a generic puzzle platformer with a single world, no trailer, no festival. Yup I'll be at Unite 2024!

@maxpitta

4 күн бұрын

@CodeMonkeyUnity even if taken individually are good pieces of advice I was joking about how incompatible are all together😅 I think no festival will be happy to announce in world premiere my “four biomes cookie toucher”. And also was a bit confusing the answer to “when should I start marketing my game?” “as long as you got 4 staged, no ai, no script biomes screenshots” and “a nice and polished trailer”, those are two very distant stages! Nice you’re there!

Hey Code Monkey, QUESTION! So from 30:00 to 38:00 where yall talk about what genres indie devs should make and suggest Horror games, did yall mean that your FIRST game can be ever can be a horror game like a mascot horror game?

@CodeMonkeyUnity

4 күн бұрын

The "order" doesn't really matter, it can be your first game or your 10th game. For example in my case he has almost convinced me to give horror a try even though it's not my favorite genre, so if I try that with my next game then it will be my 10th game.

@mr.gamechat4271

4 күн бұрын

@@CodeMonkeyUnity Ah ok ty so much for answering, as the steam marketer said the three genres (like horror) indies should start with instead of their dream game but the thing is my dream game is a horror game, a mascot horrror game if you will! So it ok that my first game is technically my dream game?!

@CodeMonkeyUnity

4 күн бұрын

Sure, if your dream game is a horror game then go for it!

@mr.gamechat4271

4 күн бұрын

@@CodeMonkeyUnity AWESOME! Thanks for the feedback! I know now what I must do!

Question: What should be the time between a demo and the release of the game? 3 months? is a year OK?

@CodeMonkeyUnity

4 күн бұрын

In terms of participating with a demo in Steam Next Fest, you should participate in the one just before release, like 1 month before. But you can have a demo much earlier than that, and in that case it doesn't matter. Some games have demos for years and they find a lot of success when they release.

Why are there quantum singularities in the bg and he’s got the same eyes of the shady suite guy in mass effect 2?

Thanks for this, really helpful. While I see the benefit of creating multiple smaller games instead of one big “dream masterpiece” game, I wonder if it has any effects on the success of future games. For example, if I made a couple smaller games that didn’t do to well due to a variety of factors, would this affect the success of a future game I put out? Does Steam factor in the success of your previous games? There’s also the possibility that a potential customer sees your previous games and how poorly they did and decides not to buy the game. At this point do you just release your game under a different developer name?

@howtomarketagame

7 күн бұрын

They do not care if your previous games do poorly.

@Schizo0ol33tKazuka

6 күн бұрын

I think Chris covered this a bit, but his point was: Even if your first game does poorly, you will still have people who love it. But no Steam doesn’t take your other games into account, that I know of. Also like Chris said, your first games just aren’t going to be that great. Just release something and get it out there.

❤

Some great advice here, but the idea of making a game of a certain genre just because it is more popular seems set up to fail. It's so hard to make a game indie you have to really care for it. I know I can't make my dream game yet but I'm trying to make the most simplified version of that style and then gradually work towards making better more advanced versions in the future.

I realized last week making a really good thumb nail is HARD! I spent half a day on it, how do we find illustrators?

@CodeMonkeyUnity

2 күн бұрын

For me I've hired capsule artists from Fiverr. There's tons of people and it's definitely worth it to go with someone that charges a couple hundred dollars as opposed to just 20 bucks. A great capsule really is worth a ton

Shovel knight was like non even 10 hrs but I get his point.

@CodeMonkeyUnity

4 күн бұрын

Is it? Interesting, I never played it myself but I thought it was a 20hr game, maybe some confusion with Hollow Knight. I guess it goes to show how the most important thing is quality, if you have a short game that is really awesome then people will love it.

49:25 HARD MODE 😃

16:13 ho! nice !!!!!

What about Castlevania didn't hit even when it is just a platformer or it's because it's souls like genre

Early Access is Hard Mode indeed!

Should you even do marketing for your first game? What if the publisher think you suck and won't care about your next games because of it?

@CodeMonkeyUnity

5 күн бұрын

Everyone starts from 0 so that's not an issue. I'm very public with my own journey, you can go play my first Flash game which was super basic, and it does not negatively impact my current games in any way kzread.info/dash/bejne/Yq6nxbKfj7iXhrw.html

hey, I can't take my page offline, and it had many mistakes for months, what should I do? thanks!

@CodeMonkeyUnity

4 күн бұрын

Just learn from it and keep pushing forward. To the best you can with that game and then make your next one even better

Does the poor reception of the demo somehow affect the sales? Well, besides the direct impact of some people walking away thinking your game will be bad.

@howtomarketagame

7 күн бұрын

In the moment demos that aren't connecting can hurt. But you can take the demo down. Fix it. Then put it back up and try again. There is no "black mark" forever.

@LizardOfOz

7 күн бұрын

@@howtomarketagame Do people look at discussions, since this is where demo feedback will likely be posted (I'm looking at GMTK's Mind over Magnet as an example)? Also, some thread titles don't specify that it's about the demo, which could make it later appear that it's about the full game.

@howtomarketagame

7 күн бұрын

@@LizardOfOz It has a small effect. Be nice. Thank people for feedback and tell them you have a new version

@LizardOfOz

7 күн бұрын

@@howtomarketagame Thanks!

29:34

He uses his hands a lot xD

See the weird thing is I feel like action platformers have decent potential, but eeeeeeveryone and their dog does a PUZZLE platformer.

@CodeMonkeyUnity

4 күн бұрын

hmm that's a good question, I wonder if anyone has done that kind of research to see if a sidescroller shooter does tend to perform better. Or maybe it's very hard to tell because there aren't many, whereas on puzzle platformers you can see there are a ton and most don't find success

should your first games even make it to steam?

@CodeMonkeyUnity

6 күн бұрын

It depends on your goals and on how much $100 is to you. If it's a large amount of money then sure just stick with Itch while learning. But if you can spend it then it helps you learn more about how Steam works by actually going through the process instead of just reading about it.