Great advice! Really liked that quote "Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others"

"If you have less than 1000 wishlists, just put the game out for free and move on." I strongly disagree. My game launched with 100 wishlists and after a year sold about 800 copies. That's not much, but also not nothing. Sure, if your game is some experiment that you shoved together in half a year, moving on might be the right thing to do. But don't be afraid to ask for money if you put in real effort and you think what you did is worth it.

@DestinedProductions

6 ай бұрын

different games perform in different ways. I agree your game isn't dead with 1000 wishlists, in fact that is a good sign people like it because you are bad at marketing (unless you collected them from steam fest). It does however mean you will miss out on some benefits you would have on steam if you had more.

Please rerelease this video once every month. I need to hear it at least 12 times a year.

Great advices. one thing that I don't agree, is to release the game for free, if the scope was to sell it, delay your launch, give it another month and focus only on marketing, try at least to do the things that you didn't do in the development process, even if it will not provide the numbers that you wish, at least you will have a better understanding on how to do things for you next project. This doesn't mean that in this time, you can't start your next project. I think that this was the case also with Forge Industry, rather to delay a little bit more the release date and do in that time more marketing you preffered to release it. I know the feeling when you get tired/bored working a long amount of time on a project and you want to "just finish it and get over it", however if you want to do free games, release them on itch, spend on month on it and thats it. So regarding RUINING your game success another tip is not to rush the release date, you worked 1 year on it and nobody knows about it, spend another 3 months and make people aware of it.

This is such a great video, thank you so much for choosing to remain honest over going for more clickbait, I'm sure that at the end of the day, people would appreciate and value this and even if it might take a while, it is bound to make you stand out in the sea of overproduced, overscriped, half-truthful devlogs out there ^^

how did you validate your latest game? What made you think this will sell?

I don't want to sound pessimistic, but did you run a background check for your "Master Sun" artist? There are quite a few red flags from what I can see: missing finger on the right hand, hat is a weird mixup with an umbrella, overly elaborate pattern on the clothes and folds that are inconsistents, to name the most obvious. I could be wrong but it looks like AI to me. On another hand here is something that you can change easily: Your menus and text boxes rely too heavily on earthy tones (In my opinion), and you can "fix" it by toning the saturation down. With an overall palette that lean more towards the grays you can have the importants bits (like the text) stand out by contrast, either light or by saturation. In your case your textbox is earth brown with a light brown lining, and yellowish white text. I would tone the saturation of the main brown, up the saturation of the light one to a mellow gold and have the text be plain white. There is many merits in exploring the powers of the grays, look at your "master Sun": his face pops up because the reds in the skin stands out against his overall gray palette and your attention is drawn by the stark contrast of the white beard that frames his face. Even his other colored elements (red strings and metal bits) are toned down to blend in with the rest, as you don't want them to take the attention away. Returning to the menus colors: a more neutral theme would also help the icons to stand out more, like your lotus one. Having them in a strong colored background also alter the perception of the colors they were drawn in, so there is that to take into account as well, if you wanted to push it. I realise that this has little to do with the content of the video, but I hope this helps at least a bit anyways.

Good solid advice. Having just released my steam page for a game I started 2 years ago, I should have released the page a long time ago. Sure the game isn't done yet, and won't be done for a while, but that's 2 years of organic growth missed out on. Hopefully others won't make the same mistake =)

Listening to the market? I want to play games that feel new and fresh. How is it possible for new game ideas to be created when the market doesn't even knows what it wants? Vampire Survivors for example wouldn't exist and people wouldn't know that they want to play games like that. Or that small Harvest Moon inspired game called Stardew Valley that took the core ideas and expanded on them, not because the market wanted this, but the creator did. Both spawned countless clones. Or Kenshi and Factorio... I still remember PC gaming in the 90s. There were so many unique games, many of them bad, but nonetheless it felt really exciting to try games where you absolutely had no ideas what they were like Sacrifice or Messiah. A lot of conventions hadn't been formed yet. Most of todays games are just way too samey.

Aye thank you, you just got me back in track

One thing that is important to remember: Listen to feedback to find out what needs fixing, but don't listen to feedback on *how* to fix it. In general, a player knows when it's not working. But unless they're literally a game developer, they will likely ask for a solution to the problem that either takes the fun away, or doesn't work with the rest of the game. That said, do still listen to their proposed solution. Not so you can use it, but so you can understand *what* it is that's bothering them. For instance, you have a horror game where the player becomes frustrated during a chase sequence, they say, "This sucks, there should be a checkpoint after you clear each obstacle!" Except, that takes away the whole challenge, and the sense of terror. Perhaps the answer is that the direction they should go is just not signposted enough, making them run the wrong way. Or perhaps the monster should be less lethal, so that they get "toyed with" that way they have more chances at getting the door open before they have to start the sequence over. Sure, some players know what they are talking about. The problem is that you can't necessarily tell them apart from the ones that don't and just give a knee-jerk reaction. But their suggestions will give you more insights, such as "the chase sequence is too punishing so it frustrates the player, let's see how we can fix that without taking the tension away."

@bitemegames

6 ай бұрын

"Everyone deserves having an opinion, but not everyone deserves a say", find out what's wrong, but fix it how you find it best indeed. We've had people tell us Forge Industry was boring (which was valid) and that we should fix it by adding a battle royale element (which is dumb) to it. -M

@k_otey

6 ай бұрын

loll (how would that even work xD)@@bitemegames

I definitely need to get better at long-term planning. Short-term was pretty good but I get too much into a groove where I finish some stuff for the week and think, "Oh, I did some good work." And then I don't do anything else. Whereas if I had long-term goals I could immediately start pushing on the next set of tasks that need to get done.

I feel like a caveat is needed for the "listen to the market" part which is kind of hinted at by the point about having a unique selling point. Remember that video games are not built over night. Heck even gamejams can take a while and often only really end up being tiny in scope, tech-demos or vertical slices. If you want to make a game people are willing to pay for, you're going to be working on it for a while. There's a fair possibility that say City Builders will no longer be popular by that point. You also need to consider the fact that you are NOT the only genius out there thinking to make a City Builder because its what's trending on the Steam homepage right now... and more importantly, there will be dozens of games which will be bought enough to break-even and hundreds that go completely unnoticed, those that do get noticed are likely to have much better marketing and development than your own game. I don't mean to be pessimistic, my point here is that "listen to the market" shouldn't mean blindly following the trend page because you are going to be riding on coattails by the time you finally release your game, and if by some miracle your game in this saturated genre IS noticed then you'll be sweeping up the crumbs left behind by whatever games started the trend in the first place. The key is to have your unique selling point and to lean in heavily on that. Look at what the current games lack, or be able to read the market and see what trend is upcoming and trying to incorporate that so your game is the trend-setter by the time it releases.

Hi. How do you playtest submarket? I think your method works only the players who basically already like your genre. BUT if you want to test on a submarket you can be in trouble. For example very few gamer likes logic games where you need to think hard. If you create an action, fps, platformer, etc game that is easier to test. The point what I wants to point is: Your general playtest strategy only works on mass market. Please give me some advice / suggestion. :)

@Ferenc-Racz

6 ай бұрын

one other question: When can you create a steam page? what is the minimum requirement?

@k_otey

6 ай бұрын

i believe that's a question for google @@Ferenc-Racz

Good video. Thank you.

Great vid. You can only build in a bubble for so long. 6 months of learning and relearning. Kinda like I'm turning a big boat. But it's all for nothing if ya don't let anyone see... so point taken. As always,,,"Thanks".

the "or adult games" 🤣🤣🤣, but yeah solid advice overall

@bitemegames

6 ай бұрын

I was seriously doubting to keep that in the edit or not, I let my worse part win -M

@celtonaugusto8282

6 ай бұрын

@@bitemegames it was a wise choice to keep it 😂

Do you think you can show a good example of a Milestone for a long-term monthly plan in a Project Management tool? I always find it hard to differ it from it being between both long-term and short-term goals, mostly because I am never 100% sure if this feels like a long or short-term task until I start doing it.

@denkkab1366

6 ай бұрын

I think the long term planning is not about planning a single task that will take a long time to finish, but rather you set a milestone for let's say, an alpha release of your game. Now when you have the goal of that milestone in your head, you can start breaking it down to tasks: What do I need to do in order to get an alpha release out that someone can playtest? You'll list down all the required features you'll need for that and give a rough estimate for each of them. Then you can do more detailed planning for each feature and break them down to smaller tasks, and then you can start to form that long term plan leading up to the set milestone to get an idea what you need to do on a (lets say) weekly basis to get there, and in what order

I cannot join discord, it says "Whoops... Unable to accept invite"

Maybe its just me but not making your dream game can set you up for failure as well. Most successful games have dream game qualities and most games that aren't dream games aren't worth playing. When you learn gamedev you should definitely think about making a elaborate project that you love instead of a cash grab or a boring game you dont have any connection to.

Marketing is easy if you know how to structure it.

Man I appreciate your tips but I am carrying with my own ideal games and they're gonna make me millionaire

First