I bet you are curious about my first steps in marketing and communication!
On my side I was nervous, because it is not my usual job — but an indie dev has many roles — so let us see how I did.
Strategy
First I started to look around for similar games.
I tried to talk about Artillery Royale in their existing game communities. This did not work well. Those communities are already focused on another game and thus not interested in a newcomer. I even quickly look a bit spammy.
Then I switched to a second classic approach: influencers.
Problem is, I do not have an existing network (being my first time as an indie dev). So I started to build up connections with interesting people. This part was quite hard as much of my attempts stayed without response. But by taking the time to select the right people I had a few successes.
My final goal was to get the game streamed on Twitch, so potential players could see it running and get into it. I did not remember exactly how many streams I manage to get, probably 20 or so (and from my perspective it is a good score). But I found out that this did not convert.
Fact is, a twitch streamer, even having 5000 followers will only get a few viewers per stream, and even worse than that, those viewers are interested in the streamer person not in what he/she is streaming.
I also connected with people we call “content creators” — a concept that was new to me at the time — and they played, reviewed and made videos about Artillery Royale. But the people I could connect with do not have a big audience yet. So it fell flat.
This is no excuse but I would say I have two extra disadvantages: 1/ not being English native 2/ not being on the right timezone (while targeting the US), that makes the whole thing even harder.
A big thank you
I may have sounded a bit harsh by saying that none of my effort worked with content creators or streamer. But all the people that connected with me were really nice person. They may not have — yet — the audience to promote Artillery ROyale as I wanted, but it was a pleasure to meet them. Some of whom I really liked to talk with.
Current Numbers
In an effort to be transparent, and show to other indie dev how it can be like, those are the number for the first 3 months (starting from zero):
- Twitter followers: 109
- Wishlists: 247
- Sales: 8
- Revenues (after steam commission — but before taxes): $73
- Total players: 35
Of course this does not look good, but it has to start from somewhere!
I’m not giving up.
Next Step
I have other strategies to test, the first one is to look for a publisher who could help in the distribution of the game. I am starting to work in that direction.
The second strategy would be advertising, but this need a dedicated budget, and I already exceeded what I could afford for that project.
