Sometimes the marketing is not the problem with your wishlist count.
I had two realizations this week :
- Marketing cannot rescue a game that fundamentally does not appeal to people.
- Good polish is often almost invisible.
I sometimes see posts from developers saying their game is not getting traction, even after they changed the trailer, rewrote the description, updated the screenshots, tried different tags, posted on Reddit, ran ads, and basically touched every marketing lever they could find. Then I look at the game and sometimes the real problem is immediately obvious: the art is inconsistent (or made by AI), the UI looks unfinished, the animations are rough, or the game simply does not have a strong visual hook. Marketing can expose a good game to more people, but it cannot manufacture demand for something people do not find appealing. I had a similar realization about polish after spending around six hours tweaking a single defeat screen. I was adjusting music timing, fade-ins, fade-outs, animation timing, and probably a dozen tiny variables. Before the changes, I showed it to someone and they immediately said it looked shabby. After the changes, I showed it to someone else and their reaction was basically, "Okay, it's a defeat screen. What do you want me to say?" At first that sounds disappointing, but I think that is actually what good polish looks like. Bad polish makes you stare at the feature because something feels wrong. Good polish lets you ignore it and stay focused on the game.
So I think the takeaway is pretty simple: polish your game before you worry about showing it to more people. Marketing is an amplifier. If the game looks great, more exposure gives more people the chance to discover something good. If the game looks unfinished, more exposure just means you are paying, posting, and hustling to make a larger number of people notice that it looks unfinished. Polish usually will not give you some dramatic "wow" reaction either. Most of the time, it just removes the reasons someone might immediately write your game off. Get the game to the point where people can stop noticing the rough edges, then worry about putting it in front of a million people.
Oh and please, be concise inside your game. People don't have time to read your novels. When you increase damage by 10%,
- Don't say:
"AdditiveDamage Augmentation IIncreases all outgoing damage dealt by the player by 10%, applying the bonus as a separate final damage modifier rather than adding it to existing additive damage bonuses, thereby ensuring that the resulting damage increase remains proportionally consistent regardless of previously acquired damage-enhancing effects. This effect was inspired by my wife's boyfriend." - Instead say: +10% DMG