r/gamemarketing

Hi everyone,

We're currently preparing our co-op game CREWED for the upcoming Steam Next Fest. Right now we're sitting at around 1,700 wishlists, but our daily growth has almost completely plateaued (graph attached).

Here’s what we’ve tried so far:

• Reddit Ads: Gave us a solid sustained bump in late April, but performance dropped heavily over time and eventually stopped converting well.
• Press Outreach: We contacted a lot of gaming press and content sites. One article gave us a huge single-day spike (300+ wishlists), but there was basically no long-tail effect afterward.
• Influencer Outreach: We've recently started talking with TikTok gaming creators. One creator quoted us $1,500 for a sponsored video.

At our current scale, does spending $1,500 on a TikTok creator actually make sense? Has anyone here seen strong wishlist conversions from paid TikTok promotions, especially before Next Fest?

We're trying to figure out whether we should double down on influencers or pivot toward something else entirely before the festival starts.

Would really appreciate hearing real numbers or experiences from other indie devs. Thanks!

We launched the Steam page for our game ZOMBUTCHER on October 2nd. Right now the game sits at around 8200 wishlists, with most of the audience coming from the US, Western Europe, and surprisingly - Japan.

At the beginning, there was no "big plan". It was more about constantly testing ideas: which posts worked, which platforms provided any response, and where we could get the first visibillity.

I am going to use [number] for our milestones, our wishlist graph can be found here - https://imgur.com/a/6lZg0FF
[1] The first wishlists were from the team and friends - we shared that we launched our page and they supported us with their wishlists.
[2] Then there was the first serious jump - an article which we posted in one of our local gaming web-site. Article was about our unsuccessful experience with the publisher at the very beginning of development. The post went viral and gave the page its first significant boost.

After that, there was a rather long period of almost no growth. On some days, the game received 2-3 wishlists, and sometimes there were small spikes after posts on Reddit. At this stage, it became clear how hard it is to handle marketing alone and how unstable organic reach is without major news events.

[3] The next big jump happened after signing with the publisher - Loopr Partners. They came from the PR field, so the main focus was on media outreach: publications in the media, contacts with YouTubers, and a trailer on IGN's second channel. This gave the game its first real international reach and took us far beyond the local community - we were very surprised by the increase from Japan in particular.

[4] The most powerful source of wishlists turned out to be the Steam Next Fest. Before the festival, we were worried that we hadn't gathered enough wishlists before it, but in the end, the festival gave more than 2x the total number. At the same time, playtests helped a lot: we conducted the first one at the dawn of development to test basic hypotheses about the game, and the second and third ones were done with the publisher.

[5] After the festival, videos from medium-sized YouTubers and ads on Reddit gave a good result. But the most interesting conclusion came later.

[6] We tried for a long time to convince the publisher to work on TikTok. Initially, the focus was more on classic PR and advertising, and short videos were seen as something secondary. At some point, TikTok finally started to be managed properly - using fresh footage, hooks in the videos, and good quality editing. And it was then that steady growth began.

Another important aspect is maintaining internal social media for already interested players. Telegram and Discord are our main channels for communicating with the "internal community". They help not only to gather an audience but also to maintain constant activity around the project and collect useful feedback.

The main conclusion over these months is that indie game marketing is rarely built around one big success and one channel. Usually, it's a set of small hypotheses, constant testing, and attempts to understand where your audience actually is. And sometimes one well-received TikTok can be more beneficial than a week of classic advertising.

Hope this little article was useful for you. Sorry if it reads a bit too much like a report sometimes. Would love to hear how other indie teams handled marketing during development!

I’ve been developing this game for 3 years. I poured my life into it, invested money, worked day and night - and after the announcement we only got 300 wishlists...

Guys, I’d really appreciate any advice or personal experience. What actually works?

When I got the idea for the game, I had this number in mind - couple of hundred wishlists would be good.

Sure enough, opening reddit everyday and seeing the crazy spikes of other indie devs reaching 1000 or 10,000 wishlists made me feel inadequate about my game. But every time, after cooling down, I try to remember what I set out to do in the first place. That is, release a full game and if I get 200 wishlists, I would be happy.

So I think it's important to define what success means to you before you publish your steam page. The posts we see online are majority outliers in an ocean of hardworking people like you and I.

Steam page has been live for the last 2 months almost and the wishlist climb has been slow.
There was no "viral moment" or "visibility spike", just a little bit of sharing and posting while I focus on my 9-5 job and make the game on the side.

I hope you stick to finishing your game and not get distracted by the outliers. Best of luck!

Hi guys,

We released our first game, Wavekin, quite recently on Steam. We're happy with the game, feedback has been positive so far, and we were even featured in some public events here in France. However, we barely got 150 sales after 3 weeks!

We have good visibility on our social media with paid promotions, and many people land on our Steam page, but the conversion rate is absurdly low.

I'm new at this video marketing thing, so I'm quite unsure how to proceed. I feel our Steam page is lacking something, but I'm not sure what. Maybe the image doesn't catch the eye enough?

I swear this is not a promotion stunt, I'm genuinely looking for some feedback regarding our Steam page. Is everything clear on our page? Are we missing something? Here's the link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3930190/Wavekin/

I'm new at Reddit as well so I hope this post doesn't get me banned, please be kind......

We're Ivory Echo Media, and I want to answer any questions you have.

We’ll write music for games, film, animations, indie projects, etc

Your Story, Our Echo!

Which one is more suitable and appealing for a clicker game?

Hello, I'm building my economic sim game. Seems like it is becoming my midlife crisis hobby.

I've created icons for the goods and buildings. Also started designing new UI to get rid of the shadcn and moving toward my new cohesive brand.

In the battle mode, we had our first raid today. My alpha testers conquered a new district in the city. Now we all have a new bonus for energy regeneration.

Closed alpha is live. There is still a lot of work to do.

Wanna try? Sharing invites via DM.

After approximately 1 year and 2 months of development, I can finally wrap up the demo for my game, Horns. I believe the demo clearly shows what this game is becoming and what it’s truly about.

Horns is an unusual RPG that combines classic old-school gameplay mechanics with modern design. Players will feel the influence of legendary titles from the late ’90s and early 2000s such as Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Morrowind, and Max Payne. At the same time, those ideas are expanded and merged into a dark fantasy experience inspired by games like The Witcher, Dark Souls, and Elden Ring.

The game is heavily focused on narrative and exploration, with the goal of uncovering the mysteries of the realm of Velharion and the story behind its main protagonist.

It is also important to mention that there is currently no studio behind this project. Horns is a solo-developed game, my personal vision of an RPG and a strong desire to create serious, meaningful games based on my own stories.

I also want to give special thanks to several talented friends who contributed in key areas such as voice acting, face models, original soundtrack composition, and programming support. I truly hope this project succeeds so that one day we can build a real studio together and turn all this talent into a professional game development team.

The 2+ hour demo is now available on Steam.

Full release planned for Q3 2026.

Hey!👋

I’m working on my first indie game and I’m still very early (around ~10% done). I launched the Steam page about 3 weeks ago, posted a devlog on YouTube that got ~20K views, and I’ve reached 260+ wishlists so far.

The capsule art will still change, and there’s a lot of content that’s not visible on the Steam page yet.

My goal is a relatively successful launch later on, but I’m not sure how to interpret these early numbers.

Steam page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4639140/Dough_it_Yourself/

We’re developing a cozy puzzle game for 2 months and our page is 1 month old. We’re constantly improving our game therefore the page. What can we do better at first glance?

Thank you for the answers.
Steam page link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4636410/Flight\_Date/

Hey guys. This is just my experience:

- from Apr 17 to Apri 30, I spent about 100 usd in short video content, vertical videos on TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook, etc.

- On May 8 I stopped those campaigns, and started testing reddit ads, spending the minimum 20usd per day.

I'm not even sure i';s worth it, but I'm done anyway since I spent all my marketing budget.

I dont have a demo, but I opened a playtest a week ago. (still open)

Hello everyone,

I’m a solo developer and I’ve just published the Steam page for my first game, Blacksmith Idle.

It’s an incremental/idle game where you build your workshop, hire workers, unlock new forges, and grow your production over time. Chase BIG numbers or watch your workshop grow on a second monitor.

youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lhxZV6qevOY

I’m planning to release the demo shortly before the Next Fest. If anyone enjoy Idle and Incremental game check the Steam page:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4606220/Blacksmith_Idle/

Quick "About me":

• 5 years as a streamer on Twitch working with companies as big as EA, Ubisoft, and Microsoft (As well as indies)
• 5 years as a marketing lead with clients as big as ASUS (indies as small as solo dev projects)

I want to share with you what I've learned so it can help you make more informed decisions.

The hidden side of marketing is "TRUST"

Every marketing company that's been around can instantly tell if they can bring you value or not. They know when they see a good game and know how to evaluate how fast your brand or product will earn the trust of players.

They don't tell you this.

They keep this to themselves because while they can't predict the future 100%, they have experience with good products and bad ones. But developers don't know that they need to earn the trust of their target audience so marketers sell them on pure awareness campaigns.

They reach out to influencers, press, and players to "tell them" about your game.

That is NOT marketing. That is an awareness campaign.

Marketing = awareness + trust

So every client needs to ask their marketing partner "How are we going to build trust with our audience so they feel comfortable to purchase our game?"

If your marketing parter or publisher can't answer that with a coherent plan... WALK AWAY.

Maximizing awareness while having 0 trust is the same as trying to sell a CD on the corner because your "mixtape" is great... you will just look crazy and get laughed at.

Indies make publishing deals because they lack the trust with players, influencers, and press... and a publisher already has built that. That's ok if the pub really can provide this fast track to trust.

But its not OK if you can build trust yourself... Just post online, talk to your community, and slowly show presence and product features. It will work if you listen to your audience.

Remember to ask about trust!

If you ever hear a marketing company talk about "authenticity", walk away ASAP!

Making you look "authentic" is NOT a shortcut to real target audience trust... its just a scam that marketing companies try to fool you with because they can provide awareness but have no desire to help you build trust. And in turn, really have no desire to actually "market" your game. There are there for a quick buck...

Hope this helps.