How to get noticed?

man , you try to make games and you get super excited about and then you don't get even noticed. How can I can make my games be noticed and how to get noticed by people. I'm starting to lose self esteem about this. How does some indie games can make over 10,000+ views and plays in a short duration while my games barely 100 or 200 and that after a year ! Should someone pay to make ads and publicity or just publish the game and hope for the best?

Well I am no expert but:

-be sure to be noticed by the search engines (have a trailer on youtube? Have a clear title and a good set of tags so random searches related can work out, have your game on a store or a website? Try to see what you can do so people wanting to try it or see its page can do it with almost no efforts, have other games? Maybe trying to use them to get the player to play your next game after, if the users can't find you directly by searching, they will probably not find you randomly).

-try to built up a community, or at least, a group of people that enjoys it, might not be effective but can still be valuable.

-polish the game as much as you can, looks way more like a complete creation that way (a lot of games I saw that were not commercial seems to lack polishing).

-some recommand trying to get in touch with LPers, while I do not think it will be the most effective (I watch let's players for games I won't ever play), it can still be something to try

Keep in mind I am not good at getting noticed though! So I might be wrong.

Just keep at it. The longer you work at it, the more likely you'll be able to make that connection to players. Abandoning projects is way too common nowadays... So I think if you show you are active, players (on Steam and the app stores) will notice if you are updating regularly. Also it's not a bad idea to start a devlog or vlog and discuss the making of your game.. put yourself out there.. people love that stuff.

this is the eternal question, which doesn't apply only to games in my opinion but to anything related to internet.

I noticed 1 major fact and i can say its a law of internet, if you want to become successfully or popular for that meanings, since popularity=success on internet, with your app or blog or whatever it is that you do online, you need to have a good idea of how to market the crap out of the thing you do. so the law of internet in end can be call marketing or exposure or whatever word can come into your mind that resembles getting mapped and noticed.

a few easy tricks for games since its our main concern here, if you dont have a prebuilt plan for it, i mean like selling it for specific companys or marketing it for surtain type of stores, and you want to keep your game for yourself as a free developer, and to let people know u do games, and gather more followers, id suggest spread all over community's that offers free game hosting, hell, you can even create your own arcade blog, and post your own, but lets say you dont have the patience so youl just have a few choice, one is spread your game to all websites as newgrounds, kongregate, google chrome store games which is free to submit to , opera store, and many others... i cant really tell right now all of them, but i have over 100 bookmarks for this types of spreading websites. so that might bring u some pretty cash, if ... you have lets say newgrounds ads incorporated which will sum up on your main account, even if you upload in kongregate. other websites have their own api if you want to make a different api version advertising you can do it, depends all on you.

so basically there is no easy way, since involves marketing and sometimes marketing isn't meaning just a twat on twitter or a YouTube Video, those help, if you have active subscribers or followers, if you dont have you can ask a friend that has a built social follower group and give him a threat. marketing is a tedious work, its not that hard to do, but takes time, you always have to be in touch with people, posting new content, original content, facts, etc depends on what type of crowd you want to build. thats why i kinda quite'd game dev for a while and im researching marketing, and ways to build a good arcade website and social network around it.

(also there is a trick for those who have patience, creating arcade blog clones with free hosting will increase ur google indexing on the specific game, its a matter of copy pasting same blog on different domains/sub-domains and so on, also embedding your main source files into the cloned website will bring u more views on your main website which will grow a natural traffic on it, but then its a lot of work, and all major succesfull bussiness like kongregate, newgrounds, arcadegames,armorgames,mochimedia, codemonkeys, etc done it untill the point they dont need to do it anymore-but then there is a downside to it having a lot of accounts free hosting's and blogs, youl need to check in on all each week add new content, but if you have a script that allows u to push notifications or content to all websites from a main administration board will save you a lot of time.)

i can write an entire book based on my experiences with this thing, which eventually cracked me open, and made me quit all this bullshit. its not easy work, and im kinda searching ways to find that golden goose but seems there is no way, unless you got lucky and get viral by no reason at all. hitting that 1% chance in 1 billion and make a hit .. even though going viral is a long process in internet, some big viral games toked even years to reach it.

however i went into another direction and that is growing small, and bit by bit. its the best way in my opinion. dont try to hunt the big bull, but go for small little potatoes, that will help you reach your goals, bit by bit, till eventually you have enough followers and content to work with.

if your going to build your own community or arcadewebsite 1 type i suggest you avoid is those rating websites. those like wow badges and many others, where kids have power to rate your content. i got made a mistake on one of my old domains which ruined my pr from page 9 to 0 just because i was hosting a arcadewebsite with embedded games from unity... so i got a flag saying i got corrupted files, or such things, which i dident.. and then google started indexed that and my website went down and down. so i just pulled the plug off. after 1 year and smth of building it.

which now seems to be bought by a japanese or chinesse company , that i wanted to sell the domain to but i just dident bothered. gcstudio.net anyway i got the main domain still... gamecorpstudio.com which i have to search ideas in building it at the moment i think is still redirecting to gcstudio.net.. but eh.. who cares anymore.

this is the eternal question, which doesn't apply only to games in my opinion but to anything related to internet.

I noticed 1 major fact and i can say its a law of internet, if you want to become successfully or popular for that meanings, since popularity=success on internet, with your app or blog or whatever it is that you do online, you need to have a good idea of how to market the crap out of the thing you do. so the law of internet in end can be call marketing or exposure or whatever word can come into your mind that resembles getting mapped and noticed.

a few easy tricks for games since its our main concern here, if you dont have a prebuilt plan for it, i mean like selling it for specific companys or marketing it for surtain type of stores, and you want to keep your game for yourself as a free developer, and to let people know u do games, and gather more followers, id suggest spread all over community's that offers free game hosting, hell, you can even create your own arcade blog, and post your own, but lets say you dont have the patience so youl just have a few choice, one is spread your game to all websites as newgrounds, kongregate, google chrome store games which is free to submit to , opera store, and many others... i cant really tell right now all of them, but i have over 100 bookmarks for this types of spreading websites. so that might bring u some pretty cash, if ... you have lets say newgrounds ads incorporated which will sum up on your main account, even if you upload in kongregate. other websites have their own api if you want to make a different api version advertising you can do it, depends all on you.

so basically there is no easy way, since involves marketing and sometimes marketing isn't meaning just a twat on twitter or a YouTube Video, those help, if you have active subscribers or followers, if you dont have you can ask a friend that has a built social follower group and give him a threat. marketing is a tedious work, its not that hard to do, but takes time, you always have to be in touch with people, posting new content, original content, facts, etc depends on what type of crowd you want to build. thats why i kinda quite'd game dev for a while and im researching marketing, and ways to build a good arcade website and social network around it.

(also there is a trick for those who have patience, creating arcade blog clones with free hosting will increase ur google indexing on the specific game, its a matter of copy pasting same blog on different domains/sub-domains and so on, also embedding your main source files into the cloned website will bring u more views on your main website which will grow a natural traffic on it, but then its a lot of work, and all major succesfull bussiness like kongregate, newgrounds, arcadegames,armorgames,mochimedia, codemonkeys, etc done it untill the point they dont need to do it anymore-but then there is a downside to it having a lot of accounts free hosting's and blogs, youl need to check in on all each week add new content, but if you have a script that allows u to push notifications or content to all websites from a main administration board will save you a lot of time.)

i can write an entire book based on my experiences with this thing, which eventually cracked me open, and made me quit all this bullshit. its not easy work, and im kinda searching ways to find that golden goose but seems there is no way, unless you got lucky and get viral by no reason at all. hitting that 1% chance in 1 billion and make a hit .. even though going viral is a long process in internet, some big viral games toked even years to reach it.

however i went into another direction and that is growing small, and bit by bit. its the best way in my opinion. dont try to hunt the big bull, but go for small little potatoes, that will help you reach your goals, bit by bit, till eventually you have enough followers and content to work with.

if your going to build your own community or arcadewebsite 1 type i suggest you avoid is those rating websites. those like wow badges and many others, where kids have power to rate your content. i got made a mistake on one of my old domains which ruined my pr from page 9 to 0 just because i was hosting a arcadewebsite with embedded games from unity... so i got a flag saying i got corrupted files, or such things, which i dident.. and then google started indexed that and my website went down and down. so i just pulled the plug off. after 1 year and smth of building it.

which now seems to be bought by a japanese or chinesse company , that i wanted to sell the domain to but i just dident bothered. gcstudio.net anyway i got the main domain still... gamecorpstudio.com which i have to search ideas in building it at the moment i think is still redirecting to gcstudio.net.. but eh.. who cares anymore.

Great stuff ! Thanks for sharing ! My first big step will be making a completed and polished game to online hosts like Kongregate , NewGrounds , GameJolt and what not! Let's hope this will work! I don't know how someone can count his fan base. is it based on social network followers or it is based on views and play ? till now I actually don't know

Gamers search for new ideas, try to make something new.

Great stuff ! Thanks for sharing ! My first big step will be making a completed and polished game to online hosts like Kongregate , NewGrounds , GameJolt and what not! Let's hope this will work! I don't know how someone can count his fan base. is it based on social network followers or it is based on views and play ? till now I actually don't know

no problem, is my pleasure to share the experience, it makes me release some tension and frustration im gathering on time passing, i wasn't sure if you'd be understanding a word i said cause i have a few typos.

however newgrounds and other websites are a good starting point, personally i dident got a good experience with kongregate, not sure why, maybe the content was the fault i mostly uploaded demos there ) low quality crap cause the community isnt interacting with new games. but on newgrounds, i can tell you as soon as i submit a new game even though im not even active for the past few months, in 2,3 days after posting the game im gathering around 500-2000 views, then starts to drop, the biggest views i got was from a contest from stencyl , i think its 1 year from that time, i got around 25000 views on it, some ninja fruit slashing clone, my first game actually, then i just uploaded free ads demos, for scirra store, and other websites im using. not sure what is going on there anymore, but if your new to building your crowd i say again its a good starting point, also make sure that you threat all reviews good or bad high or low the same, dont apreciate the good and blam the low, since people will notice, and youl get to be the one to suffer, becoming neutral its the best thing. since majority of the people on this platforms, are kids(6-10), or teenagers (12-17), just a few that are doing art will be actually legal age.

There's a lot of hard work to be done Here's a list of things to do:

*Contact reviewers - make them notice it. If they like it, there's a chance they will write about it.

*Contact youtubers - have them try your game, if you're lucky they might make a video about it.

*Go to events and other gatherings, promote your game.

*Make a lot of promo/press material. Post it or send it to relevant places.

*Contact local magazine in your area. Send them a press release, maybe your local newspaper want to talk about a small new studio in town.

*Make gameplay videos.

And like A0Nasser said. If you're games are not unique enough they might never get noticed. There's an endless amount of clones so push the things that makes your game unique.

Basically you got to be everywhere all the time (Facebook, blog, twitter, forums, youtube)

Tell people you story and let them know you and your games.

It's pretty simple. Make a good game. People talk about good games. All the marketing and promotion in the world is useless otherwise. Sorry to be so blunt, but flappy bird / space invaders clones with public assets and a game where you tap squares aren't the most appealing. There's an ocean of amazing work out there and it's gonna take more than that to get noticed.

Make things that stand out. A creative artstyle, pushing genres, fill gaps, innovation. Give journalists a reason to write about your stuff and give viewers a reason to follow what you do.

Add social buttons to your game - If someone likes it, make it easy for them to tell there friends

Get your friends to rank and post reviews - I'm more likely to play a 4 star game then a 3.

On google play, I found adding Language Translations to the store Listing will boost the downloads - I don't recommend if your game has a lot text or requires reading to play.

Try to pick a unique name. On Google Play my app Sewer Fish is #1 on the Keywords "Sewer Fish" & "Sewers" and It's #3 for "Sewer". My other game Smash Car title is not that unique and it's hard to find - but I'm working on it. I just started using mobileaction.co to track keyword placement & ASO - it's free

Naji Thank you for writing a review of Smash Car on your site, that helps to.

It's pretty simple. Make a good game. People talk about good games. All the marketing and promotion in the world is useless otherwise. Sorry to be so blunt, but flappy bird / space invaders clones with public assets and a game where you tap squares aren't the most appealing. There's an ocean of amazing work out there and it's gonna take more than that to get noticed.

Completely agree with this. This applies to any art form. Make content that has some type of quality and people will come to it. Maybe not millions at first, but it will interest some people. No need to play cheap tricks, just make good content.

A lot of great advice here! As somebody knew to this art form (musician turned games designer), the best trick I've learnt is to get involved in the community of it all. From diving into forums like Scirra and TouchArcade, to the plethora of hashttags on twitter (#indiedev and #screenshotsaturday are my favourites for striking up a conversation). Go to networking events/conferences/exhibitions, even better if you can display at any of these, a lot of the time these are free too

Notice me SENPAI!