How should I advertise my game

I need to work harder on my advertising skills. :p


Not just allowed, but welcomed. We're always happy to introduce new devs to the community. B):thumbsup-left:

Always a good thing. ;-) We would love to see this expand.


Very awesome! Although, the load times and navigation times were really slow for us, and we're on business-class fiber. Not to pry, and our apologies for being presumptuous, but are you using a CDN platform, like CloudFlare or CloudFront?

Send your completed games my way. It benefits everyone. :cutesmile:


Not that I know of.
I use Hostmonster for hosting purposes.

We would highly recommend that, if you want to make Aldorlea into a real DDP like Steam, look into a CDN service like CloudFlare or CloudFront.

Otherwise, as content is added, and as more people access the site, it's going to choke and eventually crash.

What's the site I'd love to see it and ofcourse we wouldn't just buy anything and everything but the ones that had hard work put into. As baby's first Rpg wouldnt have incurred anywhere near the costs we have they cant expect to throw their project up that's RTP galore and receive copious amounts of revenue the next day.

Since this place already exists I think we should all make efforts to make it as reputable as this very forum (unless it is and I'm just out of the loop lol) is I can't wait to see the page

All my games have been sold on the Aldorlea site before going to Steam. It has made sense as a business model and has proved successful - Shadows & Lies was the best seller on the site for 2018.

It is a pleasure to interact with a community of players who actually like RM games, instead of battling all those on Steam who don't. They give constructive feedback and - as long as it's only one or two and they are fixed immediately - are tolerant of bugs. What isn't acceptable, of course, is a game with a lot of bugs, so anyone thinking of selling there should not assume that their standards can be lower just because people like RM games.

But players don't care for "hard work", they buy the ones they like, that's all.
Devs =! Players, both have a different approach.


If the game is appealing, they can, to a certain degree. It's more about providing a fun experience than anything else. And it's not a blind shot as there's always a demo to judge from, so players have all the necessary means to make a knowledgeable opinion about each game.


That would be nice lol
Link in my signature.
Every dev with one or several completed commercial games is very welcome in the community. B):rock-right:

very nice! what webhost do you use?


this was posted almost a year ago but i just read it and had to chime in on it, i think the problem with echo is it broke the wall and went no further. what i mean by that is the creator worked very hard to make the game look GREAT....but only by RPG maker standards & not to the outside world. To us echo having a custom animation that probably cost 3000+ was mind blowing, but to the average players an animated cutscene is a dime a dozen and by that right the custom animation was lacking compared to what even the most basic PSX rpg would pump out in the early 00's, couple that with actual gameplay being your usual RPG Maker ARPG that many cringe at outside of our community and it was meant to be a disaster on steam due to ignorance. i find the most succesful RPG maker games go completely into a niche visual all their own, like the upcoming "she dreams elsewhere" is popular on reddit indie gamemaker threads where people of all dev programs gather, theres also another project known as Senescent Link thats a very akira-inspired pixel art deco game thats pullling some attention too, if we try to push RPG Maker as is in a traditional RPG we have to find that sweet spot where we don't try to package ourselves to look too much better than the actual core gameplay but also don't float too closely to the stock RTP failures of the past, i feel Ara Fell did a great job of standing out as an actual RPG and not just an RPG Maker product in that respect.

Thank you. Hostmonsters.

I think @Conflictx3 hit the nail right on the head. One of the best down to earth posts I have seen here in a while.


Echo is sucessfull on youtube as developer that has a following of other RPGM developers, that was never going to translate into sales. While I have used a lot of her videos myself to learn things for my own projects, what a lot of people within the community consider to be amazing to people outside of the community would generally be considered pretty generic or average because they dont have an understanding of the engines limitations.

While I personally find Echos knowledge of the engine incredibly impressive, the actual nuts and bolts of what makes a game outside of programming fall well behind her competition. Her art and writing in particular are... well could use a lot of work, few things turn off your average gamer more than objectively "bad" anime art (I could go into details about the lack of cohesive color theory, busy UI, awful fonts etc, something that Drifty is also guilty of despite his deep knowledge on the programming side. I guess really its something I see in about 99% of the projects on these forums). Thats not a knock against the work that she (or Drifty) puts into her games, she is passionate about what she does and does as much as she can herself, and thats admirable, but passion almost never translates into sales. Theres also nothing wrong with that since most people here are hobbiests and releasing a commercial game doesnt change that.

What a lot of devs seem to miss here is that what impresses other people who use RPGM as developers does not impress your average steam user. Like at all.

thank you for for your thoughts @VisitorsFromDreams !
definitely on the same page

if i were to be really honest for a moment as i want all of us to succeed in sales and spur a change of reputation for RPG maker, the biggest most obsolete and limitating feature of RPG Maker that needs the biggest update of all is us devs. Our way of thinking is far too detached from reality.

to keep this on topic with advertising i think we all need to look at our projects and ask, what ARE we advertising? a game? theres a million games is that all we're advertising? or is it the story we wrote? or is that slamming turn based battle that has some nice plugins jammed in there? long story short: what is your projects selling point? as Visitors and i have mentioned Echo's selling point was to look visually better in packaging than any other RPG maker game regardless if she knew it or not, and it worked, from a RM dev standpoint we're in awe of her work, unfortunately that bar is set way too low to do anything for steam/PC consumers and or even mobile consumers, hell my galaxy note9 has 512GB on it, soon as i got it i turned half the damn thing into a gaming system as my PHONE can handle KINGDOM HEARTS BBS like it was a PSP with ease, if our phones are at a point where they can handle AAA company games without so much as an increase of battery draining more than it normally would then why would good ol' PC master race gamers who understand their computers can outclock PS4/Xbox/Switch if set up right want to play our retro style game if our retro style game isn't of the quality/an improvement in the games that inspired them? i recently mentioned octopath traveler is a prime example of being a retro game that every gamer wanted to get their hands on despite being an IP from a company that can't seem to catch a break with their leading titles like FF, and they just announced a prequel for Octopath traveler for Mobile with the exact same engine.

We drank the water, as devs we have a defeatists attitude becuase we accepted that RPG Maker has all these limitations so products of RPG maker can only do so much, then when someone does break the mold with it and does something crazy i hear people make comments like "it so good we shouldn't even call it an RPG maker game, its a game" to me thats a bad attitude, if people found a way to make a worthwhile title with RPG maker it should very much be highlighted that its an RPG maker game because thats a badge of honor.

to wrap this up as i don't wanna go off on a tangent, we should really look at our projects and figure out a selling point and push it on much more than the pitch of: "ITS A GAME...ANNNDDDDD......ITS.....*DRUM ROLL*...FINISHED!!! I FINISHED MAKING IT, THATS THE SELLING POINT!", its 2019 - with MV this program has become quite robust and thanks to great contributions by yanfly, Victor, Hime and many others we can break those limits,

i give echo much credit still because she had a concept and exceuted it which is by no means a failure and something we should all do in our own way because its that kind of ambition many makers are missing: to find a theme and own it best we can. if we could take this tool, go back in time to when SNES reigned supreme and was asked to use MV to make a game to beat FF6, Chrono trigger, Breathe of Fire, etc. with all of our memories of those games and the games that came out after them intact in our minds, unlimtied time, budget, and help many of us would still fail to make a game to compete because we're too stuck on being traditional while those games were trying to break the limits from back then, in this scenario Echo would have competed because her work and ideas were to push the envelope, like any AAA would back then, we need to have that mindset for commercial games.

rant over, the gist is if were going the commercial route we have to try harder in different areas then just pretty packaging the menu and game trailers/pics with anime busts as many of us do and programming clever boss fights, once you figure out that gaping weak spot that you can improve on, you sell that aspect.

No offense, but I've given up on Steam when it comes to selling games there (though I'll probably post it there...eventually). All I've seen says that unless you are the hot new AAA game or a porn game you got about 0.000000001% of making it big. Even the big name RPGMaker games didn't do it on Steam, they sold the game elsewhere long before they got on Steam. The few that did good on there did so as it used to be that if Steam sold a game, it meant it was a good game, so if people saw your game on there, they assumed it was good and bought it. That is also probably how an RPGMaker game with all default RTP and looked a lot like baby's first RPG sold over 200,000 copies too, as people thought it was good as it was on Steam, then found out otherwise.

I think its worth noting which RPGM games have had the most "mainstream" success as well. Its not the big long fantasy RPGs inspired by FF6 and Chrono Trigger, its the unique cult hits that got people outside of the communities attention. Games like Lisa: The Painful RPG, Suits: A Business RPG, OneShot and Hylics. Games thats selling point is that they are niche, they are unique, there is nothing else like them out there. Games that take the limitations of the engine and turn them into an advantage. While I dont have any numbers to show they sold better than any other RPGM games (though judging by the quality of the preview footage of Hylics 2 and Suits 2 which have both moved to more involved engines they must have done pretty well), what I do know is I can talk to plenty of my friends who arent remotely interested in the RPG genre that if they havent played these titles are atleast well aware of them.

If your making another generic fantasy RPG thats fine, theres obviously an audience for that, but the best way to advertise your game is to have make a game that stands on its own and out from the crowd.

Most games on Steam "sell" giveaways more than actual copies lol at least as seen from a steamspy data page (because Steam does give you the real no bullshit figures but this obviously isn't available for everyone like Steamspy).

As far as the entire post goes I Couldn't have said it better myself we think very alike.

Idk if OP ever got his answer but that's basically how to advertise his game in a nutshell and that goes for the whole community

You know what? I'm there too. Steam is so congested now that i'd rather sell on more focused or dedicated platforms and companies. Better chance to stand out and sell decently. Sales were decent a few years ago, but the last 4 months or so they've nosedived, and without spending a bunch of money and/or time and/or getting lucky, they aren't coming back.

Hi there,

I am also aware that steam is congested with a lot of games, some that could have been curated before being allowed to publish. So I'm wondering what are the potential release platform that can generate more popularity from the product, especially RPGMaker?

Cheers!

Well, for me, I started as a text sim game programmer, so for example, a site like Grey Dog Software is tightly focused and has a loyal customer base, so i'm making a game to publish there (a game where you run a gang of mobsters).

For RPGM, i'm thinking of publishing directly on a platform like Aldorlea Games, where the games made with RPGM are treated with much more respect than a place like Steam. It can't sell worse really, to be honest. More tightly focused once again and lots of loyal people who love the company and those 'style' of games.

The current sad numbers: Steam averages 10-30 games released every day. How can a small RPG Maker game stand out and sell? I'd say right now its almost impossible unless it really gets lucky or does something so revolutionary the press has to take notice. Moving to focused platforms with established customer bases is something more indies will need to do to survive, IMHO.

@SimProse : That's my thought process too, go to where the audience is instead of just putting it out there and hoping for the best.

I know that for steam, they take around 30% cut for selling your game on their platform in addition to the $100 that has to be put upfront. As for Aldorlea Games, do you happen to know what is the % that they take per sale? In addition, is there some statistics on how many sale would posting on Aldorlea Games would there be compared to posting on steam?

Cheers!