How should I advertise my game

When I went to seminars run by indie developers about how their games and kick starters became successful, there was a lot of talk about how they practically made marketing their games a full-time job. That's also another consideration for determining why good games do badly and why bad games can sell moderately well.

Pretty much agree on that.
Just want to add, to say it complete, the changes need to be reasonable specially when it comes to balancing and gameplay mechanics.
An example is "Overture" by Black Shell Games. While there have been many improvements, there also has been alot of frustration due to their updates.

That's why I personally think, having a publisher working separately would be better, so the Dev can solely focus on the game self.
Creation/Development is just a whole different area than Marketing.
I understand tho, that a majority of developers would like to publish their games rather by themselves to keep the control over it.

I can confirm that Skyborn sold over 200k copies to date (not sure about the others, but it's possible too) which is almost unheard of as of today. I guess having Degica as a publisher helped quite a bit.
The one thing that unites those games is that they were released pretty long ago. The market has changed too much, so has the distribution model. Their results are pretty irrelevant now. There is simply no chance at all to replicate those results today. And RTP is much more of an eyesore today because average Steam user has seen it hundreds of times in throwaway games, much more often than in 2014 or before.

Regarding better grapics vs. sales there are two points that I feel are undeniable:
1) Good graphics won't make the bad game sell (much);
2) Awesome graphics, style & art direction will make a good game much, much more sellable.

I think there are basically 3 tiers of graphics: "looks like crap"/"looks pretty standard"/"looks awesome". Selling the game in tier 3 is easy. Selling the game in tier 2 is quite possible if it's good (which is pubg). To sell the game in tier 1 you would need a really awesome and unique game that can win serious awards in something other than the graphics (see: Undertale).

P.S. I would seriously advise against working on your game a year after release. Sure ten people who played it might appreciate it but it will waste a lot of your time and won't bring many new sales. Much better to start working on a new game, or if you're serious, create a remaster as a separate product.

As an interesting and sad case study, see EARTHLOCK. When they first released their game (a great looking 3D JRPG, no less!) very little people bought it and the reviews were average. They couldn't believe their game failed so much that they decided to spend a year or more completely remaking it and re-released it. Sure, the reviews improved a bit - but the sales were abysmal. Imagine how much money and time they spent on a year developing their "remaster" and how soul-crushing and company-destroying it must have been seeing it flop again after that...

@Dankovsky : That is one thing to remember, yes. But like I said trying to predict market trends is tough. We can make a game that would sell NOW, but most of us can't complete a game that fast, so by the time we do finish it, the trend is going to be different. That is, unless you are somehow able to crank out a full game in < 3 months. Good luck doing that.

But again, just remember good graphics =/= good sales. In fact, I would argue with the industry as it is you are almost better off using the RTP. Why? Because odds are high you will still only sell 1000 copies regardless and 1000 copies at $5 for a game that cost you $100 to make vs 1000 copies at $5 for a game that cost you $20,000 to make as you licensed a custom tileset = you are bankrupt. Even if the custom graphics get you an extra 1000 copies and you now sell 2000 copies at $5 you are still bankrupt.

And if you don't think a custom tileset can cost $20,000 you are ripping off your artist (unless you can somehow find one in a really cheap country where $300 a month = live like a king, but those are rare). See Celiana's post on this for more where she points out that the cost to make a full custom tileset (remember you are also getting it exclusively!) is easily $18,000 + 20% more for taxes.

Oh, and updating your game well after release can work out really well too. See Divinity Original Sin and Wasteland 2. Of course, those two were already hits to begin with, so they could afford to do it. Earthlock was the first example I'd heard of of a game that did poorly that did it, have you heard of others that did poorly originally but they still tried to release an update way after release?

Still, I think the best argument to take away from this is this: Show off the best your game has. Whatever that is. Even if it is a minor spoiler. Even major spoilers can work, movies do it all the time and people still go see the movie, as a spoiler out of context usually doesn't give that much away.

@bgillisp - you're probably right that it's not worth it to spend thousands on graphics unless you're sure you can deliver a unique game that will hook the modern audience and won't turn them off as "another RPGMaker game, but with better graphics". Frankly a good RPG Maker game with good graphics will also probably struggle to sell nowadays, and even non-maker JRPG will.

I think trends come and go, but good games are pretty much universal. The only thing that makes me very sad is that western turn-based JRPG audience is incredibly small and it's not likely to change any time soon. I feel like JRPGs may suffer the same fate as adventure games did, being considered an outdated genre by most modern gamers and becoming ultra-niche (unless they already are).

Oh and I've of course seen Celianna's blog post but it always struck me as unrealistic and a little unhealthy. I don't think anyone is really paying anyone 20 thousand dollars to make a tileset, except maybe the AAA companies that can shove as much money around as they want (and they still probably don't).

And as a developer you probably don't need to get this expensive either. I mean, you can make a map with something like 10-20 tiles, 48x48 (for MV) each, all of which don't have to be extremely HD to look and feel good. How much would a reasonable pixel artist ask for a single simple 48x48 tile? 5 $? 10$? There, you've made a 20-tile tileset for one map style for 100-200 $. Not that I'm qualified to speak on this subject, but just offering my opinion.

@Dankovsky : My artist charges me the same price to make a 32 x 32 tile as they would to make a sprite facing one direction, so you can probably do it for less IF you know what you need. The point of that post was if you want all custom A - E + inside it will cost a lot, and she is probably close to accurate if you compare it to the price to get everything as one direction sprites.I once calculated the cost to get everything in MV made by an aritst (so all tiles, characters, battlers, sound, SE, ME, battlebacks, animations, the whole works) and I came up with $20,000, and I didn't factor in the autotiles, as I've never ordered those so have no idea what the going rate is for those.

And you might be right about the trends, though adventure games seem to be reviving some now. RPG were even seen as niche in the 90's when I was a teenager playing games on the PC too, but most developers knew this and figured if they even sold 100,000 copies it was time to have a party. In fact, I remember hearing of one developer that had a champagne party when they sold 400,000 copies of a game in the 90's. Nowadays the AAA companies would complain it was a flop.

Though i think if any of us here sold 400,000 copies we would have a party. I know I would :). In fact, in today's market I think I may have a nice steak dinner to celebrate if mine even sells over 10,000 copies.

We would advise working on a game for about three to six months after release, not as a remaster, but to fix any bugs not found in the Beta. Bugs will happen. Only the AAA Studios with tons of cash to throw into QA will be without bugs, so use those first few months of release to fix anything not caught during testing. Now, that doesn't mean you can get away with not testing the heck out of your game while it's in Beta. Far from it, you have to test your game extensively, then test it some more. But some bugs are going to get missed. It will happen. Use those first few months to finish refining the game and fixing those bugs.

We agree that remastering is useless after release. If that's what you plan, just release a new game and call it a remaster.


Celiana's charge for exclusive use of her tileset is mostly for the rights to the work, not for construction of the tileset itself. Our belief is that she over-charges too much anyway. We have a few US artists we contract out and, while no one else can use those assets for their games, the artists retain the rights to their work. Therefore, the cost is a fraction of what was quoted earlier. The same goes for our music.

I've never understood why it must be "exclusive" assets for an indie developer.
Let's face it - even with RTP - when you edit the tiles to your needs (tint etc), do a good mapping in general and apply colors like for lightning etc etc.. the maps will be outstanding yet.
But RTP is just an example.. this can be done with any non-exclusive tileset. And when it is non-exclusive, you can buy them for ~20,- instead of 20.000,-.
Okay, it won't be unique, but a "unique" tileset doesn't have THAT much influence in catching the player's interest really. At least not so much that it would justify to pay the thousandfold of a price.
Better put more effort in mapping and editing to your needs than spending incredible amounts of money you'll not be able to earn back in most of the cases.

@Henryetha
Thank you for talking sense.
@Ksi
So, you prefer a generic arabian town-styled map to my map? First of all in terms of mapping, I barely see any difference in quality between those two images. Actually, the image you prefer seems to have a character that's taken directly from the RTP and has not been edited at all. If you look at the face of the bearded guy in my image, it has been edited. I edited almost all the NPC:s individually with photoshop to make them look more personal (even though I mainly concentrated on their faces.) Taking account they have multiple positions, this takes a lot more work than just take a character from the RTP or create one from the generator.

The more important point is, however, is that you don't seem to know what's going on in my image. It's a silver, square rooftop layer constructed above a city. The silver reflects sunrays, because otherwise the city would scorch. The NPC even states this in the image so it should be clear to the player too. The city showing below is a separate layer moving and looking like it really was below the silver, and the actual city below looks a lot like your second image of the arabian town, not counting brighter colors and slightly more detail. The silver top itself looks undetailed, but it wasn't actually that easy to create. Would've been impossible without a photoshop.

This is from the world of Fire with two suns. The game itself contains full of cities that at least try to do something original like in this case. In the water world of Aquilus, humans live under the ice and get their light from the mirrors constructed on the surface of an ice crack, etc.

I wanted to imagine new kind of stuff for the areas, and not just your typical desert city, a peaceful little starting town, a farm with a cow... which I actually did in the first part of the game series but, oh well... it's a different game and we all start somewhere... : -P

Both images are just small sections from their respective cities. The city with the silver plating is a lot more detailed below the "roof," since the silver plates themselves are just smooth, undetailed panels.

@Labyrinthine : There's a difference between edited well and not edited well. You can edit everything to be pulsating blobs that look like they were drawn by a 6 year old, but it won't sell as almost everyone will say that is bad art. Plus the average consumer doesn't care what was going on behind the scenes. They want it to look like it was used well, and that is what Ksi is getting at.

If an image looks out of place when you put it as a screenshot by itself, don't use it. I have several that would look terrible out of context in my game. So guess what? I'm not using them, as trying to say "Well, you just don't get what is going on behind the scenes" is going to make you sound arrogant to the average Steam user, and that will cost you more sales than the art itself will.

What exactly is wrong with the editing there, and how does it looks out of place? How about you people post some of your own images. I'm pretty good at digging needles from haystacks as well. No hard feelings, but this is what it's starting to feel like.
I also want to repeat one thing. You can't make a game that lasts 80 hours and make every image look like it was painted by God, in a reasonable time limit.
I think I did a pretty dang good job taking account that, and I'm definitely proud of my creation. My biggest worry at the moment is that one of the haters on this thread would buy the game just to give it a bad review just for the sake of this argument. Thankfully, the price is quite high (even though it's cheaper than many of the shorter, simpler RPG Maker games there)
Edit: I also edited my last post a bit to make some other things clear about the map in question this time...

@Labyrinthine I think you are incorrect to say that there are haters on this thread, and this is starting to escalate with the accusation that some might buy just to give a bad review.

It seems to me that part of the art (as well as the skill) of being a developer is knowing how to handle criticism, especially when you believe the criticism is unwarranted. Almost nothing will lose you potential buyers/players quicker than to respond emotionally - I've seen developers criticised in depth for this, on Steam and on fan sites. It is something that we've all had to learn, and continue to need to learn, so nothing unusual there.

I think I might be able to illustrate one or two of the points being made here by reference to the map screenshots in my own game thread here. I am not claiming that they are the best screenshots ever, or that my game is better than others, I'm simply explaining the reasons for choosing those screenshots rather than others.

• They show a variety of location types.
• They show a variety of atmosphere with the lighting, as well as what's on the maps themselves.
• They are completely stand alone. They do not require the viewer to know anything about the game, its mechanics, what else might be going on on those maps. They can be understood just with what you see.
  
• They, hopefully, are a little bit intriguing - what's that big hole in the 3rd screenshot? Why is there a skull as a shop sign and skulls on top the little turrets in the 4th. Does this tie in with that ghost you can see on the 2nd map or is it something/somewhere different? Just something to try and pique the viewer's curiosity.
• They are 'interesting' - a difficult thing to pin down, but there's enough going on there without them feeling too cluttered.
• They tell you something about the game play - the followers go up from 4 to 5. So probably there will be 5 in the active party. This is then confirmed by the battle screen shot - yes, 5 it is.
• The non-map screenshots in the other spoilers tell you a lot about the way things are handled in the game without a great wall of text.

I think people are saying that you seem to have chosen your map screenshots somewhat randomly, and therefore you perhaps are not saying as much with them as you could. My 3rd bullet point is particularly relevant to some of the comments - a map screenshot must be completely stand alone.

Perhaps if you were to compile your own list of things that you want your maps to demonstrate, and then look through your game to find places where a screen shot would help you achieve that list, you might find that you want to change what you've currently got on the game page for something else.

@Kes
At least your critique makes sense, unlike the one where two images with almost identical quality were put side by side, claiming that mine was worse.
Your art looks good, but I have to stress the point that I could've never done that because of how large my game is. The budget and time taken to do it all would've been too much.

The bottom line is, in the case of Labyronia Elements, I had to compromise some things to complete it at all, and I decided to compromise the visuals. I still tried the best with what I had in terms of time 'n stuff, but I can admit it's not the best looking game out there. However, it's nowhere near the worst-looking either (for that you need to look for my first game "Labyronia RPG"(not the remake) or something like "Destiny Warriors")

The things I didn't compromise with were the story, world building, atmosphere and music.

Still, comments like "it looks like a baby's first RPG" are just ridiculous. I've completed 4 games, and I know what I'm doing with the tilesets at this point. I haven't just been sure what images to use because of the structure of the game, and then there's the compromising thing. It's weird that no one who actually played the game never complained about the visuals, though. Some people even liked them pretty much.

I can admit I'm bad at choosing right images for marketing, and this is not sarcasm, because I'm really not good at marketing in general.

I NEVER said the edit was bad. What I said was to be sure to not use an edit badly. And the only reason I said that was your response to Ksi looked like you were saying about the screenshot he didn't like "Well, it's edited", and were ignoring the issue in the first place. Editing images do not automatically make them good, and that was the point of my post (and I stated that as I read your previous one as you saying it was edited in defense).

Kes makes some good points though, you do need your screenshots to stand alone if possible. Sure, in an 80 hour game not every screenshot is going to look good, which is why I said to pick the good ones. As for my game, I'm working on the screenshots as we speak so it will be a little bit before I post them, all I got are temporary ones for now to show off something. Are they my best? Probably not. Still working on that.

Also...I saw you posted as I was typing this. If you are bad at marketing, why not hire someone to market it? Some might take 10% of the sales, some might want payment up front, but if 10% of the sales gets you double your current sales, it might be worth it.

(As for who to hire, you'll have to go outside the forum for that, as since Degica is a publisher marketers and publishers are not allowed to post offers here).

@Labyrinthine On the size of budget - those maps, indeed the whole game, was made using one store bought pack (Celianna's to be exact) and free assets found here on this site e.g. that lighthouse. I did do editing - the ruins, for example, were totally created by me from a few of the resource pack tiles. It took me a few hours, but it meant that I could have a pretty unique feeling location for zero $$$s. I edited the colour of the cliff tiles so that again I could have different locations which didn't feel too samey. Ditto the roof tiles and house walls. None of those things took massive amounts of time, but again added hugely to the sense that places were different.

@bgillisp
I really am broke financially, bgillisp. Like, literally.
Edit: I'll think about the % stuff, though.

Fair enough. Maybe ask someone on the forums then if they can suggest a few screenshots they think will be better? I'm sure someone has played the game and will be willing to do that for you.

If I had time I'd be willing to play it through and suggest some too. But I do not have anything remotely resembling free time the rest of September. Maybe afterwards?

@bgillisp
Well, that would be an honor, of course. It is a big game so I understand if you don't have the time... but since you seem like an objective person and probably won't judge the game just because we've been arguing over it, I could send you a free Steam Key at some point. Just PM me when you got time and if you still wanna play it then (if just to see it's not complete crap visually/ or if it really is : -D) I always appreciate criticism, even the bad one if it makes sense (now I think I'm repeating myself...)

Based on what I could see in the comments on the actual game page, I'd strongly recommend a mechanical change in the game, in order to effectively neutralize the top review on the page, which is a severely negative one and likely to drive away traffic.

Let the Dark One keep all skills and equipment gained on the journey, to maintain a consistent sense of continuity on personal progress.

Either that or add a subset of progressively learned skills that are separate from the skills that are lost. Keep the equipment no matter what.

Maybe add elemental equipment that can restore lost skills while worn as well.

Afterwards, respond to the negative review (again) and add in the description of the game about this update, making the negative review effectively neutralized in terms of marketing.

This is an objective suggestion, nothing to do with feelings, based on observation of how strong an effect a negative review can have on marketing, even if you try to explain designer intention.

Edit: After reading his review again, it really did seem his problem was mainly how Dark One develops. It's true he won't get his skills from the worlds back to the Spirit World, but everyone else do. Dark One should probably be left as a character who mainly collect skills in Labyronia, because he loses his skills after completing other worlds.
However, this was the only way to do it and keep the balance. The rest of the cast will be retrieved to the end game with the skills they had, and in the end, everyone can be leveled to max 99 with the skills they obtained from other worlds.

There are some blatantly false statements in that review such as this:
"Thus the 15 hours I played in the Fire world have absolutely no bearing on what I do for the rest of the game." That's wrong because you'll get a lot of skills, gear and elements for the rest of the fire world cast from that world. These are all useful in the fire world, but also in the end game when the cast returns. The same goes with every world.
Another one is this: "I find there is little point in seeking out secrets and strengthening characters who I don't get to keep." Well, sorry to say but you get to keep the characters. I can take criticism, but false statements (or unintentional lies) are a different thing. It's annoying, gotta admit.

I can tell you it wasn't easy to code this to begin with. The central world changes every time you complete some world, and there are four worlds you can enter in any order. The changes depend on the element retrieved. It took some math and I don't like math at all -.- This system had also something to do with the Dark One's case in this scenario, but I can no longer remember what it was exactly.

When Dark One enters another world for the first time, he is told about his problem in a dialogue. It has to do with his body transforming. He doesn't like it anymore than this reviewer, but that's just how it is.

So, I don't see a big problem here, and apparently no one else have seen it as a problem either (time to knock some wood). It just doesn't work in a same way as every other game. This is one of those "Metroid Prime is a bad game because it's no longer 2d"- types of things if you ask me. It's impossible to please everyone, and trying to change a mechanic like that would probably cause severe issues, bugs, rethinking and so much time to change it reasonably I might just start building the game all over again.

There are always some negative reviews and that can't be helped, but at the moment most people have liked the game and I'm satisfied with it. Also, I don't think the guy would remove his review no matter what I did. People just move on.