How to get people excited for your game?

I've working on an RPG maker game recently, and one question keeps going through my head: "how can I get people to know about/get excited for my game? A few days ago I posted some info for my game with the hopes that at least a few people would notice it, but while other people get 50+ replies, I have 0... :(

I feel that it's really important to a lot of game creators that their game has an audience, and I was wondering if anyone has any tips for creators like me. How can we get people as excited as we are about our games?

People come to your game because it has something different than the other. Usually when it comes to a screenshot, a RTP heavy game will be ignored. A bad custom graphics usually will be ignored as well. People said "don't judge book by it's cover" but alas, people do judge the cover first.

Also get involved with progress thread or similar like #screenshotsaturday trend on twitter. Tell people what you're working on either on discord chat, forum status update, or monthly progress thread. So people know what you're doing. It also helps you to get known here.

Btw, I managed to get ppl play my game bcz I shamelessly used it to advertise my battle system script

Hmmm... I'll be sure to start getting involved with Twitter and Discord, those are great ideas! :) I was sure my project would get some attention, because the style is pretty different visually from what I've seen... (I'm not really familiar with this site, so maybe I'm stupid and the thread hasn't been accepted yet...)

I believe you need to make your game stand out from every other game. And even if it is highly different than other games, you must spread the word and advertise on your game's uniqueness.

I have just had a look at your thread and it is not very inviting.
All information is inside a spoiler, so there is very little to catch my eye. You also have very little little to give any feedback on, no demo, for example, so I'm not surprised that no one has replied.

When creating a game page I think it is important to present information in such a way as to engage the attention and imagination of the reader. At the very least I'd put the 'story' paragraph (and put it first) outside the spoiler, and also the 'gameplay' paragraph. That way even a casual reader will see straight away what the setting and style of the game is.

It also helps if the developer is an active member of the forum. If they have given feedback to others, posted helpful suggestions in the Support section, posted interesting ideas here or in 'Game Mecahncis Design' etc., people are far more likely to give feedback in return. Judging by the number of posts you have (4 at the time of writing, 2 of which are here) you have not been involved here during the development process. It looks like you became a member in order to post your game thread. You are, therefore, unknown.

First thing is, your game needs to have something to get excited about - and different people have different interests.

So you need to identify what some groups of people might like, and then focus your advertising on that for this specific group.

You can have more than one target group, but never everyone - and it does help if several different target groups are at least interested in similiar things.

This forum for example is one that is mainly composed of developers - to get people interested you'll either need a good game mechanic to discuss or you'll have to have good implementation skills and either show of your maps or your storyline or so on.
"General Fantasy storyline #837 with RTP" is usually not enough to get any interest here, especially if you're new to the forum.
No, I haven't checked your game topic so I don't know if that would fit or not - it is a general classification of the interests (or rather not-interests) here in this forum.

And then you'll not even point people to your topics - there is nothing in your signature that gives a link to your game topic.

And third - time.
Yes, there are game topics with 50+ answers - and if you check them out you'll find that these answers usually were given over months or years of slowly rising interest, because exactly as said those people developed their game on this forum and weren't unknowns to drop by.

In general... you're going to run up against a few problems.

1. This is a website of game developers. When you advertise here, you have to remember that if you want attention, you need to be doing something we've rarely ever seen before. A mechanic, a story, a script, something. Appealing to us is going to be a lot different than appealing to an audience of video game players with zero experience in game development. Namely, we don't usually respond to a lot of "flash", because it doesn't mean much here. But, if you were to advertise somewhere with people who don't develop games... flash will get you sales (indeed, look at games like Destiny, which is mechanically easy to reproduce in about two months, but difficult to reproduce the artwork in that same length of time, yet the game sold quite well despite being monumentally basic). So, know your audience.

2. In these forums, we often see a lot of people "come and go". There's typically a "grace period" before we know whether or not you'll "stick around" the forums and actually contribute anything. It's not typically measured in "post count" either. It is difficult to get involved or excited in these forums if you remain an "unknown". That is, you post rarely, don't post in a lot of topics, don't contribute much, and talk exclusively about your game. It's like a community here. Many of us know each other (not in person, mind you), and interact with each other fairly frequently. We're more likely to check out each others' work as a result. So, become part of the community to guarantee some interest.

3. We see a lot of games "Flame Out" here. I don't know the actual numbers, but I'd estimate something like 95% of all advertised games here... never reach even a Demo Phase. My game is among those right now. 4 or 5 years on, and I don't even have a Demo yet. Let that sink in. Most people here... They've got a story like that. As a result, it is difficult to have any interest in a game posted here... because you might never see it. I've received PM's expressing interest in what my game is, but I try to reply to those with a bit of measured optimism. I don't want people excited for my game. Because, frankly, at the rate I've been going, it may never release. You have to realize that most advertised games here... never see release of even a Demo. So, release a demo before worrying about whether people are excited for your game or not.

4. As a personal aside... It shouldn't matter if other people are excited for your game. Not at this stage. It should only matter if you're excited for your game. Because, if you can't keep that excitement up, you'll never finish making one. All the excitement in the world from an audience doesn't matter if you never finish making a game. If you get attention for your game and never release it, or take too long to release it, then you damage relations with your consumer-base. At this stage in your development, there's really no reason to worry about getting attention. It will only serve to discourage you later. Build a game you want to play first. Get to the Demo Phase first. Release that... then worry about how much attention it gets. Right now, you simply have no reason to need or have attention for your game at this early stage of development.

Ok... that’s very helpful, thank you

I'd say don't just post your game on one forum and expect it to take off. Use multiple social media accounts, and know the strengths of them. Twitter reacts well to flashy gifs, for example. Get involved with Twitter, set up a Tumblr and get involved with RPG Maker fan blogs, set up an itch.io (with a demo) and post devlogs on there, even join another forum like RPG Maker Net and get just as involved with that forum as this one. If it sounds like a lot of work - it is. That's why there are full companies out there whose job it is to create hype, because PR and advertising is essentially what you're asking about, and those are full-time jobs. But if you want the simplest answer, become a truly active member of the forum. Help others. Contribute to discussions. Give feedback on other games and encourage the creators of them when you find something you like. Several of the posts in my topics have been from people whose games I've complimented or given feedback to, and several of the games I'm most interested in are by people who've helped me and others out. For example, Pharonix spends a lot of his time helping people use a certain battle system plugin and he's given me personally a lot of help, so when his game is at demo stage you bet your arse I'm gonna want to see what he's done with the system. Get involved, be a chill person and try and keep expectations in check. It's a big forum, and some stuff inevitably gets lost in the shuffle. It's a community after all, and it's a two-way street. You can't expect people to get involved with what you're doing if you don't get involved with what others are doing.

One thing I did that helped with my game was I got involved in a review trade. Basically, a review trade is where you offer to review someone else's game if they review yours. Through that I got 6 people to play my game and I got to see what 6 other games were like.

From there, it just took time. My thread has been up for 4 years now, and it still took a few months to take off, then it puttered off for a while as I had to pull the demo to fix a game breaking bug which took a while, but once the new one was posted, it has slowly gained traction. But it took time, a lot of time to be exact.

In short, don't be shocked if you get no feedback at first. Get a demo out so people can see what you got to offer. And play other demos, some of them might be nice and return the favor as well.

I read your game page quickly and I recommend adding some mystery and hook to it. Conflict and suspense is what captures attention and you create that usually through at least one character and expanding the plot of same character/characters.

For example, with a horror game you'd usually have a eerie setting, like a place where people go and disappear and the main character for some good reason is heading out to that place, then you can say something like what they find is what they always thought was impossible or unimaginable. I'm not suggesting you take this exact example, I mean it might do but I'm only using it to try and explain a way to create a hook and a mystery to your plot.

I quickly looked up Ib here, on this wiki and it says
http://rpgmaker.wikia.com/wiki/Ib

"A young girl named Ib visits a gallery with her parents. While observing the many paintings, she suddenly realizes she is alone and in a new atmosphere. And in her search for others, she finds things awry in the gallery..."

This is EXACTLY what I'm talking about. Right now you don't really have this on your game page

I also looked up the offical English page for it. Again it's the same thing.
http://vgperson.com/games/ib.htm

So something similar is what you'll want.

Wow, I didn't that exist. What a great idea. Where can we find those review trade? And is it for finished game only?

@MushroomCake28 : The one I did was for the IGMC2014, and it was eventually discontinued over time, though we did do another one for IGMC2017 as well. So we might see another one when/if there's another IGMC.

Though I do remember a member tried to start up a thread for it a long time ago (2 - 3 years ago), no idea what happened to it.

If you are curious, I included the rules we used for the IGMC2017 one in a spoiler.


I might see if I can revive it in August sometime as there might be enough demand for it to run for a month or two, though it will be after the 9th if I do as RL is really busy right now.

Also on another note, if you look at pages and see a lot of feedback posted on/around February/March 2015 that is because we held a forum event where you were to review as many games as you can in a month or so. Those who reviewed 7 or more got a forum badge, though the badges have been lost in the internet transition, so you won't see it floating around anymore.