What's the best way to market IF/indie games?

[Brisben (Ben)]

Hey all!

I’ve been apart of IFDB for a long time, but first-time poster here.

My friend and I are in the very early stages of setting up a small games company. We were super inspired by Seedship by John Ayliff (and later Beyond the Chiron Gate) and we are currently producing our first super low-scope text game called Velcro Church, which is a non-linear exploration of the last moments of a man’s life and the memories and fantasies/nightmares that intersect with his dying state.

I’m wondering what platforms and strategies people have successfully used in the past to build hype and market their IF/indie games? I’ve seen people have success on Twitter, but they are always visual games, not text-based.

[Hidnook]

Hi, welcome to the forums!

If you’ve been around IFDB for a while you’ll notice that the majority of games there are free. That’s because there’s a really small market for interactive fiction in general.

However, you may find success on Steam or Itch for selling your work for a fixed price, or even a “pay what you want” model. But if you do, make sure that you build sufficient interest, ideally with a demo or many screenshots so that a potential buyer has a clear idea of what they’re purchasing.

In terms of marketing outside the platform you’re selling on, here and the IFDB are probably good places to start. You could do an Advanced Reader Copy type thing where you send the full work to people for free in exchange for an honest review. This will get your work some momentum so people can see what others thought of your game.

I haven’t sold any games (or anything else, really), so I don’t have personal experience.

Also see this (old) thread on commercial IF.

[dfabulich (Dan Fabulich)]

Marketing IF is extremely difficult.

The general consensus in games marketing is that for many games, there is no activity at all that generates a positive return on investment. You can buy ads, but you’ll spend more on ads than you bring in. You can plug away at social media, but your time will cost more than you’ll make.

Successful indie games are mostly sold exclusively on Steam. Succeeding on Steam normally means getting game streamers (mostly on Twitch) to exhibit your game, but text-based IF generally can’t be visually engaging enough to attract viewers.

(Most streamers won’t even respond to your offers of a free copy of your game. Even if a streamer does foolishly give your IF game a chance, Twitch visitors normally visit a stream based on a thumbnail of the currently streaming video, but IF can’t look interesting in a thumbnail; your text usually can’t even be legible in a thumbnail.)

The other major venues are online gaming festivals, especially Steam Next Fest. But there, again, you have to attract viewers by streaming, which requires a visually appealing thumbnail, and that’s almost impossible with IF.

At Choice of Games, we did it in an unsustainable and perhaps unreproducible way. Our first handful of games were launched in 2010-2011 completely free on the web and mobile, and we ran Google Ads on them. This made us low hundreds of bucks a month at the time, which was fine for a nights-and-weekends project.

But as we started to develop our library, we built up a big mailing list of players who wanted to see our next game. Now, our mailing list is the engine that drives sales.

But, as for totally new users, we get them mostly through words of mouth and “similars” on Steam and mobile app stores. (“If you liked this game, you might also like…”) Also, when lots of players buy a new game all at once, it can drive us up the charts enough for us to attract a few new users that way.

[Brisben (Ben)]

Thank you! This is very, very helpful.

[Brisben (Ben)]

Thank you so much for your detailed response! You have given me a lot of food for thought and confirmed some suspicions/fears that I had! Cool to know about your Google Ads strat and that developing a mailing list is the way to go long-term. All super useful. Thanks again!

[jkj_yuio]

Great answer and fascinating. The “ads” plan doesn’t sound as bad as I thought. How much do you think a free game with ads might return today per month. Say it had some graphics too. Did you do a lot of promotion for free stuff, or did it not need it.
Thanks for your answer.

[dfabulich (Dan Fabulich)]

Well, before anyone tries following in our footsteps, part of the reason it was unsustainable is that Google banned us from Google ads less than a year after we launched the company. I blogged a lot about it at the time.

We’re Banned from Google AdSense

Why Did Google Ban Us from AdSense?

You Can’t Build a Business on Google AdSense

8 Ways to Make Money When You’re Banned from AdSense

@jkj_yuio

How much do you think a free game with ads might return today per month

I have no idea. But I can tell you that once we were forced to pivot, we started making much, much more from selling games than from giving them away for free with ads… but we’d already built up a little community by then.

[virtuadept]

I have purchased quality interactive fiction before and not only in the 1980’s with Infocom, Scott Adams, Rainbird, etc. One reason I did it was for a very long form IF involving a period piece set in the 1930’s that came in a beautiful box with feelies like the ones Infocom used to do.

But this is a seriously niche market now and that was 1999 or so; the amount of super high quality free IF is through the roof now compared to then. An established author could probably get me to splash out, but newer authors would definitely have to put substantial demos out to attract me or other long term fans of IF.

Having said that, I have seen and purchased a few quality IF games through itch.io and through Steam. Most of them if not all of them do have illustrations (static, pencil black and white sketches or sometimes other things but usually the graphic is static or maybe a short repeated animation). Maybe a pure text adventure would be harder to sell.

[mathbrush (Brian Rushton)]

Do you have an example of one with quality pencil sketches? I’ve been practicing art for a while (mainly pencil sketches) and I’ve considered adding character and location sketches to my game Never Gives Up Her Dead for a theoretical commercial version, and it would be nice to see what quality other games have.

This is the artwork style I would use (but of course with stuff from the game):

Summary

edit: I got a dm in response to this so no one needs to feel obligated to answer on here

[severedhand]

@Brisben

I’m wondering what platforms and strategies people have successfully used in the past to build hype and market their IF/indie games? I’ve seen people have success on Twitter, but they are always visual games, not text-based.

I Kickstarted my WIP, a sci-fi parser game. This was an enormous undertaking. I did it on a foundation of having a lot of creative output I could point to in different fields, not only IF.

My reputation in this forum as a developer and reviewer magnified the assistance of those who are on this forum, but they are still a minority of the people who backed the Kickstarter. I can probably also assume, though, that a second ring of people who backed but whom I didn’t recognise, are only one or two removes from those first people in overlapping IF/gaming circles.

I had a long run-up to the Kickstarter that I operated in many circles – social media (that I normally have nothing to do with), gaming forums, my Apple II circle, personal and work circles. I tried traditional press angles but probably received less coverage than I have in the past for other things. I ran competitions in a Discord server using methods derived from a gaming conference talk that I can thank/blame @dfabulich for showing me. Short version – that didn’t work for IF to create a critical mass! But sometimes (or inevitably?) living out some mammoth task you feel grouchy about immediately after has hidden benefits.

I did so many things, I’m hard-pressed to point to any one and say, ‘This was the critical thing’. I think it probably succeeded because I did an absolute ton of things. And in circles where I knew people, I had my work and reputation to stand on.

I certainly wouldn’t recommend a Kickstarter unless you’ve got something really hooky, and of obvious quality you can share, unless you’re already standing on a lot of stuff. In IF, I think that means getting some quality games under your belt that people know about. Fortunately there are numerous competitions and things here that give you a chance to do that.

Others have had recent success with IF Kickstarters deployed with less multi-disciplinary attack efforts than mine (e.g. I doesn’t exist) but already you can see, they had graphics, and game cuteness to sell as well. It think some smaller IF efforts can Kickstart at a nice, modest level if they have graphics. Pushing retro can work for that audience, and the more retro project crowd can be highly motivated. I just can’t speak for text-only efforts. I think you need more than just the game you’re pushing in the Kickstarter to excite people.

I have other posts and things about my Kickstarter about the place, probably most are linked from my PDF document post. It may be of use in general, not only for a Kickstarter.

Andromeda Acolytes Kickstarter planning notes PDF

I was going to post the following in my blog, but I didn’t because I can’t attach a PDF to my blog without having to host it elsewhere first. During my 2022 Andromeda Acolytes Kickstarter, I said on this forum that after it was over, I would share my planning notes. It’s a good thing the campaign succeeded as it makes me feel a lot better about sharing the notes! What these notes may be good for You want to run an IF Kickstarter You want to run some other kind of Kickstarter You’re curious a…

-Wade

[virtuadept]

@mathbrush

I’ve been practicing art for a while (mainly pencil sketches)

Very nice sketches! I have seen a lot of commercial games with far less detail art. I mean heck there is a whole RPG series that literally uses stick figures. I think as long as there is something to help visually oriented people spark their imagination, people will accept and appreciate the story. Assuming the writing is good, but I have faith that you will nail it.

I will try to post examples later in a few days when I have access to Steam. But if you use tags for text-adventure or something like that you will find quite a few games on Steam that combine static art or simple animations with text to tell choice based interactive stories.

I have also seen art asset collections with commercial licenses going for very low prices every now and then on Humble Bundle. Quality on that may vary, and it leans towards anime style, which may not be the vibe you want for your projects.

-v

[StJohnLimbo]

Just for the sake of cross-referencing, here are two related threads which might be of interest:

IF economics

Hi there, I think it’s safe to say that nobody here makes interactive fiction to get rich. I just read today’s blogpost by @zarf where he alludes to the fact that writing original IF games for profit is “tricky at best”. Indeed. As I was reading that, I happened to remember a rule of thumb for guessing Steam sales from number of reviews, and spent some time looking at IF games (both parser and choice-based) on Steam. I started with Thaumistry and Anchorhead, continued with a sampling of Choice…

The Current Audience for IF

I’m curious about what people’s impressions are on the audience for IF today. This is a fairly broad topic, but here are some specific questions: How many people are downloading/playing a game on average (obviously it would vary based on a lot of factors, but you could just give your own experience)? What are the biggest sources for discovery in IF? The IFDB? Specific competitions? itch.io? Are there particular media outlets that cover this type of work? Do you find that authors are also…

[HAL9000]

Hey, Brian. I have always loved the art style in Hotel Dusk for the Nintendo DS. I wish more games would employ rougher, sketchy art.

Sketchy Animations (unrelated, but cool)

There’s also a technique of “lively” static images where you trace the image a few times and loop them. Like, check out this fan version of the Hotel Dusk style.

Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with sketchy art. Love it!

---

Edit: Also, you may find the reverse sketchy look of scratchboard art appealing.

[mathbrush (Brian Rushton)]

Wow, this looks awesome! Great inspiration