How to engage your community in this crowded world?
·As indie game developers we all know the very big problem of getting seen. What is all of our efforts, games etc. worth if nobody actually see it? I am often encountering these problems, then I do a lot of promotion in Facebook groups, reddit or forums and maybe have the success of getting one or two more fans. But as soon as I stop promotion you lost any engagement.
Is the only solution to do 50% marketing and 50% programming as most indies advice?
I tell you the truth I hate to market my game, content etc. because I don't want to force people to my content. I like the idea of having a good game, content which people actually enjoy without being forced to it. But the real world is showing me every day you need to force people. The best example I have here is my Patreon account. I did a lot of promotion and put a lot of content there, but no growth was happening. Then I decided to ask people directly to support me with private messages. I really felt some kind of dirty about that, but I was able to get more Patreons. It was the result I wanted, but it is not the method I would like to use at all.
Is there any chance to be a nice and friendly indie game developer who convince with the content instead of "begging"?
I would absolutely like to be that one! But in my experience so far you have to do a lot of unwanted promotion and forcing people to your pages to even get a few views. If you just post your content on regular basis and nobody knows about it guess what you won't get anything at all.
So, lately I started to post a lot of Godot Tutorials on my YouTube Channel to actually help out other indie developers, who maybe know the struggle. I have to admit even with those kind of videos I had to do promotions on reddit and Facebook groups to get views on my videos. It is often said that SEO would do the trick on YouTube, but really if you have a very small Channel you won't get found. It is so hard to grow my channel and there again you have to beg for subscriptions, likes whatever. Otherwise the people give a shit about you ...
I am kind of sad at the moment, because nothing goes the way I really would like to have it. It is a lot of work for just few responses at all and I only talk about engagement here. So, we don't speak about any money for the games, Patreon etc. The feedback is missing and the analytics tell their story.
I have no idea to get out of here ... I tried a lot but not really much success at all.
How do you engage or find your community?
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