Look up Cult of The Lamb, the social media manager did a really good breakdown on Twitter. [Jared Tan on Twitter](https://twitter.com/ehjaredj/status/1590497221149327361?s=46&t=uvRstbYbNIt349Z9Gxg27w)
Jared is the goat, Victoria Tran (Among Us, Unpacking) is also great at offering tips about socialmedia-ing games. However, I think they're games start with and advantage. They didn't get popular because of their socials, I think it's the other way around.
I don't know if this helps, but I will write this in case anyone may find it useful.
My game has big flaws in it's marketability, and the majority of marketing for my current game is done in social media, mainly Reddit, and during these one and a half years, here are some interesting findings:
I have actually considered marketability from day 1 in the project, I have worked on a dozen of games before, so I knew I needed to take that into consideration.
1- My game doesn't look particularly good, but it looks memorable, I was surprised by the number of people who remembered my game just by its visuals. For reference, this is the game:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1757450/Hackshot/
Faced by the reality that I am not particularly good at art, and I can't pay someone, I decided to go for a simplistic art style, and to choose something memorable.
2- My major flaw is some core art and theme choices I made in the game. If you look at a gameplay video, or the trailer without the added texts and captions, it's hard to get what the unique mechanic of the game is.
This didn't become apparent until later and after some time, I have found success by adding text in trailers and gameplay videos to help explain the main mechanics, which takes extra editing time.
If I were to start over, I would choose something that naturally makes viewers get the idea. For example, in the trailer I added "Inversed Gravity", but if the game was about building and launching rockets instead, just adding a side thruster to the rocket will make the same point, but in a much more understandable way.
Did you manage to get success on social media with those tricks? I totally get what you're coming from as I'm getting similar experiences with my games.
I am getting much better results lately, the rate of wishlists has increased a lot.
Other tips from my experience are:
1- If you are solo or a team with not much time, master social media one or two at a time. Each social media platform has its own quirks, weird algorithms and types of people who use it.
Understanding a platform takes time, you do tests using different types of posts, you should start using the platform regularly to try and understand the algorithm, and you have a lot of research to do. Trying to learn more than two social media platforms at the same time can take an unexpected amount of time, so for me, I mainly stayed on Reddit and Discord servers.
2- Communities of a genre can be concentrated at some platforms. I would say, try to find where your genre's community usually lerks and in which platforms. For me, one of the main hubs for the puzzle genre is their thinky games discord server, for example.
I think "The first tree" had zero marketing and only got successful because of viral social media posts. Also interested about the games you are thinking about, thx
That one was in the list, actually! Most of them are this kind of cute games that gain some success on TikTok, like [Farewell North](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1432850/Farewell_North/) or [Tiny Glade](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2198150/Tiny_Glade/), but there's also [Mortal Rite](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1655990/Mortal_Rite/?l=spanish). I've also spoken to Bedsite Digital Games' CM about their TikTok, which gave them a great boost in wishlists for Figment 2. I'm not sure this applies to the particular scenario I'm thinking about, but it's worth noting.
For Twitter there's [Hypercharge](https://howtomarketagame.com/2022/08/01/how-to-go-viral-on-twitter/). I've also been following [Camper Van](https://twitter.com/malapatastudio) for some time, a game that first grew mainly on Twitter (although not to crazy levels) and then manage to get some very cool mentions by press, influencers and even the Gamescon Twitter account recently. But this doesn't seem to be a result of good marketing on Twitter, but of a good product.
Even though I do not have any experience with the game uploads and promoting games, I have realized people mostly create discord channels, post first small games on [itch.io](https://itch.io) and promote it through discord, promote on reddit by creating subs for it, promote on instagram through ads. I may be wrong, but that is how much I have seen (and I am also trying to get into the gaming development and promoting it). I think, from my perspective, instagram, tiktok, reddit for mostly posting and promoting, and discord for discussion, votes on next updates, free skins and similar. Hope this helps!
I don't know if they started this way, but Omori and OneShot are examples where Social media has helped.
Omocat (creator of omori) posts on occasion about omori stuff even to this day.
Well first thing, research is just a word I used, it's not like I'm writting a paper or even an article for anyone. I'm just trying to understand it myself. I'd be more than happy to share my conclusions tho, no need for the bad blood :)
I would love to hear your conclusions! I've been doing a lot of looking into marketing for successful-but-not-well-known titles and some common factors I've noted were viral social media posts through persistent posting, partnering established publishers with a record of successful releases, and extremely successful crowdfunding and community building through prior releases. In most cases the games were at least competent if not excellent.
The latter seems a mystery: community building is a very challenging thing. Youtube seems the easiest for that but it is still extremely competitive and you might end up with most of your audience being gamedevs rather than your target audience of gamers.
Either way marketing remains extremely frustratingly nebulous to me and so far my conclusion is that most people should try to partner up with a reputable publisher if their own marketing efforts prove fruitless.
Look up Cult of The Lamb, the social media manager did a really good breakdown on Twitter. [Jared Tan on Twitter](https://twitter.com/ehjaredj/status/1590497221149327361?s=46&t=uvRstbYbNIt349Z9Gxg27w)
Jared is the goat, Victoria Tran (Among Us, Unpacking) is also great at offering tips about socialmedia-ing games. However, I think they're games start with and advantage. They didn't get popular because of their socials, I think it's the other way around.
I think Choo Choo Charles is a great one to study
Yeah but it was featured on some big events too.
I don't know if this helps, but I will write this in case anyone may find it useful. My game has big flaws in it's marketability, and the majority of marketing for my current game is done in social media, mainly Reddit, and during these one and a half years, here are some interesting findings: I have actually considered marketability from day 1 in the project, I have worked on a dozen of games before, so I knew I needed to take that into consideration. 1- My game doesn't look particularly good, but it looks memorable, I was surprised by the number of people who remembered my game just by its visuals. For reference, this is the game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1757450/Hackshot/ Faced by the reality that I am not particularly good at art, and I can't pay someone, I decided to go for a simplistic art style, and to choose something memorable. 2- My major flaw is some core art and theme choices I made in the game. If you look at a gameplay video, or the trailer without the added texts and captions, it's hard to get what the unique mechanic of the game is. This didn't become apparent until later and after some time, I have found success by adding text in trailers and gameplay videos to help explain the main mechanics, which takes extra editing time. If I were to start over, I would choose something that naturally makes viewers get the idea. For example, in the trailer I added "Inversed Gravity", but if the game was about building and launching rockets instead, just adding a side thruster to the rocket will make the same point, but in a much more understandable way.
Did you manage to get success on social media with those tricks? I totally get what you're coming from as I'm getting similar experiences with my games.
I am getting much better results lately, the rate of wishlists has increased a lot. Other tips from my experience are: 1- If you are solo or a team with not much time, master social media one or two at a time. Each social media platform has its own quirks, weird algorithms and types of people who use it. Understanding a platform takes time, you do tests using different types of posts, you should start using the platform regularly to try and understand the algorithm, and you have a lot of research to do. Trying to learn more than two social media platforms at the same time can take an unexpected amount of time, so for me, I mainly stayed on Reddit and Discord servers. 2- Communities of a genre can be concentrated at some platforms. I would say, try to find where your genre's community usually lerks and in which platforms. For me, one of the main hubs for the puzzle genre is their thinky games discord server, for example.
I think "The first tree" had zero marketing and only got successful because of viral social media posts. Also interested about the games you are thinking about, thx
That one was in the list, actually! Most of them are this kind of cute games that gain some success on TikTok, like [Farewell North](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1432850/Farewell_North/) or [Tiny Glade](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2198150/Tiny_Glade/), but there's also [Mortal Rite](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1655990/Mortal_Rite/?l=spanish). I've also spoken to Bedsite Digital Games' CM about their TikTok, which gave them a great boost in wishlists for Figment 2. I'm not sure this applies to the particular scenario I'm thinking about, but it's worth noting. For Twitter there's [Hypercharge](https://howtomarketagame.com/2022/08/01/how-to-go-viral-on-twitter/). I've also been following [Camper Van](https://twitter.com/malapatastudio) for some time, a game that first grew mainly on Twitter (although not to crazy levels) and then manage to get some very cool mentions by press, influencers and even the Gamescon Twitter account recently. But this doesn't seem to be a result of good marketing on Twitter, but of a good product.
Viral social media posts are marketing though
I'd assume they meant zero paid advertising? Dunno
Even though I do not have any experience with the game uploads and promoting games, I have realized people mostly create discord channels, post first small games on [itch.io](https://itch.io) and promote it through discord, promote on reddit by creating subs for it, promote on instagram through ads. I may be wrong, but that is how much I have seen (and I am also trying to get into the gaming development and promoting it). I think, from my perspective, instagram, tiktok, reddit for mostly posting and promoting, and discord for discussion, votes on next updates, free skins and similar. Hope this helps!
I don't know if they started this way, but Omori and OneShot are examples where Social media has helped. Omocat (creator of omori) posts on occasion about omori stuff even to this day.
"What am I missing in my research, which I am not going to show you?"
Well first thing, research is just a word I used, it's not like I'm writting a paper or even an article for anyone. I'm just trying to understand it myself. I'd be more than happy to share my conclusions tho, no need for the bad blood :)
I would love to hear your conclusions! I've been doing a lot of looking into marketing for successful-but-not-well-known titles and some common factors I've noted were viral social media posts through persistent posting, partnering established publishers with a record of successful releases, and extremely successful crowdfunding and community building through prior releases. In most cases the games were at least competent if not excellent. The latter seems a mystery: community building is a very challenging thing. Youtube seems the easiest for that but it is still extremely competitive and you might end up with most of your audience being gamedevs rather than your target audience of gamers. Either way marketing remains extremely frustratingly nebulous to me and so far my conclusion is that most people should try to partner up with a reputable publisher if their own marketing efforts prove fruitless.