I wonder how I can get more players playing my games. Is there anything I can do for that end?
There’s a couple of things you can do:
Interact with people in the community, so potential users get to know you and the work that you do.
Share your projects on social media.
Invest money in advertising your games.
Make sure your game has a trailer-video and good-looking art as cover image and on its page.
Hope that gives you a few ideas. Each game takes a different approach, hope you find the one that works for you.
Some things on itch.io you can use:
1. post your game in release announcements. Not exactly sure, but this seems tied to whether or not your game goes in the "fresh games" section of the front page
2. make devlogs for updates and releases and whatever else you'd like
3. join game jams where your game will get some notice
4. make your itch.io page look really fancy. This will be one of the first things a potential player will see so it's good to make sure it looks amazing. Depending on what you want to do, custom css might help
I hope this is helpful to you :) it's just what I have learned from making games here
Hey, yeah I think I will do more work on the itch page and make a devlog this time (https://itch.io/t/1300533/project-pvp)
I don't think I will be able to join a jam as the game we're making will be ~half a year of work.
In the modern day, with so many games coming out on everything that's ever been able to play a game ever, really the most pragmatic way is to make it run on everything possible. It's fairly easy with some engines/systems, while others are difficult. For instance, I think GameMaker spits out for every major platform and modern computer, but if you want true 'runs literally on anything' then making a game for an old console/computer and then binding it to emulators to run on everything is another way to do it. It depends on skill level and effort. Other things mentioned work, but if your game is windows-only, well, only people with windows will play your game. Likewise, if your game is on NES and there's no single-click/normie solution where it can be easily run on their system of choice, unless they're already into emulators or flash carts, they'll pass it up or ignore it, even if it's something they'd maybe be interested in.
I think folks sometimes focus too much on trying to be the loudest person in a sea of social-media type places when you're more likely to get folks looking at your works in a relevant community that's already looking for the kind of game you are making. From there, it's, imo, likely easier to grow an audience more organically.
Just don't rely on social media advertising. It's trash. Word of mouth, blogs, reviews in prominent places work a lot better along with proper tagging in youtube (as someone mentioned YT trailers are good...get a professional or someone competent to edit the trailer...)
Just don't get discouraged. Not every game can be minecraft or mario. There's plenty of room in the world for games that only two people in the world have ever played and if you're making games for yourself, then it won't matter how many people play but how many people of those enjoy it. i.e. Qualitative entertainment rather than quantitative.