Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines

No-one cares about my game

A topic by Nulisar created Apr 14, 2023 Views: 3,310 Replies: 79
Viewing posts 1 to 28
(+3)

So I've promoted my game on various platforms including itch.io and - holy crap, is it hard to get interest.  A few people have told me it seems interesting or whatever but literally no-one has joined the Discord server.  Is it basically impossible to get anyone playing your multiplayer game unless you're a big studio with a big budget or something?  I knew it would be hard but this is depressing.

(1 edit) (+13)

Like writing a novel, creating a game takes a lot of passion with no garuntee of reward. Some people get lucky and find wild success from their efforts, but more often than not your projects will go unrecognized. But, like writing a novel, you should take pride in the fact you completed your game. It is evidence that you had an idea and followed through on it. I know this may not be the answer you're looking for, but I think it's awesome that you created something.

(+4)

true im a writer myself. It's quite fun when you put your mind to it

(+2)

I am also highly unnoticed, but here is a fact: about 1 in 20 indie games are published, of those only 30% succeed (gain fame), and of those only 7% will generate good enough revenue to fund a second project (assuming you have a budget). Also, only 15% of indie game developers take home $100,000 annually. It takes time, it's hard, and it's stressful, but if you are committed you will keep going and eventually make it.

Wow really do you know any good ones i chould play?

(+1)

All the popular ones? Those are the ones that fit what I said. So like: Minecraft, Fortnite, PubG, Hill Climb, Geometry Dash, etc.

ok any creepy ones

FNAF? I don't play horror games so I don't really know any.

Do you have a source you could recommend on this? You list a lot of numbers here, so seems like you might have done some research in this area. Definitely good to keep all these numbers in mind as indie devs...

I forget where I saw it, but I could try to find it again if you want :)

Well I'd definitely be curious to read more on this, but noooo worries if it's too hard to dig up

This is where I got it from, I probably worded it a bit wrong though.

(+3)

I don't think it's a matter of being a big studio or not, but more a matter of can a project retain the attention of a potential player long enough? It's a very saturated marketplace, and it seems your game is quite niche. Not only does your game have to be "good enough" it also has to land on people who are interested in that specific type of project. 

Like others have said, congratulations on finishing a project, that in itself takes a lot. Now if you want more and success is something you're looking for, I'd advise looking inward and see what you can change to keep a potential player hooked, and try to find the people who are willing to not be polite and harshly criticize your game so you know what to improve.

I hope you don't let it get to you too much and you keep at it!

(+3)

Yeah I wasn't expecting it to make $100k or anything but I was kinda hoping for a small community who could play regularly.

(+2)

Yes, it's absolutely true that it's hard to get any interest. I think I've made a few fun games, but they're all spectacular failures in terms of promotion and getting attention. If you're not constantly promoting, the plays dry up - I think that only a tiny fraction of all games on itch.io get natural, sustained attention (from word of mouth, being featured on the front page or being on top of the "most popular" search lists). Even if people play your game, there's only a small fraction of them that will leave a comment, rating or review...

If you have fancy graphics or a unique, catchy gimmick as main selling point, you might have a chance with your promotion efforts, but if your main selling point is deep and interesting gameplay... well good luck with that.

What's worse: you made a multiplayer-only game. That's just not feasible as an indie. Make sure your game can at least be tried in single player mode, for instance by adding AI (it doesn't matter whether it's truly smart).

All my games here except one are multiplayer (local or online), but I've been trying to make sure they're (nearly) all playable in single player mode, even if that's a lot less fun: either by adding AI opponents (competitive games), or by allowing players to control multiple characters (coop games). For the online multiplayer games, I have no illusions; I'm not even hosting a server. If you want to play them, you need to run your own server. I mainly made those games to play with my friends during lockdown. :-)

That said, your game looks quite interesting. I just haven't been able to play it yet (because of the multiplayer). Make sure to market this to board game fans, like the people who play on www.yucata.de or en.boardgamearena.com  - that's quite a different audience than typical video game players, especially here on itch.io (it seems horror, visual novel and simple arcade games dominate here).

Thanks for the comments.  Yeah, I had already considered the mutliplayer-only aspect as problematic and thought of adding an AI months ago, but just haven't got round to it yet because AIs are pretty difficult (even dumb ones).  I actually looked into reinforcement machine learning as a way of building a decent AI but it's very complex and difficult and basically requires using Python for everything, which I'm not that familiar with either.  I'd love to get help from someone with AI building experience but I'm guessing those people don't tend to volunteer their time and it'd probably take a large salary to hire them :-)

I noticed that for some board games, simple Monte Carlo Tree Search is surprisingly powerful. Very shortly (and badly) summarized: just simulate a lot of randomly played games starting from the current position, and pick the move that led to the highest percentage of wins.

Depending on how the game logic is implemented (with clear model/view separation), programming such an AI might be doable, though it works best for finite games, and your game definitely looks more complex than the simple games I tried it for.

Also, doing such a brute force approach might take a lot of CPU power, so doing it server side may become expensive. Anyway, it's just an idea that you might find useful...

Yeah given the tree of possible moves with my game that would turn into a virtually infinite number of games very quickly.  Some kind of directed A* search is probably needed, and that is gonna be tough.  Either that or hand-craft some AI behaviours that make some sense, but probably aren't all that hard to beat.  As I said, ideally I'd have some kind of reinforcement ML expertise on my team and the AI could be trained to make good moves through the whole reinforcement neural net magic. :-)

Hey, if you are ready to get into Unreal, there's a built in AI support for NPCs.. I've used in my game Roxroria. You may check more on Unreal documentation. Pls ignore, if this doesn't help your situation.

Oh, just thought I'd say this for the record: I tried to post about my game on the forum of boardgamearena.com and got a moderation warning for "advertising".  So yeah, they apparently don't want their members to know about board games that aren't hosted on their site.

Rightly so.  While you might be able to sneak something in on their offtopic boards, they are about board games, real physical board games, you can buy in a store.

Your game is not a board game. It is a computer game. They do not allow computer games on their platform, why should they want to talk about computer games, lest allow advertising for such. 

And as I mentioned below, your competion is triplea. Axis & Allies with AI and available custom scenarious, including popular stuff like   LotR and whatever you find in the community. I did not check out your game, but maybe your ruleset and units could even be adjusted to be a module in that open source game. So yeah, no one cares about your game, as it is not a popular existing board game. Or is it? Try finding a community for online computer board games maybe. 

It was recommended on this board that I mention the game on there.

Do not trust random strangers on the internet   (scnr).

I had a quick look at that site, and after a minute it was clear, that you could not host your game on there, even if you tried, because they only do real board games. If there forum has a promotion corner, it would have been a good idea, I admit that. And that is why I recommended to finda place where people talk about computer board games (and allow promotion ;-) 

Not really.  In the context of the internet, "board games" obviously includes electronic board games.  Do they have to "look like" a physical board game, do they have to render some physical dice being thrown?  That seems a bit limited.  A "board game" in an online context pretty much means a turn-based strategy game IMHO.  Which my game is.

Just because your game has a 2d map and is turn based multiplayer, it is not a board game.   Is the civilisation series a board game?

You could tag it as board game on itch. Just like card games are tagged card, even though you have no real cards. But that is tagging and not real attributes of games. And depending on your game, the tag might even be wrong. Just look at the games that do have this tag.

Could your game mechanic be replicated in    Tabletop Simulator? And that stuff can replicate the heavy board games like Twilight Imperium...

   If so, I would be more inclined to believe your statement, that your game would be a board game. But your definition includes stuff like civ. Turn based strategy games are turn based strategy games and not board games. In the context of computer games you would tag turn based strategy . And yes, you would tag board, if you try to create the look and feel of a physical game. Imagine chess. That is a board game.  But would you tag a computer chess game as board game? I do not think so.

(Oh, and electronic board game does not mean what you think it means. Google it ;-)

Frankly, who cares.  People interested in board games are likely to have a large overlap with people interested in turn-based strategy anyway.  Board games are basically a subset of turn-based strategy.

(+2)

Yeah, promotion is a huge task in itself. From looking at your itch profile, I'd suggest three immediate tips:

1) Create a striking game thumbnail that isn't just a screenshot

2) Make an avatar

3) Have at least one social media account that your profile links to.

Stop worrying about big budgets- that's not going to happen easily for any of us! Think instead about what you can do yourself. It's worth asking who do you want playing your game, and why aren't they playing it at the moment. If you hadn't made the game yourself, would you even know it exists and- if not- what can you do to change that?

Going from zero to multiplayer *is*, however, an almost impossible task. Can the game be played single-player too? If not, you need to introduce this otherwise people will just look at it, have no one to play against, and go. Just realised this point is pretty much what PaulsGames above me said so... yeah!

im a coder but not this type of coder. i use blocks to code

(+1)

How do you mean? I don't code myself- I do the writing and creative stuff on our team.

i never said you werent?

I just meant I don't know what using blocks to code means because I don't code myself. Apologies for any confusion!

its ok can you give me tips on this game im tryna beat you supposed escape i think misfiction  game i can never beat it

Yeah, sure, but can you comment on the game page please? It's a bit off topic to post here- plus I don't know which game you mean! Just let me know which bit you're stuck at.

k

(+3)

I clicked on your game through your profile, it's a blank page with a "visit my  website."

(+1)

Even my games are not that popular.

I keep getting sad on seeing the analytics 

ill play one.

(+1)

thanks bro 😊 

np

(+1)

I see this time and time again. Keep grinding and Don't give up. Build your page and create a fanbase/followers. I takes a long time to build up to something big.  Be professional and growth will come. Set goals create a business model and stick to it.

(+1)

Re: multiplayer/AI, consider a single player puzzle or challenge mode to grind through. Your game looks prime for generating tons of levels to unlock one-by-one.

Starting out with 0/low population with multiplayer-only is tough, chances are people coming on don't even have someone to invite, so they have to bounce.

Also as other says, working on your thumbnail, game page will help retain players. I also think personally working on getting the game working within itch.io and not linking off will help massively. I'm happy to help with the cookies there. 

That’s a good idea actually, pre-made singleplayer scenarios could also be a good way to introduce mechanics one-by-one as a tutorial that slowly transitions from teaching mechanics to introducing the player to common situations and strategies that appear in multiplayer matches.

Well yeah generating levels is fine, but the actual playing of the levels isn't really a single-player thing - I think there'd have to be an AI.  Unless you can think of some variant game mode I could introduce where people could play single player.  Capture all the hexes as fast as possible?  I think that would be rather boring with no competition. :-)

Puzzle mode doesn't need to be the same as the multiplayer game, just something to do if you're on your own on the site. I haven't got to play your game yet to give ideas for puzzles/challenges, but I'm sure that wouldn't be a stretch to think about!

For me i personally like any type of horror games i just prefer simple ones. As a block coder and writer i personally dont do it for money just for fun which is weird because im 13.

YEs, this is a big problem.. millions of people... wanna do videogames.. even more millions wanna be artists, sing songs... You know, people a re taugh kind....

(+6)

You should not promote on itch.io in my opinion, it is good as a place to drop your files and let other people download it but other than that, you should be promoting outside of this place.

By the way, if I may say so myself, your game looks quite a bit boring which may be why people don't want to give it a second glance. Maybe you should put anime girls in it or something to draw people in, I mean if you look at all those awful mobile gacha "games" they're not very good at all, but they are popular because of the anime girls. My observations. Carry on

(+4)

Also, I would like to add that even if I enjoyed your game, I would have zero interest in joining your discord server. What benefits can you offer me if I were to join your discord server? Do you think people should automatically want to join your discord server just because you created one? Maybe you should give people a reason that they would want to join it instead.

For right now, I don't see any reason to join a discord server for a game that doesn't even have a Steam page.

lol

Keep crying that no one wants to join your lame discord server lol

Moderator(+3)

Stop bullying people for asking legit questions.

Stop bullying and harassing me I thought we buried the hatchet we arent fighting anymore right???

I mean you literally followed me over to another thread to harass me

Moderator(+1)

People have complained.

Okay well I offered what I perceived as good advice and he proceeded to "lol" at me so I am understandably upset at him but you don't say anything about his rudeness and no I am not bullying him I even took time out of my busy schedule to offer some of my wisdom but he didn't even appreciate or thank me

As a matter of fact you are completely ignoring his rudeness stop playing favorites please

(+3)

Oh, you again.  Taking stuff personal and over inflating things again.

You wrote a comment and a reply was lol and in your mind you construe an insult out of it, even painting yourself as a victim because you did not get the proper thanks, because you came down from heaven to share your wisdom. Try getting out of your shoes and think about what you would think about someone else doing what you did.

Maybe you got a lol, becauseyouhavenospacesinyourcommentandthatreadsfunny.

>becauseyouhavenospacesinyourcommentandthatreadsfunny

wtf are you messing with  me lol it shows spaces for me


I am not messing with you. None of the  other people's posts look like that. Seems there are nbsps that are not rendered (in Chrome and I tried Firefox as well). And not all the spaces are nbsps , so no clue at all where they came from. Or why the nbsp are not rendered as spaces.

(and do not lol people, you established, that you consider it an insult ;-) (ps, that was sarcasm, lol  all you like)


Did you advertise that people will find players to play with when going on the discord? Like, on the game page...

Also, are you aware of the game Triplea?  

The whole world and it's wife want to be entertainers and create games so people will play.
Conisdering that there are limited genres for a game, you get things repeated over and over... In 1998 not many people knew about game making software so I made myself a name with my below mediocre games... Back than, if you was a youngster like me you would download anything that seems like a game because everything seemed shiny... But at these times it seems that like with any kind of art, It is as said, is like your child... You mostly only like your's!

(1 edit)

You actually see this when accomplished professionals from other elsewhere in the entertainment world (novelists, movie makers, sports stars, etc) decide they're going to make a game. Doesn't matter that they may have been successful in other areas of life. Their game will not be a big hit. That's how tough the market is.

There are just too many games out there these days for most people to take notice of anything that isn't high end and ultra-polished. I've been making games for decades myself and agree with what you said. Back in 1998 it was enough just to *complete* a decent game. You would get players. Nowadays, even highly original games get neglected.

After 30 years I play games it is gets repetitive, including the plots for any game... Nothing much new or innovative anymore!

(+1)

Hi, I know its so hard to advertise games even on Itch.io. I have been here for 7 years and I was lucky to make $145 in these 7 years due to bundle sales. 

All I can suggest is that all of us who have a youtube channel for showing our games should cross advertise each others published games. Thats a start.

(2 edits) (+1)

One answer: game jams, events when you squeeze a game out of sleep-weary eyelids in 48~72 hours. 

Big yearly ones such as GMTK have thousands of entries. Hundreds of people get to play your game when they rate it. If your game gets the highest ratings, it's permanently displayed on the jam results page. Even if it doesn't, you get to improve your gamedev skills, get useful feedback from other game developers, and get a prototype out extremely quickly. Big indie titles such as Celeste and Baba Is You were first made for jams. 

Check out the itch.io jams page to find jams you'd like to participate in. I'd personally recommend starting with Mini Jam, which runs for 72 hours every two weeks. Here's a video on participating in game jams.

Your project seems to have a really large scope, and a jam would help to limit that so the core mechanic of the game is made as fun as possible.

Ofc don't underestimate the cost to your sleep schedule and sanity, but as someone who has made 10 games for jams I don't regret signing up for them.

If you want more views try making small quality games (or downscaling your games to micro games) 

If you make smaller games you won't feel like you've lost time when you deem it a failure and making a smaller project can teach you so much more about development. 

I feel the same way. It's not your fault. Even if you put in lots of time and effort into your game, its most likely not going to get recognized. It's mostly luck, but it's also just how things are in the current climate. People only want to play certain types of games. New or innovative games might get passed up for games that a proven to be more popular. I hope that your game gets the recognition it deserves. Best of luck.

as with any art, you’re not gonna make it ever. i’ve accepted that fact. it isn’t even that big of a pill to swallow.

It's kinda expected tbh. You have to go into making games with the expectation that it'll probably not get much attention. So when it does, you're pleasantly surprised. And if it doesn't, well you were prepared for that outcome so the disappointment is more manageable.

Just never give up. My first game took almost 2 years to even get to 280 downloads. My newest one got to that amount in just over a month.

It'll get easier the more you try.

"Be true to your work, and your work will be true to you." ~ Charles Pratt.

Not just fancy words. While I am bringing up my own ala mater's motto into this discussion, there is a message that resonates with me to this very day since I walked out of that school with my BFA that should resonate with you.

You shouldn't have to be down on yourself because no one is following you right from the get go.  The more important thing you need to recognize is that you need to make your work, no matter if it's art, a game, a book, a song, or a 3D model. Whatever it is you're working on. As long as your making the work then the rest will come naturally and the more people are likely going to follow you.

Don't be one of those people who seeks fame for what you do. I get your struggle, but the more you interact with people like a normal person and build on those relationships the more likely that you will improve your chances of getting people to recognize you. Might take a while, but it will serve you more in the long run.

"I get your struggle, but the more you interact with people like a normal person and build on those relationships the more likely that you will improve your chances of getting people to recognize you."

Yep, totally agree! Exactly what I'm trying to do every day I can. 

(2 edits) (+3)

"If you believe that your work has potential to be great, then it's already great."  ~ Me

I heavily relate to your problem, like lots of other people here. I was concerned when my game didn't get lots of views and comments within the first day of release. I tried to look for answers on how to get it out there, and I couldn't find many helpful tips.

So I decided: If I want this community to notice me, I have to notice it first.

So now I'm spending most of my time going around and giving people feedback on their work, following them, trying their games, rating, and being as helpful as I can, because what else can I do? I refresh my analytics page every day, several times a day; Some days are slow, some days are good. Sometimes I get only two views overnight, and sometimes I get 12 views and a download overnight (last night). It's all part of the process.

Two weeks into release and I stand at 228 views and 53 downloads (some of which were technically me because of testing). Still got a ways to go...

(1 edit)

That is exactly what I do! I released my game yesterday and I have 33 browser plays now.

(+1)

Yep, that's the right idea!

I was going to play your game earlier and give feedback but I had to leave, but now I'm back and I'll be giving it a shot soon :)

just make coomer games and you'll get a bunch of click in a secound. (if you need a easy mode off course)

if not because you have dignity, maybe the illoominati leader named pewdiepie can help.


idk im at the same boat m8