Whether you’re producing a commercial game or taking on a project for fun, it’s always nice to have an audience that has an interest in your work. A typical marketing strategy involves thousands of dollars being thrown into ads but this doesn’t have to be the case especially if you’re just starting out.

Killing Two Birds With One Stone

When it comes to coding the mechanics, designing the levels, or organizing your project, you should work as efficiently as possible. You should not put off a recurring feature all the way up to release day when you find out this could make or break your game. apply the same rule to your marketing strategy; don’t wait until your game is already developed before you start promoting it.

during your development process, you should share any of your milestones within your communities (and if you’re not in any, I recommend joining some!). This allows you to get feedback as well as attract an audience while you’re still in development! posting content on your game is also a lot easier when it’s still fresh in your memory and hard drive.

Social Media can definitely help in this area. My personal favorite is probably Reddit, their active game development subreddits have helped and inspired me a lot in the last couple of years.

Identifying your Niche and Audience

What type of gaming are you making? Who are you trying to engage with? Games are being developed every single day so it’s important to understand that there’s a slim chance that you will get noticed, let alone make any money. However, if you want to make your game more noticeable then you should be reaching out to people that would actually be interested in your game at first glance. What do I mean by this? Well if you’re making a roguelike game then you better start engaging with roguelike communities, look for their feedback, give back to the community, and improve your game.

The more unique your niche is the more likely you will get noticed. Trying to make the next big Battle Royale probably won’t work when everyone and their mom is making a battle royale these days.

Branching Out

There are a ton of free ways to market your game but they also require a lot of work and effort. Here are a few that come to mind:

• Devlogs – kind of like vlogs but instead you’re documenting your game development progress in a way that’s entertaining
• game trailers – people obviously need to see what your game is about
• posting your game to every single gaming medium/platform when it’s ready to be shipped

note: Most of this advice is for marketing if you’re new to game development. There are tons of other ways to promote your game but I found this to be the easiest and practical use of my time while simultaneously working on my projects and living my personal life.