How to maximize viewership for a newly released game...

[Gwedelino]

... without taking account of game tags/genre or trying to add more fetish to catter to a larger audience ?

Basically : how to make more people click on your game threads.

I already saw a lot of advices being posted here like :

- Work on the banner of the game
- Create signatures
- Pick polished preview pictures
- Post the game on multiple websites (which one ?)

Do you have any other advice that comes to your mind ?

 

[Droid Productions]

First step is to create a sig for yourself, and link your game in your signature.

One tip is to make a WebGL build if you can; there's a huge audience of people on places like Newgrounds, itch.io (where you can also do downloadable versions) and Gamecore. Newgrounds and Gamcore is especially important because they are audiences that otherwise won't be see your game; there's a large overlap between F95zone and the huge number of other smaller downloadable/pirated desktop and android builds. Most of them will feed off F95zone anyway, and reuse their links (or upload them to other hosts). The WebGL ecosystem is different, so that's new people that are introduced to your game.

 

[Meaning Less]

frequent updates

 

[Deleted member 229118]

1: Catchy title.
2: Good looking art.

When i look through new releases the first thing i look at is the pretty art.
Then second is the title.

Just like movies, books, games, etc.
The cover is what draw interest.

Likewise if i see a game that doesnt discribe what it is about i general ignore it or read the reviews.
I mean if you can not be bothers to give a brief explination of what i am getting into why would i waste my time.

3: Remember you have compitition.
There are thousents of games viewing for out attention everyday.
You need to stand out.

4: First impressions.
Act 1 or the demo needs to be compelling.
Something that make's me want more.
If the first act is just: Here are the character of my future visual novel that you wont fuck until act 5 and here is a dream scene to tie you over.
I am filing that game under trash.
Even if you improve it massively latter it will always remained filed under trash because unless words get around it did improve massively it will always been seen as trash.

 

[woody554]

provide possibilities for people to get engaged with the game and its devs, like dev diaries, streams, discord bullshit, competitions, freebie events. in other words: work the crowd. be active in the game threads.

very difficult to spare time in a one person team, but maybe there's aspects of it that are applicable.

if it fits your game, trying to create a modding scene often builds a massive and persistent community.

 

[Ambir]

Look at games that are like yours and are popular. Look at the titles they put on their game, the banners they made, the previews.

If you inspire yourself from other people who have succeeded and try to adopt similar strategies to them, then you are likely to stumble upon something that will help you. (do not copy, that is a surefire way to get destroy, just take inspiration)

 

[DawnCry]

Well to have a successful start it's important to actually interact with the players a lot at the start, the first key is visibility, even more being well known in some forums helps a lot and having a banner under your name is good.

Something that can easily attract people is to find similar games to your own, try it and be like another user talking with other people while having your banner at the bottom, it can easily catch the attention of the players and in fact it is more easy to get that visibility.

 

[Rafster]

If you inspire yourself from other people who have succeeded and try to adopt similar strategies to them, then you are likely to stumble upon something that will help you. (do not copy, that is a surefire way to get destroy, just take inspiration)

SO MUCH FUCKING THIS. I spend months monitoring the launch of HTML games here on F95, why they were criticised or praised, and take a look at the sandboxes, which are games similar to mine. That helps to know what to do and what to avoid at launch.

Ah, and players note if you copied the code or Ui of another game. Somehow they are like psychics.

 

[chainedpanda]

Just wanna add that I don't think adding a bunch of fetishes is the answer anymore. Due to changes with the latest page, one can now block specific tags. Not in the mood for incest? Block it! Now, all incest games are hidden. Simply adding tags for view-ability no longer works.

That said, the single most powerful weapon under anyone's disposal is without a doubt repetitiveness. The more often someone notices a game, the more likely they are to try out the game. It doesn't matter what the game looks like, or many other factors. If I see a game enough times on a feed, I WILL click on it. If I click on it, there is a 100% larger chance that I'll download and play it when compared to not even bothering to click it.

Many games have actually used this strategy to their advantage, rather they meant to or not. I'll use Twisted World as an example. This is not a game I'd normally play under most circumstances. It contains tags I generally don't enjoy, the banner is the ultimate balloon tit character I generally dislike, and yet it kept popping up while I was searching for new games. Eventually, I just said "fuck it" and gave it a chance. I actually like it, despite my initial skepticism and general dislike of some of its tags.

Another example would be Grandmas House, while it does contain tags I generally enjoy, the banner doesn't do it much justice. Furthermore, it's name is a massive turn off for me. I have 0 interest in GMilfs, and this name screams "its all Gmilfs!" however, due to it's update schedule being insane, it was impossible to ignore. I simply had to click on it and now it's become one of my favorite games.

While TW kept appearing because of it's growing popularity at the time, and GH appears not only due to popularity, but its insane update schedule, they both show the power of visibility and repetitiveness. While gaining the cult-like following of TW or the update schedule of GH may be difficult, this may be a line of thought worth considering. How can one manipulate the algorithm to show your game more often?

While I may not have the answer, I do believe this to be the most powerful potential tool any developer can utilize, if they can figure out how.