I’ve been developing commercial indie games and trying to get people to care about them for over a decade now. Marketing is a known thorn in the side of pretty much every indie dev but, sorry, this post doesn’t give you any cool tips and tricks. In fact, I think the vast majority of game marketing activity is performative (and by extension, useless).

It’s been a minute since the last email we sent out, we’ve started a YouTube devlog for The Song of The Fae (SoTF) and that’s mostly replaced what I was writing here. So, I’m trying something new. Devlogs and open development are more popular than ever but I find that most developers prefer to present the “pretty version” of game dev.

Our videos show my raw thoughts on the current state and design, and show how uncertain the direction of a game is at any given point in its development. Similarly, I want to share posts (like this) that illuminate both the “creative” and “business” side of the studio, showing our vulnerability and lack of understanding.

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I’ve realised we are not on track in terms of marketing for The Song of The Fae (buy/wishlist plz ❤️). All is not lost, we’re still in heavy development etc. but we’ve already made quite a few blunders:

• Overscoped the game

• Prolonged development

• Unclear vision from the outset

• Shared public demos too early

• Entered Early Access too early

But, in fairness, we’ve done many things right with SoTF compared to our previous title The Thin Silence (also buy/wishlist plz):

• Grew audience + wishlists throughout development

• Feedback from players early

• Building a community

• Heavy market research

• Strong core mechanic

• Learned to tweet/post interesting things

• Looks good in GIFs and screenshots

• A somewhat interesting devlog to follow (still learning this)

We’re doing better than we ever have before and to some extent that’s the only signal that matters, but being who I am… I want to do better. I am still slipping into performative marketing habits and I aspire to be much more strategic.

Get to the point already!

Okay okay. So what about game marketing do I feel is so “performative”?

A quick google of “how do I market my game” will immediately suggest a lot of activities to you:

• Post on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok constantly

  Make sure you include interesting1 footage and images of the game

• Start a YouTube channel

  Don’t even consider how many hours a simple video will take away from the game, nor how difficult it is to appear comfortable on camera

• Start a blog

  Just write! Not like the content matters! Blog constantly!

• Contact streamers

  I’m sure they’ll pick your email out of the 1000s they receive daily

• Write a press release and send it out

  Here’s a crappy template that everyone will immediately recognise as a template! You might even end up as subheading in a Kotaku article

These are performative activities because it’s not the items on the list that matter. It’s the aesthetic, implication and personality that carries the real “marketing”. A surface-level interpretation of