Gambrinous Blog » Marketing http://blog.gambrinous.com Wed, 27 Aug 2025 23:08:44 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.6.1 The List of Indie-Friendly Publishers, 2017 Edition http://blog.gambrinous.com/2017/10/25/the-list-of-indie-friendly-publishers-2017-edition/ http://blog.gambrinous.com/2017/10/25/the-list-of-indie-friendly-publishers-2017-edition/#comments Wed, 25 Oct 2017 09:23:39 +0000 admin http://blog.gambrinous.com/?p=1231 I put together a list of indie-friendly publishers back in 2014 as I was pitching them on Guild of Dungeoneering.  I'm now once again shopping for a publisher for our second game so I've put together a new and updated list! I hope it helps anyone else looking.

My goal like last time is to find a publisher that can help promote & market our game (and front the money to do so), and on top of that this time I'm also looking for someone who will co-fund development. This is for a PC & console game, so mobile-only publishers have not been included. There's also a couple here that would be money-only rather than a regular publishing arrangement, like the Indie Fund and Jonathan Blow's offer.

Thanks to the everyone who helped me put this list together. If you have any suggestions to add to this list feel free to mail or tweet me!

]]> http://blog.gambrinous.com/2017/10/25/the-list-of-indie-friendly-publishers-2017-edition/feed/ 0 Exciting Times at PAX South http://blog.gambrinous.com/2015/02/11/exciting-times-at-pax-south/ http://blog.gambrinous.com/2015/02/11/exciting-times-at-pax-south/#comments Wed, 11 Feb 2015 00:07:19 +0000 Colm http://blog.gambrinous.com/?p=1016 There's an entire separate hall to queue in

There's an entire separate hall to queue in at PAX

Two weeks ago I was able to attend my first ever PAX, which is a massive and beloved consumer gaming show. The kind that attracts real gaming fans who will happily give up their weekend, pay for tickets, and queue in their thousands to be the first ones into the show. The kind that sells out of tickets on a regular basis. Just attending would have been extremely interesting to me but I had the opportunity to do something even more incredible: I was able to showcase the game I'm working on to thousands of potential fans. WOW. Read on for my full postmortem.

How did we get to exhibit at PAX anyway?

As we recently announced we have now signed with Versus Evil to publish our first game Guild of Dungeoneering. One of the main reasons I partnered with a publisher was to be able to bring the game to big consumer shows like PAX. And VS Evil certainly delivered on that promise. Within days of signing I was flying to Texas to help showcase Guild of Dungeoneering in their booth. It was also a great opportunity to meet the VS Evil team in person at last – the entire deal had been done over Skype and email!

Everything looked super lovely!

Dungeoneering never looked better

I flew in on Thursday evening with the show floor opening to the public on Friday morning. This is not something you can normally do if you are exhibiting at a big show like PAX. Setting up your own booth usually means weeks of organising and days of work before the show starts. So it was wonderful to be able to simply turn up in person and have the entire thing already set up for me! Score one for going with a publisher!

The Versus Evil booth

I was really impressed by the booth Versus Evil had set up for the event. It was very professional looking with large amounts of branding dedicated to the games (rather than themselves). It was set up to allow folks to wander right into it with PCs at standing height with various VS-published games available to play. Guild of Dungeoneering had four PCs taking up one entire side of their booth. As a bonus this was the side that faced towards the show entrance, and the VS Evil booth itself was in a great spot: right in the main corridor from the entrance just after the really massive booths (like Twitch). This meant a huge amount of people saw the game as they wandered into the show.

Their setup & location meant that for basically all three days there were four people playing the game at once, with a few people watching (and sometimes a big crowd of people watching). We actually have a special ATTRACT MODE built into our build of the game for shows like this where if you idle on the title screen for two minutes the game starts playing itself (like an arcade game). For three eight-hour days I barely saw it happen at all – there was basically someone playing at all four machines at all times.

This was what our side of the booth looked like for 8 hrs a day

Our side of the booth was like this for eight hours a day

I would generally hang out nearby and watch people play. Occasionally we had a crash bug in the demo we had people playing so I'd have to restart the game if that happened. When folks were waiting I'd chat to them about the game. If I saw people play for a long time (like a half hour+) I'd approach them when they finished to ask them for feedback. Feedback itself was incredibly positive. People loved the aesthetic, really liked the concept, and generally really enjoyed playing the demo we had brought. That last bit surprised me as I guess I see all the negatives of it (it's not deeply fun yet!). I guess since it was people's first exposure to the game everything was new and interesting and they didn't quite get stuck in enough to see the problematic parts. Also it's a bit awkward giving negative feedback to one of the makers of a game in person! No need to be so polite when your feedback is real, folks!

Now in totally sweet HD

We were showcasing the game in 1920×1080 resolution for the first time and it looks totally hot. A lot of passersby were drawn to folks playing just because it looks so wonderful. This was something we had always intended for the game but had only put together for the first time the week before PAX.

Click for massive

Click for massive

We were also showcasing our battle mode for the first time. No more autofighting; now you choose an attack move each turn. This first attempt was ready just in time for PAX, but it needs a lot of work. We've now reworked it to be MUCH more interesting (less like a paper/rock/scissors guessathon) while still retaining the essential idea: you gain attack moves from your equipment, thus building your character depending on what loot you place for them.

Click for massive

Click for massive

Overall I was very happy with the build we were showing, even though we were already working on improving the game for our next event.

Press & Influencers

Now there were lots of potential fans at the show and it was really great to meet them and hopefully they will see the game when it comes out on Steam and be that little more likely to try it out. But the real win for us at a show like this was reaching some press and other influencers. For example check out this tweet:

I need to print out this tweet and stick it on my wall!

I'm going to print out this tweet and stick it on my wall

Yep that's Randy Pitchford the president of Gearbox randomly checking out our game and telling his 288K followers that it's cool. Eh.. thanks!

We also had Dodger and Jesse Cox drop by the booth and play the game. They both seem to really like it: see this video. That's two youtubers with really big followings. Hopefully when we finish the game they'll be streaming it.

This video has over 400K views already!

This video has over 400K views already!

Finally all this attention got us some great new press articles. Firstly from TouchArcade (we plan on going to tablets after the PC launch), with whom I got to have a little chat while the writer was playing the game. Secondly from Rock Paper Shotgun, who I don't think were even at PAX but must have been reminded of us because of it.

Nice!

Nice!

Is PAX worth it?

So what did we really get out of being at a big game show like PAX? Was it worth it? One of the problems with this kind of game marketing is you really cannot quantify exactly what it does for your game. I will say it was incredibly interesting to see what spending the big bucks on promoting your game can get you: immediate attention from gamers and influencers that I had serious trouble reaching on my lonesome. I still think every lone-wolf indie dev should spend around half their time on marketing and outreach without spending anything, but you should also seriously consider what partnering with a publisher could do for your game.

Also it's really nice to bask in the positive potential of your game in the hearts and minds of your fans for once, rather than being mired in the day-to-day problems of making your special snowflake of a game happen. And for that, I thank you, PAX South.

]]> http://blog.gambrinous.com/2015/02/11/exciting-times-at-pax-south/feed/ 0 The List of Indie-Friendly Publishers http://blog.gambrinous.com/2014/09/02/the-list-of-indie-friendly-publishers/ http://blog.gambrinous.com/2014/09/02/the-list-of-indie-friendly-publishers/#comments Tue, 02 Sep 2014 13:56:10 +0000 Colm http://blog.gambrinous.com/?p=943 That's not an oxymoron! While the whole point of being 'indie' is to be independent (primarily of a publisher!) there are many other ways a publisher can help you while letting you remain independent. Traditionally game publishers would pay an upfront fee that paid for a studio to develop their game, but in return own all of the IP and almost all of the revenue from a game (and sequels!!).

Nowadays with digital distribution one of the main reasons to need a traditional publisher is gone but there are other things they can help with like PR, advertising and marketing budgets around launch, getting you onto marketplaces like Steam, etc. Sometimes this could be more of a partnership than a publishing deal.

I've just started talks with a few indie-friendly publishers for Guild of Dungeoneering so I thought I would share my list for others considering this approach. Some of these are full-on publishers with a focus on indie games, some are actual indie developers who also publish other dev's games, and some are marketing specialists.

I'm focused primarily on PC, as is most of the above list, but if you are looking for help with a mobile game I'd recommend looking through this twitter list as quite a few of the list are mobile-focused.

Thanks to the Indie Game Developers facebook group, @kristruitt, @LukeD and /r/gamedev for helping me put this list together. If you have any suggestions to add to this list feel free to leave a comment!

]]> http://blog.gambrinous.com/2014/09/02/the-list-of-indie-friendly-publishers/feed/ 2 Getting Your Game Greenlit In 2014 http://blog.gambrinous.com/2014/06/11/getting-your-game-greenlit-in-2014/ http://blog.gambrinous.com/2014/06/11/getting-your-game-greenlit-in-2014/#comments Wed, 11 Jun 2014 15:34:03 +0000 Colm http://blog.gambrinous.com/?p=919 Making a game for PC or Mac? You'll probably want access to Steam's 75 million subscribers and their often joked-about spending problem. After all it turns out most people are buying games on Steam that they never even install! Now there's a market you want to tap into!

The infamous Steam summer sale

Time to buy some games you won't play!

Steam's almost-monopoly causes some real problems, with gamers often refusing to buy games from you directly, saying "I'd buy it if it was on Steam". A couple of years ago it was basically impossible as an indie dev to get onto Steam. Even with the launch of Greenlight, their crowdsourced vetting service, it was extremely difficult as recently as last September. Fortunately in January Valve started ramping up the number of games they were Greenlighting and right now they are accepting a batch of 75 games every two weeks. Lets ignore for now what this rash of games is going to do for your game's release (hint: find an audience outside Steam) and instead address the question 'How hard is it to get through Greenlight in 2014?'.

Case study: Guild of Dungeoneering

Since last October I've been building a game called Guild of Dungeoneering which is a kind of reverse-roguelike with a pen-on-graph-paper aesthetic. On April 9th I submitted it to Steam Greenlight and it was Greenlit in the batch of May 14th some 35 days later. Oh and my first day as a fulltime indie dev was April 14th so I got to spend plenty of time refreshing that stats page (all day long, every day!). Here's what I learned.

Coming to Steam (and elsewhere!)

Coming to Steam (and elsewhere!)

Submitting

Submitting your game to Greenlight is dead easy. Just sign up for a new account for your business, throw GabeN your $100 (hilariously it counts as a game in your steam library, so you could even gift this to someone), lash up some screens & a video and BOOM your game can be unleashed on the salivating masses.

Quick aside: when is the right time in development to hit up Greenlight? As an indie dev you should be sharing your game embarrassingly early, but for Greenlight I think it's best to have things just a tiny bit more polished. Specifically I think you need a nice video trailer, some nice looking screenshots, and some gameplay (either in video or demo form). But you do not need to have a finished game! In fact you should be on there long before you have finished your game.

Second quick aside: don't bother with the Greenlight Concepts section. Just go straight to Greenlight nowadays.

A rush of votes to the head

As soon as your game is live on Greenlight you will get a pile of views without you having to do anything at all. This is because it's added to everyone's Greenlight queue to vote on (a bit like a gamedev hotornot). This means for $100 you'll get several thousand interested gamers to look at your video (sometimes for several seconds!). If you think of it in pure advertising terms that's actually incredibly cheap & incredibly targeted. Nice! This will however disappear into a trickle of traffic after a few days or at most a week.

The important line is the green one for 'yes votes'

The important line is the green one for 'yes votes'

Aside: you can post announcements on your Greenlight item which are supposedly shown to people who pick 'ask me later'. Barely anyone uses this so don't use them to reach people like you might with Kickstarter updates: of 16,973 votes cast for Guild of Dungeoneering a tiny number of 629 people picked 'ask me later'. That said the announcements are prominent on your Greenlight page so throw in at least one to show you are alive for future visitors.

Time to promote

To get anywhere you are going to have to get your fanbase to vote on your game. Luckily you've been building up that fanbase from the beginning, right? I timed the start of our Greenlight campaign with the release of our lovely trailer, which I hoped would get picked up all over the internet in a sensation of traffic and cause the game to be greenlit in like one day. Ha! That would never happen. Oh wait it did happen exactly that way to the guys behind CRAWL!

CRAWL, featuring the best indie trailer ever.

CRAWL, featuring the best indie trailer ever.

You can't rely on that happening to you, so assume you'll have to do the legwork like I did. I built up a presslist of over 60 specific games writers who wrote about games like my one, and then mailed them customised one-to-one mails pitching my game, the trailer, and that it was now on Greenlight. This took a full day. I followed up with everyone who hadn't written something about three weeks later, gently offering a new build + the fact we were almost through Greenlight. I also wrote my first ever Press Release and handed it over to the lovely gamespress.com for release. Finally I was all over my usual forums & social networks asking friends and strangers to vote & share.

This got me quite a lot of press articles, though mostly from smaller sites, but does it lead to that precious resource of Yes Votes?

Basically no one votes on Greenlight (or in elections)

You work hard for traffic & attention to your game. Then you divert a lot of it to your Greenlight page to get some extra votes, and basically no one bothers to vote. There's a few reasons for this, but the main one is how people use Steam vs how they read about games news. Your Steam client logs in automatically for you on your games PC. However you read news on your mobile phone, on your laptop or your work PC, or even if you happen to be on your gaming PC you will see this link and it will open up in your browser. Oh wait, you aren't logged into Steam on your browser are you? Nope. Just in the Steam client itself. Will I try and login.. oh wait now I need to jump through some security hoops.. NOPE I'm out. By my estimate (backed up by what others saw) something like 0.1% of visits from outside the Steam client lead to votes.

Aside: you could try a steam:// link that opens up directly in the Steam client. However I would be worried about people who click it on one of the many places where they don't have steam installed, getting a weird prompt instead of the Greenlight page.

In fact I found it easier to sell $10 pre-orders of Guild of Dungeoneering than to get yes votes, at times. This one-paragraph mention on the BoingBoing tech blog led to over 80 people buying the game via my site in one day, but less than that went on to the prominently linked Greenlight page that day.

Still it all helps, as without the extra attention you could be on Greenlight forever.

Lots of people vote no, but that's OK

Don't be worried about this. The question they are answering is "Would you buy this game if it were available in Steam?". A no vote means they wouldn't buy it, not that they hate you and want you to fail. Even the best games don't get bought by everyone; there are genres of games I will never buy and ones I love for example. Here's our breakdown of votes showing 50% yes – compared to 39% yes for an average top-50 game.

Click for bigger!

Click for bigger!

So how many Yes Votes do I need, anyway?

Valve uses more than just the number of yes votes you've accrued to select who they Greenlight, though exactly what criteria they use is a slight mystery, but getting into the Top 100 games on Greenlight certainly helps and should be your main goal. They even show you your 'percentage of the way to the Top 100' on your stats page. When I was running my campaign in April/May the line to make it into the top 100 was about 6,000 yes votes. Interestingly in January just before Valve started accepting so many more games it was about double that, so I expect that number will continue falling.

If you look at the graph above you'll see that after about 3 weeks my yes vote tally had tailed off to about 60/day at about 5,000 votes. At that rate I was looking at about another month before I would be in the Top 100 zone and likely to be greenlit. So I decided to take part in a giveaway via a large Steam group (Who's Gaming Now?!) giving away 100 copies of the game to their members who took part (and asking them nicely to vote, if they wanted to). This led to about 1.5-2K more votes over the following 10 days, bumping me right up in the rankings (briefly sitting at the #5 spot at one point), before the game got accepted by Valve.

Whee!

Whee!

Good luck!

Best of luck with your own game & getting onto Steam. You can do it! Got any questions about the process? Drop me a mail (colm@gambrinous.com) or leave a comment and I'll see if I can help. Also check out this AMA I did on Reddit which has a lot of info from me (and other devs) about the process.

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