I've noticed something repeatedly on Reddit (in r/gamedev and other game dev-related subreddits), and I think it's worth discussing.

Time and again, I see developers asking about sales, discoverability, marketing, or why their game isn't performing commercially, yet describing themselves as hobby developers who aren't particularly interested in the business side of game development. I think there's a fundamental disconnect here, and it's something more developers need to reflect on.

If you're developing games purely as a hobby, that's great. Spend five years experimenting with mechanics, use whatever tools you enjoy, and work on whatever interests you. You can even release your game on Steam and charge money. The difference is that you genuinely don't give a fuck whether it sells. If you make absolutely nothing, that's fine. You made something because you enjoyed the process, and that was enough.

But the moment sales, profitability, or return on investment becomes a thought, you're pursuing commercial objectives. And that requires a different mindset.

That doesn't mean you need to run a studio or develop games full-time. You can work on your game in the evenings and on weekends and still develop a commercial product. What matters is what you're trying to accomplish, not how many hours you're putting into it.

This is where I see developers getting into trouble. They'll dismiss marketing, market research, production planning, scope management, or even their choice of development tools as things that don't really matter because they're "just hobbyists." Then they'll turn around and ask why their game isn't selling at release, or how to do X to boost sales.

The reality is that these decisions matter when you're trying to bring a commercially viable game to market. Your tool choices and production pipeline affect development costs and efficiency. Your scope affects your schedule and ability to ship. Your marketing strategy determines how you reach potential customers. Understanding your audience and the market you're entering should be part of your development process, not something you start thinking about a month before release.

None of this means abandoning your creative vision or treating game development as nothing more than a business. You can be passionate about making games while recognizing that your time has value, your resources are limited, and sometimes you need to make decisions based on commercial realities rather than personal preference.

You can make a fantastic game that fails commercially. You can do everything reasonably well and still struggle to find an audience. That's part of the risk. But there's a difference between accepting that risk and ignoring the business considerations that might help you succeed.

I think more developers need to ask themselves a simple question: Am I making this game purely because I enjoy making games, or am I trying to build something people will pay for?

Neither answer is wrong, and modest commercial ambitions are fine. But if making money matters to you, even a little, then the commercial side of development needs to matter to you too.

You can't approach every aspect of development like a hobbyist while expecting commercial results.

I’ve recently realized that getting feedback from friends and family can sometimes be more discouraging than helpful.
I’m an indie developer working on cozy, dream-inspired puzzle games. I love creating atmospheric worlds, experimenting with colors, and designing relaxing gameplay experiences.
But whenever I share my progress with people around me, I rarely get genuine curiosity about what I’m actually making.
Instead, I get questions like “Why don’t you make an FPS game?” or comments that completely miss the point of the genre I’m working in.
And here’s the thing: I genuinely WANT criticism. If a mechanic doesn’t work, tell me. If something feels boring or confusing, I’d love to hear why. That’s how we improve.
But there’s a difference between constructive feedback and criticizing something without even trying to understand what it’s supposed to be.
I’m not expecting applause for everything I create. It would just be nice if someone occasionally asked how a mechanic works, what inspired a design choice, or even acknowledged the effort behind it.
I’ve spent countless hours building these games, and lately I’ve realized that asking people outside my target audience for feedback might be doing more harm than good.
I think I’m done seeking validation from my immediate circle. I’d rather hear from people who actually enjoy the genres I’m developing for.
Has anyone else experienced this? How do you deal with discouraging feedback from people close to you?

I’ve been working on my game, for almost 3 years. Three years of working alone, with nobody to show it to except my friends and family. Honestly, it got pretty lonely at times.

A few weeks ago I finished my demo and sent demo keys to a bunch of YouTubers. It was the first time I was showing the game to anyone outside my close circle. A lot of small creators picked it up, and every single one of them made my day.

I also sent keys to a few bigger channels, mostly thinking “worst case, they never reply.” One of them was Fooster, a YouTuber I absolutely love who plays a lot of horror games.

And he played my demo in one of his videos, which is crazy to me😭

It also helped a lot with visibility: I’d estimate around 400-500 wishlists came from the video. It’s hard to say exactly, because I’ve also been posting on social media and some of those posts did well too. But it’s clearly given the game a huge boost.

I can’t even explain how much this means to me. After years of working in silence, seeing people actually interested in the game is the best motivation I could ask for. It makes me want to keep going even harder.

So thank you Fooster, thank you to every YouTuber who gave the demo a shot, and thank you to everyone who has watched or shared it.

Take care, everyone! 💙

Four events, over US$10,000 in expenses, roughly 1,150–1,300 new Steam wishlists, and quite a few unexpected lessons.

I'm the producer of City God Alice, the first game developed by our small independent team in Taiwan. In 2026, we participated in four international gaming events: gamescom latam in Brazil, Busan Indie Connect Festival in South Korea, gamescom in Germany, and Tokyo Game Show in Japan.

Some exhibitions were handled remotely, while others required me to attend in person. We received assistance or subsidies for certain events, but paid substantial costs ourselves for others.

I wanted to share our actual expenses, wishlist results, and what we learned about exhibiting an indie game overseas.

1. Results at a Glance

Wishlist figures include approximately one week before and after each event. They are not exclusively attributable to physical booth visitors; Steam event traffic, media coverage, and other promotional activity may have contributed.

Tokyo Game Show's figure could reach approximately 400–500 if we include related Japanese media coverage, although we treat that separately to avoid overstating direct exhibition results.

These numbers reveal an uncomfortable reality: spending more on an exhibition does not necessarily generate proportionally more wishlists.

2. gamescom latam — Our Best Financial Result

Cost: $0 | Wishlists: ~300

We participated remotely through assistance from Taipei Game Show. The organizers handled almost everything, from exhibition arrangements to promotion. Our main responsibility was providing game information and a press kit.

For an event that cost us nothing, gaining around 300 wishlists was an excellent outcome.

There was one problem: our game was initially missing from the event's Steam promotional page. Taipei Game Show helped contact the organizers, and the issue was resolved after the first day.

However, we couldn't determine precisely where those wishlists came from. Some may have originated from online promotion rather than people visiting the exhibition.

Lesson: Free or subsidized remote participation can provide excellent value, but limited involvement also means limited insight into what actually worked.

3. Busan Indie Connect — Affordable, but Lower Than Expected

Cost: $900–1,000 | Wishlists: ~150–200

BIC was my first overseas exhibition in person. With support from Taipei Game Show, accommodation and some equipment were provided, keeping our expenses relatively low.

We brought promotional cards, snacks, and additional hardware. The booth remained occupied by players for much of the event, yet we gained only around 30 wishlists per public day.

At first, I was disappointed. Previous domestic events had sometimes generated 100 or more wishlists per day, so I assumed our preparations were inadequate.

I attended alone, without hiring an interpreter, cosplayer, or additional staff. That made me wonder whether spending more would produce better results.

The trip also ended with a canceled flight due to severe weather. I spent hours arranging transportation, obtaining insurance documentation, and finding last-minute accommodation.

On the positive side, sharing Taiwanese snacks with other exhibitors helped me meet developers from different countries. Those personal interactions became some of my favorite memories.

Lesson: A modest wishlist count is not necessarily a poor result when exhibition costs are low. Personal connections can also have value beyond immediate sales.

4. gamescom Germany — More Exposure, Much Higher Costs

Cost: $4,900–5,500 | Wishlists: ~500–600

For Germany's gamescom, we hired a third-party company to exhibit our game remotely.

The exhibition was expensive even before accounting for booth representation and promotional materials. We also couldn't secure a position in the dedicated indie game area.

Our game gained approximately 500–600 wishlists, supported by more than 40,000 impressions.

Initially, the results looked promising. We gained over 100 wishlists before the business days and more than 200 during them. But daily gains declined significantly afterward, eventually falling to around 30.

Our representative reported that the playable station was occupied almost continuously, yet that activity did not translate into equally strong wishlist growth.

The bigger disappointment was business networking.

Although our representative distributed business cards, I wasn't physically present to introduce the game, explain our plans, or follow up with publishers. After the event, we received almost no meaningful business inquiries.

Lesson: Remote representation can generate exposure, but it is much harder to replace the developer's personal involvement in business meetings and relationship-building.

5. Tokyo Game Show — Our Most Demanding Exhibition

Cost: ~$4,600 | Wishlists: ~200 during the exhibition period, potentially 400–500 including related media exposure

Tokyo Game Show was the event I cared about most personally. As both a game developer and a lifelong gamer, attending felt like achieving a personal milestone.

This time, I wanted to test whether more preparation and spending would improve our results.

We invested in booth arrangements, local assistance, interpretation, cosplay promotion, media outreach, and printed advertising. Taiwan's trade promotion organization helped reduce some of the expenses.

I personally contacted dozens of Japanese and English-language media outlets. Several published articles about our game, generating traffic comparable to the exhibition itself.

That was one of the more successful parts of our strategy.

The less successful experiment was advertising.

I purchased a full-color page in the official event guidebook for JPY 165,000, approximately US$1,100. Despite the expected distribution of thousands of copies, we still gained only around 30 on-site wishlists per public day.

We couldn't reliably distinguish guidebook-driven wishlists from booth QR-code scans, so I cannot claim an exact return on the advertisement. However, the overall result was underwhelming.

Business networking was more rewarding.

We met journalists, overseas event organizers, localization and marketing service providers, and other industry contacts. Several introduced us to services or opportunities that would have been difficult to discover from Taiwan.

Then another typhoon disrupted the final exhibition day and our return travel.

Apparently, unpredictable weather had become a recurring feature of our international exhibition strategy.

Lesson: Advertising and physical foot traffic do not guarantee wishlist growth. However, media relationships and industry connections may provide benefits that are difficult to measure immediately.

6. Five Observations After Four International Exhibitions

After comparing the results of all four events, I noticed several patterns worth sharing. Some are based on repeated observations, while others are only tentative hypotheses that I haven't been able to verify.

1. Participating in a Steam festival alongside a major exhibition may not always produce the expected additional traffic.

During Tokyo Game Show, we also participated in Steam's Team-Based RPG Fest.

Based on our previous experiences with Steam festivals, I had expected tens of thousands of impressions and approximately 200–300 additional wishlists from the festival itself.

However, the results were much weaker than expected.

One possibility is that the timing overlapped with Tokyo Game Show, where our game was already receiving less traffic than anticipated. Perhaps the two events did not provide independent sources of exposure, and the festival's visibility was affected by our relatively weak performance during TGS.

Another possibility is that our Steam store page did not communicate the game's team-based RPG elements clearly enough, making it less appealing to players browsing that particular festival.

I only have one experience of this kind, so I can't determine which explanation is correct—or whether something else was responsible.

2. Steam's exhibition traffic may be influenced by external promotional activity in the preceding two weeks.

This is another hypothesis based on our observations rather than a confirmed understanding of Steam's recommendation system.

In the two weeks before gamescom Germany, I was actively distributing press releases and contacting media outlets. That period also coincided with relatively strong wishlist growth and exposure around the exhibition.

Before Tokyo Game Show, on the other hand, I did much less additional press outreach, since many of the relevant outlets had already been contacted earlier.

The difference in results made me wonder whether Steam's event-related visibility is influenced, at least partly, by the external attention a game receives shortly before an exhibition.

Of course, the correlation doesn't prove causation. Differences in event audiences, competition, store-page performance, and other promotional activities could also explain the results.

Still, it has made me reconsider the importance of building momentum before an event rather than relying on the event itself to generate exposure.

3. Our physical booth may have a practical daily conversion limit.

Across several exhibitions, our on-site wishlist gains repeatedly clustered around 20–30 per day.

Looking back at our booth activity, we typically accommodated approximately 30–50 hands-on players per day and distributed around 500 promotional cards.

If our booth setup, staffing, demo duration, and promotional approach remain similar from one exhibition to another, perhaps our daily capacity to convert visitors is also relatively consistent.

This doesn't necessarily mean that 20–30 wishlists is a universal limit for indie booths. It's simply a pattern we've observed with our own setup.

To improve beyond that level, we may need to change the way visitors interact with our booth, rather than merely spend more money on exhibition space or advertising.

4. Steam QR codes displayed prominently at the booth appeared to convert better than QR codes printed on promotional cards.

Based on our observations, players seemed more likely to visit our Steam page and add the game to their wishlists when scanning a QR code displayed directly at the booth.

QR codes printed on promotional cards appeared less effective.

One possible explanation is timing: visitors standing at the booth are already engaged with the game and can take immediate action, while people receiving a card may put it away and forget about it.

However, we usually displayed both types of QR codes at the same time, so I can't reliably separate their individual conversion rates.

I would treat this as a practical observation rather than a controlled experiment.

5. Steam store-page language and login behavior can create unexpected barriers to wishlist conversion.

This was one of the most frustrating discoveries I made during the exhibitions.

I noticed that scanning our Steam QR code could lead visitors to a Traditional Chinese version of our store page when they weren't logged into Steam.

For international visitors, that created an unnecessary obstacle.

Even small differences in Steam's interface across languages can affect how easily players locate the wishlist button. When someone is standing at a crowded booth, even a little confusion can be enough to make them abandon the process.

I only noticed the problem halfway through an exhibition, after seeing players give up on adding the game to their wishlists.

It reminded me that a QR code is not automatically a frictionless conversion tool. Developers should test the entire process on different devices, languages, and login states before attending an international event.

7. Would We Do It Again?

After spending this much money, dealing with complicated preparations, canceled flights, and typhoons, I was asked whether I regretted participating.

Surprisingly, my answer was almost no.

We did what we could with the information and resources available. The results were not always good, but they taught us things that would have been difficult to learn otherwise.

If our only objective had been acquiring Steam wishlists, several of these exhibitions would have been difficult to justify financially.

But as a first-time indie game producer, I also wanted to understand the international industry, meet people, and experience these events firsthand.

That doesn't make every expense worthwhile. It simply means the value of an exhibition depends on what you hope to achieve.

I hope these numbers help other indie developers make better-informed decisions about whether to exhibit overseas—and how much they are willing to spend.

Hi guys,
I'm a bit confused right now and i need you help!

Currently i am working on my first commercial game launch for my game Crown Me Again.
I dont want to promote the game here but i feel that i have to provide the game name as context. Sorry!

I have announced the game end of September and have launched the steam page back then.
Now i have stumbled across a different game King Dies Rich. The Steam page was launched a few days ago and it has a disclaimer that the game was made with help of AI.

I am soooo confused because the game looks similar, has a similar premise and is marketed with similar words to my game. It will also be released in a few days...

But the thing: Its not a exact copy. There are way more systems then in my game. It feels like someone took my steam page and told the AI "To make a similar game but add more depth".
It doesnt look that bad... but maaan this feels so bad somehow.

Also:

I started marketing the game end of september and got quite a bit of traction around that point (2k wishlists in the first 2 weeks). King Dies Rich's App-ID was first seen bei SteamDB on the 2nd October.

Guys, i need your opinion on this. My post is maybe a bit chaotic but thats how i feel at the moment. I have spent over 10 months hand-build this game and now i see this.

What you guys think? What should i do?

Are prompt-generated assets public domain? (Since copyright requires meaningful human input.)

If so, can anyone use assets generated by others? (for the sake of the argument, it's known there was no post-editing)

How does it work?

For some context I'm at 4k wishlists. I hit 2k last year from steam next fest and was pretty much at a stand still until I started doing a lot more marketing in the last month. This is my biggest jump by far tho.

I plan to release sometime in November but I really didn't want to until I gave marketing an honest shot. Ideally I'd go live with the coveted 8-10k wishlists but don't know if I got it in me to wait that long in this current climate.

Oi! What is it called when the character the player controls feels out of place? Not in a "He's wearing modern clothes in 1639" kinda out of place, but more like you just dragged a bunch of free models into the game in 5 seconds.

I recently-ish played a game that felt this way. It's hard to explain, but it felt just slightly out of place, and kind of cheap? In a way? If that makes sense.

so, ive been working on a project for over half a year. im confident i will finish it someday, perhaps in a couple years. and of course i have chosen an appropriate name to match the story and everything. the name is not taken on USPTO, and i own the domain with the name. but im worried that someone will create a game with the same exact name before i finish. what then? i would have spent thousands of hours creating a game around a name that i cant use anymore? that would really suck. i did some research, and it apparently costs me over a whole paycheck and it only protects me in the US (and i need a whole attorney since im not from the US). this is absurd for an indie solo developer. what do you guys do to make sure that you own the rights to the name(s) of your game(s)?

This may not happen for years, but I've been creating a story for a video game for a while now. About a year into making my story I came across some people on Reddit that had stories similar to part of mine.

I reached out to them and they said it was fine to use their material for inspiration.

Should I credit them underneath the "special thanks" area? Or should I leave them out entirely just so they don't get into any trouble considering the subject matter (which I will not spoil)?

I just wanna make sure I'm doing the right thing.

Hello everyone!

I'm a beginner in game development, and I want to learn C++ for Unreal Engine. I've already started learning OOP, and now I want to learn how to write game logic in C++ for Unreal Engine.

What tutorials, video lessons, or courses would you recommend for a beginner like me? I'm looking for resources that explain everything step by step, with practical examples and small projects.

I'd really appreciate any advice or recommendations. Thank you!

Hey everyone,

I’m currently at the stage of my indie game project where I need to source assets, skyboxes, and other environmental elements. I've been looking around on Fab recently, and it left me with a serious question: Can we actually trust whether assets were made by humans or generated by AI based on the tags?

I’ve come across a few assets where I am 100% sure they are AI-generated, they practically scream AI, yet the description claims that "no AI was involved." On the flip side, I found some other assets I really liked that would have fit my project perfectly, but the description honestly stated they were made with AI (which I honestly wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't been declared).

This raises a few questions for me:

1. Can we trust these tags at all?
2. Is there any point in reporting false declarations, or does Epic not care because of their pro-AI stance?
3. How do you guys handle this? Do you blindly trust the labels and steer clear of anything tagged with AI, or do you just make everything yourself now?

Curious to hear how others are navigating this. Thanks

Heya! I'm an design communication student doing research relating to the future of game development for one of my 3rd year project. Me and my group mates are looking for people who are learning game development to help us fill up some survey questions for data collection. Please leave a comment if you're up for it 🙏The survey is not done yet, but I will dm u guys when its done! Would really appreciate anyone who can help us out 🥹🙏🙏🙏

Like a lot of you, I've suffered from project hopping.

When you're months into a project and slogging through that last, endless 10% that is actually ~60%, you start to daydream about the earlier days of your project where it was all broad strokes and nailing down how mechanics function instead of supporting translations and fine tuning UI. You unconsciously start to plan your next project. You put mechanics together in your head that you are excited to build and completely mentally block the possibility of ever having to build a well paced tutorial again.

This is the time I have abandoned most of the projects that I've let die. This is the time that every single Revshare team I've ever worked with has failed. It's like the difference between building a house and cleaning a house. All of the stuff with power tools and layouts is done, and now onto the important, but mundane tasks of details and maintenance.

To get around this, I've started picking up Game Jams. There are hundreds of differently sized ones out there. I've been particularly focusing on ones that only last between 2-7 days. It gives me enough time to get the fun of building on a blank canvas without the hassle of needing to deliver something fully polished. It also gives me a chance to test some of those new mechanics and tools that I've been daydreaming about without abandoning my long term project and starting from scratch.

If you have a history of project abandonment, maybe spend a weekend on something un-serious and then go back instead of burning everything to the ground every few months.

I took part in the October Steam Next Fest with my game. I went in with ~8k wishlists and left with ~10k. I’m sharing my numbers so you have some data to compare to, or to know what to expect.

I had no momentum going in. My wishlists were pretty much dead in the 2 weeks before the fest. I had heard that momentum in those 2 weeks might affect results, along with wishlists count. Both of these are just a starting point. The real metric I believe is how your demo resonates with the people who play it during the event.

My stats from Steamworks:

• Total players: 1,280
• Wishlist additions: 1,898
• Played and wishlisted: 296
• Max Concurrent Users: 21 (steamdb)
• Players per day: 172, 129, 174, 200, 198, 231, 176
• Wishlists per day: 134, 342, 282, 325, 237, 275, 213, 179 (there's an extra day in wishlists cause it didn't start at midnight)

There were a lot of entries, and there will probably be even more next time. But from what I saw, the garbage got buried within a couple of days. My game somehow stayed consistent through the whole fest, so maybe it was detected as not garbage (?)

What to look for:

This got me surprised since I'm aware the kind of graphics in my game are not for everyone. Anyway, these are the numbers I’d check after the fest. The comparisons come from Chris Zukowski’s Next Fest surveys (Feb 2026, June 2026).

• Demo conversion (played and wishlisted / total players). This tells you if your demo works. The median was 16% in Feb 2026 and 19% in June 2026. The top 30% was above 20 to 23%, and the games that really took off were around 32%. Mine was 23%
• Wishlists without playing (total wishlists minus played and wishlisted). This is probably your capsule, trailer and store page. Normal is 68 to 88% of all wishlists. Mine was 84% (1,602)
• Wishlists earned vs. what you had going in. Games that went in with 1k to 10k earned a median of about 1,000, and the top 30% got 1,700+. Mine was 1,898, maybe could be better here since I was loser to the 10k
• Players per day. This shows if you hold up after the first days. Mine stayed steady and peaked on day 6.

So overall I am satisfied with the result considering how I joined the Next Fest. And got some great feedback from players too.

It's important to have the most polished demo possible. I released the first version months ago and kept iterating on it. I was lucky that a lot of creators played it, so I watched a lot of gameplays before finding a good balance.

What I’d do differently:

• Build as much momentum as possible before the fest. My wishlists were dead going in.
• Make the unique mechanics stand out. The start of my game isn’t very new, and the interesting stuff comes later. I thought about a vertical slice demo, but I didn’t have everything in place for it.
• Update the trailer with the best one you can have, I went in with an old one. And have the best steam page you can, possibly localized

Hope this was helpful to somebody :D

solo dev, cozy farming roguelite (yes, i know), 2 years in. we crossed 10k wishlists last week！！！！！！！

which means i can probably keep doing this. heres the honest breakdown.

what moved the needle:

- steam next fest: about 3,800 wishlists. the demo had to be polished, not big. 20 minutes of game, every second of it good

what didnt:

- twitter. 8 months of devlogs, about 300 wishlists total

- paid ads. spent 600, got 140 wishlists. never again at this stage

- a discord before anyone cared. 11 members, 9 of them my friends

since someone always asks about ai: none in anything players see. steam asks you to disclose it and my players would hate it. internally i did animate some concept art on dreamina into mood clips for my composer, cheap and handy, but it cant keep a character consistent for 2 shots in a row, so it never went near the game.

launching in march. scared and excited in equal amounts.

if youre 6 months in staring at 200 wishlists, i was too. You f-ing got this.

Playing with a prototype that has the player's avatar growing/shrinking between 50% and 200% normal size and everything in between. Is there an established way to handle this while avoiding mixels(mixed sized pixels)? Are there any ways to mitigate the "offness" of mixels? Would this concept be better with a vector based art style?

Damn.

Today is the 26th. My initial submission for SCP: Antimemetics Division was Oct. 8th. They didn't respond until the 20th, and after a quick fix to controller support in one of my menus, it's back under review.

I heard the backlog from Next Fest was terrible this year, but truly hoped the traffic jam would subside.

If you are considering when to submit a build to steam...don't be like me, and think that 3 weeks is enough time!

I'm a backend developer looking into game economy. PlayFab and Epic Online Services feel too heavy and complex for simple indie games. How are you guys handling player wallets, virtual currency, and inventory? Are you building custom backends from scratch or is there a lightweight API I missed?

This number is suggested everywhere as the minimum number for a “good” launch, mostly sourcing from Chris Zukowski, I wonder how it turns out as I’ll be releasing one with a close number.

I'm posting this partly out of desire to rubberduck with humans, but also partly because it's the sort of content that I hope to see when I visit gamedev subreddits.

I'm building a 3D explosion system for my framework at the moment. I have a rough idea of how I want to simulate explosions, but I'm not 100% confident that I'm going in the right direction. I've tried to test what other games do but it's really hard to get a clear picture because explosion simulations are invisible and you generally can't get enemies to shut up and stand still while you fire rockets at them. My framework is for a boomer shooter in the Build Engine Holy Trinity style so I'm going for fast fun explosions rather than super detailed shrapnel simulation etc.

My current thinking is this:

1. Overlap sphere at the point of explosion.
2. Filter overlapped colliders down to entities that are allowed to be hit by explosions.
3. Filter remaining colliders down to ones that have direct line of sight to the explosion with raycasts (i.e. prevent things from getting hit through walls). I suspect I will need to fire raycasts at enemy feet, waists, and heads to avoid silly situations where explosions miss an enemy because a prop is blocking a ray to the center of their collider while the rest of their body is exposed... but perhaps this is overkill?
4. Calculate and publish force and damage messages for the remaining colliders based on distance from the explosion point.

So... does anybody have any thoughts on how to improve this approach? Or ideas for smarter or more elegant approaches? Am I missing some secret industry standard explosion trick?

I’m a solo indie developer from Poland. When I started working on my first game, TRENCHWORMS, I barely knew how to program.

I decided to make a real-time 2D action game inspired by Liero, with fully destructible terrain, 26 weapons, BOT opponents, and local and online multiplayer.

Looking back, I probably chose a much bigger project than a beginner should have.

Getting the different systems working together was a learning experience, and adding multiplayer made the project even more ambitious.

Now, after all that work, I’m just three days away from releasing my first game on Steam.

One thing I’ve learned is that finishing a game and getting people interested in playing it are two completely different challenges.

For those of you who’ve released your first game:
What was the biggest lesson you learned from your first launch? And what would you do differently if you could start again?

Thank you in advance!

Hey Folks,

I've been in game development for around 3 years now, tho I come mostly from a business background rather than games.

I've had multiple successful online businesses and doing well for myself

I very well understand how hard game development is.

I want to get feedback / thoughts from the people here, who understand business, and have launched a successful game, and know the importance of marketing, and how a game won't randomly sell it self.

In regards to marketing, what would be the best way to go about marketing for a game? as far as I know atleast getting a couple thousand steam wishlists before launch

I am working towards organic content, having it clipped, etc..

but also considering gamers / Youtube channels being paid to honestly pay and review the game.

Would appreciate some direction here. thank you.

I’ve been working on HareStack, a tool that converts 3D models into sprite stacks, including animated models.

The goal is to make it easier to use 3D models in 2D game engines without having to manually create every slice and animation frame.

I’m still working on it, but I’m considering releasing it to the public for free.

I’d love to hear what other game developers think of this workflow and whether they’d find it useful.

Here’s a quick demonstration of the conversion process.

Hey r/gamedev,

We're a small indie studio. We just finished Steam Next Fest with two games, and the results were so different that we thought the comparison might help others. Both demos had been out since August, so neither game was "fresh" going into the fest.

The two games going in:

- Grandma Left Me a Building: 13,150 wishlists. For the month before the fest it was already doing about 200 wishlists/day on its own.
- Hellmate (chess deckbuilder): 700 wishlists. Basically flatlined before the fest, at 2-3 wishlists/day.

Wishlist charts:
- Grandma Left Me A Building

- Hellmate - Chess Deckbuilder

Days 1-2: the opposite of what we expected

Grandma: Nothing special happened. It kept doing its usual ~200/day. We honestly couldn't feel any extra effect from Next Fest.

Hellmate: This one actually woke up. After weeks of 2-3 a day, it got ~70 wishlists in the first two days.

We didn't read too much into it, though. We'd heard that the first couple of days of Next Fest don't tell you much, so we half expected things to change. We just didn't expect them to flip this hard.

From Wednesday evening: everything flipped

The common wisdom is that the first ~48 hours of Next Fest are when Steam figures out which demos to push. Whether that's exactly how it works or not, things turned around for us right when that window closed, on Wednesday evening:

- Grandma took off and settled at around 700 wishlists/day. Its best day was Saturday, with 1,150 wishlists, our biggest single day ever.
- Hellmate slowed down to about 10/day. That's still better than its pre-fest baseline, but the early momentum was gone.

The China surprise

Partway through the week we noticed something odd: China had become our #1 country by far. Over the week it made up about a third of Grandma's wishlist adds, almost twice as many as the US. Including Taiwan and Hong Kong, it was around 40%. Before this we had barely any traction there.

That made us wonder whether something besides Next Fest was going on, so we dug into the traffic sources. These are rough ranges, not exact figures:

- Visits from Next Fest: roughly 1,400-2,000
- Visits from "Other" (external sources): roughly 3,000-4,000

So our best guess is that around half of this week's wishlists weren't directly caused by Next Fest. Our theory is that the game got shared somewhere on Chinese social media. We tried to find the original post and couldn't. If anyone knows a good way to track down where your game is being shared in China, we'd love to hear it.

The catch is that we can't cleanly separate the two. The game may have been shared in China because people found it through Next Fest. And the outside traffic probably raised our numbers, which may have made Steam push us harder inside the fest. It all feeds into itself. Still, if we had credited every wishlist to Next Fest, we would have drawn the wrong conclusions about what works.

Another data point that fits: during the fest Grandma hit an all-time peak of 41 concurrent players in the demo. Every one of these spikes happened around 14:00 GMT, which is evening in China (22:00 Beijing time).

Don't forget the deletes

Something that's easy to miss in the charts is that wishlist deletes went up along with the adds. On Grandma's peak days we were losing about 100-140 wishlists a day, compared to almost nothing before the fest. Over the week, deletes came to about 12% of adds.

China's ratio was about 11.5%, slightly lower than the rest of the world (~13%). Among the countries Steam lists individually, the highest ratios were Germany, the UK and Taiwan (around 17%).

Still, if you only look at the adds line, your Next Fest will look better than it really was. All the numbers in this post are net.

Final numbers (net)

- Grandma Left Me a Building: 13,150 → 17,300 (+4,150)
- Hellmate: 700 → 825 (+125)

Takeaways

1. Don't judge your Next Fest by the first 48 hours. We expected some change after day 2, but our early numbers still pointed the opposite way from how the week actually ended.

2. Check your traffic sources before you credit Next Fest. In our case "Other" brought in roughly twice as many visits as the Next Fest pages. Without checking, we would have overestimated the fest's effect by a lot.

3. Look at the country breakdown. A sudden jump from one region usually means something is happening off-Steam, even if you can't find the exact source.

4. Look at when your spikes happen. Peak CCU times can tell you which audience is actually playing.

5. Track net wishlists, not just adds. Deletes go up with traffic, and the ratio can vary a lot by country.

6. Momentum going in seems to matter. The game that was already growing got amplified. The game that was flat got a short bump and then faded. (Two games is obviously not a real sample, so take this with a grain of salt.)

Happy to answer questions or share more numbers if it helps anyone.