Preface: I. HATE. MARKETING. Well, maybe not too much really. It’s just that I have massive awkwardness vibes whenever I promote the stuff I do, particularly online. I know it’s a pretty normal and standard thing to do, but for me I just have this ick. There’s also this idea of how a marketing shtick becomes too cringey, too try-hardy, or too boring when done incorrectly.

Don’t get me wrong though. Marketing IS important. If not, how are you going to promote your work? How are people going to know about your work in the first place? For people who have the money, it’s as easy as hiring a marketing agent or just someone who is well-versed in advertising. For a three-person crew like us in God’s Radio Dev, that has their roles already picked out, eventually somebody has to do the marketing. It’s a very ughhhh job that all of us don’t want to touch but have to.

Fortunately, with the internet, there are a plethora of ways to do exactly that. The job here really is just… the willingness to do it. This devlog talks about how we went about our marketing, even if we… fumbled quite a bit. 

Joining Otome Jam

I want to emphasize the fact that if not for Otome Jam 2022, we wouldn’t have gained the following and views on our game Meteor Shower we currently have. I think it’s important to mention this in this devlog because it’s also a way to boost engagement. Fans of the genre (Otome, in our case) will flock to the jam to see loads of entries, and what better way to promote your game by joining!

One (very, very) small caveat for joining, however, is the fact that it runs for only 2 months. Fortunately, creators actually can prepare ahead of time, just so long as their entry are still within the bounds of the rules of the jam they are joining.

One funny thing our team did is we started working on Meteor Shower literally probably uhh 2 days after the jam just started

I’m not kidding – Skai literally just thought of the idea that day. Wild. 

Youtube & Tiktok

Ahhh, video format promotion. In the case of our visual novel format, I think it’s inevitable we used both of these platforms. These sites, however, serve different purposes.

Everyone knows Youtube. It’s the internet’s most popular video site after all. The itch webpage allows us to use Youtube link embeds, which made it trivial where we uploaded our trailer for the game! Since then we’ve used some of that embed function to upload some music for devlog entries. In the future, it can also be a possibility to upload more trailers and content there relating to current and/or future projects.

Tiktok, however, is a different beast all in itself. Sure, you can post a trailer there, but the way that it works is very reliant in keeping a viewer’s attention to the content you post, so I am not very sure if the trailer thing would even work! Things that gain traction on the site are usually based on the current trend, and trends really REALLY come and go – one week it’s the autotuned song from a kid liking corn, then the other week it’s Angela Basset who did… the thing? It’s easy to get lost if you don’t frequent the site. And you really, really HAVE to be creative with how the trends relate to what you’re promoting.

So far, we’ve not really made much… traction there. We’ve uploaded a short-ish, tiktok-like trailer for Meteor Shower, but then, not much. Blame it on my busy schedule and reluctance to cringe. Someday, though, we’ll take advantage of it.

Twitter & Tumblr

Of course, the design of online posts have been so commonplace in our internet era, that you would literally be shooting yourself in the foot if you’re not on them. These sites are quite literally our generation’s newspaper in the morning.

Twitter, in my opinion, blows all of these other promotional techniques out of the water. You can upload content to promote your work, you can follow other people and follow their work, you can interact with people in the community you want to be in, all that jazz! I think it’s made online community building easier.

We’ve used it to upload videos and sometimes screenshots from our games, we’ve uploaded there links from our devlogs such as these, and of course, who doesn’t love memes.

(btw, I think I may be a Scarlett. Minus the drama, of course.)

Tumblr is, well, I think, a different beast all on its own. For some, it may seem that it functions almost the same as Twitter, but there is kind of a culture that permeates the site after its years of existence. For one, I recognize how it is more image based in its posts rather than text, and how the notes function on the site can be a doozy to look at (Is it just me? I’m sorry tumblr frequenters, maybe it is just me).

 Also, well, we haven’t done any content on Tumblr LMAO. To be fair, we created an account when Twitter was Muskified, as a contingency plan if ever the site self-destructed (because let’s be real – a lot of us don’t like the takeover and was genuinely worried of losing the site). So, till we’re all stable, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to try and start posting on Tumblr once we’ve figured out the kinks. 

Telling all your friends

This is a pretty fun, though simple, marketing technique. You can definitely get something from this! When the demo for Meteor Shower released, we went and sent it to a couple of friends on our Discord servers! Not a bad idea to use classic word of mouth to promote it. Since we can also go on a group call with them, why not host a playthrough as well! It’s more personal for us to talk to our friends directly while playing the game and getting to see their reactions in real time! They can give criticism to your game, and they can tell it to other people if they really enjoyed it. 

Writing devlogs

As a closer and a last point, I think it is also a good practice to write these devlogs when you’re making a game. There is great importance not only in spreading the word, but also maintaining that audience gained by keeping them updated about your game.

Devlogs can contain different things, maybe you can talk about project management, or things like art, music, writing, characters, etc. A little ramble about something on your game can definitely fill up a page or two, and you won’t even notice it. Or you can just… shitpost. Nothing wrong with that.