Indie Game Movement - The podcast about the business and marketing of indie games.

Andrew Pappas serves as your guest as he is interviewed by Simon Bailey, one of the team members of The Business of Indie Games, a virtual summit that happens annually and is scheduled for Dec 9 - 13, 2019.  In this episode, we debunk some of the myths of paid advertising, dive deep into strategies and how data collected can be applied to other marketing efforts used to promote your indie game.

The Game Bakers have an incredibly diverse catalog of games, and they do a really good job of marketing them while avoiding giving too much away. In doing so, they show how it has become a pretty interesting artform.  We’re going to dive in further with how this works for them, what type of promotional materials they reveal prior to and after launch and understand their process better right here on Indie Game Movement.

It’s a big question we all face at one point or another. When does an indie dev get to the point where they should seriously consider taking it to the next step and form their own company. Starting any kind of side venture, it may be a big step but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take things seriously. At the very least, having some idea of what you want to do is important.  In this episode, Mustapha and I share our own personal experiences with forming our own companies, what the procedure was like for us and what we learned from it so you don’t have to sweat the small stuff when deciding if forming a company is right for you!

There are a lot of big events game industry events out there that indie devs are involved in, whether it’s PAX, E3, MAGFest, GDC or any other event. Regardless, with all of the events out there we understand that there are a lot of things people can be doing to make the most out of those events. In this episode, Mustapha and Andrew discuss how to make the most out of big events and offer some quick tips regardless if you’re an attendee, exhibitor or just following the event.

Out of the gate, indie devs are faced with a bunch of challenges from coming up with the concept of their game to...well frankly everything else. Of course, it’s hard to be on top of everything, but there are just some areas devs really can’t afford to skip. Specifically, that’s legal matters.  It might not seem like it matters much, but there is nothing worse than stepping into a legal mess that could have been avoided. Thankfully, Zachary Rich of Press Start Legal is here to talk with us about when is the right time to consider legal assistance, in what scenarios you would need help and how you can take action now so you don’t get caught off guard later when you least expect it.

If there’s one thing that indie devs should know they need, it’s having a thriving community. But building a community and supportive fan base is no simple task and not knowing what steps to take can easily make the challenge of building one overwhelming. Thankfully, Rami Ismail of Vlambeer is willing to offer his experience with creating communities and how they not only play a role to Vlambeer’s success but how his process and mission has had a positive impact on the gaming community as a whole.

In this episode, Mustapha and I decide to change things up a bit by rounding up several indie devs that were exhibiting their games at PAX East. Our mission was to find out what marketing challenges they faced and what they were doing to overcome them.

With so many games and other businesses resorting to crowdfunding as a means to finish their project, it’s always difficult for games to stand out among so many distractions. While it’s always a challenge to figure out ways to have your Kickstarter Campaign stand out,  Neal Laurenza of Skymap Games shares how their campaign was able to deliver a greasy punch through the clutter and reach their funding goal.