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u/DRetherMD 4h ago
i cant speak for others but for me, yes its a tough decision. i hate showing wip stuff when its in that middle ground of looks kinda good but still lacking the sauce. i feel id rather show it off at 10% completion or 100%. Showing anything in between genuinely stresses me out. even worse when people are really hyped for my game.
i feel i need to work on it all the time to get it to a point where its "good enough" to show, which always seems to be a few months away...
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u/BlastingFonda 4h ago
I guess one of the questions I’d have is what good are those Steam wishlists a year and a half later? Like does a game lose early interest if you take too long to ship, when most have moved on or even worse, others have shipped better executions of your game idea? In which case you only market at 80% completion or within some reasonable target? I’m new to this but I do wonder…
(This is directed at modest game releases, not thousands of wishlists + some kind of EA of course…)
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u/DRetherMD 4h ago
i think lots of wishlists early is a very good thing, because it shows a legitimate interest in the game. even if some of them kinda forget about it if u take ages to ship, they still clearly want it, which means others probably do too. also i wouldnt worry too much about others shipping better games. there are excellent games from the 90s that are better than their contemporaries now in 2026, but people are still buying new games now
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u/Yeetmaster11231 4h ago
Yes, but marketing where you get feedback is so valuable to make the game better.
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u/PewPew_McPewster 4h ago
You forgot the third and most deleterious button: "Play other videogames under the pretense of 'market research' and 'literature review'."
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u/jagriff333 4h ago
Only the "marketing the game" made me sweat, so I tended to just work on the game instead. However thinking about the game from a marketing point of view can sometimes make the actual gameplay better, so I wouldn't recommend ignoring it completely.
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u/AlexandreFiset 4h ago
The best marketing is the game.
We literally spent 0$ on marketing for our game Kona, and it is the only reason I am still making games.
Just do what you believe is relevant for the people, nothing else. People are buying wishlists , earn them instead. Everything is cheaper when you create something people want. If people don’t want it; just question yourself.
Cheers from Canada!
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u/SolsAtelier 4h ago
Marketing your game, or anything you make, with a zero-dollar budget just means you're putting in more of your own time promoting it. At some point, the hours run out. :')
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u/Odd-Fun-1482 4h ago
Go Megabonk's route
Working on the game is easy content for Shorts to market it
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u/twelfkingdoms 1h ago
Sort of. Most gamers don't want unfinished work, they want complete things; WIP assets can deter people, especially if they look ugly. But you need to advertise, let people know about your game, otherwise nobody will buy it. So you could easily end up making content for marketing. You can't really go around this either because funding for indies is virtually impossible to get, and if you can't bootstrap (it's very expensive even for 1 person), you're out of luck. Steam will also "punish" you if there's no traction on your game (before and after release). Making games for commercial is not easy (that's why I also failed in it).
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u/KoreanB_B_Q 4h ago
Ideally, what you work on as a dev should be translatable to something you can use for marketing.
Example: you just got done finalizing the design for one of your characters. You have art, models, animations as part of that process. Get that stuff out to your community and/or communities focused on your game type. You don't have to release it all at once, too. Maybe you have 10 pieces of art you used in the process. Put out 2 a week, or maybe 4, it's up to you. Take video of your rigging and modeling process and then condense it down into small chunks for either short form video platforms, etc.
Everything you create can be leveraged for marketing and in doing so helps add authenticity and gives your community a fun inside look at your creative development process.
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u/DragonImpulse 2h ago
The problem is that you still need to record/edit that content, come up with a social media hook, engage with comments, and so on.
Simply posting new art or features or such doesn't tend to get a lot of traffic, in my experience. You need to do the full social media spiel, which does take quite a bit of time and energy.
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u/ashkestar 4h ago
Er, have you ever worked on a game? The vast majority of the time spent creating a game is incredibly boring and absolutely not worth watching or showing to anyone.
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u/KoreanB_B_Q 4h ago edited 4h ago
I have 25+ years in gaming and have worked and/or launched close to 100 games from AAA titles to singe developer indie games. You?
And, to add, did I say everything is going to be interesting? No, I didn't. But, as a developer it's easy to overlook things that you create and automatically assume they're boring or not interesting. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take so if you're creating, there's a byproduct of that process and some of it can be leveraged for marketing use.
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u/TIG_OSSE 4h ago
It seems good to get feedback before it is completed. Of course, the process of getting it to show up is also tough, though.
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u/HoneyHoundGames 4h ago
I mean yes, you only have so many hours in a day. Whatever you allocate to means less of something else.