I saw the post yesterday but didn't reply at the time because i was busy. This is partially replying to the old post, but also some of the comments that have fallen here.
- First of all, perception of quality can be a difficult topic. I've gone through the motions with my own project, both on the side where I feel very ambitious and confident in the project, and then on the flipside where I feel down and doubtful about whether people will actually be interested. The take away here is that ultimately, your own perception can be unreliable, it is good to try and get honest feedback from fans and comments.
For the time being, I wouldn't necessarily make presumptions about your games "quality", especially given that I believe you are currently rating your game on its "potential" quality, not where it actually is right now. We all have grandeous visions of what we would love our games to look like, the features they want to have, but when you have been working on games for years, you know that while you can achieve some of those goals, and even exceed in certain areas, often times your game will never ever match that "perfect" vision you have for it in your head. At one point, time and money slap you in the face because it is infeasible to do everything, and if you try to, I can promise you that your game will take far longer than you imagine.
So I would say it's naive to think that "most" indie developers make bad games. I believe that 99% of developers have great intentions, but you'll find it is a lot harder to actually finish a game than you may initially anticipate. Once time pressure and resource limitations become a factor, the majority of developers get forced into the same path, of having to cut features, shorten the scope or force out an early release just so the project can stay alive. The pressures of development force this style of process out of even the best developers, it is simply the nature of the market and its worth considering that you may find yourself in a similar position a year down the line. There are also plenty of technical hurdles that you can hit a long the way too, which is one reason why I'd also be careful about considering alpha releases with progressive updates, because once you release a game, developing to update and bug fix can hold you back from being able to work on the big features that need time.
- Second of all, I see a lot of game developers talking about "the players" and "gamers" like they are some abstract topic. Making statements like "make a good game, people will come", "players will do this that" "players want this that". This is especially prevalent when talking about marketing, considering followers to be a set type of person, or setting expectations about how willing people will be to buy games. Ultimately, its important to consider that players are people just like you or me, and they will ultimately make their own final decision about purchasing a game. The reason I mention this is because it is important to cater to all of your following, and consider the sorts of decisions they would be making that would lead to a purchase of your product. If anything, it is a good exercise to put yourself in the shoes of a prospective customer and see how easy or hard it is to convince yourself to buy your own game.
Some of this can be progressively done during development, some is perhaps best to do later on once you have a clear identity behind your game. From my own perspective, I really don't like being strung along, and I hate that I have to be quite vague with our game's following, given unpredictability of development, therefore i'm personally trying to cultivate more of a long-term plan that hits the ground hard once the game is ready. I feel the culture for following unreleased games has changed in recent years. Repeated disappointment has made people less willing to invest time and energy into getting excited about a game before it is a sure thing, so keep this in mind if you do plan on going through the alpha/beta/release pattern.
I'll also add that it almost doesn't matter what other games are, if you think other games are bad, then great! that's less competition!
Upon initial observation, its also important to make it easy for people to even find your project. In your big post yesterday, you talked about your twitter following. I could not find your twitter account at all, even when specifically googling the games name.
To clear this up a bit, I don't think marketing should be your main concern at this point. It is true that some developers muck it up, but ultimately, the single most important part is having a game, and getting the game to a point where you KNOW it can be released within a given time frame. You can do progressive marketing, however you have to bear in mind people do lose interest and disconnect from the atmosphere around the game if too much time passes. I think what you should be considering right now is the process for finishing and releasing a full game. The big mistake most developers make is getting themselves into a hole where they can't actually finish a game, whether it be down to technical issues (big technical challenges that are hard to solve, or have developed over time in the project as a result of poor planning), lack of time, lack of money etc; If you establish your process from the start, and avoid making assumptions about potential earnings during the process, you'll set yourself up for success. So yeah, I think the hardest part of making a game is actually finishing it, and marketing should take a backseat to that.
Though, while we are talking about marketing, I don't profess to be an expert, but some ideas that might help you come up with a plan:
1) As I said earlier, always think about how the players are going to approach your game. What do you think would interest them, and most importantly, don't make it difficult for them, or equally, don't let it be too obnoxious. There shouldn't be a need for people following a project to put an active effort into having to engage if they don't want to. The common things to do:
- Dev log (Gamejolt, Itch, Own website, twitter, facebook)
- Video dev log/trailers (Youtube, Twitch)
- Community and discussion (Forums, Discord servers/groups, skype groups, reddit)
2) Consider how you expect information to spread, and how people will actually discover these sources in the first place. I.e. at some point, you need a means of expanding your groups. One of the most effective ways of actually getting people to buy the game and play the game is word of mouth. You can start small with this, but if you have a small base following and a few friends, you can try and get them to play the game with their friends, and expand it from there. This can require a bit of active effort from you, but can be highly effective. What's the point in having 10,000 followers on twitter for example, if only 2 of them will actually buy the game?
3) Release is probably the most important stage, and at this point, you need to be able to efficiently consolidate all your platforms to get a surge of people going to your game at once. If you use a platform like steam, discovery is pretty rubbish unless your game starts generating sales. Once you do that, your game may boop up in the ratings and thus become more easily discoverable, at which point, you can make the most of their platform to actually expose your games to other players.
Adding onto this, and why I also feel that you should potentially avoid alphas/betas on steam, any negative feedback or trickled sales caused by a staggered release may impact the ability for the project to snowball and generate a mass of sales in one go, so i would save prerelease versions for smaller platforms like itch and gamejolt