have any of you gotten a youtuber or review blog to check out your game?

pixeltroid

Member
So I was thinking about how indie video game marketing should be done. Note that I'm not talking about big "indie" games in the same league as Shovel Knight, Axiom Verge etc. but smaller indie games that exist only on gamejolt and itch.

I was wondering if any of you have gotten a youtuber or a review blog to check out your game and maybe write or say something about it, so least their audiences know the game exists.

If so how did you go about it? Twitter? Did you personally contact them?

How should one ideally go about spreading the word about his or her game?

Are there any content creators on youtube who are looking for unheard of games to play and/or review?

Any information would be appreciated!
 

woodsmoke

Member
The forums at itch.io have a few reviewers (like here) asking for games to review. I got a video review (or two?) for my games there.

And once a random Japanese website reviewed my game Catacomb Chess in their blog and made a video, but it disappeared after 2 years. I didn't do anything, but the characters in the game do look a bit Asian (unintentionaly).
 

TheSnidr

Heavy metal viking dentist
GMC Elder
I can vouch for Gamejolt! Posted my game "Doomshark" there, and a couple of popular youtubers found it and posted videos about it, and then hundreds of other smaller youtubers did the same:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=doomshark
The game was a silly little jam game made in three days, yet it's been exposed in youtube videos over a million times. I didn't market it any more than just posting it there.
 
T

Toolkitz

Guest
I made a game for Steam and hired a person to send presskits to reviewers. I got a few reviews but sadly very few people actually checked out the game.

Another game I asked some small time newbies on YouTube to check it out, and some did. Be aware these NewbTubers only had like 100 subs so of course it was easy to get them to play my game. Well, nothing happened from that. However, years later, another under 100 YouTuber made a video on the game after going through pages after pages of the fighting section of Game Jolt. Though he did not say he discovered it through YouTube videos, he mentions in another video of another game that he did not find any videos of that particular game so he must have searched my game on YouTube at some point.
 

Warspite2

Member
It seems like many bigger YouTubers lately are focusing mostly on AAA titles. I would try smaller youtubers first that are trying to make a name for theirselves. One day they may have 100k subscribers and hopefully will not forget you. Many times I can't help but wonder that it's not the developers that are making all the money, its the youtubers. Then if a youtuber with a few hundred thousand subscribers decides to make a game, chances are it will be a success as long as it's decent.
 

pixeltroid

Member
It seems like many bigger YouTubers lately are focusing mostly on AAA titles. I would try smaller youtubers first that are trying to make a name for theirselves.
Yup. I'm looking for smaller youtubers as well. Especially those who review indie projects. But of course, if a youtuber who review on AAAs and big indie projects decides to review my project, I'll be thrilled.

One day they may have 100k subscribers and hopefully will not forget you. Many times I can't help but wonder that it's not the developers that are making all the money, its the youtubers. Then if a youtuber with a few hundred thousand subscribers decides to make a game, chances are it will be a success as long as it's decent.
There appears to be some kind of a symbiotic relationships between small youtubers and indie devs. We give them something to create content and they give us some publicity and even valuable feedback.

I imagine it must be a great feeling to see someone else playing your game and people commenting on it on youtube. :)
 
From what I've seen, the talk about the influence of a big youtuber is being a bit overstated. I've seen lots of people say they were covered by pewdiepie or someone else really popular on the youtube community and only saw a slight bump in sales. Of course, there are outliers, but I've seen more people say that it doesn't matter much than I have seen people saying it matters a lot.

Not really trying to rain on any parades, and of course, try to get any publicity you can, but just pointing out that getting a youtuber to let's play your game might not necessarily lead to instant success. I think a lot of people watch let's plays -instead- of buying the game, I know I'm guilty of this.
 
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