My game and trailer flopped! Only 250 wishlists. Here is what I did to flop
Game development · 0.90
Summary · qwen2.5:32b
The developer of a 2D sim racing game on Steam has garnered only 250 wishlists despite advertising across multiple platforms, including Reddit, YouTube, and TikTok, which yielded poor results or were shadow-banned. The developer used AI to create the steam capsule due to limited art skills and is considering future improvements in marketing and game features for a planned early access release in 2028. One concrete detail is that the YouTube trailer received almost no views, partly because YouTube did not allow custom thumbnails.
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marketing challenges in game development
Excerpt
<!-- SC_OFF --><div class="md"><p>After developing my "2D sim racing game with highway driving" for many years I decided it's time to start a steam page and advertise game in some places, show off to people to collect feedback and wishlists.</p> <p>I made a trailer, screenshots, steam capsule (using AI), steam page. After creating steam page I started advertising it.</p> <p>Here is where I advertised (for free) and what results I got:</p> <p>-Reddit: not easy because most subreddits ban self promotion, but I posted on some subreddits, results are varied, sometimes I get 0 upvotes, sometimes there is some success. The best results so far was in <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/gamephysics">r/gamephysics</a>.</p> <p>-4chan and other imageboards: good because you can keep "bumping" your thread to keep it alive, however 4chan is very niche site, almost dead, there is not much people there that could wishlist your game. They are also very negative and criticize a lot, but this is kind of good, I got lots of great feedback about what to improve in the game.</p> <p>-Youtube: my trailer got almost no views, it doesn't help that youtube doesn't allow me to upload my own thumbnail for the trailer. I only got 200-300 views in total for two trailer videos.</p> <p>-Youtube shorts: I uploaded many short videos, I typically get 1-2k views per video. However, the problem is youtube isn't showing the shorts to Americans, but mostly Asians (but not Chinese).</p> <p>-Tiktok: tiktok instantly shadow banned my account for no reasons, I contacted tiktok support and they didn't unban it and didn't explain anything why they shadow banned. Maybe I should create another account.</p> <p>-Twitter: I get almost zero views because Twitter requires your account to be very active, you need to post comments to other tweets, but I don't know what to post because my Twitter just shows spam on my screen.</p> <p>-Instagram: tried short videos but got little views, about 100 per video.</p> <p>-Facebook: didn't try it. I think it's for old people (boomers).</p> <p>-Bluesky: similar results to Twitter but a bit better, but it also requires your account to be active, I don't know what to post.</p> <p>-content creators: I have not tried it yet. I plan to. But should I pay them if they ask for money?</p> <p>-forums: Didn't try it yet.</p> <p>-4chan indie game festival (v3expo): got some wishlists from it, but it's pretty niche festival and only once per year</p> <p>Do you have any ideas where else to advertise my game? Do you have ideas how to improve my results with the current platforms?</p> <p>Do you have feedback on my game, how to improve it?</p> <p>Why did I made the steam capsule using AI? Because I have too low art skills to make it on my own and professional artists cost $500+ for capsule.</p> <p>I could still hire artist in the future for the capsule.</p> <p>Paid ads? I could use them but when the game is already released, now I would just burn money.</p> <p>The planned release for Early Access is in 2028, I am not in a hurry, so I still have time to improve the game, capsule, marketing.</p> <p>What about events and festivals? It's hard to find suitable event for my game. I was in v3expo which is a 4chan gamedev event.</p> <p>I plan to participate in Steam Next Fest but I need good amount of wishlists first.</p> <p>Link to 2 minute trailer: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW4QzwUWn_0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW4QzwUWn_0</a></p> <p>Link to steam page: <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/4660070/Destructor2D/">https://store.steampowered.com/app/4660070/Destructor2D/</a></p> <p>Trailer is a bit outdated, I have youtube shorts with the current state of the game.</p> </div><!-- SC_ON -->   submitted by   <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Destructor2D"> /u/Destructor2D </a> <br /> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1uor9vc/my_game_and_trailer_flopped_only_250_wishlists/">[link]</a></span