Hello everyone! Welcome back to another devlog – this time with a slightly different twist. Today, I’ll be talking about something that a lot of VN devs seem to struggle with: Marketing. Specifically, marketing your VN for Kickstarter.
Going into The Divine Speaker’s Kickstarter, we were all nervous but confident. We knew that we did as much as we could beforehand to run a successful Kickstarter and we were happy with our starting position.
45 days later, we finished at 183% of our goal, $29,499AUD.
Disclaimer: This isn’t the be-all-end-all of marketing. This is just what worked for us. Your experiences might differ, and that’s great too!
First of all, let’s start with:
Why should I market my game?
Well, do you want to sell your game? Do you want your Kickstarter to succeed? If the answers are yes, then you need to market your game.
These days, more games are coming out than ever before. You don’t want yours to fade into the crowd, you want it to stand out. You can have the most intricate storyline, the most beautiful artstyle, the best voice actors out there, but it’ll all go to waste if nobody KNOWS your game exists. You have to get your game in front of as many eyes as possible.
Even if your game is free, market it! You’re putting all your love and soul into something, and you want people to play it.
When should I start marketing?
Straight away! No jokes, as soon as you have something to show. Backgrounds, sprites, CGs, sketches, anything! The earlier you start the better.
We started our Twitter/Tumblr/Facebook pages September 2018, when all we had were the sketches for Raen and Fawn. At the time, I thought “Am I starting too early? Is anyone going to be interested in this”? The answer was yes, but it wasn’t instant. Don’t feel discouraged if your first posts only get a few likes. Build up from there!
Finding your audience
A major part of marketing is working out who you’re marketing to. Is your game BL, GL, otome, GxB, or a mix? Depending on the crowd you’re advertising to, you’ll want to showcase different things.
Working out your genre is a good first step in knowing your crowd. Take some time to research other similar games, and see what they’ve labelled themselves as. Here’s a few basic ones to start with (Please note: there’s always outliers. This is just something to get started with, and not a definitive list. Also, just because I’ve linked these games doesn’t mean they were successful in their marketing. It’s just to see how they’re classified):
Obviously, these are just categories for you to start with. More likely than not, your game will fit into a few different categories, or even none of these at all! Treat it like somewhere to start your investigations, and branch out from there.
Marketing Campaigns
If you know anything about TDS, you’ll know that it focuses mainly on a long, fantasy storyline, rather than being purely smut. However, this didn’t stop us from using suggestive art for advertisement. In fact, it was a major part of our marketing campaign.
Of course, there’s varying opinions about this. Some people worry “I don’t want my game to be associated with lewd things” or “I want my game to be known for it’s story, not just adult content”.
These are reasonable thoughts! When you put a lot of effort into an intricate storyline, that’s what you want people to notice. But you can’t see a storyline at a glance.
We found that suggestive and nice looking art is good at catching peoples eyes and making them want to learn more, whilst an amazing game and storyline will help to retain those players.
Here’s some examples of our promotional art:
However, this totally depends on the kind of game you’re making. If it’s a family friendly adventure, you probably don’t want to post anything lewd, but you should still keep in mind that graphics are the best way to catch someones attention. Promotional art is fun for both the audience and you! Have some fun with it. Make some AUs. Post polls to get people involved in the decision making process. Go wild!
The more you post, the more people will associate you with a brand. Make them WANT to learn more about your game, to follow you, to play your demo.
Another thing to keep in mind: Art style matters a lot for a commercial game. You can’t go in with amateur art and expect to make $100,000. Keep your goal reasonable and attainable.
Statistics (Where did our backers come from?)
We found that 63% of our backers pledged via Kickstarter. Just having your Kickstarter active is advertising by itself, so I suggest aiming for a 45 day campaign minimum. Now, onto some interesting numbers (this isn’t all of our stats, but some handpicked ones):
Referrer | # of Pledges | % of Pledges | Total Pledged |
Recommendations | 106 | 19% | $5622 |
Search | 36 | 17% | $5085 |
Direct Traffic | 85 | 13% | $4083 |
48 | 10% | $3203 | |
9 | 4% | $1403 | |
Tumblr | 12 | 1.5% | $450 |
Youtube | 8 | 1.3% | $390 |
Itchio | 8 | 1% | $350 |
Lewdgamer | 3 | 0.4% | $135 |
4 | 0.4% | $126 |
Lots of numbers! As you can see, a lot of our backers came organically from Kickstarter.
From our social media, Twitter was our biggest referrer. Tumblr and Facebook didn’t do so well, but there may well have been more backers from these places that simply went to Kickstarter and searched there.
A lot of our big backers came directly to our campaign from youtube playthroughs and posts on social media, too! Some people came directly from itch.io, but more likely than not players that enjoyed the demo went to our Twitter and then found our KS there.
You’ll also notice we receieved $135 from Lewdgamer. That might seem like a small amount, but just reaching out to people can help to boost your total. If you contact 50 people and 10 end up making posts/playthroughs, it’ll already be worth it.
If you haven’t already checked it out, go take a look at this amazing spreadsheet of BL game crowdfunds created by the BLGW crew.
Okay, but what should I do to make my Kickstarter successful?
A question I can’t exactly answer! I’ll tell you what we did, and you can take what you want from it. First of all, the things we did to prepare:
During your Kickstarter:
There we go! There’s a bunch of things you should consider doing in the lead up and during your campaign. Following these won’t necessarily make your campaign successful, but they’re sure to help.
Developer and publisher of narrative heavy games.