The Pit: sharing indies online

Sharing indie games is much harder than you might think. Case in point... my technical posts about how to make games at times look more popular than the games I make.

I'll take for granted that few are in it for the money - but do you want players for your games at all? I do! 

Finding players for free games online may be no easier than selling games on mobile!

I recently released two games on indie game sites gamejolt and itch.io.
The first game is a multiplayer, toon styled shooting game one month in dev.
The second game is a shortie visual novelette made in a day.

I shared stories using Facebook, Tumblr, DeviantArt and IndieDB. I also release short news on GameJolt (probably a complete waste of time). I considered using social software a la hoot-suite but for now I might stick to posting myself.

I collated traffic sources for itch.io:



Taking this at face value, one may draw a couple of conclusions or at least, ask questions.

Is the shooter worth the effort?

30 days of dev. yields at best the same number of plays as 8 hours!
For now I’ll put this conclusion aside. The shooter got on itch.io on the late, so it would be reasonable to throw gamejolt data in the mix but I can’t think of a clean way to do that.

Also... I have data from the Photon server showing a DAU in the 5-10 range.

Contemplating a synch-ed launch on a bigger site; not expecting conclusive results.

In social mode, users engage with casual games.

I have convergent data (game jolt via google analytics) to back this up - suggesting that social accounts for no more than 12% of plays on the shooting game.

Of course, with this level engagement you don't get any explicit feedback or ratings.

Conclusion?

I don't have one really! Instead, I would ask: how do you share your indie games?

For reference, you can find the games analysed in this article here, on itch.io.