YouTube is one of the best ways to promote a game nowadays, because it’s a free platform and anyone can upload or access it at any given time. If harnessed properly, this can be a goldmine for any game designer, as it can bring in a lot of traffic and astounding results as a whole. But the best part is that the traffic is all organic which means that you will actually be able to generate customers quite easily. In this article, I’ll share a few basic tips in order to make the most out of YouTube as a nascent indie developer.
Find a YouTuber who plays games
There are many YouTubers that play titles often and have gaming channels, and they are the perfect ones to contact. You will need to focus on as many as possible, no matter if their channels are very popular or not, because in the end this is not too much of a problem. Just ensure that they are playing games on the console/platform you want, and more specifically check if they cover your specific genre.
Contacting the YouTuber
Send an email instead of using the YouTube messaging system as the message might get ignored. Make sure that the mail is short, personal and relevant, but at the same time try to explain why your game deserves to be covered and why it would fit the YouTuber channel.
Of course, you also need to add some in-game footage or at least a trailer for the YouTuber to get a feel for your game. Also, provide a way to download the game, be it a Steam key or DRM free download.
Dealing with rejection
Do not spam the YouTuber instead try to be professional. They might have missed your mail, so try to follow up with a message on mail or Twitter in the next few days.
Optimizing your game for the YouTube platform
You will need to try to make your game friendly for the YouTube environment. Some of the best games for YouTube are easy to record and support a windowed mode, but they also bring in neat mechanics as well as humor. If the game makes gamers laugh when playing, it’ll absolutely have a huge leg up on games that don’t.
Leveraging the power and reach of Twitch.tv
A similar approach like the one for YouTube can be used on Twitch as well. There are many live streamers on Twitch that provide you with some great ways to promote your game as well, so just try to contact them via social media, they’ll usually leave a contact method there as well!
As you can seem, YouTube as well as Twitch and other platforms bring in numerous opportunities to promote your game, all you have to do is to contact those persons that cover games on the said platforms and that’s it! Rest assured that using these channels will be very helpful, so keep it in mind when you want to promote your indie game!
Special thanks to our team for authoring this article.
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