There is so much that goes into making even a small game: design, writing, art, playtesting, editing, publishing, etc. And yet, making games is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to running an independent game studio. Even if you make an amazing game, it can be difficult to find customers if you don’t invest an equal amount of time and resources into marketing.
As someone who is new to the games industry, I am trying to focus on small achievable milestones as I learn new skills. I know that my first projects won’t have the scope or resources like well-known indie games like Gone Home, Butterfly Soup, or Dream Askew. But I’d still like to give them all the love and polish and attention that I can, and that includes marketing.
So, I reached out to a couple of other indie game designers who have released successful narrative games with queer themes to learn more about what strategies and tactics they used to market their games. I spoke with Jay Dragon about their tabletop RPG Sleepaway and Sisi Jiang about their IGF-nominated interactive fiction game LIONKILLER.
Sleepaway by Jay Dragon
Jay Dragon is a prolific role-playing game designer. Since joining itch.io 12 months ago, they have published 24 game projects there, many of which are compilations of multiple games. Some of their games are poems, some are zines, some are rituals, some are secrets.
Sleepaway is currently Jay’s best-known game and largest publicly released game. It is a tabletop RPG about a group of camp counselors defending their campers from a terrible creature known as the Lindworm. The Sleepaway book is 130 pages and contains illustrations and character art by multiple artists.
I asked Jay why Sleepaway was the one game of their many RPGs released in the last year to get this lavish treatment.
“I made the game and then I looked at it and I realized that it was going to be bigger than anything else I had made yet. It was like, okay this is going to be a chonky boi, and so I need to make this what it deserves to be. I have artist friends, so let me do a Kickstarter and pay them what they’re worth.”
In addition to that desire to do the game justice with a fully featured publication, Jay also believed that the potential market for Sleepaway was significantly larger than the market for many of their smaller lyric games. This intuition proved correct when they launched the Kickstarter and surpassed their initial goal of $3500 and raised over $14,000 from 501 backers.
Before the Kickstarter
While Jay may be relatively new to itch.io and publishing printed games, Jay is not new to game design. They started running, producing, and designing large-scale LARP events when they were 14 years old. This decade of experience has honed Jay’s ability to conceptualize and pitch games to different audiences.
“People always make fun of me, because when I write something, I write the title first before I write anything else. When I sit down to make a game, I have the concept in my head and I’m like ‘what’s the game called?’ And then I name it something and then I can write it. But I can’t write a game unless I know what it’s called.”
Funnily enough, Sleepaway originally had a different title when Jay first started writing it. Jay knew at the time it wasn’t the right title, so after the game was finished, they went back and changed it. Once the title changed, Jay felt like they were ready for Kickstarter, because they knew the best way to pitch the game.
“One of the most important skills in all of this is just being able to give a good elevator pitch and then making sure all aspects of your product connect back to that elevator pitch. I see a lot of people fail at that on Kickstarter. If I look at the title and the tagline and the cover art and I don’t already know what it is and why I should back it, they’ve already made an enormous mistake.”
Jay had the pitch, but knew if the Kickstarter was going to be successful, they needed phenomenal cover art.
Jay negotiated with one of their artist friends to create the Sleepaway cover art. Because Jay has spent years in the LARP and TTRPG communities, they have many talented friends who are willing to collaborate. This was essential, because while Jay has many skills (game design, writing, graphic design, marketing, distribution, printing, publishing), they also have a very realistic understanding of their own limitations.
“I do not know how to do art. I do not know how to edit. I do not know how to manage podcasts. But I know a lot of artists, editors, and podcasters.”
In summary:
Know your game’s elevator pitch, maybe even before you make the game
Don’t be afraid to change your pitch if it isn’t working
Befriend as many cool talented people as you can
During the Kickstarter
Once the cover art was complete, Jay felt they had enough material to launch the Kickstarter. The text of the game was mostly complete, and the success of the Kickstarter would determine exactly how much additional art Jay could commission.
To coincide with the Kickstarter, Jay released an early PDF version of Sleepaway online for people to test. This lets people see the game mechanics and world-building at work in Sleepaway before deciding to back the project. It also gave Jay some much-needed playtesting feedback to help finalize the game.
Most of Jay’s promotional efforts for the Sleepaway Kickstarter happened through Twitter. Jay only had about 250 Twitter followers when they started promoting Sleepaway, by the end they had 500. Sleepaway was also promoted by Kickstarter on its front page and the cover art was feat
