#34 - Marketing Your Indie Game With Chris Zukowski

On Episode 34 of the Game Developer Podcast, we interviewed howtomarketagame.com's Chris Zukowski on, well, how to market an indie game. This episode was recorded live at GDC Showcase 2023 and produced by Jordan Mallory. Enjoy! Hello and welcome to our second live recording in the Game Developer Podcast today during GDC Showcase. I'm Alyssa McAlloon, publisher at gamedeveloper.com, and one half of your hosting crew today, alongside Game Developer's Editor-in-Chief Danielle Rando. Folks, I'm going to introduce today's guest in just a moment, but first just a quick hello to our audience today. So for those of you joining us live, we'll be keeping an eye on chat and the Q&A section. So be sure to ask any questions you may have for our guests, and I'll do them. We'll do our best, not just I, we will do our best, of course, to work those into today's conversation. And that being said, on to the podcast. Today, we were joined by Chris Zukowski, Game Marketing Consultant Strategist, and Steam Expert. Welcome, Chris. Thanks for being here. Hey, pleasure to be here. Thank you so much. Like, Steam Expert, you just need to know everything about Steam. I think every time we have a conversation, it kind of like six degrees of viewers into talking about Steam at some point. How's Steam doing? How you feel about Steam right now? It's fun. I'm only a Steam Expert because I read the entire instruction book for Steam because if you go to Steamworks, it's really dry stuff. That's all that makes me an expert. I just translate that stuff for everybody else, but no, just got off Steam Next Fest, just ended a few days ago, and that's always a good shake them up to see what's going on. So that was a fun thing that a lot of games were in Steam Next Fest. Always participate if folks watching this have an upcoming Steam game. I always say, "Target the last Steam Next Fest before you launch." I'm just going to go right into the tips free. No, yeah, absolutely. Love it. We don't bother with us. Just go right into it. You can mon-loss for an hour, and I will be good with it. Yeah, it works for us. Don't tempt me. I guess talking Steam Next Fest then, because Steam Next Fest, I feel like I blinked and there was like wandering the pandemic gears, and then now there's just like one every month or every other week or something like that, themed one, seasonal ones. Is it really just a matter? Pick the one closest to your release date. Is there more of a strategy there? Is there one that everybody watches? Nobody pays attention to them all? What's the secret there? Yeah, so Steam Next Fest got a little hazy there during the pandemic times, but it comes every four months, so they're three per year, and it's typically February, June, October. That's when the big three are, and then that just happens. Now, the specific date moves around a little, but you never know exactly what date it's going to hit. Then what I always recommend is you want to go to the last one. The reason for that is because Steam Next Fest really prioritizes the games that have more wish lists, more what we call velocity, which is gathering wish lists, and they just move those games up. The games that do best are the ones that are already doing well. I always say the last one because your marketing is starting to hit its stride. You've been out there for a while, and then you go for the last one. I consider that one of the big mistakes is that in these, they get so excited, they make their steam page, and then they jump into the first one, but they have so little visibility on their steam page at that time that they just get buried by all the other games. So hold off. I know you're excited, Indies. Just wait it out. But is there kind of like a, you want to wrap it fire, like hit everyone, or do you just want to have the one and go for it? Like, is there any harm to doing more than one, or you kind of want to be focused about that kind of thing? This is the tricky part. They only let you do one. That's why you got to read the instructions. That's it. You got to read the instructions, or you just listen to me. So I read the instructions so you kids don't have to, all right? But yes, but here's the thing. There are other festivals, not just steam next best. I mean, steam, there's nothing special, that special about steam next best. It's just that it's one that you are guaranteed to get into, because they let in everybody, but only one time. But there are festivals all the time. In fact, I track them on my website if you go to, I run this site called howdemarketygame.com. If you go to howdemarketygame.com/festivals, my community collects when all these festivals are. And what do I mean by a festival are virtual ones? This is the hot new thing that kind of came out of the pandemic, really, is steam will dedicate a front page to some organization that comes up and, you know, since hey, we'd like a show spot. For instance, I think just just before kind of towards the end of steam, next best games of Germany. So an organization that collects all the games made in Germany, they went to steam and they said, can we get a festival in the steam? It was like, yes, you can. So if you made a game and your team is primarily based in Germany, you could apply, they might let you in. And then you get a front page spot right there on steam. So this type of marketing where you go to these organizations, one of the best things you can actually, it is the best way to collect wishless. And it's just steam next best is just one that you are guaranteed to get into, because all the other ones are kind of curated. I think start flowing and questions are starting to flow into chat there. Thanks for folks emitting those. We will get to as many of them as we can. So talking about like steam, but I guess like platforms. Oh, I don't know name. One in chat wants to know they say that you are like a steam guru to them, but they want to know if you've had experienced some other platforms like console or mobile. And I kind of want to talk about like other platforms on PC as well. So it's going to be my yes and onto this. Okay. Great. Yes. And question there. So basically here's a here's a short of it. I don't really do consoles. I don't do much because there really isn't an instruction book. Unfortunately, the console, how do you do well on consoles is basically you kind of find somebody on the inside. Some person on the on the platform, who's the, you know, manages the store there and you say, Hey, can I get my steam game or can I get my game featured on your shop and they take a look at it. And if they like you, they feature you, if they don't like it, they just bury you. That's essentially the whole marketing strategy for consoles. And the unfortunate thing about this is consoles, depending on the game, but for the most part, we have found that games will earn about 75% of their revenue from steam. And then the other quarter or so room thereabouts, depends on the game again, will come from the different, you know, the different consoles. So switch is probably the next biggest slice of that pie and then Xbox and and PlayStation make up that other kind of sliver. So really, the steam is where you're going to make your money for this. Unless you get like outrageous, you know, platform support, you know, they pay you money to be there. And if that's the case, by all means do it. Yeah. In the most part, it's going to come from steam most of your money. All game developments a little bit of luck, a lot of bit of luck, but on PC, it seems like you have a bit more control of your destiny than other places. Exactly. It is. At least there's an instruction manual, you know, that's something. That's something, you know, we always say when all else fails, read the instruction manual or just call me in and I'll read it to you at bedtime, you know, that's what your podcast, you can spend all the time reading the documentation. Yeah. Now you have a new idea for my next YouTube channel or something, you know, I'll just do that is. There it is. Can I ask if I were, hey, I have a five person studio. I have this game we've been making for three years. We don't really have a marketing plan, but we really want to have one. What would you say to a person like me? Would you say, okay, here's here's the day one stuff you didn't do, but you should do now and then kind of go from there. Or, you know, would you direct me towards one specific resource? Yeah. And I assume you're making a game that will go on steam, right? Yeah, that kind of, like I'm making a game for PC and, you know, consoles may be one day, but right now PC, yeah. Yeah, great, great question. So what I always advise is get your steam page up. And the reason is, these, the marketing schemes have kind of changed. Back in the day, you know, when it was early indie days, like this generation of Indies, like I'd say 2010 and beyond, it was kind of like a, basically you would like throw your, your marketing out like a couple months before you lost your game, you would hope to get covered by the press. A little bit of streamers, they didn't quite exist that as much as they do now. And then hope for the best and then you take off. But really the current meta, as we like to say, is get your steam page up nice and early. And as early as you possibly can. And basically what you're doing is you're trying to collect wish lists and get into those festivals, get some early streamer coverage and possibly some, you know, some press. So what I'd recommend is as long as your game, then it's kind of the minimum requirement, people always ask, wins too early with my steam page. This is what my basic is. If you've got the like genre pitch, you know, like you've decided it's not like, well, maybe we're a metroidvania or maybe we're a rogue life. We can't decide. You're like, okay, we are definitely a metroidvania. Let's just, I'm making your game for you here. And you're like, this is the genre we're going to be. And then you, your art's pretty finalized. And by art, I mean like you know the general look of it. Like, oh, we're going to be cel-shaded or we're going to be dark and grimy. Whatever the general art direction is, that's kind of settled. And then I'd say kind of pick like you've got enough for like three environments. So it looks like you've got a good variety to your game. It's not like a game that looks like one level. Yeah. Once you get that, make a quick trailer that's like 30 seconds long, get that steam page up. And then from there on out, what you're doing are these like kind of quick hits, you're trying to get into all those festivals that I mentioned. Again, how to marketagame.com/festivals to find out what the next one is. Seriously, in these, check it out. You got to get into those festivals. And then from the festivals, you also try and get your demo out. As soon as you can, demos are hot now. This is the new meta. I'd say since 2020, you got to get those demos out. And you're just riding that way. Get that demo out, trying to get streamers to play your demo, because a streamer can't play screenshots or a trailer. They just can't. So you got to get that demo out. And then you ride that way from here until launch. And then between there, you do some use some socials. It depends on your game. If your game's beautiful, great visuals, you might do well on TikTok or Twitter. Otherwise, you're going to be like the rest of us where you're just grinding it out and nothing really works on Twitter or TikTok. And then you just ride that wave of festivals, streamers, demo, all the way till launch. And then you do a big blast right at the end. That's basically my plan for you in your five studio. I love it. I'm taking notes. Here I go. I do want to ask how much obviously things have changed quite a bit. But I do want to ask a little bit about how much press you've been plays a part like review, cycle, stuff. How much does that even really play a huge part at this point? Because obviously, it seems like it's a little bit more about streamers, especially for smaller indies at this point, right? Yeah, it really is. Streamers are kind of the way to go. I've done a study and you know, I reached out, find out from Moenchaine. These I surveyed about 100 indie games. And I said, where did your big increases in visibility come? And most of them did come from streamers and festivals. The press we found is kind of a lagging indicator. So if your game goes hot, then the press covers you. And they said, Oh, there's hot game. There's a couple places that do, especially for the PC marketplace to do well, like IGN or game spot, if they feature your trailer, that does very well. But again, it's visual, you know, it's unfortunately journalism around that. But if they feature a trailer, that does well. The stories though, here's one thing that the journalism kind of does. It's kind of like a bank shot. So either the press comes after you've already popular. Or what will happen is you get covered by the press and interesting story. And then you can forward that to the streamers or possibly platforms like journal or, you know, like an Xbox or something. And say, Hey, we were covered here. Would you like to feature us? And then there's some featuring that comes from there. So it's kind of press kind of comes in at this weird bank shot, I'd say. I think taking that one step further, because we talked about steam festivals, we talked about the press. And of course, we just had summer game fest like a week ago, two weeks ago, I've lost track of all times. I know that's a little bit outside of like the steam-specific room of that. But how valuable are those kind of like more in-person or more kind of like online announcements festivals now? Because I seem to be veering a lot more indie than they were a couple of years ago, especially this year. Yeah. So the online ones you're talking about, I think it's called summer games fast. Yeah, the one that Haley does. And then there's a bunch of things that kind of orbit around that in the same kind of like festival announcement highlight reel five. Yeah. Yeah. So there's like PC gamer show. Those are good. Those will get you a ton of visibility. But the big mainline mainline ones like Jeff Giles and PC gamer show, those are I'd say the top tier. We've done some studies to see that that will give you the biggest increase in visibility. We usually track that via wishlist like biggest gain and wishlist. Those are, but they will cost you like 20, 30,000 dollars on up, depending on where you end up in the show. I mean, they go up. So that is not like if you're a first time day, maybe not, but if you have some investors or you've partnered with somebody else, that might actually be an okay thing to spend the money on. Why not? But I don't see it as a type of return. Really, there are a second kind of tier, which are like gorilla collective, which have had a couple clients get featured in. And that did pretty well. That's a mid tier gorilla collective. These are smaller. They don't cost as much to get in. There's another one called OTK, I think, or okay, tea. It's an organization. The streamers are kind of banded together and they do their own show. That one's a pretty good one. There's a lot of kind of these mid tier show at the same time that do well, a better cost benefit. You're not going to get as much visibility, but it doesn't cost as much. So those are kind of the things. But those are all the online shows where you know, they edit together all these streamers. They have somebody nice talking in between the different trailers. The in-person shows, I don't really recommend those. They're very expensive and the visibility isn't great. Now, if you want, you know, I mean, could you go pay hotel, airfare? Who needs that? So what I recommend is, if it's in your town, if there's like a big show like you live in LA or something and there's a show locally, sure, drive in as long as you can sleep in your own bed or maybe surf on somebody's couch, I just don't see much of a benefit. They're good for networking, but you don't need a booth for that. You can just walk around and say, you know, like, hand out the business cards, be charming and stuff. You know, do that stuff. You don't need a booth. There's a statement. This isn't a question that came in, but I'm curious what your take on it is coming out of chat. Talking about steam page timing, if you're working on crowdfunding. So Radian and Chat said that they, people may want to wait on getting a steam page up if they plan to crowdfund because getting a steam page up closer to when you launch a Kickstarter or a backer kit can build the hype for the campaign. Agreed to agree with that. How do you feel about crowdfunding right now? Yeah, that's a great point and I should have put a couple more caveats on that. Yes, I would say time of crowdfunding when you launch a steam page get those together and I'd even add a third thing, like if you could also get one of those festivals to feature you because sometimes you can apply for these festivals and say, they actually like it when you apply to one of these festivals and say, hey, we're going to announce some things. Then they're like, oh, we get announcements. This is awesome. So yeah, funding and and trying to do all this stuff. Yes, that's an excellent point to time, these sort of things. The other thing that might be a slight caveat is if you are going to get a publisher and Daniel's magical five-person company did not know if you were getting a publisher with that one. But with a publisher, what I would recommend is here's the thing. You go to the publishers, you do a round of, you know, the top ones that you think you're, you do well with. And when you do that, you just put it out there and say, hey, we're getting ready to launch our steam page pretty soon. We're going to announce our game. We haven't mentioned it anywhere and see if they bite. Give it like a month or two. See if you're getting negotiations or something. But here's the thing publishers will do, which I really don't like when they do this. They go like, oh, we're just not ready to sign right now. Why don't you fix level three, put a little extra polish on level three and come back to us. They always do that. That means they're not really interested, but they don't want to say no because they don't want to say no to the golden goose because you might be the golden goose. Here's what I recommend. If you get that run around, the publisher run around that way, we're like, oh, just tighten up this. And then we'll talk again to say no, thank you. Go publish your steam page. Do the whole marketing thing that I recommend. Then when you get all the wishless, because you did awesome, then come back to the publishers. You can do another round and publishers like it. When you've done a lot of wishless stuff, they're like, this is a hot one. We got it. Then you have a decision, what you're going to do. You might say, hey, we're getting so much visibility. We don't even need a publisher or you come in hot with all these wishless and you're like, hey, look at us now. Then they know, oh, well, that's hard to do. We're going to sign you. You come in and but match much better negotiating position if you publish a steam page. And I've talked to several publishers like on the record off the record. They're like, we don't care if you have a steam page up. We do not care. We actually like that because then we can quantify whether you're doing well or not. That's kind of another caveat to stack onto that statement from that other questioner. Nice. I want to dominate the conversation. I feel like I have, or like the question, the rapid fire questions that we're firing off here. I guess Danielle, Danielle, did you want to do a lightning round? If you just want to go for it. It turns into an A of A. It's pretty good. It really does. I want to ask one from the chat as well from Jeffrey Yang here who says, and I know this is something actually that you had touched on in a previous interview, Chris, so I'm getting it ready for you here. But many indie games start, I get their start on h.io before transitioning steam. And they are asking if you have any specific advice on how to make that process run more smoothly. I know itch is something that you have talked about in the past and having sort of work that's out there on itch that helps you to kind of build some momentum. But this sounds like a little bit of a, okay, when are you ready to take that next step from from an itch to a steam? Basically. Excellent question. Excellent question. So quick caveat on how it works. It just, and this kind of goes to, I think one of you also had a question about other PC-focused platforms like itch is one of them. You don't make a lot of money off of itch. I'll be honest. She just, you just don't think it's not a game. It's not a platform for buying games. I love itch. It's great. It's it's heartfelt, but they just you just don't make any money off of it. But streamers love itch because they like to just filter by free and they find like the weirdest wacky stuff and the itch audience loves wacky weird stuff. So it's a very potent audience for that kind of thing. And what I say is track how, how, how you're doing on that. If you're like doing a game jam, you know, you do a game jam, you upload it to itch. Do this a lot and just see which one picks up. There are several games, one's dome keeper. It used to be called dome romantic. You can find on the itch, just search dome romantic with a K at the end. And another one is Paglin. Both of those games started as game jam games that were uploaded to itch. And it's hard to say like somebody's going to the next question is like, well, what's good? I don't know what the good number is, but both of those developers had released a lot of games on itch. They just, you know, game jams, weird prototypes. And one of their games dome keeper and one case, Paglin and the other, it just was like five times as much traffic went to that game. That is an excellent sign because you want to judge that interest. That is really all these little weird marketing tricks and stuff don't matter. It's the game front and center, your game is the most important thing. And it's good before you dive in and spend five years, five, five people to make your game company. But it's actually an interesting idea. And I think itch is a great way to validate that idea. You know, they put up your game jam and you're like, people are emailing me asking if I'm going to make new levels. They keep saying, when am I going to release this full? If they're doing that, that's a good sign. And that does happen. Like people are begging Dylan from Paglin, they were like, please, can you finish this game jam game? I can't stop. And he's like, okay. And he actually abandoned one game and picked up Paglin and made that full. That's a good sign. And I can kind of come from, you know, itch. Now, I don't, one caveat, I don't know if the audience was quite asking this question. But when you launch a demo, I mentioned demos are one of the best marketing tools. You want to kind of have a steam page because here's one thing that could happen with your demo that's on itch. If it takes off really big, and I mean, like, streamers find it and play it forever on stream. And you don't have a steam page. You lost out on a lot of capture, which is like capturing wishless because it's just living on itch. That's the risk you play when you just upload to itch is it could take off. And then you're like, no, no, no, no, I'm not letting you scramble to make a steam page to kind of capture all that interest. That's rough. So just go in knowing if it's a prototype or a, you know, you know, game jam game that keep it small like that. And if it does take off, hopefully you get a steam page out under it pretty soon. Yeah, we're in the newsletter, right? Because you're also a big email marketing believer. Has the tide changed in the last couple of years? No way. I am so hard. I love it. I love it. A list that you could have done. This is a profession. I don't know. I don't know. I don't want to, I don't want to take you away from GDC central here. But here's the thing. You just fed right into it. So one alternative that you can do with itch. If you're crafty, you put it in a side of your newsletter. And that kind of buttresses you against that problem where you don't have a steam page up. Because I say, and there's a great game called Tiny Glade that's really cool. It's a wholesome castle building simulator. It looks really cool. And what you get what they did was they didn't have a steam page ready yet. They just were putting out prototypes. They didn't have an itch prototype. But they were putting out images on steam. And then they would just direct to a mailing list. And then they can kind of build that mailing list quietly. Then nobody else noticed about it. But they built it up to 25,000 subscribers. And then when they're ready with their steam page, they just converted that mailing list into steam wish list. And it was awesome. Perfect. So one thing you can do if you're doing jam games make a link in the front page like when you start up your game jam game on itch. It just says play. And then right now that sign up for the mailing list to find out if this is going to be real or you know something fun like that. And then they sent it for the mailing list. No, not everybody's going to do it. But then you're just capturing that interest in a place to hold on to it. That's what you're doing. And by the way, never has there been a stronger case for mailing list than right now. Because what's happening to Twitter, Discord, Reddit, all this stuff falling apart mailing list will never go away. They're like the rocks of South Dakota. They're just there. They don't go anywhere. That's what I love about email marketing is it's just there. Yeah. There's no one creepy CEO that can take away email. It just exists like as part of the internet infrastructure. So that's why I say they've never going any time when I'm not pitching for email addresses and email marketing have like a similar issue with like every other platform where it eventually gets so loud. It's hard to cut through the noise and you have to start being more competitive more emojis in your subject line or whatever works there. How do you navigate that? It's honestly not. It's like I don't know. It's like put a couple of emojis in there. But for the most part, it's pretty steady. The open rates for email is still just rocking it. So yeah, just do it. Most things. Most cities don't do it. So it's an open field for you. Just get them to sign up for your email address. And then when you're ready, tell them to wish list on steam. Bring board into future games as well because I'm trying to watch our previous conversation which everybody can watch in GDC fault or on the GDC podcast or game developer podcast feed. But one talk about like the best marketing you can do for your second game is to like have your first game and how you can kind of like grow your audience there and email list seem like a great way to kind of like make sure your second game set off for success. But it's really interesting type first game. Yeah, and I'll be honest for Indy's watch is your first game. I hate to tell you it's not going to probably not going to do very well. It's just that's just a way it goes. Don't lose heart. Nobody does well on their first game. I mean, very few. You hear about those stories, but they don't. You have to like roll it forward and the way you do it. It's like snowball. You're just like every time like your first game is not going to like whoever does well with their first of anything. So what you're doing is you're just rolling it forward and your email list gets bigger and bigger and bigger. So every time you do one of these announces when you're ready for your next game, you do the steam page, your mailing list is bigger and bigger and it just just grows and explode. So that excellent advice. So really, really, you gotta stop spouting so much stuff because the GDC is repeating points that you made there. So I just excellent by advice right back at you. A quote your quotes of the steam manual at you and I'll just be a genius for it. There it is. There is one question from Chad here. I wanted to ask maybe a bit controversial. I'm not sure. Andy wants to know. Chris, do you believe that the game market is winner take all with the majority not being profitable? If so, what percentage are winners? Do you foresee the status quo remaining the same for years to come or will the amount of winners increase? Okay, all right. Okay, so here's kind of my, this is what I'm thinking of. So this is kind of weird. Oh, it depends on winner take all means. I mean, anytime you do pro, I look at every game that releases every year and how much you're making and all that kind of stuff. So it's a hockey stick every single time. Like I've done a hockey stick and then I'll zoom into just the, I don't know what a part of the hockey stick is on. I'm from Arizona. Who even knows about hockey in there? But you look at that front part of the stick and even that is a hockey stick. So the earnings of games does go up. Now what and the other thing I did was I just looked at like, okay, every year, how many games are released and it always goes up. It doesn't go up as much as everybody thinks it goes up. But the weird thing is the number of games. So here's another thing about steam is they, it's like a big filter. They don't actually tell you. It's kind of like ghosting. Steam will ghost your game. Basically, basically what steam is, it's set up to be a filter to find out does this game have a juice? Like is this game actually fun? Because there's a lot of, you know, like spam games and asset shirts, junk games, hobbyist games. There's not a junk on steam. So the algorithm for steam is tuned to like filter out games that have no shot at anything. They know from pretty quick, like, no, he's going to buy this game. They give you on a shot. But then they are like, no, yeah, this game just doesn't have it. Thanks for playing, kid. We're just going to put you in the basement. And they just basically bury your game in the algorithm. It's sad. They don't tell you. I wish there was an email that says, sorry, we're going to bury in the algorithm. They don't. They're just like, oh, you're still doing good. Of course, like you try and buddy. So I get the analysis and roughly the cut off, I'd say it's about, don't tell anybody. It's about $250,000. Not afraid of the conversation we're having right now, so I think it's a great surprise. Just us in the 500,000. So it's about $250,000. I'd say, dollars earned. You start to lurch. You start to get stuff on steam for that. So I went and I said, like, well, how many games every year make that, you know, really above that amount. And despite the fact that the number of games is increasing, the number of games that make it, it's actually pretty steady. It's almost like steam only has a limited capacity to promote the games that it's chosen. No, I don't, don't quote me on 500. Don't tell steam, like, oh, Chris says it's only $500. I don't know the exact number. But the funny thing is I found is the number of games that reach kind of an upper tier is staying steady every year. And it's like steam has a natural capacity for how much it can promote. Because if you start spending enough time on steam, you start to see the same games recommended over and over again. Yeah. That's just how it goes. And so here's, here's where it's like, oh, is there a chance? I actually do think that there's a chance. I mean, it's not, if you want predictable, go become an accountant or, you know, something like that if you want that. This is the dream business. So it's going to be risky. So nothing here is definite. But I think the big problem that we have is kind of what we were talking before is a lot of people quit after their first game. So they make a game and they just quit. They realize one, they don't like it as much. Making games a lot less fun than playing it. And they're bad. I mean, most games are bad because, you know, your first drawing is terrible. Your first painting is terrible. Your first anything is terrible. But people do it. They release and they're like, oh, that's that kind of sucked. I don't like that. And then they ghost. They never, they never make another game. So there's always that much. And the games that do well are the ones are if you do the research on that. That's what I write about on my blog every week. How to market a game.com/blog is games that do well. And I always find the games that do well are from developers who've been around for a long time. It's like their fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth game. And so this kind of winner take all. Yes, it is winner take all. But I usually find it's the people who just kind of ride it out for a while and have released game after game and after game. And they they had a lot of bad games. It just didn't do anything. And so yes, but the whole system, the whole steam system pretty much all the marketing, everything is set up to promote and determine whether a game is fun or not. And people can determine if the game is fun or not in like a nanosecond. They just do. And I don't even know what it is. I don't know what it is. Not like, oh, if you had a guy with blue pants, there's no secret. It's like trying to figure out what makes somebody, you know, like why you fall in love with somebody. You can't put it into words, but some games have it and some games don't. And so the whole system is built to filter out the games and have it or the games that don't. That's just it. And so you just have to be around long enough to make it. So you figure out how to be good enough to make games that are fun and how to market it so that the games that your game is fun. But it's mostly the game. So that's why I hate to say it's like all luck and a winner take all system because it's mostly just it is winner take all, but that's because a lot of games just kind of suck. Yeah, it's a persevere in Cernan. I don't want to like pivot off of the topic completely, but the I spend a lot of time on TikTok is my dark secret. I talk about all the time. It's on secret at all. But there's such that kind of stamp decision of do I want to consume this content when you're scrolling through your TikTok feed and game dev TikTok is particularly interesting too, like both from like cozy game advertisements on there or like dev logs or something like that having to capture that like split second of attention in that kind of similar way of like does it have it or does it not and then that all spirals into a marketing thing and everything's bigger there. Not a question, just a comment. TikTok. Yeah, and if you spend a lot of time trying to do marketing like just post something on TikTok, I don't know who who who who who's tried it, but it's weird like just the most subtle thing like, oh, my background's blue, my video does better. I don't know, like just something about something just cascades in these systems like even TikTok, even though it's not always selling games, you could be selling like makeup or something. Just the slightest change can have an outsized result. And that's the way these systems are kind of built. And so a lot of people, they just they're just throwing stuff at the wall until they kind of figure out, oh, this is the kind of when I use this tone when I have the camera angle like this, when I dress like this or I'm in this environment, just enough of a change is all of a sudden you're like constantly getting 100,000 views. And that's essentially how the market works in both an any algorithm based market until a change is for no reason, you're just like, I didn't know anything wrong, don't know what's happening. Great. Yeah. Well, so what would be something you would give as advice to actually having a sustainable business to actually, all right, I want to make indie games, I love indie games, I'm willing to be very gritty and push forward and make my fourth and fifth game and things like that. What kinds of things would you say are like, okay, you're you're you're going to be in it for the long haul, you're going to actually maybe see some success here, you've figured out some of these lessons you're making it work. These are some strategies for that kind of success. Gritty game developed. I love it. That's a good set. Yes. All right, so here's how to get gritty. Okay, this is what I would suggest is one, don't spend so long in one game, especially if you're new and it depends on if you're new or not, but if you're new developer and new, lots of little games and there are some great developers that are releasing games like every three months, six months and they're not, those games aren't going to go huge, but what you're doing is you're just building up that audience and you're kind of getting yourself known and a lot of people discount the amount that just getting known and having sort of these like, there's little tiny gatekeepers all over the place, like some of these shows that I'm talking, just getting yourself known in the industry and with other developers is very valuable. It's very under, you know, undervalued. And so if you just release a lot of small games that don't sell very well, but you keep it cost low, I mean, five, going into five people is pretty rough, Daniel. So this is what first is just one until later. Starting low, yeah, start low with just one or two people and slowly hire on, go slow until you've kind of gotten your feet under you. The other thing that I would recommend and this kind of gets me trouble and trouble is look at the genres that are selling on steam and I know, I know they're going to say like, oh, you can't just market this everything. I'm not saying market test every decision, creative decision. But I mean, there are genres and types of games that do better on steam than don't. And I'll just be honest, they're kind of the genres that I call crafty-buildy simulator games. Those games do very well on steam and they're kind of like the roguelike city builders for X, you know, these factorial games where you're building these bases, colony sims, crafting games, simulators like, you know, a power washer simulator. It's not so much you about running around a beautiful world. It's about me building the world starting from something and then building it up. Those games do very well on steam. And I'm not going to say like, oh, a building game where you are a pirate pirate to hot this year. No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying like to the general building crafty simulator games are very good. The problem that I see a lot of Indies make is they make a lot of games that are more triple. They're trying to they've learned from AAA. They played a lot of AAA games. So they try and emulate the AAA style, which is a single person running around a beautiful world. And we Indies cannot generate enough content to fill a world to big enough for fans to feel like they're satisfied with the amount of game. It's just a really rough thing. And so I think that's a problem that a lot of first time Indies get into. So if you focus on those genres that do better, build for the long term, smaller games and get bigger and bigger scale, I think that is your best, but start a mailing list so that you have that fan who's rolling with you. And then you can incorporate the latest trends like TikTok. But then, you know, I have a feeling like two or three years we're going to stop talking about TikTok. We're going to go to do something else. That that is a source, but there will be something else because people write things. So it doesn't matter what it's going to be next year. It'll come and go, but your baseline is you're following your brand, your mailing list, all those things stay constant. And then you're changing up, you know, what are their platforms you have coming in. So that, I'd say, is a good sustainable plan for the long term. Nice. >> Great question, we're in a successful studio, Danielle. >> Danielle, studios, opening today. >> Two kind of big questions I want to ask. And I'm keeping an eye on chat to see, oh, we don't want to just come in, but I don't want to read right now. So we're good. So I've talked a few times about the original inaugural GDC showcase conversation we brought you on. We just did this exactly thing we're interrogated you about marketing questions for an hour. It was wonderful. But 2021 was two years ago. There's been some things since then that have happened. It's a different world now. It's a super broad question. I'm sorry for that, but what's kind of the biggest change in game marketing or even like the advice that you give from now versus like two, even two years ago in 2021? >> Yeah, I do think that we kind of touched on it before, but the new meta of what I say is get your steam page up earlier, get that demo out earlier, and spend more time long term. Because really the thing that's solidified are these shows like these online festivals start applying to more, start building those up. Because the longer you have a steam page with a demo up, the more festivals you can apply to, streamers are still very big. And a lot of studios have gotten this message of doing this. And so what we're finding is it's just like it's amping up how much you have to do. For instance, like this next festival we just ended, it got really competitive. I used to say if you could get 3,000 wish lists in the two weeks before the next festival, like front page. Now we're seeing it in this most recent one, it was 20,000 just before. So it was like 4x, what you had to get. Now, we're monitoring it. I don't know if that next festival is so hot because we also just came off of the big summer. Three like shows fed into that. But I think that that is a big change of people are kind of learning this system of long term. These hits from streamers and festivals. Those are the two big ones. And it's just like ramped up. So we're all running at such a high pace that this next festival is very competitive to get on to the front page. Because that front page of next fest is what it's all about. Like, after, if you're not on the front page, it drops hockey stick again, way off. And so that is a big change is just just the number of people who figured that out where it's like festivals and streamers, festivals and streamers is doing this long term marketing campaigns. Really, I'd say is is the big change from 2022 or 2021. That's her timeframe. Super, super, super anecdotal. But like my sister also in the video games or whatever. But she's less like online than I am. And that's a great thing for her. But like we'll be talking about a game and she'll be like, Oh, I didn't realize I was out already. But she was the one like very on top of steam next fest. And like, Oh, there's this demo thing going on and playing this demo right now because it kind of like these demo fest and these like big things have a way of engaging with people who might not be as plugged in or might not be like on Twitter every day or some like that too. So it's interesting to like see that kind of thing extrapolate out. I don't know. I don't know where I'm going with that. But no, that's awesome. So your sister, does she do social media? I'm doing a little user. A little bit very little user researcher. So I'm going to do this for you through to your sister. So what does she do? Like she on social media? What's her favorite? Twitter and Instagram, but very rarely. And doesn't really like reply to anything. It's kind of like a once per week, once per month kind of doom scroll. And then it exists in the world and has real hobbies. Yeah. Yeah. No, I find that I know like all of us, all of you watching everywhere talking. We're extremely online weirdos. And I don't think that is a perspective that Indies have enough because we're all weirdos. Everybody who's deciding to like quit their accounting job to become you know, Indie game marketer. They're weirdos. We're all weird. So we think that oh, the whole rest of the world is these online weirdos who are doing this stuff. We're not weirdos. And then most people aren't online. They don't they're not gritty to the discourse, all that kind of stuff. We're weird. So I love to hear from the normals. And that's what I find is that okay, so here's the deal is the reason festivals works so well is they are on steam. If you think about it, it's really weird that we're trying to use this weird social media platform to get people to go to another platform to then buy our game. Most people just go to steam. They don't follow a game and then follow all these weird links to get to the steam. They just are on steam. And that's where here's the thing is most of your visibility is going to come from steam. When we do all this marketing stuff like TikTok and Twitter and getting a streamer to play it, what we're trying to do, this is actually what we're doing. We are not concerned with getting those people to buy the game. What we're doing is we're getting them to wish list and like and maybe buy. And that triggers enough of algorithm. It kind of is like a fuse that lights a fuse that fuse lights the algorithm on steam. And steam says, oh, we've seen enough early indications that this game could be hot. Let's expand it and show it more and more places. Most sales come directly from steam. And that's why next fest is so powerful and all these things because it's on steam. And so when you think about this stuff in these in the questions and boxes, you're really doing all this stupid marketing stuff just to look cool for the steam algorithm so that steam will present us everywhere. That's that's really how you should start thinking about marketing. Got to impress the computer. The show is for the computer. I do. I do kind of like that. I do want to read this this question that that had come in right before you started speaking Alyssa. So I'm going to run through this one. A really interesting one actually. Andy Lee says, when a runaway success like vampire survivors comes out, there usually comes a flood of fast follow imitators after right after. Most of these are forgettable, but some of the clones end up successful in their own right. Just Chris have anything to say about working on a clone of a popular game type. And is there a sweet spot of a sort of a window release date that an imitator might want to aim for? Yeah. Yeah. So again, all right. So I for don't I know this makes me look lame. I know. And these are supposed to follow their hearts and stuff. But if you're first time studio, like new. I say, this is a very viable path. It's kind of called a fast follow. I know it's not your dream game. It's not what you wanted to. But it's a good way to kind of like wait into the indie marketplace. And I had a couple people in my community that did the fast follow first time Indies. They did one of those 20 minutes till dawn. Another one was them add survivors. Rogue stone survivors. All of these are soul stone survivors. Sorry. Yeah. Very, very profitable follow on to vampire survivors. And I do think that this is a viable path. Not to build your long term career, but a great way to kind of enter into this. Because if you can make these games pretty quick. And I'm saying like six months. Don't try and make a game for five years. We don't know where vampire survivors is going to go. I still think it's a very viable genre. If you want to take on there's still games like Bro Tato was on the front page of steam just a few days ago. And that was a fast follow of vampire survivors does very well. People are still playing the hell out of that game. I think it had like a hundred thousand concurrent players. So people still really like vampire survivor lights. It's just become more competitive. But I think this is an excellent way for studios to kind of get their feet wet in marketing and development because 90% of the game design is kind of done. And what you're doing is you're finding like one how to develop that then you're kind of tweaking on the game design. And that's a very good lesson for game designers to say like how far can I push this and still maintain what makes it fun, but still put my unique spin on it. And so I say take one of these popular genres like vampire survivors. There's a couple others that we can talk about. And then just add 10 to 20%. Don't totally break it. Don't say it's vampire survivors, but it's a dating simulator. And it's a horror game. You've like broken that's too far. Gentle, gentle, it's in my and this always gets me in trouble with the in the chattering class. It's okay. Well, you really should only improve a game by like 20 to 30%. I know that's not sexy and not fun to say, but too much. And then you've lost the audience. And I think that's a very under people don't realize that. That takes a while to learn that like how much can I push on a design before it breaks being that fan group. And it's a very important skill to learn. And if you screwed up, you only spent six months, you didn't like invest your life's stuff on there. And then you've learned though a lot of things that you can then take to your next game. Because a lot of the tech that you have to make to make a vampire survivor's like this meta upgrades, you know, all this kind of procedural stuff can be used for a different genre. You just take all that progression code. And then you can kind of apply that metal layer to a different genre, a different game. But it's a very important thing to learn. So I like doing it. It's not going to it's not going to revolutionize the world, but that's okay. You don't have to revolutionize the whole world all the time. So especially when you're first starting, right? Especially for game one for something. Yeah. Yeah. Getting out there. Because I hate I just feel so bad for these innings that try and reinvent the wheel or like, you know, like, I'm going to make a brand new genre that's never been seen and then like two people buy it and it feels so sad. It's much more uplifting. I want people to make two, three, four games. I don't want you to have to go back to a job at like EA or something. I want you to do this some more. So make your kind of like one for them as they say, like vampire survivors, like learn your skills. Then your next one make a personal passion project. But you're still making a lot from your vampire survivors. Hopefully. And then you kind of, that's how you build a career. That's how you do it. And then then you can make your dream project when you're like, pretty good. Like a fourth or fifth game. Make one for you. Make one for them. But I'm lame. So go for it. What have you all? Now, I think vampire survivors is such like an interesting game to use for this discussion too. Because I feel like it's kind of the rule breaker in a way where it is kind of like it, it's own genre in a way. I got into a discussion with Brian Francis on our team about it who was a big vampire survivor's believer. And I'm just like, oh, it's just another like shoot them up or I didn't get it. I do not come around to it. But it's a game that kind of like breaks some of the rules. I think I remember like one of their like awards features or something like, oh, we don't even have like running animations in the game. Like my characters don't have animations. And I'm an award-winning game or something. I might be making up words in their mouth. But it's such an interesting example of that. But to see like the other things that kind of pop up in the wake of it is interesting as well. When that we talked in that previous conversation, which I'm just going to reference to heck and back all day, talked about kind of like tagging. And not wanting to like cast the wide net when it comes to tagging. You want to be very specific about kind of like what the interests of your games are so that people know what they're getting into there. When you're working with a game that is a very close, closely inspired by a game like vampire survivor's word, you might be very visually similar to it. How kind of like upfront do you want to be with it? How much should you deviate from kind of the formula you're working with to make it enticing but still kind of like degrounded in these principles that are recognizable? Like how much does that factor into it? Yeah, I think basically I think the one of the ways that Steam works very, when I mean Steam, I mean the audience on Steam is they really like a game design first and foremost. Like they're like, oh, I am a 4X player. I want like a super deep strategy game and they're more flexible on the second layer, which is the theming and for the most part. And so they want genre first and then you can put a layer of meta like story and art and design on top of that and that audience will move with you for the most part. Then in other words, like you can take a 4X game, which is a deep strategy like conquer the world type of game. You can take that in a sci-fi environment and take it to ancient Rome, then take it to like ancient China. You can do all that stuff. No problem. But if you try and take that and you try and push it too far and go to like super wholesome bunnies that are cute and like there's no guns or something that audience, not going to like that. And so you've pushed that thing too much. So this is it's hard because it depends on every genre. For example, the wholesome games where a lot of them are very management focused and these are very men, wholesome games are very viable genre and to your point of what's what's changed since 2021, I think the cozy wholesome games have just grown and stature so far, very, very far and they're very viable. But this is the thing is I a lot of people kind of me and they're like, oh, we want to make a wholesome game. But and they try and take a design that doesn't fit with the wholesome genres. And they try and take another genre and make it wholesome. And it's very hard to do. It stretches the genre too far. And like defining personas in a way is kind of what you're talking about too, right? I'm sorry. And I mean, to cut you off there, but kind of like knowing your player x is interested in this. So this is also their interest. They're not stepping outside of it. Exactly. And a lot of wholesome games are very management focused very narrative, like visual novels type of things. And but what I'd recommend, if you are planning to do that, play those games, like play every single game that you think is in that area. And you start to notice and read the reviews and look on red to see what people are commenting or on streamers comments. Fans of that genre are talking about. And you start to learn what is and isn't in that genre. And I think that's one of the biggest mistakes early in these two is they try and cross these genre lines because somewhere, Indies got the message that we have to like, oh, shake it all up and mix genres that have never been together and stuff. I think that is actually secretly super risky. And again, I feel so bad. Like I know that was the message that Indies got like, oh, you got to like rip everything. But the fans, and I think that's one of the reasons Indies always have such trouble is, I'm telling you Indies, like, I know it sounds so lame, but stick closer to the genres. When you violate some of these genre norms and you go outside the genre, you actually alienate the audience. You were originally targeting and you're trying to pull two different genres together from two different audiences. And they're both like, no, we do not want to mix. We do not want that. We want to stay in our genre. And I think I know, if you want to be an Indie that just wants to revolutionize everything, go for it. But if you're really trying to do this for the long term and kind of stuff, learn those genres. And there are times I can say push on 20 to 30% of the design, figure out what are those pressure points where you can push more sometimes in a design you push too far. And it's like, oh, that broke that violated some core tenant, some anchor of that genre that we can't cross. And okay, well, the next one I do and we'll back off on that. It's just really important that you kind of learn that genre. And I see just play every game, the ones that succeeded, the ones that didn't look at the fans and really learn it. And I think that's one thing people are missing. And you can take a tax credit on your games like when you buy, that's a business expense. So you can buy games, that's a business expense, you're doing genre research. So do it. I'm telling Indie's to play more games. I'm telling tips with Chris. Let's go into it. I think there's something that kind of like loops back into one of the things he said previously about like, don't beg at all on your first game, too. Because if you're making a game at a genre, you learn your player type a lot more through like releasing your game and getting feedback from your players. And then maybe that next game, you identify which rules you can break. Because you'll know them a little bit more. And that's the point restart being a little controversial. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think people, that's one thing Indie's do is they underestimate how much fans like a genre and they don't want the pieces moved around too much. They kind of like it tight in there. So again, we're weird. I can, I love every genre and I like to play these weird games. But with most gamers kind of have their hotspots. They kind of like one or two three genres and they like to stick to it. I want to touch on. And once I just interrupted Daniel, who was about to say something. Okay, I was about to read this next question. So why don't you do yours and then I'll do the next question to spare to your for me. Yeah, we're doing that thing where we come down and there's eight minutes, about eight minutes left. I know. I have so much to say. We talked a little bit before before we went live as a secret conversation about mistakes and the mistakes that came to make and that they learned from and how you learn and grow from those. So I'm just going to give you the springboard here and you can go into everything after that. But what's kind of like one avoidable mistake that you see developers make that you're like, hey, hey, hey, hold up. Hold up. This is like easy to go here and kind of what mistakes should developers watch out for. How do you navigate a mistake? Yeah, yeah, great, great. Leiden, I actually, I wrote a little mini book. It's 60 mistakes that every indie should avoid. So if you go to how to market a game.com/free, you can pick up that book for free. And so what it is, I just, I went through because I've done, I do a lot of consulting, a lot of indie's are in my community and they just ask me these questions and he's like, these are mistakes. Like don't do that. So I just wrote down the top 60 and how to fix them hopefully or avoid them in the first place. So how to market a game.com/free to get the book. I just send it to you. But the big one that I see is going to early access to early. For some reason, they love to make early access games, Indies. It's early access seems easy. Again, I talk about waiting into the pool of game development. A lot of Indies are like, well, early access, I can just early access it. Oh, early access. I'll just do early access. I don't know where I came from, but all of a sudden, Indies want to do early access all the time. I actually think it's hard, but regardless of that, they go into early access. They're like, okay, I put this game. I want to get some feedback. I'm going to go to early access. When's your game on steam? I'm specifically talking about the steam algorithm. Once your game is for sale, you have released your game. It doesn't matter if you think it's early or something, you have released your game. There's no coming back. You cannot get a publisher because publishers do not touch games that have released that are for sale because publishers make all their money like in the first month from a game. And once you've lost your game, you got the entirety of that first month. And so publishers know that and they're like, I'm not going to touch this game. It's already gotten its money. It's the first month. And so you can't do that. You still, even though it's early access and sound so lovely, you still have to do this marketing campaign. One of the things that I always recommend is minimum, get 7,000 wish lists before you launch because that's enough to kind of start triggering the algorithms. Remember how I talked to us a fuse that likes the bomb? Well, the flame on that fuse has to be 7,000 wish lists hot. Otherwise, there's no hope that you're going to detonate that bomb. Even if you're doing early access, you still have to do that 7,000 minimum wish list. Early access is your launch. And so even if you're planning it, you still have to do these long marketing campaigns, get those wish lists up, release it, and do it. Early access are not. And I find out in too many indies that come to me and they're like, okay, Chris, I like released into early access about two months ago. How do I start my marketing? And I'm like, yeah, there's literally nothing I can do. It isn't. It has released. In the Steam algorithm, they usually come to me when the game's not doing well anymore. That's it. Steam has Black Mark the game. If you don't sell well in the beginning, Steam's like, well, this game's just not going to do it, sorry. And then it, you know, I talked about secretly put you in the basement. You're in the basement. I'm sorry. You can't maybe at least a sequel. I don't know. But unfortunately, that's the big mistake. Early access. It's a serious commitment. Kids think before you do early access. And then it's like and more. You know, like, I wish I could just can we get that post like, uh, this is live. What am I talking about? For the vibe. We're just doing the stand effects like, the more you know, kids, don't do early access until you've talked to your parents. It's stay away from the basement. You know, to your parents before doing early access. We've got time. One last one. So I'll talk to you, Danielle. And I will zip my trap. All right. Unless you want it, you know, I'm sharing his caring. Okay. All right. This is another one from Andy Lee. I really don't know. It's interesting. Exactly. Just Chris have any advice for an indie studio looking into public domain, intellectual properties, like when you the poop, Pinocchio, or more niche properties, like a science fiction novel that might be inexpensive to license. Is it hard enough to make good game design that IP licensing is a dangerous path? Where are there success stories? I don't know because I'm not a lawyer. I don't know what's public domain. I think like if you were even a touching or a public domain thing, like if you did Wizard of Oz and they looked like your main character looked a lot like, you know, what Judy Garland, like if you tried to make a Judy Garland, I think he would get sued so fast by the Garland estate your head would spin. So I don't know what you can touch on what you can't. I do think it's a good idea because people do underestimate the power of IP. So just, I mean, it would be great if Judy Garland was in the public domain and we could put her everywhere, but yeah, can't. I don't know. Talk to a lawyer, but it does sound kind of cool. Like if you could say, this is a Wizard of Oz game, and then you'd have to come up with your own thing. But if you did like return to Oz, that might just scare children, but still cool. That movie is insane. I would love to see a game where you get to tie an L-Ked to a couch, whatever. Yeah, that'd be awesome, actually. Yeah, that'd be cool. I talked about crafting building games. That is a crafting game right there. There it is. Here's the kingdom, whatever. This is the essence of the L to the couch. I'm sure there are some IP that, you know, is actually like, oh, they are actually hunting for, oh, it would be great if we could make a game for Starburst Candies or something. Interesting stuff wanted to like open the, I don't know either, but went into public domain in like the last year or two or two. So it's probably right, but I'm so out of touch with my literary degree that I don't know. I'm going to love one more question at you because we got two minutes, and I like using a bunch of time, rapid fire question. What's one marketing kind of tip that a developer of any discipline should have? So if your programmer, your designer, your audio guy, like, what's something they should always have in their back of the mind for like marketing know how? Oh, that's great. Just to understand that everything is a funnel. That's the most important thing. And what I mean by a funnel is there are things that are big and loud and get a lot of attention, but they don't actually convert very well. And that's like TikTok, Twitter, even YouTube. You get covered a lot, and you'll get, you'll look at the numbers. It's like 30,000 views. But then what you got to do is then convert that to a higher converting kind of platform, like an email list by favorite, or discord is what we call middle of the funnel. Something where we can contain them, we take that interest, we turn it into what's called, you know, well, this is awareness, and then we turn into interest. And that's, it's a slower burn in the middle. And that's like a discord or mailing list where you say, hey, welcome. And then you kind of warm them up and say, this is who I am. This is there. And then you collect this over time. And then you convert it into what we call action, which means buying something. Just understanding the funnel is so powerful. And know that these things that are at the top, the very loud flashy things that I really, really thinks is marketing, are just the top of the funnel. And so you should always think of like anytime you do marketing stuff, like, oh, is this top of the funnel or mid funnel? And should I be, how do I convert this attention that I got into something else that's more practical? Because you never sell stuff directly from Twitter, or TikTok, or anything. What you do is, and what everybody does, and people don't realize it, is you convert that into a middle funnel thing. Like, that's what a steam wish list, steam wish list is a middle funnel thing. You're converting that big attention into a smaller, slower burn. And that's the most important thing you should always learn is, oh, how do I convert this into something more practical that I can hold on to? Good nugget of advice. I think that's a great note to wrap out on as well. Wrap out. Just wrap up on. So we are the game developer podcast and Neil and myself and the rest of the game will over crew. We put out a monthly episode on Spotify Apple podcast. They call it now Google podcast. You can find us pretty much anywhere there. We have like 30, 40 episodes all talking to very smart people about how to make games. It's great advice. Recommend it wholeheartedly. I saw a comment in chat saying the session needs to be five hours long. Great news for you. If you search Christy Kasky on Game Devote or on GDC Vault, you'll probably find about five hours or more worth the content I would wager. And as well at how to market a game.com. Do you want to do some self-promotion here? Yeah. My mid funnel from all this attention at the top is how to market a game.com/free. You get that book that is 60 mistakes that every indie makes that you should avoid. So head over to that. That's the only thing I want you to do. How to market a game.com/free. Do it. Put your name in the email box. I send you a letter of how to market a game every week. It's not spammy. Just do it. It's fun. That's at least 20 hours of content every month depending on how slow you read. You could read it super slow. There you go. I like a good bathroom book. Like one a day. Like make a calendar event. I don't know. I'm just pigeon. But yeah, that's going to be all the more than all the time we have. Thank you so much for joining us, Chris. And thank you to everyone in the audience too. It's been delight.