🎙️ Sprint Planning, Complexity, and Marketing

Well I'm still unpacking from our move but I found my microphone, which means:

It's podcast time!

I'm honestly tired, guys ... so tired. It's good, it's fine. I've been very focused on my game Pixel Washer and I'm having fun, but I've also had less time for other things (like writing articles and podcasting).

Fortunately the lovely Valadria community provided me with some questions to get the ball rollin' for a new podcast. If podcasts aren't your thing, I typed out a bunch of the stuff we covered, too. Let's get into it:

(If the above embed doesn't work, you can click here for the podcast.)

Work schedules / time tracking / sprint planning

1. Focus on the bare minimum (make it shippable)
2. Under-promise, over-deliver (keeps confidence high)
3. Write down 1-3 things to get done daily (anything else is gravy)
4. Practice discipline (while avoiding burnout, very tough)

Game architecture complexity

1. Mind the mortar (pay extra attention to the supporting code)
2. Visualize your game's logic as a flowchart
3. Give scenes and transitions a home to live (a dedicated class or system)
4. Create a powerful API for your game (simple methods to accomplish things)

Splitting time on indie game development / other stuff

1. Try to commit to a schedule
2. Carve out time when you can reliably get it
3. You can get a lot done in 3-hour bursts
4. A sacrifice might need to be made. What/when are you willing to give up?

5 ways to take your creative side seriously right now

Are you a creative person? You should nurture it! Here are 5 impactful ways to empower your creativity.

ValadriaMatt Hackett

Marketing & promotion

1. Recalibrate: separate marketing from promotion (watch this)
2. Pick a genre that's popular on your target market (read this)
3. Be annoying (outgoing and repetitive)

⚔️ A Challenge For You

From your game, produce at least 5 clips that are at least 30 seconds each that could convince the right people to get excited about your game.

This is a great challenge because it really puts pressure on your game. If it's hard to do this, it'll be even harder to make a good Steam page.

Promoting Your Game on Social Media

1. Schedule your posts (e.g. Buffer)
2. Lean towards content for gamers (not developers, as much)
3. Ask your audience for advice and opinions on your game's details
4. Be consistent (I struggle with this especially)

🎬 Time Codes

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:23 Work schedules / time tracking / sprint planning
• 4:28 Game architecture complexity
• 8:50 Splitting time on indie game development / other stuff
• 14:09 Marketing / promotion
• 21:08 A challenge for you
• 23:40 Ramble on
• 34:06 Promoting games on social media
• 37:20 Outro

Time codes for what now? Oh, right, the podcast. Yup I ramble about all this stuff.

📝 Show Notes

• Join the Valadria Discord
• Jeremy Jackson (Star Spark)
• Making Big Indie Games
• 🏆 My Favorite Game Dev, Marketing, and Steam Advice
• Marketing For Indie Games by Jonas Tyroller featuring Chris Zukowski
• What are Crafty Buildy Strategy Simulation Games?
• Matt on TikTok (so cringe! but who cares?)
• 🚫 No Stacking
• Lostcast (my old podcast before Make the Game)
• Ryan Clark on game hooks (part 1, part 2)
• Don't Commit to an Interval
• 📙 How to Make a Video Game All By Yourself

You were played out with Back @ It by Joshua Morse.