Here's The Honest Secret to "Surviving" The Indiepocalypse

I'm Nick, the "business guy" at indie developer Raconteur Games. My job is basically everything "not working on the game" -- production, management, marketing, hiring, finances, etc. If it's related to the business aspect of making a game, I do it!

Recently, a very thoughtful article made the rounds on Gamasutra giving five great tips for surviving the "indiepocalypse."

I'm a fan of the indiepocalypse, which is really weird to say out loud. It's quite a wonderful idea when you think about it -- there are so many people making games now!

This kind of accessibility to get started with games was hardly around five years ago, and it's amazing how easy it is to get started with games nowadays.

Of course, it's not all fine and dandy. Increased competition means you are required to stand out or face failure (which isn't the worst thing to experience - it's made me a better developer and businessperson).

Articles with tips like the one above are great, and I agree with them -- but there's an even better, simpler answer as to how to survive and I'm surprised that no one is talking about it.

There are more in-depth measures you can put in place to test market viability and obtain a greater predictor of success, but this one is my tried-and-true methodology that anyone can try.

The secret, really, is simple, and it's what I tell every developer that asks me for advice.

Prove that someone wants to buy your game before you make it.

That's it -- that's the secret to surviving the indiepocalypse!

Get me a hundred people that are interested in your game, and then I can tell you if you have a chance.

Better yet, get me a thousand.

And if you can't? That's likely a big indicator that a change is needed.

How can you do this? It's really easy, and there's a process I follow:

That's it!

Congratulations, you are now guaranteed to perform better than someone who just releases their game with minimal promotion and expects it to sell, because you now have a list of interested customers and a way to contact them.

"But wait! I've already started my game!" Not a problem at all! I recently used this methodology at the opposite end of development and it still proved effective.

I worked with James Bennett and his game Conquest! (which is a really cool game with an awesome story behind it, send James some love!) to have a strong launch -- getting ten times the number of users interested in the game as compared to before the big launch.

What did we do? The exact same idea applied!

We used the power of his existing customer database in order to create momentum and spread the word, combined with a few other things that helped (including a reddit AMA).

Bonus: If you're really wanting to test market viability, use Google AdWords to test the popularity of the genre of game you're making, and also to drive people to your teaser site.

It's a one-two punch: you get hard numbers on demand in regards to how many people saw and clicked it, and also test how effective you are at pitching the game in only a few words.

For example, this helped us get an initial wave of signups for our upcoming game Traiteur, a VERY specific kind of game about emoticons going to war in an ASCII world. You can see how that page is formatted to get an idea of the kind of webpage we're talking about.

I've seen hundreds of articles over the past year about the indiepocalypse and "secrets" to standing out, but never felt that anyone talked about the real issue: building a list of interested customers.

I wish you success in your journey, but remember -- get those 100 signups ASAP! If you follow my advice, shoot me an email (nick-at-raconteurgames-dot-com) or Tweet at me and tell me how this impacted your project.