Brian Kung
Chris Totten
Ryan Miller@Totter87 Generally my experience (based on the bird site) is that the audience we build on places like these are made up mostly of other game developers. The consumer reach on this platform (and in our circles within this platform) is quite small. Many game marketers have explained over and over that Twitter is not an ideal space to reach a consumer target audience. I think Mastodon would be even less effective as a marketing channel (I like Mastodon but that's not what it is right now).
@Totter87 So that being said, I get about the same engagement on in-development videos for my game here on Mastodon as I did on Twitter, despite having about 1/5 of the audience here. It's nice and keeps me motivated, but I don't expect will turn into many copies sold on launch.
@Totter87 so for promotion, look at platforms with broader consumer audiences. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, etc. Consider trade shows. Website advertising (a spot on Touch Arcade, if you have a mobile game), etc. Other developers are awesome to be connected with, but you will likely want to build an audience outside that small community!
@Totter87 these two guys seem to know what they're talking about; worth doing some reading if you haven't seen it already: Simon Carless: https://www.simoncarless.com and Chris Zukowski https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh9CBk0FHSM
@Totter87 apologies for the extra info and potential mansplaining! I'm also curious to know if anyone is getting meaningful traction on Mastodon.
@ryanmiller I am getting good engagement here, but definitely from other devs. On Twitter we’ve had some luck breaking out of the silo, but it’s tough. I think other sites are easier (Facebook especially) Tik Tok is a bit beyond my preferred way to use social media - I’d rather hire someone to do it. Reddit is odious.
@Totter87 agree with everything you just said, haha.
@ryanmiller yeah I know about all that - not my first good around. I guess I wanted to see if this site still@factors into folks’ plans or if this is really just the networking place.
bbbbbr@ryanmiller @Totter87 If a retrogaming oriented instance reached enough critical mass I could see it being beneficial (if an acceptable use case) for retro game developers to be on the same instance as people who enjoy the things they make.
Likely still wouldn't have nearly the same amount of reach, but could help narrow that gap a little.
Blackthorn@Totter87 from what I can see Mastodon is not the right tool for self promoting work. It seems to be designed against concentrating the attention on people with the most likes/followers. There is just no need to go in that direction when there is no gain with advertisement. Even boosts only work on the federated instances (so, not necessarily all of them).
blindlight@Totter87 as a consumer of indie games, I followed the #screenshotsaturday hashtag so stuff like that comes up in my feed
Lucid Dream Party@blindlight newbie question, how do I follow a hashtag?
Duke of Germany 💫@LucidDreamParty @blindlight Click on the hashtag you are interested in. In the resulting view, click on the icon in the upper right corner. 👍
@duke_of_germany @blindlight ah found it!
Doesn’t appear that MetaText has the option, which is why I was missing it.
Doesn’t appear that MetaText has the option, which is why I was missing it.
Chicago Cat UrbanistI used Twitter extensively to follow indie developers and this is alarming. Even with me following you and looking at this thread through my interface I don't actually see any of the replies and I don't know why. I see them if I go directly to your profile while logged out however.
It is definitely going to make things like Screenshot Saturday or the equivalent of Turn Based Thursday to be useless if people are completely filtered out even on non-blocked servers. This is no bueno.