What to do next?
It’s been almost 2 weeks since I last made the Steam store page public, and I’ve gotten 80 wish lists so far from posting on LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube (announcement trailer), and on a few Reddit pages.
It’s not as much as I had initially hoped for (at least 7,000), but it’s definitely a start. 80 people taking the time to click on the wishlist button is absolutely not nothing. There’s quite a bit of excitement from the people who are looking forward to it, and it warms my heart to see their comments.
As of now, I only have the store steam page up, screenshots, and the announcement trailer. In order to boost marketing and visibility, I also need a gameplay trailer and a demo. I’ve decided to delay the demo to work on it some more.
When I first started this project, I gave myself a deadline: I’d validate the game and its user demand after working on it 3 months. If there was enough user demand, I would keep working on this for 6 months, and if there were still enough user demand then, I’d keep working on it for an additional 12 months.
It was TBD on whether I’d go for funding, for investors or publishers.
However, I’m now at the 4 month mark, and I’ve learned quite a few things:
60% of the time is spent on development, and 40% of the time is spent on marketing
It’s unlikely I’ll make anything good with just 6 months, due to the breakdown mentioned earlier
I’ll need to dedicate at least a year to fully build this out, though I should be able to get a better idea of user demand by making a gameplay trailer.
Right now, I’m planning to spend another two months on the gameplay trailer, doing some more marketing, and beginning work on the full game.
I’m still nervous about this, but I think this game shows promise and potential, and I want to see it through. There’s obviously some risks involved with this though (such as the lost opportunity cost in going for a real job), but I just don’t think I can do this on the side. I think the moment I get a job, I’m not going to have the time to work on this due to competing priorities. I’m still trying to figure out the logistics of this though.