Launching a game is not easy. Building a game is its own feat. Preparing to sell it brings heaps of difficult challenges. But, it’s important to remember, it is manageable. Having a plan is crucial to stay on track, ensuring a good launch, and increasing the likelihood of success.

This is part two of my two part Abridge Launch blog series. Before, I covered the 5 questions I wanted answered before launching my Steam Game, Abridge. It’s not required to read before this one though. It addresses some launch questions that I had and other game devs have to. This post will cover Abridge’s launch.

This post is broke into two sections: Planning and Retrospective. In the Planning section, I’ll walk through my Pre-Launch Plan, Launch Day Plan, and Post-Launch Plan for Abridge. In the Retrospective section, I’ll share what went well, what didn’t, and what I didn’t even think about until after Launch.

Let’s start in Planning with my Pre-Launch.

Planning

Pre-Launch

My pre-launch plan started 3 months before my launch day. I broke it down into development, marketing and business.

Development

Development means I was working on Abridge. I recommend writing down everything into a todo-list or into an organizational structure. When I got to this stage, I introduced Trello into my workflow. Before this, I used an excel sheet or wrote them down in a notebook. Trello’s interactivity and visualization while having everything in one place is nice. It sped up my workflow by allowing me to prioritize better, and stay on track. I structured my Trello Board with a list based on priority and added tasks to the correct list. These are lists I had from greatest to least priority:

1. Done
2. Doing
3. Must Do
4. Bugs
5. Feedback & Feature Requests
6. Recommendations
7. Nice to haves
8. Think about

The life of the task consists of moving up in priority until it gets to Must Do. I check all the tasks in Must Do, decide this task in Must Do must be done, move it to Doing, and finally to Done. It works out pretty well for me and is satisfying to move it to Done.

As for the specific development tasks I had written down, it was all those “last minute details” of testing, and polishing. Here is what I had (in no particular order):

• Cleaning up the main menu
• Adding menu options for video, sound, and gameplay
• Adding backgrounds to the main menu
• Updating the credits
• Adding particle effects to pieces moving, hitting the goal and solving puzzles
• Making fine tweaks art and colors
• Fixing scene transitions
• Adding new sound FX
• Giving the puzzles names
• Making a user input recorder and playback for solving puzzles
• Making sure each puzzle is solvable
• Adjusting audio levels
• Testing endgame transitions and steam achievements
• Tweaking user input controls and pieces speed
• Adding a tutorial
• Improving and adjusting puzzles
• Fixing bugs

These are the tip of the iceberg. When I got to this point, I was tired and didn’t want to look at Abridge any more. From experience, I knew that I needed to dig deep and preserve if I wanted to accomplish my goal of releasing a Steam game. Putting the effort into the little things goes a long way.

Once I got those development tasks down, I started to add marketing.

Marketing

These were the ones that took the longest for me. While they are simple tasks at their core, they take time because they are not my strength, tedious or a little boring (if I am being honest 🙄). Yet, these have greater value than the game. I tried my best to give them the time and quality they deserve. It’s also important to mention, I had announced the game, launch date and had Steam and itch.io pages already up. My goal for marketing was to show off Abridge and get wishlists on Steam.

Like development, I wrote down all the tasks in Trello and prioritized them alongside the development tasks. My strategy was to do the ones that are going to be duplicated in many places first, and ease into the more specific ones. It’s hard to recommend when to start doing these exactly, especially with images and videos. I want it to be as late as possible in development to be accurate while showcasing Abridge’s polish. But, early enough that it showcases Abridge while not having to update it again.

Here’s what I had lined up:

• Update Trailer
• Get Screenshots
• Steam
  • Page
    • Add updated trailer and screenshots
    • Make Capsules
    • Make Gifs
    • Update page text and formatting
  • Get Steam Keys (recommend getting between 50 to 100 keys) to share
  • Create Steam Forum (Link)
• Itch.io
  • Add updated trailer and screenshots
  • Update page text
• Upload Trailer to YouTube
• Build a Press Kit
  • Includes a factsheet, screenshots, backgrounds, pieces, branding guidelines, capsules, logo, and title
• Reach out to content creators
  • Build a list of contacts
  • Filter through list
  • Research them more
  • Evaluate the likelihood of them making a video or review
  • Make custom emails tailored to them with Steam Keys
  • Track and collaborate with them as needed
• Website
  • Update the dedicate Abridge page
• Socials
  • Update descriptions and banner
  • Update Twitter, Reddit, etc. as I was developing and getting close to launch day
• Announcements
  • Write out announcements for Steam, itch, and socials
  • Make announcement images

My suggestion is to focus on the trailer, screenshots and any Steam related item. Keep them as updated as possible. I say this in hindsight as most of my sales came through Steam. Which segways into the business side.

Business

I’ll preface this by saying that these are my opinions and recommendations. I don’t have any formal training in this area. Please do your own due diligence and research. It’s best to consult with a professional if you have any specific questions. There are free programs available that provide business advice. You’ll need to find them around you. 

Now, I already had set up and completed the paperwork that I need to operate as a business (US – California) long before my launch. I thought I was going to release Abridge in March, not October. Make sure you do this asap. It takes time depending on your city, state, country, and business structure. 

At a minimum, I needed a business license and a license to operate a home-based business. I also opted to also complete a Doing Business As (or DBA) to operate under the name Eventide Games Studio rather than my real name.

Next, I already opened up a business checking account. It’s good practice to separate business expenses from personal expenses. Mixing the two can lead to legal issues down the road. The account doesn’t need to be anything fancy. It needs to hold money. I got one that doesn’t require a minimum balance or a fee to have the account itself. It’s also nice that it comes with online banking and a debit card. Credit unions and smaller banks are nice for accounts like this.

Once I got all this setup, I went into Steam and itch.io and filled out the tax and payment info.

So, I was ready to sell Abridge. From a development perspective, Abridge was finished and uploaded to Steam and itch.io. Players knew about from my marketing efforts. The next step was launch day!

Launch Day

It’s best to be prepared when it arrives. Have a plan for exactly what you need to do along with when and where. Doesn’t sound like a lot. But, when I broke it down to the nitty-gritty details, it ended up taking me all day to finish it.

Here is a summarize launch day plan for Abridge:

1. Release Abridge on Steam and itch.io
2. Publish Release Trailer on YouTube, Steam, and itch.io
3. Post written release announcement and images on:
   1. Steam and itch.io
   2. Website
   3. Socials (Twitter, Reddit, Discord, etc.)
4. Share any reviews or players that play your game on Socials
5. Celebrate!!! 🥳🙌

Launch is just the beginning though. Post-Launch comes next.

Post-Launch

Post-Launch still includes development and marketing but at a higher and more support level. Development consists of bug fixes, patches, updates, and DLC’s. Marketing is promoting and sharing information about Abridge. There is a definite mental shift that took place because it required me to be more reactive than proactive. By this I mean, I had to address players’ issues as they came up rather than trying to prevent them in the first place. I didn’t have an explicit plan for post launch. My guideline was to position myself in a listening role with my players by reading forums, getting feedback and watching videos. 

My post-launch was a little rough. Why? I softlocked Abridge twice within 4 weeks of launch. One happened on launch day for itch.io players (Announcement) and the other affected all players (Details, Announcement). 

Besides that, it went well. Players left feedback and requested features like a move counter. I implemented them along with various bug fixes. 

In the moment, it feels like a lot of work and pressure to give players what they want to make them happy. In hindsight, I am glad I did it. But, I wish I would have put less pressure and worry on myself and enjoyed the process of developing and interacting with players. I had a certain expectation that if I didn’t listen to my player, they wouldn’t like Abridge or myself as a developer. The thought of not being able to meet this expectation that I thought they had for me, stressed me out. I wanted to be a good game dev and I accomplished that. The important idea here is that I am not Abridge and Abridge is not me. Sure, it’s a reflection of me. It shouldn’t define me though. Additionally, I put too much of my identity into being a game dev and that also stressed me out. 🙂

Summary

Phew…that’s a lot of info. Let’s summarize it before we move onto the juicy launch learnings. 

About 3 months before launch my pre-launch starts. I wrote down everything I needed to do to launch Abridge. I would recommend a digital solution like Trello or a good old notebook. The tasks needed to be completed fell into three categories: Development, Marketing, and Business. Development tasks were about finalizing, tweaking and polishing Abridge. Marketing tasks consist of making a trailer, getting screenshots, making assets for the Abridge’s Steam and itch.io pages and providing updates on social media. Business tasks involved setting up the payment methods on Steam and itch.io, setting up a bank account, and obtaining the correct business paperwork to operate a business, such as licenses. Once they are written out, prioritize them. This acted as my pre-launch plan. Start executing the plan. 

Then, the day before my launch day, I made a Launch Day Plan. It should encompass everything that needed to be done along with when and where. I launched Abridge, executed my plan and celebrated!!! 

Afterwards, I put together a post launch plan or a guideline. For me, I focused on listening to my players, gathering their feedback and watching them play Abridge. I updated it with features players requested and fixes.

What did I learn from Abridge’s launch? That’s the focus of the retrospective section.

Retrospective

In the second half of this post, I’ll talk about what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what I didn’t even think about until after Abridge’s launch.

What went well?

Having a plan

Kept me organized and focused on accomplishing one task at a time. Allowed me to manage my time, stopped me overcommitting and kept my scope down. 

Prioritization 

Made it easy to cross off things that are not important. Execute on what matters and what had an impact on Abridge.

Building Tools

Most underrated thing I did from a development standpoint. Makes doing the hard and boring things easier and faster. They didn’t need to be elaborate or have a fancy UI. No one was going to see them or use them beside myself. They needed to solve a problem that was specific to me. Otherwise, I could have kept doing things the hard way or I could make something to do it for me easier and better than I would. Freed up time for doing other tasks.

Some of the tools I built are:

• Save Data Creator
  • Generate specific sets of save data for testing
• Save Data Viewer
  • Basic Unity Scene with UI to view data, change and save it
• User Input Recorder
  • Logs user inputs when moving controller cursor, interacting with pieces or moving pieces. When a puzzle is complete, it saves the log to file. Captures known working solutions.
• User Input Playback
  • Loads the recorded solution. Execute it step-by-step to complete the puzzle. Allowed me to test puzzles , test trigger conditions for specific gameplay moments, and helped me record gameplay footage (plays Abridged much more consistently that I would 😉)
• Custom .bat Scripts
  • Build zips with Abridge Builds for itch.io
  • Copy files for Steam Pipe GUI

Receiving Feedback

There are two important parts to this:

• First is having a place for players to provide feedback
• Second is telling players to provide feedback in that place

This was vital. Set this up right now if you have not already. Players will spot small gaps where they feel Abridge could be better. I find it frustrating when I have something I want to say to help but not having the contact and means to do it. If it’s too much work, players will move on and you’ll lose an opportunity to get feedback. Respect your players time and your time to make this as easy as possible. My solution was to put a button into Abridge to direct players to the Abridge Steam forum. I put a pinned note in there saying to put feedback here, bugs there, etc. 

For itch.io, bless their hearts. They have a comments section at the bottom of main page. They can make a new thread to provide feedback. There are some other good alternatives such as discord that might work better. But, it’s outside the scope of this post.

Listening to feedback

I tried to really read and understand what my players were saying. They took the time and effort to leave their feedback. Many of them were playing for the first time, which is something I haven’t done in a long time. They are also viewing the game from a different perspective. I wanted to take advantage of this. They already did the hard part. So, I said thank you, reviewed their thoughts and executed on them if I could. 

At the end of the day, it’s the player’s experience that matters the most. It feels rewarding, as a developer, that I could provide value to my players with features and fixes in a game that I built. 

My rule of thumb is to address their initial questions and/or responses as quickly as I could. Then, provide updates every 2-3 days to, at the latest, once a week.

Emailing YouTuber’s

My response rate for the emails I sent out was quite high, 6 of 23. 2 of them were thank you’s, 1 of them was a youtuber, and 3 of them were from reviewers. I attribute this to my email structure, the personalization of it and my press kit. One of the reviewers even complimented me about my email and wished it was the standard.

Here is the outline of my email’s:

• Gif at the top
• Steam key (large and bolded)
• Couple concise sentences about myself and Abridge
• Personalization to creator
• Closing comment with contact info and attached press kit

Press Kit

It contains everything about Abridge in a nice little package. Anyone who wants to write or to do anything with, can do so. It took a while to make. But, it was worth it. It reduced the friction for the content creators to do what they do best, review or make videos. I provided a web and .zip version to maximize the opportunity to access it.

Expecting it not to be perfect

Coming from a customer support background, I knew Abridge would need some maintenance and would need to address concerns as they came up. It’s normal to not get everything right the first time. Everything will be fine. Deal with it one issue at a time. Learn from them and move on.

Itch.io Front Page

I noticed that I was getting a lot of views all the sudden on itch.io. When I looked where all the traffic was coming from I saw that it was from the itch.io website. I loaded up the front page and I saw Abridge! 

I was ecstatic and extremely grateful for the opportunity. I had emailed their support to ask for it. They said they don’t do that. But, their internal team had already noticed it and decided to push it to the front page.

What didn’t go so well?

I want to preface that I want to stay away, “I could have done better with more (insert thing)”. More time, More people, More money etc. Anyone would have done better with those things. What I would have wanted to know are tactics. What could you or I have done different or done better. 

I broke down into two ways: 

• Redirect
  • Do thing A over thing B
• Add-On
  • Consider thing C along with thing A and thing B

Being notified of feedback

This happened twice. I received feedback on the Steam forum and I didn’t know it there because I wasn’t notified of it. My recommendation is to set up a notification method. Subscribe to your own Steam forum or be diligent with checking it.

Quality Control

As I mentioned earlier, Abridge released with 2 softlock issues within 4 weeks. Why did that happen? It boiled down to quality control.

I tested Abridge on Windows in Unity, with Steam, and through Abridge’s .exe. On MacOS, I used Steam and as an app. On Linux, I used the executable through a VM on my Windows PC. For MacOS and Linux, I want to be clear on the testing I did. I didn’t play it too long. I made sure the game ran through the first couple levels and called it good. Incorporating testing into my plans would have been a smart idea.

I would recommend changing the environment you play the game on. The goal is to ensure a good and consistent experience everywhere you can. Playtesting outside of the engine. On different OS’s. On different computer systems. Playing with Steam or using other game platform launchers. Playing with executable. Do this as frequent as you can manage. The key is to get these quality concerns and environment details out of the way as early as possible. 

I was tempted to give away a set of keys just to help out with this. I don’t have the means to hire a quality control team now. Another alternative would be to give copies to the family and friends to see if they could play it. If you have an audience, give it to them to try out. Any of these strategies are good and will benefit you in the long run.

Building a list of content creators earlier

I underestimated how long it would take to collect content creators contact information. Each of them has their own methods and preferred social media platforms. It is tedious and boring but it’s vital when wanting to reach out to them.

For each creator, I captured the following:

• Name
• Email
• Link to YouTube (I like it to the About page) 
• Link to Twitter page
• Twitter Handle (i.e. @mytwittername)
• Discord Handle
• Twitch
• Website
• For YouTubers,
  • Write what type of channel they are
    • What game genres do they play? Puzzle, Horror, FPS, etc.
    • What style is their content? Video Essays, Let’s Plays, Reviews, etc.
  • Notes
    • Write down any personalizations (i.e. the little things)
      • Real first and last name
      • What stand out to you about them or their channel
      • Dog or Partners name

Limiting my thoroughness may have helped me. But, it would have lowered my effectiveness. Not everyone I found was a perfect or even a good fit to reach out to. I wrote them down anyway though. I want to keep making games and I know I will need to market those games too. It is going to be a lot easier in the future to look through a list I already. Rather than needing to start from scratch.

Starting cold emailing YouTuber earlier

I don’t mean like a month or 3 months. I mean like 6 months to a year. I wish I would have dedicated some time to it rather than development. When I was focusing on a boring thing or struggling to find an issue, I wish I would put that problem aside and focus on another issue like marketing. While they were effective, it underestimated how long it would take to make and send them out. I averaged about 20 mins per email to get it the way I wanted it. One of the reasons was because I was doing research on them at the same time.

Making the best of being on the front page of itch.io

While I was on the front page, all I did was tweet about it and wait for the sales to roll in. They didn’t 🙄. I wish I would have had a plan to convert that opportunity into visits and sales. Felt like I could have done something alongside it but not come off as braggy. Feels like a bittersweet moment now.

Steam Next Fest

I participated in Steam Next Fest back in February. I made a YouTube video about my experience here. It was a great opportunity. Yet, I participated in it way too early. I used it more as a marketing campaign to get wishlists. I should have used it as an opportunity to build momentum leading into Abridge’s launch.

Oh…I didn’t even think about until after launch

Scammers

Wow. This was the biggest surprise. I was getting 1-2 emails a day for weeks for free keys. I still get 1-2 emails even 3 months after. They claim to be streamers and YouTubers with various reason why you should give them a key. They are out of money, overseas and promise to expose your game in their native language. Unfortunately, most of them are fake. Do your due diligence about them. Assume they are fake going into it. Try to give them a reason why I should not send them one. I find a reason within a minute. Usually, the email, twitter, YouTube, Twitch or email on YouTube doesn’t match. It also raises suspicion when they are asking for a steam key for a puzzle game while they play a different genre.

If I had a doubt or a feeling, I didn’t send them anything. There’s no harm in that. I could have asked them to send me a message via Twitter or YouTube to verify their accounts. But, I didn’t think it was worth it. If I was bold and wanted to test the water, I could send them only one key and let them get back to you. I could check if they claimed the key and go from there.

Getting Reviews

I know getting reviews is extremely important. Especially for Steam. My issue is the transition of getting players to do them. I thought players would just magically give them. Surprise…They don’t. Ironically, I am one of them. I didn’t even think about my experience with reviews until after launch. I am not to explicitly ask for them according to Steam’s user review policy. I admire players a whole lot more now when they add reviews of steam games. They took the time and went the extra step to give their opinion on it. Hopefully, it’s a good one too. 🙂

Underwhelming Response

While it was extremely rewarding to release the game, the response was underwhelming. It is wild for me to think that to other people and players, it’s just another day. It’s slightly depressing to think that after 2.5 years of hard work, a player may see your game and think “meh” and move on. Unfortunately, it’s also reality that happens everyday and we have to deal with it at some level. That’s why I had my goals to focus on things that I control vs those I cannot. For example, release a game on Steam vs. get 10 reviews.

Awards & Contest

Now that I have time from not developing or improving your game, I thought I would have time to promote Abridge. I didn’t even think of signing up Abridge and submitting it to a contest or award. I thought that they would be easy ways to market and gain publicity. Spoiler: they’re not. They take time and long forms to fill out. This is a good thing for the contest. Not so great for the developers. Creates friction to do it. Those dedicated few who persevere may reap rewards while others like me didn’t even give some of them a chance. Some take money too, which is another hurdle. Due to when I released Abridge most of the contests were already done. That’s another thing to take into account. I signed up for BAFTA, IGF and GDWC. I want to loop back on this again when all them are complete and give my thoughts if they were worth it. The next one I am thinking about submitting to is indiecade. To be honest, I wouldn’t recommend doing a contest or signing up for an award for your first game. Unless your game has had notable impact or press coverage, save your money and time.

This post was a lot longer than I was anticipating. It was nice reflecting on it and learning what I could have done better. I hope this was enjoyable and helpful for you as it was for me. Share this post, tell your friends about the blog or tweet about it (tag me @eventidegs if you do). It would mean a lot to grow the blogs awareness and help out the game dev community.

Cheers! See ya next month!