Marketing Is Important for Indie Games

Developers who make independent games need to take into account all sorts of things, but they shouldn't forget to properly market their game, at least according to Dean Dodrill, the creator of Dust: An Elysian Tail, which was recently released for the Xbox 360.

Gamers have been treated to a variety of independent titles in the last year across all sorts of platforms, ranging from the PC, which saw the release of many impressive games, to consoles like the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or even the new Nintendo Wii U.

Dean Dodrill, the man behind Dust: An Elysian Tail, the recently released indie side scrolling adventure game for the Xbox 360, knows that all independent developers need to watch out for a variety of things if they want to succeed.

"There's always the issue of money and self-motivation and often enough, the two are related. Also, I see a lot of multi-person teams fall apart very early," he told Gamasutra.

The biggest problem, however, is marketing, as Dodrill believes that developers need to constantly promote their games and keep them in the spotlight, especially as they get closer to releasing them for their respective platforms.

"However, I think marketing will always be the biggest hurdle. The worst thing that can happen to your game is to have no one talking about it. Even bad publicity is better than nothing. There's a reason large publishers pump millions of dollars into their launches, and it's up to us, as indies, to get the word out. I learned some valuable lessons with Dust regarding this, and I hope to do better with future titles. When I started development, I underestimated my role as publicist and marketer."

Considering lots of independent games are going to appear in the near future across different platforms, you can expect quite a lot of developers to start drawing attention to their own creations in hopes of attracting customers.