Board Thread:Off-topic Discussion/@comment-34929634-20180307190349

Hi everyone, I've been having a discussion with Sierra on her Patreon page regarding marketing her games. And, by reading some of her other comments, it becomes clear that she wishes to be able to not wear the marketing hat, because it slows down her being able to create and develop as she'd wish. Not to mention the severe frustration that happens, as in the recent DoW Steam debacle.

Since (I'm assuming) we all want moar of Sierra's content, all the time, within reason, I think that one of the ways to outsource the marketing without spending additional money on it is to appeal to our community to make an indie marketing enclave for her solo projects.

I've been doing a bunch of adult games marketing research over the past month, and the situation is...confused. There are quite a few options for adult games marketing currently, but they're all tangentially but not really helpful to TLS/CG/DoW/Ouroboros/future projects, because the combination of Western, RPG Maker, good storytelling + good gameplay + sex makes the offerings utterly unique on the market.

Traditional video games marketing route is somewhat foiled because of the sex. Traditional sex games marketing is foiled because of the good gameplay (or more specifically the really long setup time, lack of art in TLS' case, and lack of popular art - read: non-anime art - in the other games. CG is probably an exception to this, but again, is more "artistic than pornographic" as one Steam review says. Also I plan on never getting CG - sorry - so I can't say, myself.)

The traditional video games marketing route is to - a couple of weeks or months before release - assemble a press kit of "summary, screenshots, and possibly demo" and send it around to different news sites, publishers, Let's Players, streamers, digital marketplaces, etc. Then once more at release. Both times, the kit is customized to each source, but also remaining standardized enough to make them findable by new users/customers.

Sierra already does this - see Ouroboros and how it's written up on LewdGamer and Nutaku.

This press kit creation (and customization) is something that we as a community and patrons can probably do, which would definitely help relieve that pressure on Sierra and free up some time for her.

Another source of marketing is to use social media, but most publicly-used social media prohibits pornographic promotion, so we'd need to find a way around that or some kind of alternative.

I...roughly know what we'd need to do, and how to do it, but this isn't something I can do entirely alone. Too many things to do (+ some of it is out of my skillset.) Whatever happens, this has to be voluntary, not paid work. (Depending on success, this might change in the future.) And it probably will never go on resumes (at least until the stigma of working in an adult industry fades.)

I'm happy to answer any questions and just to discuss the whole situation in general.

What do you guys think? Is this something you'd be interested in helping out with? 