[cableshaft]

Ooh, I own Slipways :). I don't know if I really sat down to play it (I have a bad habit of buying games and they sit for months before I get around to playing them) so I should do so.

I'm working on a game I'm hoping to release on Steam Early Access in roughly six months. It'll be my first proper game release in over ten years (life happened and a five year detour into board game design), so I really don't know how to market these things very well anymore, and it's an abstract strategy game (specifically a sequel to a game I released on Xbox 360 a decade ago[1]).

And my video game industry network is practically nonexistent now, except for a handful of people I used to work with back when I was doing it professionally.

Do you have any recommendations for building up a brand? I was going to start live coding on Twitch, especially since there's going to be some Twitch features in the game I need to test anyway, but beyond that I don't really know what's effective anymore.

[1]: https://youtu.be/Yqe0hS7AvOE

[krajzeg]

> building up a brand

That's a big topic, and one I'm not an expert on - if I was forced to pick my weakest gamedev suit, marketing would be it.

What worked for me was picking a social media outlet I felt comfortable with, then using it to its fullest. For me, that was Twitter, back in the 140-character days way before all this Musk mess. Twitch might work for you, if you enjoy building up an audience around a stream - though with a coding stream you're mostly going to get other programmers (not necessarily a bad thing depending on the game).

The biggest boost in recognition for Slipways was as a result of Twitch/YouTube content creators featuring it. Content creators (not necessarily limited to YT/Twitch) is where I would focus my efforts these days when trying to get the word out. The smaller-to-medium-sized ones are usually very approachable and eager to try stuff out.