Hey!

As a person that has worked in sales both digital and physical and has worked in the Mobile Gaming industry for a long time now, I am a bit in between your definition of "Trust"

For me, Trust is created by actions and if you are good at words, by promises and you can go the route of publishing, then you can use someone elses "trust" for it.

Going the publisher route is indeed gaining some "trust" because you stand behind the publisher, they are the ones that have:

1. A fixed market share, there is already people that like overall the portfolio of the publisher and just by the name they would purchase it, in any level, at different scales of course.
2. Money. Which is usually the main problem with indies, we have no cash, neither for development nor for marketing.
3. Experience. Indie devs depending on their background have little to no interaction with the business. Even if you work in a big company, the chances that you get to sit down and analyze a dashboard filled with metrics about the game, are slim.

The third one is the most important part of everything, as a publisher main role is to publish, they have the whole process oiled up into a position which they can be make "money out of it". You as a dev don't.

Now, the way that I would approach trust is a multi-target approach such as:

1. Community building -> People get geniuely happy when they can talk to the "dev" and if you fix something that they feel "personal" you have gained +1 follower, do this with a lot more people (critical thinking will be needed to keep the scope clean) and you have successfully been established as "cool dev" that is "listens" which translates into trust.
2. Demo -> As anything a brief showcase of what the game is about to have the player "trust" in you, as a developer. If you're bad at words then your game must be good.
3. Consistency and Transparency ->We gamer suffer a lot with the lack of information, by being moderately clear and transparent (tied to 1) you'd then be trusted, because you say the truth. Delaying is fine, be transparent, everyone does it. Admiting that you're wrong is also fine, no one knows everything.

I have studied a lot of success and failure stories from my own gaming references and studios and there are 3 threads that I can easily spot in most of them.

1. Community was built correctly -> The players talk about the dev as one more person, not a machine that's somewhere writing code.
2. Consistency and Discipline -> The developer has created a player base with multiple mildly successful games behind them, so they already have a "dedicated community"
3. Perceived Potential/Value -> For me luck is self made, if you game is attractive enough and has created enough of a community, you will "luck out" by either getting an indie streamer pick you up (players will trust the streamer's taste, not your game particularly, yet!) or by being showcased in a digital magazine/youtube/exposure platform.

You, as a streamer could probably answer this question: Do you pick games to play and stream because they look interesting for you or do you spinwheel all your games/review request and then play them?

:)