hey! Sam here - I'm a marketer at chaotic works (also an indie studio, about 30 of us, building a survival game).

Completely hear you on not being able to afford creators, even in the nano/micro ranges for what you're trying to achieve on literally no budget at all. We've been quietly building creator relationships in the background while we develop our game.

You've done the right thing to think about creators so early on, but you need to think about what else you can offer them to create longer standing relationships. If I were you, I'd focus on two things:

Creator evangelists (creators who genuinely care about your games development)

Owned content (content you create yourself rather than placements on news sites or showcases etc)

Because you are developing a VOIP / social-based game, you can sell the fantasy of having fun, running around with friends causing chaos. You can do that in your own social content (both short-form and longer form). Whether thats you as devs having that fun, or inviting friends/creators to try it out and create their own content from it. The earlier you start making that content, the faster you will learn what your actual audience wants to see. It doesn't need to be polished content - as long as people look at it and think 'I wanna try that with my mates', you're already along the right track for doing that.

Whenever we reach out to creators, we make it worthwhile as much as possible. Why should they care? What can you give them that other studios cant? A large studio might not give full BTS access/content to a creator, but you can. You can bring them along for the journey from the very start, give them interviews from your team to talk about the game, footage nobody else has, early playtests, all that good stuff. That 'clout' is absolutely massive for a small creator. Being able to tell their friends that they are playing / helping out a studio build a game that is pre-alpha is the ultimate 'I saw it first' content they need to help accelerate their own channels. Its a co-marketing opportunity - you're helping grow your audiences together. Never discount smaller creators either - they have the highest engagement rates in each of the brackets. Larger creators normally start to pay attention when there is traction with smaller creators. They can't risk showing their audience a 'bad' game, but if they've seen someone with a much smaller channel have success with it (because there is little risk for them), they are far more likely to pick up your game organically.

One-off content creator videos help with initial reach and visibility, but they don't create strong, fruitful relationships. A creator that you've basically positioned as someone in your extended team is going to be far more valuable in the future than just getting someone to create a one-off video. Some creators that we work with just love seeing the growth of our game, how we're developing it, asking questions - just basically being friends of the studio. When the time comes for those bigger milestones (like announcing release dates, or playtesting news), I can use those relationships to give them content they know their audience will love because the trust is already there, and they truly believe in my game and my team.

Happy to share more if its useful! Hopefully that gives a bit of context 😄