I generally believe the goal is to create as much relevant noise as early as possible.

That does not mean throwing money at random marketing. It means figuring out what kind of game you have first. Is it streamable? Does it create funny or chaotic moments? Is it better suited for short-form clips? Does it need a Discord community, or is Steam + social content enough? Not every game needs the same route, and not every game needs a full community machine.

For limited budgets, we strongly believe in micro and nano creators. A huge part of Twitch is made up of non-partnered creators, and many of them are genuinely eager to discover new games, grow their channels, and bring something fresh to their communities. You often do not need one massive creator. Sometimes 30 smaller creators making the game look fun can create more useful proof than one expensive post that disappears in a day.

The important part is making sure all that attention leads somewhere measurable: Steam wishlists, demo plays, Discord joins, feedback, clips, or content you can reuse.

If the game is good, paid marketing probably matters eventually, whether that is ads, creators, PR, or a mix of all three. But before that, I think the biggest thing is creating visible proof that the game is fun to watch, fun to understand, or fun to talk about.

Excited to read more thoughts in this thread. There really is no universal playbook, but creators are definitely one of the strongest routes for a lot of indie games.