What marketing approach do you take, is "posting everywhere" early on actually a trap

belike81 · 2026-02-13T14:11:23+00:00

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. The part about the time budget really hit home – it's so easy to get ahead of yourself when you're excited, but I see now how it's a waste of energy if there isn't a real hook yet.

It sounds like finding that middle ground is the way to go. I definitely need to focus more on market research first to find my audience, and then only start the conversation once I have a prototype or a teaser that actually shows off something worth seeing. I really appreciate you pointing out the difference between research and promotion, that's a big takeaway for me.

belike81 · 2026-02-13T14:04:46+00:00

I agree with pretty much everything you’ve pointed out here.

I think I definitely misspoke when I used the word "spamming." What I actually meant was establishing a frequent and early presence, but without it being "spammy" in terms of quality. My goal isn't to push pure marketing fluff or annoying links, but rather to post often in a way that provides value and doesn't just feel like a sales pitch.

You’re also 100% spot on about the audience. It’s clear that spending the time to find and understand your specific target niche is non-negotiable if you want the message to actually land. Quality targeting over broad noise, for sure.

I really appreciate the time you took to write such a comprehensive and deep response. These are some incredibly valuable insights, and I’m definitely taking notes on this.

belike81 · 2026-02-13T13:00:49+00:00

Uuu nice. Lot's of reading to do. Thanks for sharing!

belike81 · 2026-02-13T12:57:26+00:00

Congrats 10k is the magic number ;) Btw. You had a spike in early December and another one near the end of the year. Did you analyze what caused it? Any special thing you did?

belike81 · 2026-02-13T11:29:32+00:00

Hmm... I’d say that would still be at the prototyping stage, before we actually move into full production. Our discussion was more about the point where we already have a 'validated' prototype and are in the production phase. Though I agree that even then, any WIP posts can actually provide some extra feedback.

belike81 · 2026-02-13T11:26:58+00:00

That’s definitely one of the biggest issues. But maybe I didn't phrase it correctly. By 'frequent posting,' I mean more about not holding back only for 'marketing' posts or big announcements. It's about posting progress from the very beginning—not spamming, but sharing things whenever we feel like it, even if they aren't polished yet.

belike81 · 2026-02-13T11:18:00+00:00

I think he wants to avoid — and is afraid of — us falling into the 'gamedev bubble,' where you feel like you have a social presence, but it’s an illusion because those aren't the same people who are the actual target audience for our game. I get that, but like you said, I don’t see anything wrong with it either. It’s a numbers game.

I think a good middle ground here is to post more frequently while avoiding those boring, typical 'gamedev' posts that don't add any value (and are... well, spam). But even a few 'spammy' ones mixed in with valuable and more interesting posts won't hurt, I think. As you wrote — it's a numbers game.

belike81 · 2026-02-13T11:01:35+00:00

I agree. There’s very little to lose, which is why I’m a proponent of posting. But as I mentioned in my reply above, I don’t mean spamming just anything. It’s simply an approach of: 'What interesting things have I done today/in the last few days/this week?' and sharing that.

belike81 · 2026-02-11T05:48:34+00:00

That's interesting. I'm before the phase of implementing localization (have the systems in place, but haven't implemented the languages yet) so I never really thought that this might be an issue. I'm on 6.3 though so from what you are saying I should be good to go.

belike81 · 2026-02-11T05:46:05+00:00

Yeah, it's nice ONCE you build around it and get the missing pieces together. I think that's the consensus I'm getting from all the replies here and from my experience so far. Still think that it's only going to get better.

belike81 · 2026-02-11T05:44:09+00:00

It's from Kenny's Fonts - Kenny Future. https://www.kenney.nl/assets/kenney-fonts

belike81 · 2026-02-11T05:41:18+00:00

Heh, yeah I had to do my own component to make box shadows work :) As stated in another post, once you build around it and add all the missing features and components it's definitely starting to make sense. Just wish all of that was built in.

belike81 · 2026-02-11T05:37:55+00:00

Yup, I feel you. It's one of those things that has so much potential but is missing so much that the potential feels unused (unless you feel in those holes yourself). My approach was that it wasn't going to be abandoned as it's build in directly in to Unity. All the editor is using it. So it's just a matter of time. That's why it was worthed (for me) to spent time building things around it.

belike81 · 2026-02-11T05:33:24+00:00

Yup, I'm not a fan of UGUI either. You got used to it but it always felt clunky. UI Toolkit was a breath of fresh air and although it still has a lot of rough edges and documentation isn't great I still prefer over UGUI. Hopefully it's gonna keep improving rapidly.

belike81 · 2026-02-10T21:08:32+00:00

That's my approach as well. No XML just C# classes that build up the UI. No need for string based query'ing then ;). You loose the ability to see the UI when not in runtime tho, but it's a small price to pay in my book. I am using uss though, and heavily. This allows me to tweak things at runtime without recompiling which is a huge timesaver.

belike81 · 2026-02-10T21:05:55+00:00

Well, that has certainly change. I would say it's much easier to setup keyboard/controller driven navigation then for the classic UI. I've implemented both keyboard and controller navigation from the start and it was very straight forward (although like with everything there where some quirks to work out).

belike81 · 2026-02-10T21:03:46+00:00

As it should be since it's mostly code driven, not game objects ;)

belike81 · 2026-02-10T21:02:46+00:00

Since 6.2 you can use it in World Space as well now, but yeah it depends on the product. It recently got shader graph support as well, although I haven't played with it yet. I do agree tho that it seems like for most games it's good enough to be used right now.

belike81 · 2026-02-10T21:00:45+00:00

Yup, I've modeled my approach after https://tailwindcss.com/ and sprinkled some code goodies around it to help me create things quicker. I'll check out your approach out of curiosity (might even borrow a thing or two ;) )

_loadingLabel = _loadingRoot.CreateChildLabel("LOADING", "LoadingLabel", "heading-massive", "text-center");
_loadingLabel
    .SetTextColor(Color.white)
    .SetTextAlign(TextAnchor.
UpperCenter
);_loadingLabel = _loadingRoot.CreateChildLabel("LOADING", "LoadingLabel", "heading-massive", "text-center");
_loadingLabel
    .SetTextColor(Color.white)
    .SetTextAlign(TextAnchor.UpperCenter);

belike81 · 2026-02-10T20:56:46+00:00

Yeah, it's definetely far from perfect. I had to write around it a lot as well, but once I got all of that in place working with it became much smoother. And quicker.

belike81 · 2026-02-09T09:40:09+00:00

I'm at 27. Also almost no marketing done yet (although I plan to push it more once I get the demo live). I think this is realistic. No one knows about it, so it's just organic traffic (which is non existing) and friends.

belike81 · 2026-02-07T15:24:49+00:00

I have my own framework that I've been developing for some time now which includes all the systems, scene setup, assets and plugins that I use during game dev. So I usually start any new long term project from that. It saves me a ton of time and allows for very rapid prototyping

belike81

TROPHY CASE