Hello, so I’m a solo dev that’s going to release a horror game soon that my small community on my Discord server of about 50 people right now that are hyped for the release of it (even the creator of The Mimic is in my server) with very good support/feedback from the trailer and the sneak peeks. I have 3 YouTubers (one with 8k subs, 4k subs, another with 2k, and another one with 14k who apparently Flamingo plays the horror games that he uploads) who have agreed to making a video on my game. If the guy with 14k subs actually plays the game and makes a video on it, it’s likely that Flamingo will see the video. My horror game is a multiplayer one too which they usually do better than single player ones.
I also have a friend that’s in some Discord servers that I’ve joined before with hundreds of Discord members (200-300 people) and he says that trust that he’ll promote the heck out of my game everywhere in his servers when it releases since he also loves the game. I also done a poll in my Discord server where I asked who’s going to be there for the game release day (I’m releasing on a Saturday) and about 22/50 of the people in my server said that yes. From the support and everything that I just told you, does it seem to you like my game is can head towards the right direction right now without ads? Keep in mind that like how I said, this is already only WITHOUT website ads. I want to see the community’s POV on my situation and what they think.
I personally think you have to be careful with this one because first of all, the youtubers could make trash content. You also have to think about inactivity. 200 - 300 People in a server, that can easily be 150 or 75 because there can be inactive people. But personally, you can go big with the right planning! Try and host community events or other stuff like updates. Also if you can get more youtubers to play on it, it will get bigger! Good luck bro!
Also those youtubers should have good click rate. Subscribers are not always the best! They can have 4k subs but only get 100 - 200 views. Also keep In mind not all people will be interested in the game and will click!
Adding on to this, one EXTREMELY important thing is timezones. If you release in the morning but for most of the server its night, you wont get the best click rate. I would ask the server the best time to release the game!
Yup, if the game has good feedback after release I’ll make sure to run ads, I’m thinking of a sponsor since my icon is interesting. The thing is though, I have roughly 10k robux as of now and am not trying to lose all.