Today I’ve gone down memory lane and checked out pretty much everyone who ever played Secrets of Grindea and recorded a video. Yes, we’ve actually kept track of pretty much every video added to YouTube or Twitch, viewing let’s plays and reviews whenever we could to learn what people like and dislike about the game on our quest of trying to make it better.

It started as marketing research – we wanted to know how many of the keys we sent to various streamers led to them actually recording a video. So we kept track of channels, viewercounts and whether they uploaded anything or not, also adding channels who contacted us to the list as well as any random videos that got uploaded over time without any contact.

When you hear people talk about marketing, a lot of emphasis is put on how important it is to get your game out there. Of course it is, if nobody plays or shows off your game, nobody will know it exists – but it’s definitely easier said than done! In fact, the vast majority of the streamers we contacted never got around to making a video. Perhaps about 50% of those who contacted us requesting a key did. And a lot of the most popular videos were made by people who simply got the game on their own, never contacting us at all.

Looking at these numbers and reviewing what channels and videos got popular over time definitely makes the task of our upcoming marketing campaign feel terribly daunting. Will any of our efforts actually lead anywhere, or would our time be better spent just letting the game do its own thing? Either case, we’ll definitely give it our best – after all, we’d like this labour of love, sweat and tears to reach as many players as possible, hopefully bringing them as much joy as we’ve felt in creating it.

Fingers crossed!

(As a quick sidenote – a lot of people who recorded videos many years ago have, understandably, quit since then – but those that still stream regularly seem to have grown their audience by a ton. Maybe it pays off to stay dedicated to something for a long time!)