What if I don't have anything to show from my game?
Way back when X was Twitter (lol), I asked what independent developers struggled with the most, when it comes to promoting their game.
Not surprisingly, getting the media's attention was the biggest pet peeve all around, so expect more PR-specific tips to come soon.
But I got a more specific reply that echoes what I've heard from developers for a while now, mostly regarding social media: "We should post something every day?! But we've got nothing left to show!" This is still a relevant topic and question devs still have, so we created an updated response.
And I get it, I do. It's easy to post everything you have at once and run out, leaving you with nothing new to show for the months to come. But I've got some tricks up my sleeve and there's no reason I should guard those jealously for myself like a marketing dragon, so here goes:
Who are you talking to?
Before you start anything, you need to make sure you know your audience, what games they tend to play and what they like. It helps to get specific about who you think your players are. What’s their daily routine like? Think outside of games: what films would they watch? Do they read fiction, a particular genre?
Along with discovering who your audience is, you can set up the tone of your social media presence. Is your game funny and cheeky? Or is it more pensive and calming? Or would it make sense for your game to talk in all caps on socials? Just whatever you do, it CANNOT be corpo-sounding (unless of course your game is about corporate life in some way, in which case know yourself out!)
What are your game's strengths?
What people love about your game might not be what you thought in the first place: could it be a theme? Something special about the gameplay, the atmosphere, or the art style?
That self-awareness is incredibly important for your communications outside of social media too: to get funding, to sell your game, to get the media and content creators to talk about it, etc. so it's really not a step to skip.
If you don’t know what the strengths are yet, you can identify those by testing different posts that highlight separate parts of your game on social media! Another good (and fun) way is to take your game to events and local playtest nights, and see what players respond to and what they say to you.
Do you have to show new game visuals all the time?
The short answer is… no. There we have it.
When you talk with friends and family, you don't always talk about yourself or what you do, do you? You talk about mutual interests, depending on each person you're chatting with. You ask questions, you share cool facts or a funny thing you've seen recently.
Now I'm not saying you should be posting memes all day (please don't.)
In your case, posting from a studio or game account, those same things apply. Shine light on other devs you like. Ask questions. Get to know your audience – which brings up one of the most important aspects of community building: it is a wonderful market research source. Wondering what people would think is special about your game? Who they are, which part of the world they live in? You need only ask and/or check your analytics to find out.
For TikTok and Instagram, footage can especially be re-used to quickly respond to trends. Remember that your followers will not see every single post you make. Especially for TikTok, viewers often find videos through their for you page rather than the following tab. So don’t hesitate to re-use footage with a new framing ever so often!
Making new assets
If you have a non-linear game, consider yourself lucky: you can get loads of different situations to show off on social media.
If not, it'll take a bit more creativity but it's certainly not impossible. Here are a few things that Spooky Doorway (the studio making The Darkside Detective) posted while we were working together:
See, The Darkside Detective is a fairly linear game (it also made me snort-laugh during playtesting but that's another story.)
Part of its appeal were the many pop culture references (which meant there was scope to make promotional assets for social media – knowing those would get shared.)
The team jumped on the #WednesdayWisdom tag, adding in Officer Dooley's own statement style to it and creating fake bits of wisdom the character would give.
The retro-HD pixel art style was also something the game was praised for. It became a recurring social media feature as they showed the process of creating the art for each scene in a gif. Those were really popular too, and not just with the development community.
Spooky Doorway knew these were angles that would resonate with their audience, and yet only one of these shows actual in-game content. Other posts showed cases or assets that didn't make it into the final game, or seasonal content for example.
And guess what? Their engagement rates went through the roof and they rarely ran out of content to post.
In another case study, we’re also working with Anomaly Games on The Fermi Paradox, a choice-driven sci-fi narrative strategy game in which you play as the manager of the universe. It’s a lot of power, and accordingly, all your decisions have a significant impact on the alien species under your loving (or er, if you so decide, flavors of despotic or chaotic) care. We started working on The Fermi Paradox’s socials in 2021 and now it’s 2025! How do we keep it going?
Since this is a sci-fi game set in space, our players are interested in real-life space news! We don’t create posts like these often, but if there’s something exciting going on in space or a new discovery – we’ll talk about it.
The civilizations and characters in The Fermi Paradox are a major draw for players. (I mean, who doesn’t love space cats, jazz dolphins, and dinosaurs?) Cue all the memes for these species! With the amount of cat memes out there, there is probably an infinite amount of content that we could make with the space cats.
Our core community is also very chatty, so we like posting polls and asking theoretical, fun questions pertaining to, you guessed it… space. For example: “Would you volunteer for an alien abduction?” We really try to aim for an intimate and casual tone, and find that when it’s like a chat between friends, our players return the energy.
Is there a common thread?
There are a few things you know about your audience:
They like games
They like the theme of your game
They like the genre of your game
They might like a few of the things that make your game special: the music, the art style, the humor, etc.
There's no issue talking about History, art, books, film or TV if it matches what your audience expects of you.
TL;DR: Shift your focus from "what can I say about myself?" to "what does my audience want to see?" and I'll bet anything that you won't struggle so much to find content to share anymore.