3 Ways to Create Super-Fans For Your Games
A short guide to making people passionate about you.
When building an audience for your game, you don’t just want to create fans — you want to create super-fans.
What is a super-fan?
A super-fan is someone who enjoys your game so much that they can’t stop talking about it.
They’re the kind of person who shares your game with all their friends.
Super-fans are important to generate because they create organic word-of-mouth traffic for your game.
Super-fans also leave positive reviews, which are crucial for an indie game’s success.
But most importantly, a super-fan will continue to buy your future games, maybe even physical merchandise or other digital products — not just because they’re a fan of your game, but because they’re a fan of you.
You’ll want to generate as many super-fans as possible before launch day, ideally putting systems in place that continually generate super-fans post-launch as well.
Here are three ways you can generate super-fans.
Be authentic.
Super-fans should love your game because they love you.
If you’re not acting genuine, you’ll attract the wrong types of people.
They’ll only be interested in you for as long as you pretend to be someone else.
Don’t go down the path of gathering the wrong type of fans, because in the long-term, you’ll just end up losing them anyway.
For example, don’t make a game in a genre that’s popular when you personally hate playing games in that genre.
Don’t make a game promoting subject matter that you’re not interested in or personally dislike just because it’s trendy.
Instead, figure out what you love, and cultivate an audience around that passion.
Be controversial.
As Newton’s 3rd law states, every action creates an equal but opposite reaction.
In order to generate super-fans, it is necessary to also generate super-haters.
These are people who loathe what you are creating, and might even send you threatening messages online to get you to stop.
Unless it’s a serious threat to your personal safety, you should ignore the trolls and haters, and keep creating games for your super-fans.
In order to create a game that your super-fans will love, you will almost certainly need to create a game that other people will hate.
Consider that even the most popular games on Steam have negative reviews.
Ironically, your super-haters are likely more interested in you than your super-fans.
They repeatedly come back to check on you to experience a dose of schadenfreude — the joy or satisfaction of witnessing the failures of another person.
They’ll be the first to talk about you, albeit in a negative light — but just remember that all press is good press.
No matter how many haters talk badly about you, some percentage of people will see your side and will become passionate super-fans.
Thus in a way, super-haters are super-fan generators themselves.
Be persistent.
Don’t cave in to the mob and quit working on your game just because of the haters.
Your super-fans are following you because you are living out a story.
You’re going from zero to hero, on your own real-life hero’s journey.
In this story, the super-haters play the role of the antagonist.
Your super-fans want to see you overcome the antagonist and win.
In fact, your super-fans will be the reason you win at all.
There may also be other antagonist elements of your story.
Maybe you just quit your job and you’re living off savings with a family to feed.
Maybe your house just got destroyed by a tornado.
Maybe you’re struggling with depression.
Being authentic means being open about these struggles with your audience.
Being controversial means embracing the haters who want to see you fail.
Being persistent means overcoming these obstacles and succeeding anyway.
That’s all there is to it!
The development of your game is a story.
It’s a hero’s journey that your super-fans want to be taken on.
And they want to experience a satisfying conclusion.
Remember, you don’t need to please everyone.
There are 8 billion people in the world.
You only need 1000 true fans to succeed.
And thanks to the Internet, finding those 1000 people has never been easier.
Just be yourself, and the rest will follow.
That’s all for now — and until next time, thanks for reading!
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