How important is it to "have a steady hand with the community throughout a longer period"? Do you have stats how much difference it makes? Or generally, what makes you think that it is important, other than intuition?
Also, for the people who discover this article less than 3 months before the release and haven't started nurturing by that…
How important is it to "have a steady hand with the community throughout a longer period"? Do you have stats how much difference it makes? Or generally, what makes you think that it is important, other than intuition?
Also, for the people who discover this article less than 3 months before the release and haven't started nurturing by that time, what would you recommend? Do more intensive community building and still release when planned, or push back the release date to give the audience more time to accumulate?
It's definitely possible to have a hit without this 'direct' community stuff. But if your game's page is up on Steam already, you can probably tell how many wishlists it has. Its first year's sales (in copies) might be between 1.5x and 3x the number of launch wishlists.
If that's good enough, fine! If not, maybe try to spark community a little more. But ideally this is done as a holistic package...
How important is it to "have a steady hand with the community throughout a longer period"? Do you have stats how much difference it makes? Or generally, what makes you think that it is important, other than intuition?
Also, for the people who discover this article less than 3 months before the release and haven't started nurturing by that time, what would you recommend? Do more intensive community building and still release when planned, or push back the release date to give the audience more time to accumulate?
It's definitely possible to have a hit without this 'direct' community stuff. But if your game's page is up on Steam already, you can probably tell how many wishlists it has. Its first year's sales (in copies) might be between 1.5x and 3x the number of launch wishlists.
If that's good enough, fine! If not, maybe try to spark community a little more. But ideally this is done as a holistic package...