Discord for Your Indie Game: Why it is important from the get-go
A community is crucial for any indie game, and the earlier you build one, the better. During the last decade, there have been various ways to keep track of a game’s community, like social media channels and various forums, but currently, the best platform for game communities is Discord. Here are the reasons why:
Gamers live there
Discord is now 5 years old and has increased its user base drastically, from 130 million users in 2018 to 250 million users in 2019. Although there isn’t an official announcement for 2020 yet, it’s only safe to assume the number must have gone up further. And since most of its audience are gamers, a chunk of those millions most definitely fall into YOUR target audience as well.
With recent additions to the platform such as streaming and video chat in servers, these communities are sharing more game content than ever — watching each other play, gaming together, or discussing games. Roughly 963 million messages were sent between 56 million monthly players, according to the company’s website, so the platform is more than lively.
Since people are already hanging out daily on this platform, all you have to do is lure the gamers into your server and hope to get a piece of their pie of game-related time by providing great content about your indie game.
Tight communities
The communities on Discord aren’t similar to social media communities. While much smaller in most cases, committing to a messenger app is already taking one step further to more engagement. Rather than being served the content, people on Discord are ready to both be served and serve. Also, it is safe to assume that if a fan chose to be involved in your Discord server, from among thousands of other game servers, that means they are really interested in seeing what your game is all about.
Usually, the first members of any Discord server will be, other than the development team and family & friends, fans that have been following your game since it was announced somewhere on the web, very closely. These gamers are also the most “willing to pay” for your game when it finally releases. Therefore the tighter your community grows, the better your game will perform at release.
Along the Ride
Talking about keeping them interested, your Discord community will most likely be eager to learn more about your game. You should provide updates whenever you can, and even come up with complete game features with your early community if it’s possible for your development map. Exclusive content will be key, not only to get people in but also to keep them engaged.
Some indie games have significantly benefited from their Discord community, like Away: Survival Series, which encouraged pre-orders with a very transparent roadmap and tons of content on their Discord channel (which I am a part of).
Another aspect of taking the community with you on the ride is a beneficial one for you. Discord has great sources to distribute keys for alpha and beta testing. This way you’ll get very valuable, early on feedback from actual gamers.
Conclusion
I hope these reasons will give some more perspective and urge indie developers to start building their Discord community early on. I am personally a huge fan of Discord and use it for my community of Twitch viewers, and we all love it.
Helpful links: Here’s a how-to article, specific for developers to get you started (although a bit outdated, it is very helpful for devs). Also, check out these learnings from an experienced Discord moderator.
