Branding

Personal branding is the effort to market and differentiate oneself from the crowd (Khedher, 2014). The importance of the personal brand for indie game development is enormous and can be observed in many developer's pages and YouTube channels. The most notable channels I watch are Pontypants, Flow Studio and Codeer.

My experience in branding is quite limited. I have tried to create brands for Noxdew and LetScrum as well as the GitHub page of Noxdew. However, the products I have made don't have an enormous following, which can be due to poor branding, though it is important to mention I have not done any marketing for them.

On the personal branding side, I have only worked on my GitHub profile and my LinkedIn page. I am quite happy with my GitHub profile as I have the most notable projects I have been working on pinned at the top to showcase my work and any other ongoing contributions get listed automatically below. My LinkedIn profile seems to be performing very well with over 60 views a week and many recruiters contacting me for my relevant skills.

Image from Alpha Stock Images (taken from Picpedia)

Once I progress further into the Indie Game Development degree and create a portfolio I will update both pages to include a link and showcase it. However, I think this is not enough in order to reach my goals. My ultimate goal is to create my own game development studio, which means getting noticed by gamers rather than employers. I will need to work on establishing a proper brand, potentially not a personal one but of the company I am going to create.

Something I have seen all of the game development channels I am watching are doing is building a community. While this is obviously important in order to sell your game, these people are doing it before their game is ready or even before they have all the details for the game ready. What this is achieving is that they are engaging with a special part of their audience - other game developers, people interested in game development and early adopters. This is very important as this provides them with a unique way of getting early feedback and keeping their motivation up for the long months of game development in front of them.

This early community building is definitely something I am going to adopt early in my game development career starting with the final project at the end of the Indie Game Development degree. This will keep me motivated and provide me with feedback from people who aren't in my direct circle of interests, ultimately setting me for success.

References

Khedher, M., 2014. Personal branding phenomenon. International journal of information, business and management, 6(2), p.29.