Christophe De bont 
17/10/2018
If you frequent(ly visit) indie events like Indigo, Media Indie Exchange or Indie Arena Booth, chances are you’ve run into Heiny Reimes at one point or another. Next to running a hugely succesful Twitter account where he highlights interesting indie games to a following of over 100K people, this indie evangelist also started a Discord channel where indies can help each other out.
The place is a gold mine of valuable information on marketing PR, social media and working with publishers. If you don’t feel like reinventing the wheel with every new release you may want to check it out and become part of a network with close to 1000 industry professionals, ranging from developers, streamers, journalists and even some scouts for indie labels like the Square Enix Collective and more.
Nowadays a scout for Dutch subscription platform Utomik, Reimes has always been trying to help out indie developers where he could. At first he started the Twitter profile to create a buzz for the titles he was working on himself (mainly Roche Fusion), but quickly started to focus on other people’s work in order to build up a network.
Sileni Studios was one of the first Belgian outfits to join Reimes’ network.
He learned the hard way that critical acclaim from peers and press doesn’t necessarily translate to big sales. Dedicated to stay in the industry after losing his job, he committed sixty hour weeks to Twitter for little under 6 months. It was a gamble, but he saw a steady rise of likes, retweets and followers that ultimately paid off.
Twitter is great for visibility and keeping your game top of mind with fans and journalists alike. However, it’s not a great indicator for return on investment. In his opinion, indies can put effort in their presence on Twitter if they want a better chance at being covered by media or streamers, but that alone won’t help them become commercially succesful. Keeping that in mind, Reimes started a Discord where indie developers are able to share their business experiences in greater depth.
Crazy Monkey Studios’ Steven Verbeek was one of the first to point Reimes into the direction of Twitter.
Also worth of note: Heimes stresses there are no commercial obligations towards Utomik. It doesn’t matter whether you’re interested to join the platform or not, everyone gets the same kind of access, tips and info. We think the philosophy of indies helping out indies is great and we greatly encourage our members and studios to join this Discord.
