An AI game marketing workflow, end to end
6 min read
By Eduardo Orellana ·
AI is useful for the repetitive half of game marketing: researching comparable games, drafting store copy, cutting clips from gameplay, drafting posts and ad variations, and summarising playtest reports. It is bad at the half players notice: the hook, the key art, the voice of the studio. A workflow that works feeds the AI facts (a one-page fact sheet of the hook, the loop, what is in the build and comparable games), checks every claim against the build, keeps the art real or discloses it (Steam's AI disclosure covers store page and marketing material), and leaves the decisions on price, launch dates and ad spend to you.
AI is a fast junior marketer who has never played your game
That is the useful mental model. It drafts quickly, never tires of variations and knows every convention of a Steam page. It also invents what it does not know, writes like everyone else, and has no idea what makes your game fun unless you tell it. Ask a chat model for a store description with only a genre and you get the average of every description it has read: an immersive world, a gripping story, endless replayability. Players have read that line a thousand times.
The obvious conclusion is that AI marketing is generic by nature. It is generic by input. Every step below is built around three habits: give it the facts, check the output against the build, and keep the judgment. Done that way, AI takes over the hours of marketing that never needed taste, and leaves you the minutes that do.
What to hand to AI, and what to keep
A division of labour that holds up across the marketing jobs of an indie game:
| Job | Let the AI do | Keep for yourself | Check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Research | List comparable games; read their pages, prices, tags | Choosing which comparisons are honest | Every game exists and fits |
| Positioning | Argue against your hook; list alternatives | The hook itself | It names what the player does |
| Store copy | Draft short and long descriptions from the fact sheet | The first line | Every feature is in the build |
| Capsule and key art | Variations and layouts to react to | The final art, or disclose it | Readable at small sizes |
| Trailers and clips | Cut from real gameplay; variants for each platform | The opening seconds | Nothing shown that the game lacks |
| Social posts | Drafts from what changed in the build | What you would say yourself | Tone matches your other posts |
| Ads | Headline and clip variants to test | Budgets and the Launch press | Claims match the game |
| Playtests | Group bugs; summarise reports | Reading the raw notes | Nothing important was averaged away |
Start with a fact sheet, every time
The single habit that fixes most AI marketing is a one-page fact sheet you paste at the start of every chat. It is the brief a human marketer would ask for on day one. A template you can copy:
GAME: <name> - <genre>, <platforms>, <price>, <release window>
HOOK (one sentence a player would repeat): <...>
CORE LOOP (what the player does every minute): <...>
IN THIS BUILD: <modes, length in hours, features that exist today>
NOT IN THIS BUILD: <planned or cut features - never mention these as present>
COMPARABLE GAMES (3-5, recent, honest): <name - why similar - how it differs>
AUDIENCE: <who it is for, what else they play>
VOICE: <how we talk: plain / dry / warm; words we never use>
RULES: Steam short description is plain text, no time-bound phrases;
no links or other Steam games in the long description;
screenshots and clips show real gameplay only.The workflow, step by step
- Research. Ask for comparable games with their store pages, prices and tags, then open each one yourself. A model will happily list games that do not exist or do not fit.
- Positioning. Write the hook yourself, then ask the AI to argue against it and to propose three alternatives. Keep what survives.
- Store copy. Draft the short description and About This Game from the fact sheet, under Valve's rules: the short description is plain text with nothing time-bound such as "Now Available", and the long description has no links to other sites and promotes no other Steam product. Cut every feature you cannot point to in the build. See AI for your Steam description.
- Video. Cut trailers, devlogs and short clips from real gameplay. Generated footage misleads players about the game, and Valve's review asks that screenshots show gameplay rather than concept art or cinematics.
- Posts. Draft a week of posts from what actually changed in the build. Post what you would say yourself; delete what you would not.
- Ads. Draft headline and clip variants to test against each other. You set the budgets, choose the account, and press launch; the AI never spends.
- Playtests. Have it group bug reports and summarise themes, then read the raw notes too: the one tester who quit at minute three matters more than the average.
Using Claude or ChatGPT for it
A general chat model does research, positioning, copy, posts and ad variants well if you paste the fact sheet in each time, and keeping the sheet in a project or a pinned document saves the pasting. What a chat model cannot do on its own is see the game: it cannot cut a clip, take a screenshot, read a crash log or check that a feature exists unless a tool gives it the game. That is the difference between an AI that writes about your game and one that works from it.
Disclosure: marketing material counts
Steam's AI disclosure is not only about the game. Valve's pre-generated category covers store page and marketing material, so a generated capsule, AI-edited screenshots, a synthetic voice narrating a devlog on the store page, or AI-written store text all belong in it. Since January 2026, AI used only for efficiency, with nothing generated shipping, needs no disclosure.
Disclosure is common now: 35.04% of games released on Steam from January to August 2026 carried one in Flockbay's measured sample. Our Steam AI disclosure guide has the wording.
AI music and voice in trailers
Read the licence before you publish. Music and voice services each set their own terms for commercial use, and a free tier often excludes it; some require attribution, some restrict use in ads. Keep the licence, or the terms as they read on the day you generated the file, with the file. A trailer taken down by a claim in launch week costs more than any licence.
Where it hurts
Players notice generated art and generic copy, and some avoid AI-made games: in Circana's December 2025 study about a quarter of US players said knowing a game used generative AI would make them less likely to buy. The damage concentrates in the places players look for authorship: the capsule, the characters, the voice of the posts. Use AI where it saves you hours and players never see it; keep the craft players came for in human hands, or disclose it plainly.
Where the principle breaks: for a solo developer, the choice is often not AI copy or human copy but AI copy or no copy at all. A clear, honest, AI-assisted store page that ships beats a perfect one that never gets written. The standard is not "no AI" but "no claim the game cannot back".
Where Flockbay fits
Flockbay runs this workflow from the chat that builds the game, with the game itself as the fact sheet. Its Steam page drafts from your approved brief, comparable Steam games it reads on their own pages and the project, and leaves out features the AI cannot point to in the scenes and scripts; Video studio cuts trailers, devlogs and shorts from real gameplay; it drafts posts and posts to TikTok from a queue you approve; it drafts ad campaigns on your own ad accounts, and you press Launch; and it reads playtest reports. It works with Flockbay's hosted AI or your own Claude or ChatGPT. The publishing tools are free in beta until 1 December 2026.
Questions
- Can AI market my indie game for me?
- It can draft most of the work: research, copy, clips, posts and ad variations. The hook, the key art and the decisions on money stay yours, and every claim needs checking against the build.
- Is AI-generated music safe to use in a game trailer?
- Only under a licence that allows commercial use; check each service's terms, keep them with the file, and include the track in your Steam AI disclosure if it appears in store page material.
- Do I have to disclose AI-written marketing on Steam?
- Yes, if it appears on the store page or in marketing material players consume. Valve's pre-generated category covers store page and marketing material, not just the game.