Why I Started JII

I have worked in indie games marketing for seven years. I have helped launch titles, built communities from scratch, watched wishlists climb, and sat with developers in the stressful weeks before a game goes live. And in all of that time, the thing that has never changed is how much I love this part of the industry.

Indie games are where the most interesting work happens. The weird ideas, the bold swings, the games that could only have been made by someone who cared enough to make them without a safety net. The developers behind them are some of the most creative, passionate people I ‘ve ever met. Working with them has been one of the genuine privileges of my career.

A collage of photos of Jarvs working on indie games.

So when I decided to start Jarvs' Indie Insights, it wasn’t because I spotted a gap in the market. It was because something kept bothering me.

I kept seeing incredible games struggling to find their audience. Not because the games weren’t good enough. But because the developers didn’t have the marketing side down. And so they faced a choice that, in my opinion, shouldn’t exist: either figure out a discipline they had never trained for, or sign with a publisher and hand over a significant chunk of their revenue in exchange for the support they needed.

That felt wrong to me. It still does.

Self-publishing is genuinely viable now. The tools exist. The platforms exist. What many indie developers are missing is not the opportunity, it is the knowledge, the strategy, and the relationships that make marketing actually work. A well-optimised Steam page. A community that grows before launch, and lasts long after too. The right creators covering the right game at the right time. These things are learnable. They are also time-consuming, and they pull developers away from the thing they do best, which is making the game.

Jarvs' Indie Insights exists to close that gap. To sit alongside indie developers and handle the marketing so they do not have to choose between doing it badly themselves or giving away a portion of everything they have built.

Indie games deserve audiences. The people who make them deserve to keep what they earn. That is what this is about.

If you make indie games and you are trying to figure out how to reach the people who would love them, I’d love to talk.