Indie developer and Flippfly co-founder Aaron San Filippo has asked his 15-year-old daughter to run the studio’s TikTok account. It was a really good move, resulting in a spike in daily wishlist additions for his upcoming game Whisker Squadron.
Whisker Squadron
San Filippo shared the results on Twitter, showing how TikTok videos made by his daughter influenced the game’s wishlists on Steam.
So…. Hiring my 15 year old daughter to run the Flippfly TikTok account is turning out to be an extremely good move! This is basically the period where she started posting regularly, and that build up is basically *entirely* from Tiktok: pic.twitter.com/qVVnOWPTbX
— Aaron San Filippo (@AeornFlippout) June 13, 2022
Together, they came up with the “quantity over quality” strategy, trying to make a lot of TikToks about the studio and Whisker Squadron since it is hard to predict which ones might go viral. “Last week she posted something like 30 Tiktoks, which uhh, really impressed me,” San Filippo wrote. “That is not a thing that would ever have happened if I didn’t have help.”
This experiment also helped the developer realize that a lot of players didn’t know that Flippfly was the same studio that made Race The Sun, an endless running game released in 2013.
She’s also bringing her *very* up-to-date knowledge of Tiktok trends to the table, and uses that knowledge to pick the best sounds, etc.
Yesterday we came up w/ an idea connecting Race The Sun to Whisker Squadron, and hit 140k views in 3 hours, a record: https://t.co/FqKvTqsE3x
— Aaron San Filippo (@AeornFlippout) June 13, 2022
“I think the thing I’m most excited about is that she’s really engaged with the whole process right now, thinking about how to turn marketing/social media management into a career, and how to learn more about improving her skills,” San Filippo concluded.
Earlier this year, San Filippo tried to explain why announcing a game too early on Steam might cause trouble, especially if it looks unpolished and not ready.