How to properly promote your indie game
polycounter lvl 7
Hello, as some of you may have seen I'm currently working on a personal project. Putting something like 8 hours in every day after my 8 hours of work at my job as an environment artist. I tell you that to express that this is more then just a little side project, its something I really believe in and am wanting to get out to the general public.
That being established, does anyone here have any basic tips on promoting your game, sometime before release, aside from the general social networking attack. We currently have it up on twitter and indieDB and have a website with a development blog being updated every 2 weeks.
We are estimating we have something like 5 to 7 months left in development, but in true game development form, we really dont know for sure. Is it to early to start talking to the press? What do we need to be able to do that when its time? are there other forums/websites that would be good to be promoting on? Are there any specific tricks that are good for getting a project out there?
Interested to hear what the wise people here have to say!
www.snegame.com
That being established, does anyone here have any basic tips on promoting your game, sometime before release, aside from the general social networking attack. We currently have it up on twitter and indieDB and have a website with a development blog being updated every 2 weeks.
We are estimating we have something like 5 to 7 months left in development, but in true game development form, we really dont know for sure. Is it to early to start talking to the press? What do we need to be able to do that when its time? are there other forums/websites that would be good to be promoting on? Are there any specific tricks that are good for getting a project out there?
Interested to hear what the wise people here have to say!
www.snegame.com
Replies
But I'm very interested!
Good luck!!!
Try getting youtubers / streamers to play builds, get demo builds on itch.io. Get a pressKit().
this is a great resource for all things indie, can't recommend it more
Also it's sorta fun to go into /r/gamedev on reddit saturday and post screenshots there too and have a bit more 1 on 1 interaction with people.
There's no magic bullet to this thing, just gotta hold on to hope that you're makin' that game that's gonna turn some heads at some point.
Sent ya a follow, you can send one back if you care to! I'm SeaCrit@DeepInIndie
Crazyfingers, thanks for the follow! followed you back.
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MichaelRose/20091212/3798/The_Idiots_Guide_to_Marketing_Your_Indie_Game.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/184229/the_secrets_of_promotion_for_indies.php
From Steam Dev Days:
"Making your game is not enough. To be a successful developer you need to get the word out about your game. This panel is composed of a group of indie developers who have used a wide variety of methods to successfully market their games. Topics will cover some of the strategies they have used, when you should start marketing, and lessons learned."
http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/an-indie-game-developers-marketing-checklist-including-portable-formats--gamedev-7560
So yeah, if you've got a good idea for a tutorial that isn't too hardcore 3d art and is applicable to a wide game developer audience that's another way to get a little attention! If you poke around their site you can see how to get in touch and maybe get a writing gig...
Habboi, defiantly a thing that we plan to do when the game is a bit further along!
This one. Its super useful, probably the best thing you can do.
all the other stuff together is not even close to getting some awesome youtubers/twitchers playing your game.
Well don't be afraid to even send ugly prototypes. I mean if this horrible prototype we shared got lots of love, I'm sure you'll be fine! Now we've cleaned it up, it's even more loved than ever before since they're like:
"Wow, it looks a lot better than last time" and thus we impress the public even more! Clever right?