Starting a new indie gaming publication
by Marvin Hawkins · in General Discussion · 03/28/2005 (12:08 pm) · 5 replies
Hello All,
I decided earlier this month to begin an independent gaming publication. Its purpose is to shed light on the independent gaming industry much like DIY Games and Game Tunnel does. It will be unique in that it combines the consumer side of the industry (game reviews and previews) with the industry insider side( developer profiles and postmortems) I'm going to be working on this publication while I finish my first game under the company Nothing Like It Games. Now before you cry conflict of interest I'm not going to review my own games and the two companies are goining to be remain seperate entities. My question though is how can I get my first batch of games to review? I know theres a lot of indie games out now but how can I get review copies of games as an unkown publication source? Also anybody got any advice on online magazine publication in general?
I decided earlier this month to begin an independent gaming publication. Its purpose is to shed light on the independent gaming industry much like DIY Games and Game Tunnel does. It will be unique in that it combines the consumer side of the industry (game reviews and previews) with the industry insider side( developer profiles and postmortems) I'm going to be working on this publication while I finish my first game under the company Nothing Like It Games. Now before you cry conflict of interest I'm not going to review my own games and the two companies are goining to be remain seperate entities. My question though is how can I get my first batch of games to review? I know theres a lot of indie games out now but how can I get review copies of games as an unkown publication source? Also anybody got any advice on online magazine publication in general?
#2
The best way to get review copies of games is to build your site... keep it up to date with news, screen shots and review any free game you can get your hands on, this will create good content on your site which all publishers look for.
Then email/phone a bunch of small publishers and tell them about your site, what your goals for the site are and ask to be put on the press mailing list.
Most publishers will send you a game for you to review as a test to see if your any good or not (then they decide if your worth sending games to or not)... some will just send you games when ever possible, and others will just put you on a mailing list then you have to ask to review a game of theirs.
Once you have a good database of game reviews and you have a large number of hits a month start to contact the bigger publishers (if you want to)
If your site is good enough there's no limit to the great things you can get sent by publishers.
You will find indie publishers are better to work with because they don't have millions to throw at a game to market it, so appreciate any publicity they can get. (You look after them and they will look after you)
Hope it helps... sorry if it doesn't :p
Joseph
03/28/2005 (12:53 pm)
Marvin, I ran a games review site a few years ago.The best way to get review copies of games is to build your site... keep it up to date with news, screen shots and review any free game you can get your hands on, this will create good content on your site which all publishers look for.
Then email/phone a bunch of small publishers and tell them about your site, what your goals for the site are and ask to be put on the press mailing list.
Most publishers will send you a game for you to review as a test to see if your any good or not (then they decide if your worth sending games to or not)... some will just send you games when ever possible, and others will just put you on a mailing list then you have to ask to review a game of theirs.
Once you have a good database of game reviews and you have a large number of hits a month start to contact the bigger publishers (if you want to)
If your site is good enough there's no limit to the great things you can get sent by publishers.
You will find indie publishers are better to work with because they don't have millions to throw at a game to market it, so appreciate any publicity they can get. (You look after them and they will look after you)
Hope it helps... sorry if it doesn't :p
Joseph
#3
03/28/2005 (1:16 pm)
No Joe that helps out fine thanks for the advice
#4
03/28/2005 (1:23 pm)
One question as an aside, I already have a website through olm.net. But its not listed on any search engines. Do I have to register my site with portals such as yahoo. and does that cost anything?
#5
http://www.google.com/addurl/?hl=en&continue=/addurl
I would just go around to all the search engines and submit to them. There are services that do this for you, but it isn't worth it.
03/28/2005 (1:52 pm)
No it does not. Search engines like Google and Yahoo have easy to use submit pages, like this one:http://www.google.com/addurl/?hl=en&continue=/addurl
I would just go around to all the search engines and submit to them. There are services that do this for you, but it isn't worth it.
Torque Owner Wysardry
Once you have a few reviews to show people, you may then be able to get games at a discount, and after you have a couple of dozen you should be able to get them on loan and eventually for free.
Indie developers will probably be more willing to give review copies to a startuppublication because they know how tough it can be to get started, and will likely welcome the publicity.
Good luck.