Game Exposure
by RealmX · in General Discussion · 04/08/2009 (5:17 am) · 7 replies
In light of "BUCCANEERS" new-found success (www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/16877) I thought I'd attempt to get a potentially useful thread going based off of a comment made...
A question I'm sure all indies have is "I've got this great new game, how do I get people to see/notice it".
I suggest starting with posting right here on GG. You'd at least reach the Torque community and word-of-mouse can be a maker or breaker. This thread may provide a useful as a starting point to Torque users that are ready to release their first game but don't know where to start. And yes I know there are plenty of books and so on about it but a quick summary of ideas can go a long way so...any other suggestions on "Getting your game exposed"?
Quote:you can make the coolest game, getting people to actually know it exists...Now THAT'S the tricky part...something we've quickly realised...
A question I'm sure all indies have is "I've got this great new game, how do I get people to see/notice it".
I suggest starting with posting right here on GG. You'd at least reach the Torque community and word-of-mouse can be a maker or breaker. This thread may provide a useful as a starting point to Torque users that are ready to release their first game but don't know where to start. And yes I know there are plenty of books and so on about it but a quick summary of ideas can go a long way so...any other suggestions on "Getting your game exposed"?
#2
What I started to do was post more frequent blogs here on my development efforts, for starters. Forum threads are okay, but if you want visibility, blog. People like a good blog, even if they disagree with what you say or think your project won't work. I have two sets of blogs: One that I do here exclusively, that details more of the networking/business/indie side of things, and the dev blog I maintain on my website that details the work on Epic Frontiers, as well as occasional responses to other well-known blogs.
Another thing I did was going to the various conferences and conventions. I've been to VGXPO, a funding conference in London, GDC, Engage! Expo, ComiCon, and I'll be at IMGDC next week- and that's all since November. At every one of these, I've sought out press people and made friends (and press people like to make friends).
Additionally, I've been showing up for the various videogame meetup groups around here in NYC. There are IGDA mixers as well as other group meetings, and I always bring business cards. Half the time I'll even bring my laptop to demo stuff (more frequent now that I have stuff to demo).
Networking sites such as LinkedIn and Plaxo help as well, and I use those sites to help build a professional profile. I've filled out my profile as much as I can, linked my blog, put up a reading list, post comments, read and respond to other blogs, connect with people in the industry, create discussions, and announce my progress there as well. I can probably be a bit more vocal for my own cause there, but it's easy to be seen as a spammer on these sites, so I don't push it.
There are probably a few more things I can do, but I only have so much time to do it in, and the others on my team sort of look to me to get the business stuff done- PR included, so that's one of my jobs now, I guess, lol.
Where all of that has gotten me is that my site is currently averaging almost 2700 visits per month, compared to the 26 per month in December, with significant increases in traffic every month.
Which reminds me that the site is due for another update, lest it become stale and traffic starts to drop off...
04/08/2009 (7:49 am)
Something that has helped me generate traffic for my site is networking. In December, I had about 26 visits to my site- not surprising since I had just moved hosting providers, but still, I've had the domain name up for years.What I started to do was post more frequent blogs here on my development efforts, for starters. Forum threads are okay, but if you want visibility, blog. People like a good blog, even if they disagree with what you say or think your project won't work. I have two sets of blogs: One that I do here exclusively, that details more of the networking/business/indie side of things, and the dev blog I maintain on my website that details the work on Epic Frontiers, as well as occasional responses to other well-known blogs.
Another thing I did was going to the various conferences and conventions. I've been to VGXPO, a funding conference in London, GDC, Engage! Expo, ComiCon, and I'll be at IMGDC next week- and that's all since November. At every one of these, I've sought out press people and made friends (and press people like to make friends).
Additionally, I've been showing up for the various videogame meetup groups around here in NYC. There are IGDA mixers as well as other group meetings, and I always bring business cards. Half the time I'll even bring my laptop to demo stuff (more frequent now that I have stuff to demo).
Networking sites such as LinkedIn and Plaxo help as well, and I use those sites to help build a professional profile. I've filled out my profile as much as I can, linked my blog, put up a reading list, post comments, read and respond to other blogs, connect with people in the industry, create discussions, and announce my progress there as well. I can probably be a bit more vocal for my own cause there, but it's easy to be seen as a spammer on these sites, so I don't push it.
There are probably a few more things I can do, but I only have so much time to do it in, and the others on my team sort of look to me to get the business stuff done- PR included, so that's one of my jobs now, I guess, lol.
Where all of that has gotten me is that my site is currently averaging almost 2700 visits per month, compared to the 26 per month in December, with significant increases in traffic every month.
Which reminds me that the site is due for another update, lest it become stale and traffic starts to drop off...
#3
There are a fair few indy site/portals which you should probably spam to hell (but in a nice way, obviously).
There's also all the indy sellers, Steam, Big Fish, Manifesto Games (I think the guy who runs that invented the old RPG "Paranoia" - blast from past) that Penny-Arcade one - greenhouse or something, some others I've forgotten and should have bookmarked...
Maybe do a write-up on your game and spam every online games journo you can find.
Maybe do an article on your development experience and spam that to every journo/games mag - that's the "morally superior/elitist" way of advertising, pretending your not whilst mentioning your product's name every 2nd line.
If you want to get noticed I guess putting yourself around like a gamedev floozie on meth is probably the way to go.
So yeah, politely spam the hell out of everything that can't runaway!
04/08/2009 (8:18 am)
Quote:word-of-mouse has unlimited potentialYeah, those mice are flippin' awesome!
There are a fair few indy site/portals which you should probably spam to hell (but in a nice way, obviously).
There's also all the indy sellers, Steam, Big Fish, Manifesto Games (I think the guy who runs that invented the old RPG "Paranoia" - blast from past) that Penny-Arcade one - greenhouse or something, some others I've forgotten and should have bookmarked...
Maybe do a write-up on your game and spam every online games journo you can find.
Maybe do an article on your development experience and spam that to every journo/games mag - that's the "morally superior/elitist" way of advertising, pretending your not whilst mentioning your product's name every 2nd line.
If you want to get noticed I guess putting yourself around like a gamedev floozie on meth is probably the way to go.
So yeah, politely spam the hell out of everything that can't runaway!
#4
We're experimenting with doing more things, too, which is why we asked a select group of studios to present their game with us at GDC. It worked out really well: we had customers in our booth telling people about Torque and they had a chance to have a presence at a major conference. I've also written articles that go out into our monthly newsletters about Torque-made games (such as the Torque-Steam round-up in December).
I'm interested in helping you guys out as much as possible, so I'm open to suggestions if you have a good idea!
04/08/2009 (10:46 am)
From GG's perspective, we win when you guys make great Torque games, so we try to help evangelize Torque games wherever we can. Bare minimum, we add it to our ever growing Powered by Torque page. We've been moving this page around so it gets more exposure on the site; it is now featured on a "Games" drop down tab that we're going to monitor in the coming weeks for traffic and other exposure. We also do developer interviews after a game has been made, which sometimes gets picked up by bloggers and other game development sites. We're experimenting with doing more things, too, which is why we asked a select group of studios to present their game with us at GDC. It worked out really well: we had customers in our booth telling people about Torque and they had a chance to have a presence at a major conference. I've also written articles that go out into our monthly newsletters about Torque-made games (such as the Torque-Steam round-up in December).
I'm interested in helping you guys out as much as possible, so I'm open to suggestions if you have a good idea!
#5
04/08/2009 (3:32 pm)
@Deborah: I have some interesting ideas, and if you like, I can shoot you an email about them :)
#6
04/08/2009 (3:58 pm)
@Ted: By all means, please do. ^_^
#7
04/08/2009 (7:34 pm)
Sent. 
Torque 3D Owner RealmX