Advertising - or, spreading the message far and wide

[Technocrat]

So, I've built a couple of games now, and I'm a good way through my third proper one. Since I put them up in Christmas and March, they've both had a couple of hundred plays, both through this site, and through Gamejolt where I've been hosting them.

Since I'm a great big vapid attention-whore though, I've been wondering - what other places on the interweb does everyone else announce their latest great creation? I'd like more people to experience what I've made (mediocre as it may be thus far), but word of mouth is notoriously unreliable. Whereabouts do you fair folk fanfare your finest fabrications? Or would I be safer bribing people to give glowing reviews of these things on blogs?

[Calin Leafshade]

Getting Igor to get you featured on Indiegames.com is a good start.

Also getting pick of the month on the games page seems to help substantially and is worth at least a few hundred downloads.

I'm afraid that all the things you can do yourself arent that much help since everyone does it and the playing field is kinda diluted.

McCarthy was on the front page of GameJolt for months as one of the top rated games and it still only got 255 downloads from it.

The fact of the matter is that people simply dont take self promotion seriously and it can sometimes even damage your reputation as a developer if you release a million trailers and post everywhere about your own game.

However, having said that, it doesn't hurt to privately approach the press and see if they will review your game...

Also I would advise you to check your hosting stats for a download figure (use bandwidth usage divided by filesize, not server requests) since an awful lot of people seem to hotlink the file and for a popular game it can be out by at least a factor of 2.

[blueskirt]

Don't forget TIGSource.com. You can also suggest your game on PlayThisThing.com.

[Dualnames]

IndieGamesBlog

[Gravity]

Whoring out your game(s) is all very well and fine. Just don't become another Peter Molyneux.

[Igor Hardy]

I guess the most effective and fun, but also the most time-consuming way to bring attention to your games is simply to actively take part in a larger number of indie dev communities - support games by others, take part in competitions, find both common interests with others as well as showcase things that make you different from them etc. I you have enough time and enjoy the participation, then a lot of people will react to you and your stuff and after a short while you're set for life.

The fact of the matter is that people simply dont take self promotion seriously and it can sometimes even damage your reputation as a developer if you release a million trailers and post everywhere about your own game.

That's true and it's not easy to tell where to draw the line, but in the end you still have to do things in this vein, so it's better not to be overly squeamish. Of course you'll be awkward and make mistakes sometimes, but before you have any reputation to damage, it's very difficult to damage it.

[LRH]

You can always request a review from me, if you like. I'll be happy to give one. My site isn't super duper popular, but I get a fair amount of traffic month to month. This really goes for anyone, throw me a PM sometime.

[Wonkyth]

I'm yet to finish a game, so I can't say too much, but for me I only really try a game if I see something interesting in it.
Most of the time that means Candy.
Eye Candy, Ear Candy(Ear Worms) or even just a fun description of what I can expect to get out of playing the game will earn it a play for me.

[straydogstrut]

I haven't done the whole self-promotion deal myself, but here's my two cents.

As well as what Ascovel said - taking an active part in indie communities - for me personally, a really solid website for the game and the developer is a big sell. I know there's the games pages here, which are great, but I don't think it could hurt to create a dedicated website to show off your creations (if you have one already, i've missed it, sorry). If you can get people to your site, they might be inclined to look at what else you've done while they're there.

There's plenty free hosts around but a proper domain name looks better. Saying that, you can do a lot with a free blog such as wordpress.com to begin with, then move onto a self-hosted blog like wordpress.org when you have your own webspace. Before I jumped ship from Blogger, they were offering free custom domain names so maybe you could go that route instead.

As for the site itself: gorgeous screenshots, obviously, maybe wallpapers, video clips and a demo too. But what I really like to see is the developer's creative process (hence the suggestion of running a blog): Keep a development journal, talk about all the funny little issues your having and show some work in progress stuff, sketches etc. If people send you fan artwork, put it up there, talk about it, encourage friendly competitions between your followers - artwork, comics, stories - and maybe make some of your own (the Wolfire guys have a regular comic for example). If you show the game off publicly or it gets mentioned in a review, shout out about that too. All this keeps people interested and enthusiastic about the game even if it's still got a long way to go development-wise. Of course, do all the social networking stuff too - twitter, facebook group and so on - and update regularly. Respond personally to comments and emails to show people what a friendly, approachable developer you are=)

Your updates don't have to be exhaustive - you don't want to give too much away - but the personality that comes across is more important. If you can communicate what you're about and show your enthusiasm for creating games, then you'll encourage enthusiasm in your followers. Personally I like quirky, friendly developers who clearly love doing what they do, professional or otherwise. I'm the kind of person that will happily give you free publicity if I like what you're about. I'm in the process of overhauling my blog (in a dark and distant corner of the web), but once it's done I plan to write more regular reviews, so i'll add you to the list;-)

As an example of all of the above, look at The Dream Machine by Cockroach Inc. It's an absolutely gorgeous game on its own, but I think the guys behind it are awesome. Their blog is full of all the stuff i've mentioned, and they even sent me masks of the main characters. You don't necessarily have to go that far, but personal touches like that blow me away. What about offering x-game inspired blog icons etc?

It's all hard work, obviously, and I can't talk from experience myself (i'm happy toiling away in obscurity, yay!), but these are just some ideas;-)

[TerranRich]

My game's web site uses Wordpress (for which it was very easy to create a custom theme from scratch) and its own domain name.

A domain name can cost as little as $7 or $8 yer year, plus a basic hosting package can cost as little as $7 or $8 per month. Not that much out of pocket, to be honest.

I use HostGator, and their $9.99/mo plan offers unlimited bandwidth and web space. (And before anybody says anything, I checked with the tech support department, and the only limit is a physical one, which is 20% of their total upstream, which I calculated to be about 20TB per month max.)

[Ali]

As well as what Ascovel said - taking an active part in indie communities - for me personally, a really solid website for the game and the developer is a big sell. I know there's the games pages here, which are great, but I don't think it could hurt to create a dedicated website to show off your creations (if you have one already, i've missed it, sorry). If you can get people to your site, they might be inclined to look at what else you've done while they're there.

I've been wondering about this too actually. My concern with setting up a website with a game for download would be bandwidth, but TerranRich's package sounds quite good. I'd be interested to hear people's positive and negative experiences of hosting games online.

[tzachs]

Well, I haven't tried it myself, but you can use press release distribution services.

[Calin Leafshade]

unlimited bandwidth is absolutely vital. My site transfers about 10Gb every week which would cost a fortune in penalty charges

[TerranRich]

Same here, all of the sites I run, combined (including ShutUpload, a file hosting service) transfer about 250GB per month (about 8-9 GB/day) and HostGator has specifically told me that I'm nowhere near using any amount of bandwidth that would worry them.