How Do Indies Get the Word Out?

This post is a bit self serving, but I think the information could potentially be useful to other indie game developers as well. I really hope everyone who reads this will share it as widely as possible so we can get as much feedback gathered as possible.

One of the hardest things for indie game developers is getting the word out about their game so they can get a nice core of early players who will test, give feedback, help them iterate on their design, and get their game polished.

Personally, what I would really like to have early on is about 100-500 hardcore, dedicated players who will play the heck out of your game and stick with it for a few months. You want them to stay dedicated so they can understand where you’ve been and become a core group of tested players whose feedback you can benefit from for many years to come.

So the $64,000 question is: how do you get those couple hundred players?

GAMING FORUMS:

Gaming forums SHOULD be a great place to get the word out about your game. Thousands of gamers, many of which are always looking for something new and interesting, gathered in once place, in a medium that has self selected people who like to communicate.

Unfortunately, many (most?) gaming forums are completely insane with how rapidly they shut you down if you post about your game. They accuse you of spam even if all you do is make one post. Even if you check back regularly, answer questions people post, etc. (which is something an actual spammer would never do), they will warn, ban, block, etc. with impunity. I hate that so many gaming sites do this, and I wish they’d change, but I lack the power or influence to make this happen.

I don’t know if this is just overzealous moderation or bad policies. Either way, it is really disappointing and terrible for the industry as a whole. The mega giant blockbusters don’t need to communicate directly with gamers so they aren’t affected. It is the smaller games and indies that need a way to talk to gamers, and the best medium for this is being consistently made unavailable.

Are there any gaming sites/forums that aren’t like this? Where you can post about your game and actually get a bunch of people who will try out your game, give you feedback, and potentially join your hardcore group of early adopters? If so, please share in the comments!

GAMING BLOGS:

I read a lot of gaming blogs, and there are people on tons of them that I would love to have as testers or early/trial players. But blog topics are determined by the blog author, and I rarely see an opportunity in a discussion to say “Oh speaking of (topic being discussed), you guys should try my new game.” It doesn’t feel natural and instead feels disruptive or just too far off topic.

I have tried mailing blog authors and asking them to write about one of our games, and in a number of cases some awesome bloggers have done this. But these blog posts seem to get mostly ignored by the readers. I think blog readers are generally looking for commentary, analysis, or controversy. So when they see an article that is a nice, calm “hey check this cool thing out”, I think blog readers tune it out or say “oh yeah I will check that out later” but never get around to it.

So as much as I love blogs, I am not sure how well they work for getting the word out about your game. Perhaps if there are some specific blogs designed to promote indie games or to help gamers find new and unique games. Again, if anyone knows of such a thing please post about it in the comments.

ADVERTISING:

In my experience this is just a money pit. Indie companies don’t have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to dump into advertising, so chances are you won’t ever be able to get enough coverage to break through the din of marketing noise. People in marketing know that repetition is the key to making your advertising message effective. It isn’t the first time someone sees your game ad that they try it out. It is more like the 5th or 6th time they see it. Then they say “oh hey, there’s another ad for that game I keep seeing. Maybe I should try it out.”

It is hard enough for an indie company to get enough ad coverage for someone to see their ad once. Getting the ad in front of the same person 5 or more times? Nearly impossible.

Advertising on some smaller, specialized sites might be effective, and once again I’d love to hear some suggestions from readers about sites where an indie company could advertise and actually have it generate some good results.

GAME AGGREGATORS/PLATFORMS:

This is where sites like Kongregate (flash) or Pheeva (html5) come into play. I’ve never made a game that would work with these types of sites, so my experience here is zero. I’d love to hear from people who have put games on sites like this – especially if you did so with the purpose of driving people to your “main” or “bigger” gaming site.

FACEBOOK:

Ugh. I hate the dominant position Facebook has taken as a gaming platform, mainly because it is a pretty bad platform for gaming in general. Tons of screen/UI real estate is eaten up by Facebook, a third party can (and does) change the API on you at will, and if you want to charge money they force you to use THEIR currency from which they take 30% (at least) of your gross.

The only option here, imho, for indies is to make a light or simple version of your game and put it on Facebook just to entice people to play your real game (similar to the aggregators above).

Alternatively, what about just sending updates, high scores, etc. to people’s walls. Does this still work? If so, is it effective? Also, how hard is this to build into your game?