Where to promote your indie game?

Question

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Where to advertise my game?

Let's say I have developed a game and I want to "get it out there". What I have in mind is open-source, non-commercial games.

What websites do you know of where you can promote your newly developed game, rather than simply posting it on your blog?

Answer 1

http://www.indiedb.com/ has just been created, and might be an excellent choice, in addition to David McGraw's recommendation.

Answer 2

How-to:

www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4117/building_buzz_for_indie_games.php

How to deal with the press:

gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?page_id=693

List of PC game reviewers:

fallout.bethsoft.com/eng/links/fallout3-reviews.php

Marketing Book:

www.sellmorevideogames.com

Viral Marketing

www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4210/building_the_foundation_of_a_.php

Marketing for Indie Games

www.slideshare.net/simoniker/igs-gdc-austin-john-graham-effective-marketing-for-indie-game-developers?src=related_normal&rel=2670032

Indie Press Release service

www.gamerelease.net

Answer 3

I would create a post in several forums that I know of -

• gamedev.net
• devmaster.net
• tigsource.com
• igda.com

Essentially any game related forum. It's not easy 'getting it out there.' It's quite time consuming.

Aside from that, I would get active on http://www.moddb.com. There is a ton of activity and you can post your game, mod or add-on.

If you sign up on gamedev.net and pay a yearly fee one of the perks is listing your projects in their showcase - http://www.gamedev.net/community/gds/.

If you're working on something really really slick, you might want to think about writing in to some of these websites and see if they would write a post / review your game. That could help quite a bit.

Answer 4

Two more sites for promoting are http://www.gametunnel.com/ and http://www.gamerelease.net/

Answer 5

Gamedev has a board on it's forum for game announcements (the Your Announcements board), which is pretty active.
There's also word of mouth - distributing it to friends, work colleagues, family. It doesn't HAVE to be on the web, though this isn't going to be as effective. On the other hand, it's a gurantee that someone will play it.

There's also forum signatures for most general use forums; especially gaming forums.

Devmaster is also a popular site.

Answer 6

Don't forget those high traffic sites.

CNets Download.com, tucows.com, www.brothersoft.com, etc.

Answer 7

First, gamedev sites and forums:

gamedev.net devmaster.net idga.org (warning: their site is REALLY slow, the forum may take 20 minutes to load... don't give up as it takes a long time).

Then, indie communities:

tigsource.com www.indiedb.com www.moddb.com (well, sorta the same as indiedb, the forums are actually shared)

Important blogs to send your PR stuff: rockpapershotgun.com indiegames.com pcgamer.com

Shareware distribution sites: tucows.com softpedia.com download.com (to upload to them, it is upload.com)

Advertising services: google ads game-advertising-online.com

PR services: gamerelease.net gamespress.com

I will add more stuff as I remember (most of those are post-its glued to my monitor)

Answer 8

Dont forget you can also write a press release, there are many sites out there that let you publish them for free, then many companies have the chance of seeing your press release.

Also send out free copies to review sites or lone reviews (individuals) If they like your game they may put it up and if you get lucky and get onto something like kotaku.com your sales could be greatly improved.

Regards

Mark

Answer 9

http://playthisthing.com "Everything Cool in Games -- OUT of the Mainstream"

Answer 10

Visit www.altergamer.com - I'm the admin&manager there, use the contact form and give us some details - if we are interested, we will be happy to review your game. We are strong supporters of new and fairly ambitious projects.

Cheers, Adam