Hello Creators!!

I'm interested in your thoughts on how to boost interest in a buried community game.  My game Alchemist was released back in February when the Most Recent list was frozen (I didn't know it at the time of release) and therefore no one really knew it was up there.  To make matters worse, at around the same time they "fixed" it so any re-releases wouldn't put it on the Most Recent list.  So after realizing what a fubar situation my game release was in I decided to market it to review sites.  Some good, some bad, but none-the-less word was out there.  Now several months later I'm barely seeing downloads let alone a purchase.

Things were going ok for the first month but dropped down to 1 purchase a day (here or there) as opposed to 10 to 15 purchases when it's reviews were posted and fresh.

What can a guy like me do to help boost awareness about a game that due to problems with the system, was doomed from the start?

Find your game's audience? If you're game has a target demographic audience, find communities where those people hang out and join that community. If you've got something that actually appeals to them I don't see why they wouldn't pay attention to you.

Give your game a home. I run my own website for "Stegersaurus games" and on every page I have a link to my own game, Tank Strike. If people go to my Tank Strike site they may also end up clicking the download link which could eventually lead to a sale, though in all honesty I don't get that much web traffic recently, and I should get code put up to track how many people ACTUALLY click that link that goes to the marketplace...

Blatant Promotion. You could always try setting up some silly contest to try and attract more people, though I'd be cautious about that kind of thing. I know some of the more "notorious" creators here have tried this tactic out...

Make sure you make entries for your game on social networking sites.

Facebook has fan pages. Go make one for your game, and become a fan of it. Everyone who is in your little network will see that you are a fan. I've actually discovered a few games that way myself, like ChainRxn.

Post videos to Youtube, and tag it appropriately (360, XNA, XBox, Alchemist, GENRE_HERE, etc...)

Create an entry for it on the Great Games Experiment. A gaming social network.

Put it on MobyGames. Not sure if you can, but look into it. Any site like this that is a database of games needs an entry.

Become active on the IGN and Gamespot message boards. Make sure to post replies to topics in sections where the same type of player that you are targetting is posting. Don't talk about your game, just put a link to it in your sig. Just pretend to be interested in random topics, and post a few times a week. Those sites get insane traffic, and Gamespot's forum double as the GameFAQs.com forums. On IGN, you can post in the Smackdown board, and the 360 General board. They are the most active boards usually by a huge margin.

Write a faq for your game and upload it to GameFAQs.

Write blog posts about the development of your game. Write a post mortem and try to get a few sites to post it.

Post on the XBox official message board.

Just make a simple sig like:

Billy Bob
Authur of Alchemist on XBox Live Indy Games.

People will click the link out of curiosity.

Alchemist ][ Runes Fu!!!

In all seriousness I would like to see an updated folder on the main page, for games that have added content, game modes, etc.  The FaceBook Fans page is a great idea.  Good luck Aeon, let me know if you do a Fan page.

I'd say just make a sequel to the game or make a new game. It's hard enough to sell well when your game is new that I'm not really sure you can bring a buried game back up that much. If you make a new game, you get to be in the New Arrivals section, learn from any mistakes you made, and produce an even better game. To me that sounds like the best use of time.

Nick Gravelyn:

I'd say just make a sequel to the game or make a new game. It's hard enough to sell well when your game is new that I'm not really sure you can bring a buried game back up that much. If you make a new game, you get to be in the New Arrivals section, learn from any mistakes you made, and produce an even better game. To me that sounds like the best use of time.

Your absolutely right here Nick.  We are planning on making a sequel using some new features in XNA 3.1 (instead of avatar gamerpics, actual avatars).  I was just wondering what I can do in the meantime to try to boost some sales.  I'll take everyones comments into consideration and will see what I can do.  Thanks a lot guys.

Nick Gravelyn:

I'd say just make a sequel to the game...

Exactly.  Make a sequel.  Take what you have, revamp it, make it better.

Aeon:

I was just wondering what I can do in the meantime to try to boost some sales.

Let us know if anything works.  It seems to me if your game is "old", there will be little interest in it, and your efforts to market it will be in vain and would be better spend towards marketing your upcoming next game.  Again, I just skipped by the advice you are really looking for, but it's hard to answer your actual concern!

I guess in my opinion, the simplest way to boost exposure to a buried game is to talk about it. A lot. Let people know how to find it, what it is and get people excited about it. Release more videos, show more screenshots, hold contests of some sort. And while you're at it, don't just talk about your game but talk about you. That way when your next game comes out, they'll be interested because they're interested in you.

I'm having trouble boosting exposure to a game that's only been out for 3 weeks.

It's pretty hard to jump start flagging sales on a game in the best of circumstances and you don't have the best of circumstances.  The vast majority of puzzle games haven't been selling well on either XNA Indie Games or XBLA games; heck, Droplitz is a fine puzzle game that came out on XBLA recently and it didn't even make the top 10 for the week.

I'd say rather than waste your time trying to drum up sales for your old game, you'd be much better off just focusing on your next project.

RainbowDespair:

heck, Droplitz is a fine puzzle game that came out on XBLA recently and it didn't even make the top 10 for the week.

I'd say rather than waste your time trying to drum up sales for your old game, you'd be much better off just focusing on your next project.

Didn't know Droplitz was selling so badly. On reflection, thanks to the recent laser-like focus on casual gamers, every channel has been flooded with puzzle games (especially the iPhone). Bejeweled-style puzzlers with a matrix of symbols being manipulated in various ways is an especially crowded subgenre of puzzler. I mentioned in another thread that nearly every game on the XBLCG Top 10 List that was there for more than 2 weeks, doesn't have a free Flash version available online. And by 'free flash version' I mean any game made by any company that has virtually identical gameplay (or gameplay apparent from screenshots/descriptions).

I would strongly suggest you ditch the sequel idea and try to make something that looks and plays completely different, that can't be summed up as "like this other free game, but with X". Disclaimer: I didn't play Alchemist, but I note it strongly resembles a Bejeweled-style puzzler.
There's a dearth of good platformers on the Xbox, fill a niche!

We're trying an idea based on Tweets for Updates on our website, to try to boost the popularity our game Little Racers in exchange for game improvements.

Anyway we're currently working on other games, so unless the promotion thing is successful, we'll treat it as finished, do a postmortem and keep forward with new projects.

WaaghMan:

We're trying an idea based on Tweets for Updates on our website, to try to boost the popularity our game Little Racers in exchange for game improvements.

Anyway we're currently working on other games, so unless the promotion thing is successful, we'll treat it as finished, do a postmortem and keep forward with new projects.

I have written a response in a new thread.