I went in to my local game shop today and asked about leaving a flyer to promote Indie Games.  My local shop is Game and they were playing by the book as it were and said they could only do this if it were sanctioned by their head office.  I will try again at another store and see if I get someone more helpful.

I notice flyers have been successfully left by at least one person before (see VoodooChief's post), and I was wondering has anyone else tried it?  Are some stores more receptive than others?

I wondered, could this be a valid way to generally increase awareness of the Indie Games service?  Even if a flyer is game-specific it shows the person at least how to find Indie Games on the service, and a "rising tide lifts all boats" as they say.

Problem with flyers of course is that you have to front the cost of printing them. Internet is far cheaper to distribute awareness and would reach a much larger audience, you'd be better off just focusing on that :) I mean flyers are a valid method of course, but an internet-based method is overall much better.

Murudai:

Problem with flyers of course is that you have to front the cost of printing them. Internet is far cheaper to distribute awareness and would reach a much larger audience, you'd be better off just focusing on that :) I mean flyers are a valid method of course, but an internet-based method is overall much better.

I'd have to agree with this, especially for internet-based videogames.. Meaning these are games you download from a live community, by the time you see the flyer, get back home and search/download the game, you may as well have forgotten everything about it or just lost interest.

These community games have to attract the attention of the end-user when he browses through the list of available games, or just sees a video on youtube or a comment/post on a blog. A flyer is way too slow to reach the user, not effective enough I would say.

Morgawr:

Murudai:

Problem with flyers of course is that you have to front the cost of printing them. Internet is far cheaper to distribute awareness and would reach a much larger audience, you'd be better off just focusing on that :) I mean flyers are a valid method of course, but an internet-based method is overall much better.

I'd have to agree with this, especially for internet-based videogames.. Meaning these are games you download from a live community, by the time you see the flyer, get back home and search/download the game, you may as well have forgotten everything about it or just lost interest.

These community games have to attract the attention of the end-user when he browses through the list of available games, or just sees a video on youtube or a comment/post on a blog. A flyer is way too slow to reach the user, not effective enough I would say.

I disagree to an extent. Think of the number of Xbox LIVE users in the world (or at least in XBLIG nations). I think it's something like 10-15 million. How many of them shop retail stores? How many visit internet sites about games? I'm guessing far more in the first category than the second. Getting the name out is important and while I clearly believe the internet is important as shown with my work on XboxIndies.com, I think moving some marketing to the Real World™ could really help bring more gamers into the market.

Nick Gravelyn:

Think of the number of Xbox LIVE users in the world (or at least in XBLIG nations). I think it's something like 10-15 million. How many of them shop retail stores? How many visit internet sites about games? I'm guessing far more in the first category than the second.

That's exactly what I was thinking in the game store the other day.  Every single Xbox owner in the town I am in must surely go into that same store at some point or other.  But certainly not everyone of them know about, or know how to find Indie Games (I couldn't find them myself first time I looked for them).  If every Xbox owner did look, even occasionally, at Indie Games we'd all be seeing more sales.  I'd like to see flyers in my local store just promoting how to find Indie Games on people's consoles.

I like this idea. Maybe a few games could get together and make a joint flyer. We really just need to advertise that XBLIG exists. Having a couple of bright jazzy screenshots on the flyer wouldnt do any harm.
I think local stores in the uk would slip one into any customers bag for free. Could also randomly put a game code on a couple of flyers.
This won't be the saving grace of marketing but I think I'm definitely going to try this out. If anyone wants to team up in the UK to half the cost of printing count me in.

Thinking more, we have one big problem. We can't use the official XBLIG logos. This means we either break the rules (not a good thing) or risk looking really unprofessional (also not a good thing). Any ideas for how to make a professional looking flyer without using the official logos? Any artistic people want to try mocking something up?

Nick Gravelyn:

Thinking more, we have one big problem. We can't use the official XBLIG logos. This means we either break the rules (not a good thing) or risk looking really unprofessional (also not a good thing). Any ideas for how to make a professional looking flyer without using the official logos? Any artistic people want to try mocking something up?

That's a very good point. I hadn't thought of that. The main thing we need to get across is you go to Game Marketplace>Indie Games on your xbox 360 and it's free trials and games from 68p or $1

conkerjo:

The main thing we need to get across is you go to Game Marketplace>Indie Games on your xbox 360 and it's free trials and games from 68p or $1

Agreed.  What might work is if we can find a willing artist to draw up a really good looking template, without the official logos, with say 90% of the copy space all with common information about how unique Indie Games are and how cheap they are.  Then the idea is that we could all share that template and each team that wants to do a flyer can download the template and fill in the remaining 10% of the copy space with their specific game.  If its just a little screenshot and short blurb then no graphic design skills are required to do the minor customising of the leaflet :).

Anyone else think this could work?  I can post up a request on the artists forum.

Here is an idea... post flyers at local college campuses. They are very relaxed about posting them (in general) and you can often use simple 8.5x11 paper. If you attend the college printing is usually cheap or free.

You could always just leave them where ever you go.

Talking about awareness of Indie Games, I'm working an a Facebook application that can help.