Have you promote you game with social networks like Facebook or Twitter?What do you think about it?

Have you done local marketing on BBS?

what is spam and what it's marketing?





This is my marketing idea of my first game at all:

http://boringspaceshooter.blogspot.com/2009/10/boring-facebook-contest-win-worst-game.html

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Boring-Space-Shooter/186814970324?ref=ts

I did a lot with Twitter for my game. Facebook (at least the people I know on Facebook) doesn't seem to be the audience for contests and things like that. Unless you have a Facebook app version of your game, I'm still not sure how to really utilize Facebook for indie games. But maybe that's just because I'm a programmer and not a marketing person. :P

Note to self: get marketing person.

We're still ramping up (since we haven't actually released Kissy Poo yet) but we focused primarily on Twitter during the development phase. Towards the end here we've started a Facebook page for the game as well created our website for Kissy Poo. I think marketing for an Indie dev is less about the game personally and more about the person. Games that you make are going to come and go, some are going to suck, some might be good, but if you're working on branding yourself and networking yourself, now you have an audience no matter what you make.

Ultimately I have no way to know how people get to my game to download it, but I feel like Twitter has been helpful.

xboxhornet.wordpress.com ran a promo where they game away a couple copies of my game for those that started following me and passed along the message... this alone got me 50+ followers. I've got 70 people now that i can notify anytime I have news reguarding any previously released games or new ones.

I haven't bothered with Facebook... I feel like Twitter offers as much as I need and I don't want to have to deal with managing/maintaining another thing.

I'm with Nick and Kris on this one.  I just don't see how Facebook brings all that much to the table that Twitter doesn't already bring.  And for me personally, Twitter seems like it's a lot more simple and less hassle.

LOL, and this is why you guys are great developers and make good games...but suck at the marketing aspect thus lowering your sales and visibility. Facebook still has a MUCH MUCH larger user base than Twitter. So what does Facebook bring that Twitter doesn't? More people and potentially more customers seeing your name and your product.

Now if making the most money off your work isn't your goal, then you're right, not really worth it. But if you're trying to squeeze every sale you can, then you can NOT ignore a free advertising resource with one of the largest user bases out there....

Is it easiest to put some link in your game credits page to your game or company facebook page, so you can get more fans to your game. Maybe good idea is to create one facebook fan page for all indie games, which will increase knowledge of indie games. This could contain information how to find games, how to purhase, maybe list of new releases and so on...

George Clingerman:

LOL, and this is why you guys are great developers and make good games...but suck at the marketing aspect thus lowering your sales and visibility. Facebook still has a MUCH MUCH larger user base than Twitter. So what does Facebook bring that Twitter doesn't? More people and potentially more customers seeing your name and your product.

Now if making the most money off your work isn't your goal, then you're right, not really worth it. But if you're trying to squeeze every sale you can, then you can NOT ignore a free advertising resource with one of the largest user bases out there....

Stop making sense.

Twitter offers a cleaner way to announce news than Facebook but Facebook does have a large edge in customer base. I personally wouldn't friend a game company (indie or otherwise) unless I was really friends with that person too but I suspect lots of people would. I setup a MySpace page years ago for a different website I run and without really spending time with it and seeking out new friends, it was pretty much a waste. So if you're gonna use something like Facebook, you need to invest the time into it to make it worthwhile for others too and not just create an account and call it a day.

Don't forget that it can become a two for one deal because Twitter can tie into Facebook. You can post announcements in Twitter and they become announcements in Faceboook. So it's not like you even have to do that much more work.

And yeah, I personally think you can go two ways with Facebook. I personally think branding yourself is what's most important. So if you're really wanting to get your games going, you've got to get your name out there and known. And Facebook is a great way of networking. Every high school kid you ever knew, everyone in college, friends, family, etc. Those are your word of mouth. You don't always talk about game development, you talk about life. You spend time building those relationships and then when you DO have a game coming out, you leverage all those people who see what you write.

That's just how I feel about it. As an indie game developer, you have to use the resources you have and your street team is everyone you've ever had a conversation with...

You don't 'friend' companies and product, you become a fan. Its different in that they don't get your personal infrmation availalbe to them. Just some roll up demographics.

I've seen that twitter is very good to promote the game in US and UK, but there is not so much known in Europe yet.

The bad thing about facebook it's that you have to persuade fans to share the page with their friends.

I can publish games but you can't buy games in my country (Australia). Thus social networking advertising for me is pretty useless, lol.

George Clingerman:

LOL, and this is why you guys are great developers and make good games...but suck at the marketing aspect thus lowering your sales and visibility.

For sure. One of my goals is to someday put together a little team including a person who just does marketing.

George Clingerman:

Facebook still has a MUCH MUCH larger user base than Twitter. So what does Facebook bring that Twitter doesn't? More people and potentially more customers seeing your name and your product.

Indeed. Currently my problem is getting people involved. Most of my friends on Facebook fall into two categories: 1) Follow me on Twitter or 2) Don't play Xbox. As you can see, just pegging my friends won't work. Plus I just got so sick of all the app invites and crap that I stopped logging in to Facebook for a while. :P We had made a page for Metacreature way back when and it never took off. I might put one up soon for SGB and see how it goes.

I'm also working on utilizing Facebook in a much more grand sense (mainly after reading this thread and reconsidering my stance on Facebook). For those not following me on Twitter (see how useful that little site is?): http://twitpic.com/n4d6w and http://twitpic.com/n3vnd. Hopefully once I get it all done it will help every XBLIG developer by making it easier for Facebook users to quickly find games, recommend them to friends, mark the ones they own, and compare with friends. I have more ideas to make it all more grand, but for now that's the first goal.

I can't find xbox indies app on facebook.

lefantome:

I can't find xbox indies app on facebook.

That's because it's not done yet. Guess I should have put that in my post. In fact at this point it barely works. :P I've just managed to pull in my database and get some stuff going. I have a lot of work left to do before it'll be ready for release. I'm hoping no later than the end of November to have it all taken care of.

Nick, singlehandedly saving the XBLIG community from themselves :)  This is why we love you.

George Clingerman:

Nick, singlehandedly saving the XBLIG community from themselves :)  This is why we love you.

I always just figure if I have to solve the marketing issue for myself, I might as well do it for everyone. :)

In some ways I'm still in the dark ages and have no clue how to use/view Twitter or Facebook, but I've found Youtube to be a good way to get some press.  Granted, it's not a good way to keep fans up to date, but it helps to put you on the map.

George Clingerman:

LOL, and this is why you guys are great developers and make good games...but suck at the marketing aspect thus lowering your sales and visibility. Facebook still has a MUCH MUCH larger user base than Twitter. So what does Facebook bring that Twitter doesn't? More people and potentially more customers seeing your name and your product.

Now if making the most money off your work isn't your goal, then you're right, not really worth it. But if you're trying to squeeze every sale you can, then you can NOT ignore a free advertising resource with one of the largest user bases out there....

I agree!  Why not use all of the social networks you can.  In fact, we have a facebook page, a twitter account which gets updated automatically when we post something to our facebook fan page thus linking the two with no extra effort on our part.  We also set up a digg button on our website though it seems the people that come to our website either don't digg or don't know what it is.

While this is our first attempt at making a game let alone market one, I'm basically taking the approach that the pros do and pulling out all the stops as they say.  It may not make a difference but it can't hurt.  Here's out website if you want to see how we're doing it:

Canned Games Website


Cheers,

Adam Culberson
Canned Games

After reading this thread I have just decided to set up a twitter account as I will be submitting my first game for play test next week. Can anyone advise me on what I can actually do on twitter to help promote my game as Ive never used it before and dont really know where to begin.

Mouse88:

After reading this thread I have just decided to set up a twitter account as I will be submitting my first game for play test next week. Can anyone advise me on what I can actually do on twitter to help promote my game as Ive never used it before and dont really know where to begin.

Thats completely fine im not expecting miracles after all its my first indie game and im planning many more so plenty of time. How do I actually get the word out on twitter and gain followers?

By networking.... :)  That's kind of the whole point. You follow people, you talk with people. There's no magic trick, you have to actually put the time into networking to make it effective.

For twitter a good first step is to start following other XNA developers and chatting with them. They're a good first line of networking and marketing. By making friends there and talking about your game with them that's your first line. Then when you release and tweet about it, they normally will retweet and spread the word to their friends and followers and so on.

Beyond that find co-workers, high school friends, family, etc. Getting people like that in your social network give you a wider net to cast. They're going to have different sets of followers than your dev friends have and they'll put you into new markets. You'll need to make sure you talk about more than just game dev to keep people like that interest in you. But since they know you, if you tell them you're releasing a game most will find that cool enough that they too will spread the word and that will help you reach a new group of people as their tweets spread to their friends and followers.

Beyond that it's just trying to make as many friends and followers as you can. It takes work. But every follower you have is someone who will see your announcements regarding your game when you make them. And any followers that will retweet what you say just helps that message spread exponentially.

It's really far, far less about your game however and way more about you. You need to work on the social networking aspect of yourself, because it's beneficial in ALL areas of your life. Releasing a game? You have an audience to announce it to. Lost a job? You've got a whole team of people that can help you look? Going through some rough times? There's a lot of people out there that have gone through it too and they can hook you up with the right resources and what helped them.

Networking isn't something you take a week to do, it's something you need to be working on for the rest of your life.

Interesting thread!