Getting listed on the big sites has its pros and cons. Pros are; you get some credibility and more opportunities for downloads and sales. Cons are; you are but a tiny flea buried back below and underneath all the games who have publishers to pay for promotions, visual space, reviews and interviews. The noise above you is deafening. All you can do for now is spread the link around. Direct2Drive offers the opportunity for reader reviews, which is nice, but players often don't have the time to write them. GameSpot sends out updates to subscribers but if you don't let people know you have a listing there no one will subscribe to your game news. You have to get busy and post your blog, post gamefaqs and shop your site links.

Years ago when we uploaded our first demo to Apple it was instantly featured as most recent, most popular and staff pick. This year the Apple staff in charge are casual game lovers. Our game is 1000 times better than our previous effort and even though we get a tremendous number of downloads from the Apple referring link KWO has not yet been featured. This is probably mainly due to the app store movement, where games there are targeted towards casual gamers. These type of staff picks better fit into Apple's current marketing scheme. The only games in the action category that are getting featured there are small casual games or the kind of adventure game that has pretty painted screens but no character controls. Given the size of our download in that field 'most popular' spot is likely not within our reach. Not with Apple's current focus on casual. Or is that being pessimistic? :P

Press Releases

Now this is one place you have some control. There are some potential difficulties, such as the ridiculous offers made by some PR places to help get your press release out. Forget about it. They range from the hundreds for a 'one time try' to the thousands per month with a 1 year minim for a special package. If you do your research you'll find the reviews aren't that great for many of these places and you can't afford them anyways. They may have an average of up to 500 sites where they can place your press release. That's a lot, but if you try doing your own you'll find that many of those sites will pick it up from one of the larger ones anyways.

Then there are the so-called friendly community sites who will let you post your press release if you buy a Pro or Corporate membership. Our experience has shown us that they don't do anything more than let you post it. No promotion, no effort, nothing. If you are only interested in the press release service among the other services they offer the value for dollar just isn't there. Your time is better spent submitting your PR to the news hungry industry sites. Their rss feeds will get it out there like crazy.

There's also this little movement out there that is in support of fair publishing. Some sites do it vocally and others do it quietly but they give the indie developer a small chance at being heard. My favorites are Gamershell and GamePress. Gamershell will host your company profile, demos, videos and screenshots, while GamesPress will host company profile, art, screenshots, videos and press releases.

Profiles

Fair publishing sites

Giantbomb is the newer game database that kicks butt. It hosts company profiles, game info, art, character profiles, just tons of stuff. Giantbomb beats Mobygames in more ways than I can mention. Mobygames is old school and cranky, difficult to deal with. Giantbomb is contemporary and friendly. Blogs and twitter can do a lot to get you out there too.

Articles & Blogs

Writing about your experience in either an educational or post mortem format can help visibility. Articles and blogs like this take time and you don't get paid for them like a journalist will be paid for a feature. But they can find their way onto a high profile site. Dean's 'Small Team Big Dreams' article was published on GameCareerGuide and Thirteen1 magazine. Since it was focused on helping the new developer it was attractive to the publishers. That brought us some hits. Adding rss feed to your blog can help you gain visibility too, but you've got to keep them coming.

Getting exposure through indie contests

I thought maybe it would help our visibility if we could get mentioned on some of the indie sites or win or place in an indie game contest. So far it's proved to be an exercise in futility. We paid our hundred bucks to enter the 2009 IGF. It's easy to perceive the judges as biased toward the casual and 2d games given the finalists, winners and opinion pieces published around the time of the contest. We found through our service provider reports that we get far more hits from our own sites then we did from the IGF listing. Not so great exposure from the contest as expected. The one judge who played our entry towards the end of the contest called it interesting and ambitious. Any contest entry takes time for documentation and promotion as well as the entry fee. There was no point in spending the time or another $100 this year.

The definition of indie is so blurred it's hard for us to be taken seriously as an indie team. We've been told our dream is too big. It doesn't represent the majority of the indie crowd. And yet other indies who partner up with MS and get a free XBLA kit instead of having to go in through the XNA route, which all other indies do, write articles proclaiming they are still in the spirit of indie. Even BackBone Entertainment just before their multi million dollar investment proclaims to be independent.

After we moved our game to an engine that was advertised as evolving to an MMO engine, polished the game up and finished it up, we entered the game engine developer's annual game contest. We spent a lot of time posting on the forums, doing special builds for the company, taking extra screenshots etc. That turned out to be another exercise in futility. The one 'judge' who played KWO claimed to start it up on his laptop, unplug the laptop, then continue to 'play for some time' at an internet cafe without hooking up to the wireless. Our game requires internet (which we had posted in the thread and on our site under system requirements) for the streaming content. From what he did play online, we saw from our logs that he read the first 3 screens of the tutorial and skipped the rest of it. It wasn't played, yet was eliminated. That one was tough to swallow. But we sucked it up and moved on, further determining we didn't fit in the indie crowd. At least not as far as we could see.

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