Indie Marketing 101: The Right (And Wrong) Ways To Market Your Indie Game
GENERATE YOUR OWN TRAFFIC
So what else can you do to spread the word about your game? Lots actually. In this day and age you might not even need the press to really ramp up the interest for your game. They can still help a lot though (don’t abandon us!).
Forums
Presuming you’ve got your website setup and you’re appearing active, you may as well start sharing your work in places where potentially interested people may reside. Where do such places exist? There are plenty of game forums where you can not only announce your game but also keep a developer’s log there for people to read too. Keep them updated, show them some love and they’ll return the favor.
This comes in the form of offering feedback and suggestions of your development progress, spreading the word about your game and giving you an expectant audience to keep you on track. Make sure to have relevant links all over the place, especially in your profile and signature in forums, everything helps!
Some of the best forums include:
- TIGSource Forums
- IndieGamer Forums
- IGM Forums (of course)
- IndieDB Forums
There’s a whole lot more too! Many of which are listed by the marvellous PixelProspector in the Big List Of Game Development Forums.
It doesn’t stop at forums either, there’s actually one place that’s been on a constant rise at the moment and can score you a lot of views on your own website or game trailer. That place is Reddit, more specifically:
A place of joy and wonder for many – just drop a link and a brief and exciting headline and watch the traffic and interest flow. It happens, honestly.
Social Media
This is an obvious one but should certainly not be overlooked. If you’re not already, get on Twitter and Facebook and tell people to Follow and Like your pages. Keep your feed interesting with links and perhaps even your personality and you could see great success through these channels. You’ve got to be creative too – hold competitions, giveaways, perhaps a quiz, release screenshots through social media or ask for feedback on something you’re working on.
IndieDB
Other than being a part of the IndieDB forums, you should most certainly have your own pages on IndieDB itself. This could be where you keep your blog, but really you want to spread that as far as possible as we’ve said. People can follow your projects on there so keep them updated with interesting news, upload your media there too and your chances of getting distribution on Desura (which is a sister site) goes up dramatically.
These are only what are considered the very best and most successful resources for getting the word about your game out there. Needless to say, there are many more out there that only need to be discovered. So keep an eye out for opportunities and always make sure to rely on only yourself and be persistent when marketing your game. That’s the best one liner advice we can give you.
More information and resources on the topic of indie game marketing can be found over on Pixel Prospector’s Big List Of Indie Game Marketing. You should check it out!
Page 5: Generate Your Own Traffic
