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[Zaratustra]

If you make a good enough game(to save the president) I don't think you'll have to worry about it being spread over the net. A good start might be to post it here and maybe an editor will find it and front page it. Then you are world famous and will have to write autographs on your way to the supermarket. Many people read the TIG front page

Heh. You're a funny guy.

[Paul Eres]

I think the "just make a good game and marketing will take care of itself" position is only really promoted by people who have never created (finished) games, because it doesn't work like that very often. Do you think we all know about Braid because it's a good game? No, we know about it because Jon Blow promoted the heck out of it, spending massive amounts of time promoting it.

[TheBlackMask]

No, we know about it because Jon Blow promoted the heck out of it, spending massive amounts of time promoting it.

This is true, but Braid was pretty much unheard of before winning big at the IGF in 2006.  Having a good game is not the only factor, but definitely the biggest, I think.  If your game is good, it makes it that much easier to get people to play it when it does come time to market it.

In the world of AAA games, it's possible to simply market the hell out of a crap game and have it sell...Take Kane & Lynch for example.  But in the indie world, where almost no one buys a game without playing the demo first, game quality is the bottom line.

[Paul Eres]

It was kind of unheard of even after that, though -- I think the constant previews, interviews, and game design talks Blow did had more to do with its popularity than the IGF prize (although that helped). And the reason it was unheard of before the IGF was because it didn't exist before the IGF; my impression is that the version that won the IGF was that version that just had a few levels with the time mechanic and some clip art as placeholder graphics.

Indie games tend to have similar conversion rates, 0.5%-1.5% of people who download a demo will buy it (higher quality games are on the upper end of that, lower quality games on the lower end), so getting people to try it out is more important than quality a lot of the time. A game with hundreds of thousands of downloads of the demo will sell better than a higher quality game with fewer downloads, even if a slightly smaller percent of those that download a game buy it.

So I still definitely think that marketing is more important than quality, just as much for indie games as for multi-million dollar games. Besides, mainstream PC games have demos as well, so the demo effect applies to both, I didn't buy Portal until I'd played the demo first.

[Paul Eres]

As an aside, there's a list of what you're requesting here:

http://indiedevguide.com/wiki/index.php/Game_Review_Sites

Although it's not much more complete than the ones mentioned, I thought it'd be good to link to it.

[Jeff]

2D Boy did virtually no personal marketing for World of Goo and I just saw Ron Carmel on TV an hour ago.   If your game is truly awesome, you should be thinking more about business development (e.g. getting your game featured on the Wii) rather than thinking about which blog editors you need to email.

For 99% of indie games, this is obviously not the case, but 2D Boy definitely made it.  For the rest of us, trying to get covered on TIGSource, etc. is a great start. 

[Paul Eres]

You don't think going on TV counts as marketing, though? Or getting your game featured on the Wii? Both are part of marketing. It includes a wide range of activities; most successful indie developers (the ones that make a living at it, like Cliffski, etc.) spend about as much time marketing as they do creating games.

[Jeff]

Right, but my point is that Ron Carmel and Kyle Gabler didn't email Spike TV, MSNBC, and the hundreds of other sites and ask to be covered.  They did a few things that put them in that position, which I guess you could call marketing, but the things they did to get into that position was largely "make a kick ass game and win IGF".

After they won IGF, they mostly just had to sit back and the offers started rolling in.  At that point the challenge was figuring out which companies are shady and to negotiate fair deals, not compile a list of blogs to notify.  They ended up with a deal with Nintendo, Steam, and an amazing publisher.  That is smart business development.  If you classify that as "marketing", then it's just semantics.

[Zaratustra]

Right, but my point is that Ron Carmel and Kyle Gabler didn't email Spike TV, MSNBC, and the hundreds of other sites and ask to be covered.  They did a few things that put them in that position, which I guess you could call marketing, but the things they did to get into that position was largely "make a kick ass game and win IGF".

IGF is a big marketing truck for people to put their indie games in.

Some game-submit pages from websites that are too lazy to even post email addresses you can post press releases to:

http://jayisgames.com/game-submit/
hxxp://www.indiegamemag.com/2008/10/contact-us.html
http://playthisthing.com/node/add/suggestion
http://www.gametunnel.com/html/modules.php?name=Feedback (doesn't review free games and you have to get them like five copies of the game. I suspect this website is a ploy to play games for free.)
http://www.indiegamemag.com/2008/10/contact-us.html

[Paul Eres]

Right, but my point is that Ron Carmel and Kyle Gabler didn't email Spike TV, MSNBC, and the hundreds of other sites and ask to be covered.  They did a few things that put them in that position, which I guess you could call marketing, but the things they did to get into that position was largely "make a kick ass game and win IGF".

After they won IGF, they mostly just had to sit back and the offers started rolling in.  At that point the challenge was figuring out which companies are shady and to negotiate fair deals, not compile a list of blogs to notify.  They ended up with a deal with Nintendo, Steam, and an amazing publisher.  That is smart business development.  If you classify that as "marketing", then it's just semantics.

They didn't, but I'm sure they did a lot of marketing work to get their game previewed and so on: it's sometimes like rolling a boulder down a hill: once you're known it's easier to become more known, but you have to provide the first momentum. And accepting those interviews and coverage, provided it takes some amount of work (as TV interviews do) is marketing work.

And as Zaratustra said, entering the IGF and going there to accept the prize and all that is itself marketing, it takes time and effort and it promotes one's game to a larger audience.

As a side note, have you read how multiwinia is having trouble getting reviewed, even though it gets very good scores when it does and has a higher conversion rate (and thus higher quality, concievably) than any of their other games? You can read about that here: http://forums.introversion.co.uk/introversion/viewtopic.php?t=1775 -- I think that's a pretty stark example of how you can't just make a good game and expect the rest to take care of itself.

[Paul Eres]

http://www.gametunnel.com/html/modules.php?name=Feedback (doesn't review free games and you have to get them like five copies of the game. I suspect this website is a ploy to play games for free.)

It's not a ploy (I know several of the reviewers), and they do review good free games occasionally (such as their infamous review of Cave Story). Game Tunnel has been reviewing indie games longer than just about anyone -- they go back long before tim w's blog and tigsource -- so they're definitely legit. Even Derek Yu guest-reviewed for them once, if that'll help convince you they're a real indie game review website. They may not have the same sensibilities that many of us do (e.g. I dislike their reliance on numbered rankings, it feels like EGM or famitsu, which is a bit adolescent), but they're real.

[TheBlackMask]

Yeah, GameTunnel is not a scam.  The guy that runs it has worked for Reflexive Games for a while.

As a side note, have you read how multiwinia is having trouble getting reviewed, even though it gets very good scores when it does and has a higher conversion rate (and thus higher quality, concievably) than any of their other games?

Good example, but do you think that the sequel factor might have something to do with this?  I mean, Multiwinia looks pretty much like Darwinia.  It doesnt seem impossible that reviewers would look at it, then brush it off as a sequel not worth the coverage.

[ShawnF]

It's specialized and not updated a lot, but every bit of press helps, so here's one more:
http://www.fun-motion.com/

[Zaratustra]

IndieGameMag's review of Eversion missed the point and was a bit smug about it. I take back my recommendation of the site.

[TheBlackMask]

That's hilarious.  Apparently playing a game for 3 minutes qualifies you to write a review of it now.  Goodbye credibility.