next »

[Ruxar]

I'm gearing up for my first release on steam and was wondering how people handle sending out keys to the press / streamers? Are you selective at all in terms of the size of the site / channel?

[J-Snake]

Depends on how appealing the game is, I would say. Looks like you have a cool platformer with some twist, on the first glance. People are willing to pick it up and give it a run. Just try to contact a bunch of youtubers with varied amount of subscribers and see who replies. That should ground your further decisions. Good luck:)

[Ruxar]

Thanks for that, do you generally send out individual emails or do you scatter gun it with a mail merge?

[@Alex@]

Take what I say with a grain of salt as I've never released a game on steam.

I'd send personalised emails to the "big names" and any that I was particularly wanting coverage from and do a bog-standard mail merge for the littler channels/review avenues that would be nice to have but aren't going to make or break you. I'd try to limit steam key distribution to channels with >1000 subscribers [or there about] unless you particularly like a channel or whoever is making content for the channel is a friend.

Edit : What's the name of this game so I can look out for it?

[Ruxar]

That's a good idea to have a mix of the two approaches.

Edit : What's the name of this game so I can look out for it?

Heh, it's called iZBOT there's a link in my sig.

[J-Snake]

I just sent out a bunch of generic mails, only the name has been replaced to match the youtuber. I only wrote a little more personalized mails when I felt the game is appropriate for a particular youtuber. I reached out to small youtubers
(16-10000 subs), only 10%-15% of them replied back. But it is my personal case and the game is not very marketable, just look up "Trap Them" in the link below and decide yourself. Almost none of the youtubers are suitable to present it, none of them will make it beyond the introductory stages. But it is always fun to see their individual take on the game.

I think it is important to note that your mail should still be short, even when it is personal. You have to imagine big youtubers are flooded with mails and they cannot read all of them anyway. So your mail should be catchy and straight to the point. The creator of "INK" on here made a nice sum up on how to get your game noticed. He suggests to include a pic of your favorite animal in your mail, haha. That is not my style, but feel free to check out his vid and see for yourself:

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=48968.0

[oldblood]

Thanks for that, do you generally send out individual emails or do you scatter gun it with a mail merge?

How often do you read emails that aren't addressed to you and just include a sales pitch?

Probably not often...

Now picture getting 10-100x the amount of emails that you get everyday...

You spent a year developing your game (sometimes "years" plural) and then spend 1 day emailing people in bulk to market it... Take your time. Marketing is important.