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[stevesan]

This article seems pretty sensible to me. Can more experienced people comment?

[Oddball]

It seems like sensible advice, if a little obvious, but I suppose a lot of people miss the obvious. The advice I'd give is to not put too much weight in Internet advice. Everyone's experiences are different, and what works for one person might not work for others. I'm not saying ignore the advice, take it on board and use it where appropriate, but don't use it as a manifesto. In my mind the only sure fire way to improve your games chances of success is to make the best game you can.

[stevesan]

It seems like sensible advice, if a little obvious, but I suppose a lot of people miss the obvious. The advice I'd give is to not put too much weight in Internet advice. Everyone's experiences are different, and what works for one person might not work for others. I'm not saying ignore the advice, take it on board and use it where appropriate, but don't use it as a manifesto. In my mind the only sure fire way to improve your games chances of success is to make the best game you can.

For sure. Yeah, some of the stuff is obvious, but it seems like a good check list of obvious stuff

[zede05]

Yeah, all the points in the article are obvious. But realistically, someone can do all of these and still fail to sell very well, there is a certain level of luck involved, imo. Bottom line though, none of these will work if you don't have a great product.

[BudzMcGee]

Hi everyone, I'm actually the author of this little article(as well as the founder, editor of the site it is on) that has been blowing up the last two days, thanks in part to people sharing it much like the OP here. I actually saw this forum in our list of referral links today and thought the conversation seemed interesting and felt like registering to make a comment on it.

While you may be right that these 10 steps seem like common sense, there is an old adage that "common sense isn't very common."  The list was not simply crafted out of thin air, and in fact I even had a colleague from another website that typically focuses almost entirely on indie games give some input before publishing (she agreed whole heatedly with everything on the list).  The fact is, about 1 out of every 5 XBLIG's that I have tried to find a developer or game website for has either not had a website or had one that was so difficult to find due to the name or otherwise that I simply never did. I search the web, twitter and facebook for these sites, and quite often don't find them. About 1/3 of the XBLIG's I look into don't have a trailer, or at the very least don't have one on their website or easily found on YouTube or Game Trailers.  On multiple occasions I have used third parties who record XBLIG game footage and put it on YouTube in order to add video to an article. I know these are all XBLIG references, but the numbers aren't much better when looking at indie PC games either.  Adding to the point in my article, an indie developer found my site today due to the popularity of this article and went and sent me an unsolicited code to review their game (something I say specifically not to do).  Lucky for them I had already glanced at their game previously and had an interest, but case in point, someone found my site due to a list of "don'ts" and then went and did one of the don'ts.

Mostly I wrote this though because most developers are coders, artist, etc., and the business end of things isn't something they either know a lot about or understand all too well. Being on the opposite side for the last year and some change has shown me the many ways indie developers sell themselves short, and spawned this article.

But yes, as I say in the article, having a good game is still important, and luck plays a big part too.  But even great games get left behind.

[Irock]

One point I disagree with is the part where he implied that a trailer should be three minutes long. At most it should be two minutes, but ninety seconds is more my style. I rarely make it through trailers of games I don't already know about, which is usually always the case for indie games. More important than me, the press has limited time too.

The rest of the article is good though.

[stevesan]

@BudzMcGee - Cool, thanks for writing the article. Yeah, the thing about "common sense" is that when you see it, it's easy to call it "just common sense." But when you're in the middle of making a game, marketing is probably not a priority, so it's easy to forget some of this "common sense." Like...after reading this article I realized my game's website had no contact info - promptly went in and added my email address on there.

My game, if you're curious, is in public beta here: http://tinyurl.com/bjrtest - Beat Juice Radio, a fresh take on rhythm games.

[BudzMcGee]

My game, if you're curious, is in public beta here: http://tinyurl.com/bjrtest - Beat Juice Radio, a fresh take on rhythm games.

We don't typically play games while they are still in beta (we prefer to try and limit our exposure to the finished product but will occasionally do "previews" of highly anticipated stuff) and we haven't done much in browser based games, but I fully encourage you to drop me a line through the "Contact Us" page on my site when your game is finished to let me/us know.

[stevesan]

For sure, cheers man 

[Muz]

Yeah, agreed, it's a common sense article, but a great checklist.

Actually, now that I think of it, I miss out on most of those points. Programmers tend to think differently from marketers.

Never really bothered with cover art. Never made a trailer (and did use the lazy excuse over it). I've been using generic names quite a bit lately, because they're catchier, but good points in being poor for search engines. And I don't actually go out and reach to editors. Well, not yet, because I haven't made anything worthwhile, but it's good advice.

[stevesan]

Yeah, a video is pretty crucial. Think about the games that get hype based on a video alone - CubeWorld, Fez, etc. etc.

I think people are much more likely to click a Youtube link than to play/download your game - even if it's in-browser! It also gives you a chance to show off the best parts of your game, which may not be immediately obvious when people start playing it. Good example: Shadow of the Colossus. Slow-burn, but holy crap I wanted to see all of those awesome colossi!

And even though I say that, I basically forgot to do that for our game until a few days ago