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[Jacob_]

Hi, having a bit of trouble. I released my 2nd game a couple weeks ago, and since then I've gotten some good feedback from developers and released several updates (current version is 0.062). But, I'm at a loss for how to get actual players. I ran a multiplayer test today, there was a peak of 4 people this morning, but since then it's been 0 people all day. The people who did try it said they liked it, but they were mostly friends from other communities where I posted the game.

Are there any directories of games which accept submissions? I've also been involved with web hosting and open source PHP scripts, in both cases most of your traffic comes from directories.

I'm not very well established as a game developer yet, so I don't have hundreds of followers on Twitter or anything like that. None of my friends IRL are very interested in "geeky" stuff like programming.

I'm not trying to make money yet; just want to get some people interested first.

[baconman]

DevLogs and Feedback are great places to begin here. DevLogs are where projects usually go through beta; Feedback is for semi-finished projects that are being polished up and troubleshot, and Announcements are for finished projects.

I've noticed that many successful browser-based games have a "forced social" aspect about them - the more you interact with other players (and the more players you introduce to the game), the more neat stuff you get to mess with, and the better your character/abilities become. That, and something to reinforce regular play, like a bonus for playing at least once per day for 3-5 days in a row.

[Jacob_]

I posted the playable indev version in Feedback, got some helpful suggestions from other developers on how to improve the game.

What I'm not sure how to do is find people who will test the game and keep up with development--since there are usually 0 people on the server, anyone that joins will get bored and leave in a few minutes. There is single player but building by yourself isn't too fun.

I like your social idea, right now my game is very open-ended though so I'm not sure how that would work. When I add competitive game modes later, I'll see if I can implement it.

[Swattkidd]

Well for one, your game is not linked in your signature so I couldn't play it even if I wanted (although I know your game is cubic realms ). Also your game seems to be very much in its development phase (the website, and all of that) so really the only people whom would actually give it a go would be game developers.

I suggest once you get the game near complete (where its fun to play, big features are implemented and only a few bugs and smaller features left to implement) then polish up your website, add ways for people to share on twitter, facebook, etc and then contact blogs and ask them to run reviews of your game for them.

Also you say you don't have many followers on twitter, or in general, well the best time to start is now, start up a development blog and update it regularly, I personally would love to see the development process of Cubic Realms, especially if you talk about how you implement things, what you are implementing, etc, etc.

[Jacob_]

I do have a personal Twitter, but it's a few years old, mostly unused and contains a lot of stuff from when I was younger and stupider

I heard about a new site called Posterous a little while ago, so I might test that out.

[Klaim]

Why not create another twitter? Just use a name like the team name (even if you're alone) or something like that.