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[bateleur]

This is a little bit design-oriented and a little bit code-oriented, but I think it's more business than anything else, so hopefully belongs here:

Unicyclist Postmortem
Also an opportunity to say thanks to the TIGers who gave lots of help and advice during the project.

[Christian Knudsen]

My first thought upon reading this thread's title: "Matthew Wegner died?!"

EDIT: And, now, having read your postmortem, it was quite interesting. About this point:

The Unicyclist received basically no coverage anywhere. In some cases I wasn't surprised. In other cases – naming no site names – I was astonished given the nature of content typically promoted.

Are Flash games in general harder to market? I'd imagine with the high proliferation of Flash games and the sometimes looked-down-upon nature of those games, many news sites will simply ignore a press release for a Flash game in favor of the latest downloadable game?

[bateleur]

That's a plausible theory, yes. But honestly I don't really know based on a single data point!

[Snakey]

Thanks for putting this up.

[Nix]

Perhaps because most flash games are relatively short and are so easy to break into (i.e. no download and usually it jumps right into gameplay and they are free) that there's no real benefit to writing too much up about it. It's much easier to just say, "Go play it yourself and see." If I were to design the industry in a way that made sense to me (I don't really know how it works. I have never actually seen a press release for a flash game) I would say that press would be reserved for the big IP with a following (Madden Interactive, for example).

[bateleur]

"Go play it yourself and see."

This is entirely reasonable, but such coverage still has value. With hundreds of new Flash games appearing per day it's useful to know which ones are new games and which are just bad clones (or minor variations) of things you've played before. It's not like anyone has time to play everything themselves and find out.

[Nix]

This is entirely reasonable, but such coverage still has value. With hundreds of new Flash games appearing per day it's useful to know which ones are new games and which are just bad clones (or minor variations) of things you've played before. It's not like anyone has time to play everything themselves and find out.

I don't doubt the usefulness of something like that, it just doesn't jive well with my "reality sense." Does something like it exist? If not, maybe it's an opportunity for someone with time to fill an unfilled niche: reporting on the best short-play flash games.

[compositeredfox]

Thanks for posting this. Congratulations on a great game.
I'm currently wrapping up the game I've been working on for three monts to put up in FGL so I'm a bit paranoid of other people's experiences.

[Vino]

Maybe if you had gotten more of your marketing done beforehand? I'm no PR expert and I don't know about flashgames, but from what I hear media cares a lot less about a game that's already been released.

[mirosurabu]

JayIsGames are writing about flash games regularly. Not only that, but Kyle's game Depict1 didn't get a JayIsGames mention until it was ported to flash. They are also asking for linkbacks in flash games now, so yeah, that's an incentive more for them to promote flash games.

I'm pretty sure they aren't the only review website that covers flash games.

Depict1 flash was also mentioned on Destructoid and GayGamer.net.

[Alistair Aitcheson]

The Unicyclist received basically no coverage anywhere. In some cases I wasn't surprised. In other cases – naming no site names – I was astonished given the nature of content typically promoted.

Are Flash games in general harder to market? I'd imagine with the high proliferation of Flash games and the sometimes looked-down-upon nature of those games, many news sites will simply ignore a press release for a Flash game in favor of the latest downloadable game?

In terms of marketing, how did you do this? Did you send emails to the people behind a lot of games sites, or did you send out press releases on this?

I'm very interested to know, as I'm not sure how I'd go about promotion of my games, and I'm sure there's a lot of useful lessons for me to learn in that respect!

[bateleur]

In terms of marketing, how did you do this? Did you send emails to the people behind a lot of games sites, or did you send out press releases on this?

Just short emails. I don't have a proper press release channel.

[Alistair Aitcheson]

In terms of marketing, how did you do this? Did you send emails to the people behind a lot of games sites, or did you send out press releases on this?

Just short emails. I don't have a proper press release channel.

Thanks for letting me know. Is this fairly standard practice, and what kind of sites do you contact? Mostly indie, or some mainstream as well?

Sorry to bug you for details, I'm just interested to learn about your experiences

[bateleur]

First, I'm not actually an expert - happy to share experiences, but I wouldn't take my advice if I were you!

Second, no mainstream sites since this was a smallish Flash game - they never cover that sort of thing. I just contacted the sorts of sites where the game wouldn't seem out of place to me.

(Actually, come to think of it, a big thread with a list of game news sites and what they cover would be quite useful...)

[MrGando]

Thanks for your postmortem

Very nice read.

I was wondering if you know about some site like flashgamelicense.com but for the iPhone platform ?