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[Mathieu]

Because good press contacts is key for everyone of us I was wondering if any of you had a good web ressource where I can find press contact information.
Finding emails is just a matter of time investment, or you can use services like http://www.gamerelease.net/...
What I really want to find is addresses of video game magazines to whom I can send physical copies of our games. Those ones are a lot more difficult to find! 
Any idea?

[isaac]

There's a dicussion of this buried deep in the pricing thread, and TeeGee posted a few more press release resources:

So that works. I'm curious:
What service(s) did you use? Were you happy with it? How much did it cost? Do they cover non-games press as well?

Yeah, it works like a charm. At least it worked for me so far. I was actually surprized that the outcome was as good as people on indiegamer.com say it is .

Also, I handle press releases at my job and used most of the more popular services. Here's some info on them:

http://www.gamespress.com/ - a free PR distribution service. It's free to submit news, so there's no reason to not use it everytime you release something. The effects aren't as good as when using a paid service, but still some outlets will pick up your game.

http://www.softpressrelease.com - the most expensive and theoretically the best PR service. In practice, the difference between this and cheaper services is not that big (though, it's still there). We used it for the bigger news on our casual games. The effect was slightly better than when using other websites, but I'm not convinced it was worth it - sending a game-related PR is $140, so a bit pricey. Still, I only sent news on casual games through them, it might be just that their contacts are more hardcore/general gaming oriented.
Their system is also not very convinient as releases aren't handled automatically - sometime you have to wait for their employee to contact you and so on.

http://www.gamerelease.net/ - GameProducer.net PR distribution service. It has one huge advantage - you pay around $100 and can use the service as many times as you want for one year. If you plan to make many releases to build up hype or expect many updates, they are a very good choice. They always get you further than a free service and $100 is not that much for unlimited amount of releases. Their system is also very convinient and fully automatic.

http://www.mitorahgames.com/Submit-Game-Press-Release.html - Mitorah games is a small indie company offering to send PRs through their contact list. I send the news on the MAGI update through them and the results were great. I had almost no traffic and two days after the release I've got a concerned letter from my webhost that I suddenly started using too much bandwidth (20GB per day in demo downloads).
However, it might be just that their contacts were perfectly suited for my needs - MAGI is a strategy/rpg and these guys specialize in this kind of games. Still, I recommend them. Even if just to support fellow indies trying to make some buck by offering the efforts of their hard work.
The price is very competitive at $60-$85, though there's no automated system there - you have to get in contact with Tero and exchange few emails.

http://prmac.com/ - if you plan to release for Mac, I totally recommend these guys. Their system is very convinient and handy, the release costs only around $15 and your news are always picked very fast by all the major Mac outlets. They also have excellent customer support and really try to make sure you are satisfied.

That's interesting. So perhaps one could sell the game for 1 USD in the first week and add a Dollar to the price every week. 

That could be too much . The price change was justified by the fact that the new version had some major revisions, some new content (that costed me some money) and the dollar started to get really low on value.

Hope I helped a bit .

[Eclipse]

very interesting thread, subscribed

[Gravious]

Surely we're so l33t the RPS guys will promote us without even being asked?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Another thing to do is manually build up your own list of press contacts. Don't include only game reviewers (although those should be the majority), but include press of all types, even places that only occasionally review games (like the New York Times etc.). When that list is at about 1000 emails, you can probably do yourself what those press release services do. Building up that list takes time, though; I only have 133 collected so far.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

As for addresses of magazines, that's simple to find: go to the magazine's website and look under the contact section, most of them have physical addresses listed there. But game magazines are becoming less important, I've had a few mentions in game magazines but they didn't do as much for me in terms of sales or traffic as mentions on popular websites.

[adamrobo]

From my experience being press and working with the press, one of the things I've learned is that everyone loves an exclusive.

It's easy to ignore a press release, especially when the majority of the ones you receive are worthless. What's more intriguing is an offer for an exclusive interview or early look at a game. Then if the outlet does an interview/preview, there is a much better chance they will follow up with a review.

[Mathieu]

Thanks for your help guys!

As for addresses of magazines, that's simple to find: go to the magazine's website and look under the contact section, most of them have physical addresses listed there.

It may be easy to find this information for 4 or 5 big US magazines but it's becoming a lot more difficult for non-english magazines.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I imagine you could probably email them and ask. But could you name some examples? I'm curious which wouldn't have their addresses listed anywhere.

[Mathieu]

Naming non-english magazines? That's exactly the problem, finding them is hard.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Ah, I see. Isn't there a list of game magazines somewhere? A Google search turned up this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Video_game_magazines

It seems quite comprehensive.

[jesse_playtiva]

Thank you for all the information here.
So far I've only used the 'forums' approach...this is a good suggestion and thread!

[Sim9]

I used the Mitorah games service and got published on a number of sites, so it worked out well for me.  They also polished up my existing press release before it got sent out.  Probably the most exciting thing is the contacts who reached out to me from this, so I can do exclusives or interviews

Just subscribed to gamerelease.net (it's no longer flat fee, but subscription only), but my account hasn't been activated there yet.  Once it is and I do my next press release, I'll post my feedback.

No luck with GamesPress.com uploading my press release using the free service, but it later got syndicated there via my Mitorah release.  Guess they want people to use their paid service.

[Craig Stern]

I find that most members of the press have telephones and email. So that's a pretty reliable way to contact them. You could go with carrier pigeon too, I guess, but those are hard to find these days, and they tend to smack into windows.

[Michaël Samyn]

Can anyone recommend press release services that send to the wider spectrum of entertainment publications, instead of only games? Preferably including traditional press, and not just web sites.
And how about services that focus on other regions than the USA? Does anyone know of a European press service? An Asian one?