Nandrew makes it all sound so easy:

I tend to write about marketing and self-promo a lot, but I'm probably not a great candidate for actually converting that work into raw action. One can speak to marketing wizards, cite their advice and even compile their words into a nice (though haphazard) article, but courage and discipline seem to be required far more than handy tips and friendly advice.

My Game.Dev Comp 23 entry, Onslaught of the Electric Zombies, is far from an Internet sensation, but the competition's premise — to go out and promote a game — served as a great inspiration for actions which would otherwise have been much more intimidating to undertake.

Strangely enough, I see one thing more clearly than anything else after taking part in this competition. I could waffle on about how journalists are a lot friendlier than most people think, or how getting your game reviewed — no matter how much further polish you think is needed — can be pretty damn valuable for you. But all of these are hashed and rehashed in conventional pieces about marketing, and I don't think I can say that I took these lessons to heart: what exposure I did get was mostly through the agency of other, more inspired individuals as well as several glorious windfalls. In light of this, I'm going to try add something potentially new to the discussion instead: marketing is easier when you've got backup.

Game.Dev's Comp 23 acted as a valuable "excuse" for the work that I and several others did on marketing our games. Every time we wanted to do some promo, it was as easy as slapping an obligatory "I'm doing this for a competition" header onto anything that we wrote or distributed or set up. The feeling of liberation was amazing: here we were, doing what any other responsible marketers would do, but with the added joy of a "get out of jail free" card.

After all, we weren't being self-aggrandising and we weren't being particularly daring: all we had to do was point at a great big umbrella marked "Comp 23" and say, "But they're making us do this!"

On top of that, I saw people doing their best when they banded together on marketing efforts: this became most clear when several competition entrants established Twitter accounts and duly proceeded to send invitations to one another. From then on, whenever anybody decided to tweet about their new title (tentatively, I might add), it was snatched up and broadcast by all other entrants, projecting the news much further — and much more boldly.

Given how things eventually turned out when hitherto-inexperienced marketers decided to make a concentrated push with their games, I've deduced a few very important things:

1. Marketing your game may not necessarily turn it into an Internet firestorm, but it's invariably better than no effort invested at all.
   
2. Asking for help with your marketing legitimises your efforts — for you! Promoting yourself under the guise of a group, a movement or an interesting competition premise will ease your self-consciousness and allow you to push your game the way you always should.
   
3. There's nothing quite as impressive as a community of gamers all working together to punt one another's projects. Even if you're not currently marketing something yourself, it's advisable that you keep an eye on the work of friends and volunteer your services: it's way, waaay easier to promote work when it's not your own, and it's a useful primer if you're still too nervous to advertise yourself.

Sounds like nobody had a bad time being horrible marketing drones, go figure. Interestingly enough, none of the entries that tried to first make a new game got around to promoting anything… Perhaps we shouldn't be so hard on the cogs of the hype-machine after all.