Don't get around – BE around

Too many game developers spend most of their time huddled up in the proverbial basement while hacking out a masterpiece, only to emerge at the end of the dev cycle and realise that they suddenly have to win friends, influence people and promote their work well enough to make the project worthwhile.

This leads to a distressing trend of once-off forum posts, introductory blurbs in random people's inboxes and a general explosion of marketing that tends to fizzle out after a few days, leaving the Internet with what's really only a drop in the ocean when it comes to game promotion. As a rule of thumb, you can improve your chances of successful marketing by building up your audience long before the release date ticks around.

In the aforementioned Offworld article, Kyle Gabler mentions that one of the immediate tips from his "self promotion jelly bag" is to enter as many competitions as possible; events such as IGF, Dream-Build-Play and the Global Game Jam are just a few examples of annual (and high-profile) game development events. Then there's general community involvement: attending game development events, becoming an active member of developer forums and (the big one) maintaining your own blog.

Kyle Gabler

Game blogs can be a surprisingly effective marketing tool if you use them properly. Michael Rose, an editor at IndieGames.com, emphasises the importance of this from a game journalist's perspective. "It's always a very good idea to have a working website available for viewing," he says. "The best kind of development sites are the ones which have separate pages for each different project, along with a blog which I can subscribe to the RSS feed of! That way I can check out an indie's games and keep up-to-date with all the latest from them via their blog."

The Wolfire Blog is a notable example of this system in action, giving readers daily updates on the construction of their latest project, Overgrowth. The blog doesn't just serve as a dev diary either: it's laced with programming and art tips that draw in more pageviews on a daily basis. They've also gone to the length of establishing a full-blown comic based on the game's universe, building a firm society around a title that isn't even past its alpha builds yet.

Another blog to note is that of Adam Saltsman on Gamasutra: his regular writeups and strong presence within the game development community offers a great deal of visibility for projects such as the recently-released FATHOM and his Flash development kit, Flixel.

Dress up

Presentation is an important part of your promotion. This isn't just about the look and feel of your game: the media that you release and the way that you present yourself to potential reporters and communities is of great importance.

Rose talks about such padding, particularly the importance of a good video. "When it comes to promoting, I think a decent trailer is always a necessity. I can check out a video of a developer's game and think wow, that looks really good and then give it a post on the site. Screenshots work well too, but a video always give the reader a much better idea of what to expect."

Gabler also realised the importance of the so-called "press kit" during early promotion of World of Goo: he found that a lot of reviewers were using the same tired image of a single level from his game, and in pursuit of more varied promotion opportunities he decided to broaden the number of interesting shots in circulation.

Sometimes, having a unique or "grabby" form of delivery assists with marketing. Rohit Shenoy from Dejobaan Games comments on the humour-filled approach that the company took with their latest project, AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!. "No question, people like the unique flavor we have given the game. We worked hard to insert a lot of humor into the game and into media for the press. More importantly, we tried to maintain a consistent type of humor so that people recognize our tongue-in-cheek style as uniquely Dejobaan. I believe the comments from the press and gamers speak to the value of doing this consistently in both our marketing materials, and the game itself."

Even more exotic avenues include the music video which garnered additional interest for Popcap's Plants vs Zombies. "It all felt pretty spontaneous," says developer Laura Shigihara about the song's creation, "but I'd like to think that the result was one of the coolest things I've ever seen."