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General Indie Game Press Guidelines

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Photo by Official GDC Flickr account

During the process of laying out the marketing strategy for our upcoming iOS game The Last Priestess, I thought it would be nice to share with you the following rules I have gathered the past few months.

I have compiled a short list of things to build or follow when you are trying to promote your games. Each key point has some links from reference sites or other indie studios that are doing it right.

Feel free to comment and add anything that has been left out!

By the way, I have to thank the awesome Reddit community for the majority of the following resources, much appreciated guys!

Also, a word of caution: As you may have already figured out, we haven’t tried the majority of the following steps yet, but we definitely will.

So without further ado, let’s get to it!

Be creative with your blog posts, create news & give info about your dev process

Have a nice & intriguing website for your game/company

Create a newsletter for updates, announcements and general project progress!

Do writeups on big sites

Be active on communities such as Reddit

Take part on events, gamejams (Ludum Dare, 7dFPS)

Bonus: Create your internal game jam competition, create games, release them in a bundle

Create & give away swag (contests)

Maintain a devlog on Tumblr, TIGSource, IndieDB, Reddit, create & engage communities

Hold an IAmA!

Have a press kit

Create Awesome trailers

Release content & updates often

Have a Youtube channel & update it constantly with new content

Be social with other developers & studios! Feature something from their game!

Have a nice (or at least descent) page to invite testers to your game

Get in contact with Youtube personas

General Gaming Youtube channels

iPhone gaming Youtube channels

Be easy to reach through social media (Twitter, Facebook, Email, Website, IRC, Youtube)

Contact big gaming sites (English & foreign)

Get in contact with other devs & create a free bundle mini-site

Get into free bundles yourself & support charity

Release the soundtrack of your game

Get some advice on how to contact the press…by the press!

Bonus: Embrace Piracy!

Yep, you better embrace it than fight it, and hey you will probably have way more people playing your game that will eventually generate press coverage! Check out the examples below:

Build a multiplatform title & support new platforms!

What’s better than to be on the lineup of a new console launch?

Learn from the masters!

References & Big Thanks