Some tips for promoting your game using a Press Release

Posted on:August 29 2013


Once you finished writing a game, not even half of the work is done. The difficult part - in my opinion - is marketing and selling it. You need to let people know that the game exists, and let them start playing and/or buying it. I know, this is a very difficult task, I blogged about my adventures when I published my own game, Darkness Springs, a few years ago. And it is especially difficult if you have just a small or no budget for this at all.
Maybe you remember, a few months ago, I started the game development news website, where people can post their game development tool related news. That website is for game development news, not for game news, but - also probably because marketing your own game is very hard and people become desparate - I get a lot of news submissions about games on there. Which I have to ignore. But I read them, and I am shocked what people are submitting there. So based on this, here are some tips how to write your press releases:

  • Include a link to your game and your game website. People won't take the time and try to figure out where your game website is, using a search engine.

  • Some people even submitted press release texts with the note that there isn't a website yet for their game. Seriously? Create a website for your game! It isn't that hard. (Shameless plug: here is a nice, simple website editor, if you don't know how to do this)

  • It is always a good idea to include at screenshot. Or a link to a screenshot. It is a game after all. Texts on the internet without images aren't read that much anymore.

  • Use simple words. People are lazy, and tend to simply want to copy and paste large parts of your text. This increases the change of your press release to get published.

  • I can't believe I'm writing this, but seriously: Look out for the spelling. Do a spell check before submitting your text. Some of the press release texts I received were even unreadable, due to the many errors.



So, these were some very basic tips, but based on the texts people sent me until now, it appears that not all game developers know about this. Maybe it is always also a good idea to take a look at how other press releases, for other, successful games have been written, before writing an own one. Just an idea. :)





Comments:


So... did you intentionally misspell "errors" as "erros" in the part about making sure to use spellcheck?
Doug
Quote
2013-08-29 13:22:00


Hehe, thanks, corrected :)
niko
Quote
2013-08-29 13:44:00


And "change" should be "chance", too. :)
Pedant
Quote
2013-09-04 16:40:00


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