Well, now that I had a website up and running, I need to get some people to it. In creating an MMO, I'll need to have a fairly big community at launch, to make it Massively Multiplayer. So, even though the game is still several months out, I knew I needed to start to garner some interest. Here are some of the initial marketing efforts I made.
Digifest
As I already posted here this DevBlog, I went to Digifest, and met up with some other gamers, as well as other gaming companies. It was good to actually meet people, and talk to them about my game.
Forums
Next, to get the site out there, I went to a bunch of game development websites and started to get feedback from others about what I had developed in regards to the site. Here are a few I sent posts to:
GameDev - https://www.gamedev.net/topic/613834-worldalpha-website-to-be-launched-feedback-appreciated/
TIGSource - http://forums.tigsou...p?topic=22512.0
ModDB - http://www.moddb.com...-in-development
IndieGamer - http://forums.indieg...ack-appreciated.
DevMaster - http://devmaster.net...ck-appreciated/
After the game development forums, I also went to some MMO related web-sites and posted it there as well.
ONRPG - http://www.onrpg.com...rds/188146.html
Kongregate - http://www.kongregat...-in-development
MMOSite -http://forum.mmosite...4dd1b813-1.html
DevBlogs
Along with creating my devblog, I also took the opportunity to post it at a couple of DevBlog sites. Hoping to get a bit more exposure to the game I was creating as well as some feedback.
GameDev - http://www.gamedev.n...phacom-devblog/
TIGSource - http://forums.tigsou...p?topic=22656.0
Twitter @TweetGamersNow
Having a Twitter account for WorldAlpha at @WorldAlphaGame, I started to explore more of what Twitter had to offer. I started to think about having a separate account, that I could have lots of game related twitter accounts followed as well as gamers. So, I did a little searching and found TweetGamers.com was available as a domain, but unfortunately @TweetGamers was not at Twitter, but @TweetGamersNow was. So, I registered the domain, and started a new Twitter account. I took some time to find and follow lots of games. I also came across Twiends.com a service that allows you to find friends to follow. Quickly I was able to grow my Twitter account to over 600 followers.
IRC
One Saturday morning, I was thinking of other ways to connect with gamers, and I knew a few games that use IRC to allow their community to talk amongst themselves. I decide to jump on to IRC and join a few of these channels, to see how it worked. Soon, I was chatting about my game, and an ircer kcirp offered to help me create my own #worldalpha channel. I jumped at the opportunity, and with the experience he had, it just took 1/2 hr and I was up and running. Since then we've had up to 10 people chatting, and a lot of good discussion about the game, as I seek input as to what would make the game better. I've gotten some great feedback, and hope to incorporate some of this feedback into my game.
My final bit of marketing I discovered during this time was reddit. I took some of my DevBlog articles, and posted it them there. In terms of up votes/down votes I had mild success, but I did get a lot of visitors to the site. A lot more than any other site that I had posted to, but I also get a lot of bounces. So, it is an interesting avenue that I hope will yield more success as the game gets closer to completion.
Well, those are all the interesting areas of marketing that I explored. How about you? Do you have any interesting and creative ways to market an indie game? Please leave a comment and let me know.
Visit our Dev Site: http://www.worldalpha.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/worldalpha
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/WorldAlphaGame
Beta Testers: http://www.worldalpha.com/beta-testers
