This is sad. I posted a link to my game in the Announcements forums, got 52 views (at the time of this writing), and 0 downloads (I don't just mean 0 replies, I mean 0 downloads).
So now I guess my question is why. Is there something wrong with what I posted? Is the screenshot boring? Does the game look or sound boring based on what was posted? What can I do to improve the appeal?
Marketing help for my game
Monde, you aren't limiting your marketing efforts to GameDev/Your Announcements, are you?
And what have you done to teach yourself about good marketing principles, strategies, and techniques?
And what have you done to teach yourself about good marketing principles, strategies, and techniques?
Author
I did post a link to the game on another forum, and got a couple downloads. Since this is just a playtest I preferred to start small... but not this small.
I'm sure I need to learn a lot more about marketing. But at the same time, this was just a playtest. I expected it to be simple. Just write a "hey, play my game for free!" post and that was it. Apparently not. In fact, this wasn't the first playtest I've done. The previous one turned out exactly the same. No downloads. Either the game looks horrible (I don't think so, but I'm biased) or I'm doing something very wrong.
I'm sure I need to learn a lot more about marketing. But at the same time, this was just a playtest. I expected it to be simple. Just write a "hey, play my game for free!" post and that was it. Apparently not. In fact, this wasn't the first playtest I've done. The previous one turned out exactly the same. No downloads. Either the game looks horrible (I don't think so, but I'm biased) or I'm doing something very wrong.
A small sample is not reliable data. If you learn anything from your small test, I hope you learn that you have to market more widely and with more understanding of marketing principles.
What platforms is the playtest for? Your page mentions IOS - how easy is it to install from a zip? (I didn't think Apple even allowed that?) If your playtest is for different platforms (e.g., non-mobile), then that might be part of the confusion, so mentioning that might be better.
Sadly there is a lot of competition out there - even for free. You want to start small with letting people play the game - but I guess this shows that you still need to advertise more widely if you don't want that small
Sadly there is a lot of competition out there - even for free. You want to start small with letting people play the game - but I guess this shows that you still need to advertise more widely if you don't want that small
Author
What platforms is the playtest for? Your page mentions IOS - how easy is it to install from a zip? (I didn't think Apple even allowed that?) If your playtest is for different platforms (e.g., non-mobile), then that might be part of the confusion, so mentioning that might be better.
Oh, good point. I never mentioned that. The game will eventually be for iOS, but this playtest was for Windows.
What purpose is your playtest? To find bugs or simply to see if people enjoy the game? Since this is planned to be a iOS game doing a playtest on a PC isn't a very accurate representation of how enjoyable the game is as it is two very different markets. Not to mention controls are always a big factor and those will be wildly different. Even when it comes to bugs in the game many may pop up when you move it to iOS that aren't present now. The best way to test it would be to get it installed on a couple iphones and give it a try. You may actually be best publishing the title on the Apple Marketplace after doing an extensive internal playtest.
Author
The biggest goal was just to get new people playing the game and see if it was fun and what we needed to change/add to make it better. Finding bugs would be nice too. But we've already done a little playtesting on actual iOS devices, but getting the game installed on a device is kind of an ordeal (even when using something like TestFlight) compared to just downloading a .zip and running it. I thought offering the game as a free download for Windows would be an easy, almost-as-good way to get lots of testing.
If you have a little bit of money to spend, you could use usertesting.com. They send a video with voiceover from a user of someone using your app (could be a web app, a mobile app) within an hour. I think they run $39 per video. I've not used them myself, but I have friends who have said that this is part of their standard development methodology
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