Many things are happening, so much that I had not been able to even update my website like I used to. Had been busy promoting Arevan last month apart from the 101 others things I got myself into. Instead of moving over to my next game project, I thought of doing something new this time. I want to experiment with 3D gaming, and will be shifting my base to Bangalore for a couple of months for that. Honestly speaking, after working with RPGmakerVX, I am not satisfied with what it can offer. There are so many limitations to it…though I can’t complain much as this is the best I can get from a customizable commercial engine. So before I move over to my next project, I want to expand my horizons and learn something new this time.

In my older blog post, I had discussed how I had planned to market my game. In this post, I shall discuss which of the methods were success and which ones were failures. I shall discuss it with respect to the points I had mentioned in the earlier blog posts for the assessment of it’s performance.

• Primary release of Arevan on my site, Amanda’s and Indinera’s.

This had worked really well. There is nothing else that I need to say. Both of them have been simply awesome in their cooperation and have generated a lot of sales for my game.

• Sending press releases to game sites.

Press releases were a huge boost in promoting the news of our first release. Since we’re new to the indie scene, identifying ourselves in our niche was an important step. That really helped us gain exposure and visibility in gaming industry, particularly in India. Many Indian studios, sites, and game related companies took notice of our site and were eager to cover it.

• Game submission to other websites (not portals or publishers).

This is something that didn’t work at all! This was pure waste of time! Out of the sites where we approached for our game submission, only two or three actually responded. Some of them said they don’t generate much sales of RPGs from their site, which I can’t complain of. But for others, I guess it was mainly our game wasn’t available in any large portal at that point of time which is why they didn’t consider promoting us. I think I should have done it after my game has earned some market credibility and visibility.  Or the other way could be to have a rapport with the owners or partners of those sites for an immediate response…Whatever it is, this was a huge let down.

• Game submission to Software sites.

I don’t know why, it didn’t help generate much business. We have our game up at Brothersoft, Download.com, SoftPedia and 100 such similar sites. I did it through softwaresubmit.net and they have done their job very well. It’s difficult to predict, but probably our game got lost in the jungle of other softwares of utility. Or may be the traffic of those sites weren’t particularly interested in games. But whichever way it is, it didn’t do much in generating revenue.

• Submission for game review sites.

Only a couple of such sites actually responded when we contacted many. The ones which did wasn’t happy for our unconventional take in making an RPG with different mapping, skill techniques, puzzles, etc. So we didn’t bother submitting our game for further reviews. Surprisingly, our conversion rates and customer feedback has been very positive. I think apart from the constructive criticism from those review sites that would help me make better games, my customer’s feedback are far more important for considering the success of my game. Because customers are the ones who pay their hard earned money to entertain themselves, so they have the right to yell back if they don’t feel that they didn’t get any value for their money. Review site feedbacks give a nice idea from a veteran’s perspective, but it doesn’t really dictate the market’s taste or increase or decrease sales volume.

• Submission of game to publishers and digital distribution.

This has been an awesome success!! We contacted a handful of publishers and were responded well from Meridian4, Oberon Media, BigFishGames, Playfirst, ImpulseDriven and GamersGate. PlayFirst has tied up with BigFish, so they will promote games that are available on BigFish only. So to get our game on PlayFirst, we need to get our game on BFG first. Direct2Drive said they won’t promote it stating that it was too casual for their demographic. ImpulseDriven has approved our developer profile, however they are very slow in responding and setting up the game on their site. I never bothered with Steam as they hate RPGmaker games. Meridian4 expected an exclusive partnership, but giving our IP to them wasn’t a very good idea. Also that would have prevented me from promoting my game elsewhere. GamersGate already has our game up on their site. Big Fish Games will get the game up in a month or so, currently I’m doing the needful as per their instructions. Oberon Media has already started globally promoting our game through giant portals like Yahoo, MSN, Pogo, I-Play, etc. Here’s a list of the exact links to the popular sites where they have put up our game… more is yet to come (waiting for Oberon to get the game up on Shockwave, Gamehouse, Reflexive, India Games, Wildtangent, iWin, Arcade Town, AOL, etc) -

GamersGate

Iplay

Yahoo UK

Impulse Driven

Encyclopedia Britannica

MSN

AT&T

Pogo

National Geographic

Best Buy

Metacafe

Virgin Media

Oberon Media

So the bottom line is, one should try approaching the portals before one approaches software, review or other game sites as it helps earn credibility I guess.  There isn’t any hard and fast rule as far as marketing is concerned as things could work the other way around as well. Whatever that didn’t work for me might work for some other developer. So I had put them all so that one can try and see which one works for them. So far, I’m happy with what I got and would like to thank all of my friends and fellow developers who had been with me through thick and thin. Thats all for today