Recently, I had someone ask me: "How do you direct traffic to your game?" My response at the time was "I guess I'll write a blog post about it." So, here we are. Personally, I think that so many game developers spend way too much time thinking about revenue and sales, and not enough time actually making their games better. However, I do realize that even a great game can fail if you don't advertise it properly. And, there was recently a blog post about game development that pretty much said everything I was going to say about game development. So, this post will be about tips to help you publish your game. I'll be speaking mostly about uploading to Kongregate, but I'm sure there are some useful tips for everyone here. Also, please don't follow everything I say here exactly. Some of the stuff I say here might not apply to you, and it's not like I know everything there is to know about publishing. Test your gameBefore sharing your game with the rest of the world, you need to test it. Of course, most people already know this, and test their games thoroughly. But sometimes, it isn't enough to simply test the game on your end. The game might work for you, but does it work for people with different browsers and operating systems? Even if you can test every browser/os configuration you can think of, you still might be missing a bug. Of course, most game engines have lots of work put into them to make sure that they're compatible with almost every major setup out there. If you're using such an engine, you can worry less about testing cross-device. But if you're someone like me who doesn't use an engine, it might not be a bad idea to host a public (or private) beta on the internet. When I released The Man Who Can't Jump, there were tons of bug reports about things that didn't works. Ogg files weren't playing. The game wasn't loading. Black screens were happening. Thankfully, those having issues seemed to be the minority, and I was able to make the game more stable as a whole. But looking back, I wished I had done some more testing across different browsers. So, test your game. And if you're not using a game engine, test it even more. Make an iconWe're getting to the marketing side of things now. And one of the biggest things that can make or break your game, marketing wise, is the icon. I really don't have a lot to say here. I mean, I'm not too proud of the icons I made for any of my games. Some people have figured out that you can use animated gifs for the icons. They are completely allowed, but I would recommend not using gifs, or using an animation that doesn't really move/change a lot. upload screenshotsFor uploading screenshots, you should follow the same general gidelines for the icons. I'd say that having gifs is okay here, and might actually be pretty good. Again, take this all with a grain of salt. I am by no means an expert. Write a descriptionFor descriptions, I would recommend writing a 1-2 sentence elevator pitch. What is your game? What makes it stand out? What does it have to offer? If you want to expand on your game's description and make it really long, then go ahead. It's not like I'm some sort of writing police. But I would definitely recommend that you clearly explain your game within the first few sentences. Add tagsI see so many devs getting this wrong. You should add tags to your game, so that people can find it easier. Many players use tags to search for games. If you're not using tags, you're missing out on those players. Use tags. Post PublishingSo, you've done all of the steps above, and you've published your game. Or, you've done some of the steps completely differently. Again, everyone has different needs. What do you do once you've published it? Well, here are some tips:
These are pretty self explanatory. ConclusionThese are all the tips I could think of for marketing/maintaining a game. That's all I have to say, really.
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