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We made some playtests. It's an amazing experience, but it doesn't compare to a beta launch. Playtests are very useful to see how players react to the game and if they behave as intended or something is miscommunicated.

But it still doesn't compare to beta. Beta allows for big data analysis, but in order to achieve that, you need a volume of downloads or the data won't be reliable.

This is our biggest problem right now. We need data from our users but we cannot get the desired bulk of downloads.

Would love to hear how you accomplish it. As you can tell, we are pretty new to this field and not being very active in social media it's always a challenge to get the word out.

I think al the developers are short in the same subject: PR and marketing. We more or less know how to do what we want to do, but we all lack of what it is required to spread the voice.

We are trying to open discussions in many fronts. Still, not much sucess. Any tip is welcome as well :D

(+1)

Just yesterday, we were brainstorming about how to recruit for beta testing as well as advertising for the game. Such as:

1. make flyers about the game and post it to local colleges and universities

2. ask stores around us if they would allow us to setup a station where people can just come and play test for a day. Have signup sheets ready, of course

3. setup a web demo with link to a form

Nothing new, of course, but it hadn't occurred to me to try these things until recently. We are hoping to get a demo out soon :)

That's great. Point 3 has the same issue: how to get visits?

True. We intend to combine these strategies. We figured flyers with just game title and links to website won't produce much incentive to go find out more about our game unless we offer a demo. We could also draw in more people to try our game on some location if we offered free something (ie finish all three levels within time limit and you get a five dollar gift card?). Of course, I haven't actually tried any of this yet. First things first, get the demo ready.  It'll be after the holiday season before I start calling some stores. I have no idea if people are open to this sort of suggestion. I'll try to post something when I get some result. :)