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How to promote your game. anyone???

A topic by MCG created Dec 17, 2018 Views: 2,205 Replies: 15
Viewing posts 1 to 7
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I have published game here on itch, took me a almost 6 to 7 months to finish it...and still working on more levels, but my question is how to promote? It's called THE MAZE OF ANIMATRONICS, you can try if you want too...:(

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I visited the page, and for a start I'd suggest you try using better tags.  Try the tags itch.io suggests, instead  of inventing your own.  Notice that if you search for 'new-2019', your game doesn't appear. Only things with 'new' or '2019' in the title will appear. I could be wrong, don't know exactly how it works yet, but i guess coming up with new tags, other than those itch.io provides, doesn't do anything.

Also, i'd suggest you improve the description a little bit, and everytime you upload a new level, be sure to post a devlog.

Moderator(+1)

To clarify, all the tags were added by the community, Leaf just gave special status to some of them. You can always add a new one, but if it's too specific and nobody else uses it, what's the point. For instance I have the tag "urban" on a couple of my games. You'd think someone else would have used it before or since, but no. Something like "still life with flowers" will be even less popular.

That said, devlogs are very effective as a marketing tool. And promoting outside of Itch.io is important too.

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So, correct me if i'm mistaken, the only use of adding a 'personal' tag to your game, would be to wait and see if it would be given special status anytime in the future. The special status tags are the thing bringing the most views, at least in my analytics - and after the game appears on the front page in case it manages to. Because the search function doesn't seem to care about personal tags, it just seems to care about the title and subtitle.

Moderator(+1)

That's right, the freeform search looks mainly at titles and subtitles. But tag search looks at all tags that are used by enough people. They don't have to be given special status, just somewhat popular. And a tag only used by one or two creators simply doesn't cut it.

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There is a tag search, you say? I've been looking for it before, didn't find it. I guess it was hiding in plain view the whole time.

Moderator(+1)

I mean the tag filtering system. There's a quick-find box for them, too, but it's only for selecting existing tags. You can't exactly type "min" and find games tagged "minimalistic".

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Is it automatic? I mean is it possible for new tags to start appearing there on their own,  whenever they become used by enough pages, or does each and every tag require a manual input, by the people behind itch.io, before it has a chance it can be found in the 'browse all tags' page.  I assumed the latter, and by 'special status tags', i was referring to those tags which can be found there.

The portal would perhaps benefit from a tag search of the kind I meant, anyway. for example, for my game I  considered adding an 'history' or 'historical' tag, but having no way to see which one of the two is already the most shared by the most projects, if any, I decided to stick with suggested tags, even though they were less relevant.

Moderator(+1)

Far as I know it's automatic. All that admins do is mark some of them as denoting engines/tools or genres, so they can be used in more ways. And for what it's worth, the tag field on a project's edit form should have autocompletion, so you can at least see which tags and tag forms are popular enough (if not how popular exactly) and make a decision.

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My recent success with promoting my games is probably using Reddit. Post a gif in there that you think will attract the most eyeballs. 

Then share your game link and your descriptions as a comment. But you should probably do some research on the rules on promoting on reddit to avoid being banned.

Deleted 2 years ago
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There are these few - indiegames, indiegaming and unity/gamemaker etc

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If you have enough money, try to work with news sites, where games reviews are published. If not, use Reddit or some free sites. Remember, that you should recommend the game to people interested in themes your game is about or you'll waste your time and money.

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You obviously can post it on itch.io on the forum for new games, but also use other websites similar to itch.io to publish your game, like GameJolt.com.

We use both GameJolt and itch.io, and find it easier to get views on gamejolt than itch.io

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Hi Shivva!

XD

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ew

Moderator(+1)

Please avoid necroing threads and adding nothing to the discussion