Here's a bunch of ideas Ive thought of for gaining more publicity (and ultimately more players, hopefully leading to more shekel earnt) for Afterwind:
Put it up in the Google Chrome Web Store.Lichess (Greek translation by yours truly, BTW), a now-popular chess website did this and increased its traffic by over 150%.
Send it to Kotaku and other major gaming blogs when you make a new release. Obviously, with things such as this, you should really have prepared the servers beforehand.
Promote it in the indie gaming news scene. The best would be to promote it in audio/video shows. Bytejacker was a great show I watched regularly for a long time, but it's on hiatus. I'm sure there are more out there.
Create a topic about mentions in the news in these forums, and sticky it. Make sure you have it updated regularly too, and not necessarily by you. Mossmouth of Spelunky fame did this, and you bet your ass all its fans in the forums were all over the comment sections of the web, helping people out with the issues they discovered and tirelessly promoting the game.
I know the so-called "old media" seems dead or at least dormant, but it isn't, really. Mentions in magazines will go a long way. Because like audiovisual media, people have to put a considerable amount of effort into it. By effort I mean either their hard-earned money or the time they're so short of (especially regarding videos). See if you can contact any gaming magazines. You'd probably have to revoke the rule about "English only" though.
So the basic messages of this are:
Hunt for publicity only when you make a press release of some sort.
If the press release concerns an update, wait until it has been thoroughly tested first.
Above all, if there are any serious running grievances with the game, such as the current issue with engagements ("turnblocking", but I believe that term to adequately describe the issue), make sure they're sorted out first.
Prepare for your servers to take an arrow to the knee.
Feel free to come up with any more ideas below! I intend to update this thread as more ideas come our way. The power of putting these ideas into practice, lies, of course, in the hands of Amok and Ivan.
PS: Ivan, I've seen what you've done in various forum boards around the internet. It only took a web search. What you must never, ever do, is make a writeup in a forum board of which you've only been a member of for that day, and have one post there. Such shameless advertising doesn't go down well. There's no problem with promoting it as the creator--it's an indie game after all (staff of two people who don't work full-time on the game), but when you have no credentials in a given community, it's not cool, and it will only drive people away from the game. I'd avoid such advertising in the future.
PS: Ivan, I've seen what you've done in various forum boards around the internet. It only took a web search. What you must never, ever do, is make a writeup in a forum board of which you've only been a member of for that day, and have one post there. Such shameless advertising doesn't go down well. There's no problem with promoting it as the creator--it's an indie game after all (staff of two people who don't work full-time on the game), but when you have no credentials in a given community, it's not cool, and it will only drive people away from the game. I'd avoid such advertising in the future.
everyone does that and it works a lot of the time.
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~My plump juicy breasts are none of your god damn business~
PS: Ivan, I've seen what you've done in various forum boards around the internet. It only took a web search. What you must never, ever do, is make a writeup in a forum board of which you've only been a member of for that day, and have one post there. Such shameless advertising doesn't go down well. There's no problem with promoting it as the creator--it's an indie game after all (staff of two people who don't work full-time on the game), but when you have no credentials in a given community, it's not cool, and it will only drive people away from the game. I'd avoid such advertising in the future.
everyone does that and it works a lot of the time.
Nope, not really. I used to be on ST, and I got many more members to join from Bungie.net when I posted a sentence-long thread about AW, than I did on MMOhut with a good page of info. It was because people on Bungie knew me at the time, and knew that I wasn't a spambot or random promoter, and trusted the link (except for one bugger, hissed at the URL).
