AnythingIndie

[Kezip]

Hey, guys.
I've been on this board for a while, and I saw that post about the challenges game-makers face. The general consensus was getting your game into the public eye; one which I very much agreed with. But, nobody really had any solutions.
So, since I'm writing a program and a community for game-building, I thought I should try to find one.

What I've come up with is this: I call it AnythingIndie. Basically, you get to put your project into a drawing; every week (or some unit of time), a project is picked out using a lottery. Once you're picked, you get a spot on the front page, your own page on the website, one of the boards will be dedicated to your program, and some people will be specifically set up to review it just to make sure *someone* looks at it.
And, if you lose the lottery, you get to try again next week.

I'm not advertising this; it's not even up yet. I just want to know what you guys think. Would you use this? Would you check out/review projects? Basically, do you think this can help the problem?

Thanks,
Kezip


Edit: I apologize if this is the wrong board for this; I wasn't absolutely sure, and this seemed to fit a few different places.

[Applewood]

It's a nice idea, but we all have our own websites and stuff already.

To provide this as a service you would need to drive masses of people to the site - more than we can manage ourselves and we have something to sell already.

[BantamCityGames]

I agree with Paul. This same idea comes up from time to time and they all suffer from the same problem... lack of traffic.

[Kezip]

Okay, so it'd only be useful if it could drive more people to your own website than you can on your own? Understood.

Also, (this is just in general, and not trying to correct you on anything, Applewood) on rereading my post, I think I might have explained this a bit wrong; this would be an addition to an already made website for a game-making program, not a new site dedicated to this. And, the winning developer only gets their project spotlighted for the week until the next one wins. So, it's just a way to get "spot-lighted" like people try to get from editors, not a place to host information.

[Applewood]

I think we understand, it's just not going to help unless you're counting your montlhy unique visitors by number of millions.

[Kezip]

Okay, that makes sense. Thanks for the input!

[Applewood]

You're welcome. Not trying to put a downer on it, but this is a quick welcome to the problems we're talking about when going on about getting visibility!

[richtaur]

The problem is your website would have the same problem as us indies: no big audience. How would you get the audience?

[Kezip]

Haha, thanks.
Richtaur: Well, the plan was actually that I'd already have something of a user-base with this; I recently released an MMORPG making program, and I was planning on tacking this idea on to the website.

[Nutter2000]

Not to pick holes in your idea, but while I'm sure some of a user base of other game developers who are interested in an MMORPG making program may well be interested in our games, that's not really the same as a fan base of rabid game players who have already bought similar games to ours in the past (rpg, strategy, etc) which is really the ideal for a site like you're suggesting so we're back to what Paul's saying about needing a large unique monthly views.

Sorry

[ManuelMarino]

audience, lack of traffic. these are huge problems, and you can solve them in a way only: buying advertisement. Which, anyway, would ruin all the game: succeeding being a small indie with no money

[Stropp]

Kezip the best way for you to get the traffic you need to do this is to simply create an authority blog for AnythingIndie that focusses on supporting the indie community. I suggest looking at how Rock Paper Shotgun does this.

Once you have built up a decent community and a lot of traffic, perhaps 10 - 20K visits a month, you would have a lot more effectiveness in promoting indie games as well as your own projects. You might even find that effectiveness comes with a lot less traffic per month.

It's a lot of work but community & authority building works a hell of a lot better than the spammy techniques, and even buying traffic. (Buying traffic is best when promoting your own products.)

[TapitZac]

It's a lot of work but community & authority building works a hell of a lot better than the spammy techniques, and even buying traffic. (Buying traffic is best when promoting your own products.)

Agreed! Authority sites drive awareness and build communities of actual advocates instead of ads that kind of just go to anyone (even those who are disinterested). That being said, data also shows that advertising your game in a game thats similar to yours (or in the same field) usually turns out to work well also.

To fit within this strategy, i think some more compliant "well known indies" should be included to raise general traffic to the site to at least gain a following and eventually raise awareness for all indie gamers. This actually could be a really cool project should it take off.