I'm an honest person. Sometimes brutally honest. I don't want to trick people into playing my games. I want them to play them and enjoy them. But if they can't find them, wtf's the point? Anyone who has released at App has been offered "reviews for money". I commonly tell this people to F off, but now I'm starting to wonder if this is a worthy investment. What say you? Have you done it? Was it worth it?
I haven't done it before, but if they are approaching you (via email or facebook or whatever) it is probably a scam. They are simply marketing their services not trying to help you. Put out a press release and post your game on as many sites as you can (facebook, indiedb, etc). Contact all of the press individually with a free full copy (i.e. a review copy) of your game and ask for a review. If you want to pay for something you can pay for adwords or similar advertising to drive people to your site (but be careful on the spending and make sure you have analytics in place). You can try Steam Greenlight or another publisher if you don't want to do your own marketing/distribution.
Yeah after some thought, I'm against it. I'm trying to contact review people at the moment. Might invest in AdMob Ads too.
Your question and answers' wording kinda leaves no chance for the "yes" option, but I chose it regardless. A lot of youtube influencers I'm watching have had paid adverts, and they were honest about it. I like it when: - They say so right off the bat: this is a paid review - They also say (and mean) that their opinion is their own, that is, they didn't promise to say nice things, but there's an expectation they won't just focus on what's wrong The reason I like this is because it allows me to see new games I would've never heard about, and see them played. As a developer, I also find this is a correct way of getting some visibility, without actually buying someone's opinion and in turn potentially screwing their credibility. There's an understanding that a lot of this falls to the integrity of the influencer and their ability to remain honest about what they like and don't like. They also need to gauge the idea of getting money vs knowing they won't like the project and politely refuse instead. That's a lot to put on them, but to me, it is a morally acceptable practice within these guidelines. Now, pure bought piece of adverts that aren't showcased as is? That's just career suicide as an influencer (much moreso than for the developer who asked for said review).
Which is my point. I don't think there's nothing wrong in asking (as a developer). The bulk of the moral limbo falls unto the influencer, not the developer. If its clear they're entitled to their opinion and that what you're buying is just the fact they talk about it, I see no conflict.
Late to the conversation here... sorry. What type of reviews are you looking for? Have you looked into fgl.com? We have a large developer community happy to help fellow developers and we offer reviews when you put your game up on the site. If you are looking into ads too, we offer a service called Enhance™. Follow the link in the banner for more info and find out how easy it is to implement any sdk.
Thanks but I just bought indievideogames.com... launched Sunday. I decided to become a marketing authority instead of bowing down to them. I'm out to help the little guys now with as any free plans as possible.
sorry for jumping in late. imo you should never pay anyone to review your game. reviewers, as far as I know, get paid from their own sources such as ads on their websites or youtube channels. if you get approached it's best to just give them a free version of your game to let them review
I wanted to use only free reviews as I thought paid reviews did not have much credibility to them. I was contacting review sites to review my game Ginger Roll. I contacted Tapscape they got back to me saying they are busy but they can 'expedite' my review and review it within 7 days for a $69 fee. I thought $69 was reasonable so I paid them via PayPal. At the time the we were just finalising the game so we agreed with Tapscape to send them a promo code when the game would be ready in a months time. So when it came to the game being released a couple of months later I sent them a promo code for the game for them to review. A few weeks went by and I sent them a couple of emails to check to see if they received the code. They did but they were saying they had been 'busy'. Long story cut short they started saying they had sold the website to someone else and the new owner was saying that I should get a refund from the old owner and forward him the payment, even though it was the same company and it wasn't possible to get a refund. It has been over 10 months since I actually paid them and now they are just simply ignoring my messages. I've sent them countless amount of messages just to reviewing my game but they are ignoring my requests. They are just scam artists. All I wanted was for them to review my game. This is not a way to do business and I have completely lost trust in websites that 'expedite' reviews. It's a joke.
Yeah, that's my take as well. Since starting this thread, I have bought the site indievideogames.com and I am still in the process of retooling it. My goal is to make a site that is 100% free (from using real money) and instead awards Indie Developers 'Points' based on their activity on the site (with the best way to earn Points is to share other people's games). Currently, I am offering constant retweets of your game (among others' games) for 250 Points / 1 Week. To earn 250 Points, all you have to do is share 5 games on your own Facebook. That's easy. Later, I hope to launch Puppet Devs which is a silly puppet show offering a variety of things in the indie dev world, including reviews. Reviews will cost Points, not cash. Hopefully we can gut companies like Tapscape by offering what they offer ... only for free.
Sometimes it comes down to who the most popular reviewer is at the time and them somehow getting involved with your game as well to be challenging on the negatives. For some reason the more popular reviews are the overly negative ones, as opposed to those of a positive light. rankly as well, I noticed most paid reviewers tend to be sloppy.