Marketing IF games


30 Nov 1995 23:26:44 GMT

Shareware IF is certainly sellable, if you have:

1) A _very_ good game. (Trinity-level quality.)
2) A fairly well known author.
3) An advertising genius.
4) Divine intervention.

However, since all of the above (except maybe 4) are required for
_anything_ shareware, no matter what, your odds aren't that bad. The
snazziest shareware game in the world won't sell more than 10 copies without
good advertising.

Here is a little practical advice...

ADVERTISE ON USENET

The easiest one, but I still hardly see IF announcements in comp.sys.games.
ibm.pc or comp.sys.games.mac or any of the other relevant ones. Plus,
remember most people will have no idea what a ZIP interpreter is, and think
you are talking of PKZIP.

ADVERTISE ON MUDS

A very large market potential here--there are hundreds of people on some,
and they are certainly well acquainted with playing in text format.

SEND TO BBSs

If you want to seriously market, try at least the biggies like Channel
One. There are services that will distrbute games for you. Also, SDN
is a good free distributer.
Advertising on big nets like Fidonet and Majornet is also a good idea.
One advantage to this is the people that use BBSs will be, since they
are mainly text-oriented, already ready to go into the IF field.

GIVE AWAY FREE COPIES

Say, for example, a business has a contest where they are asking software
companies for donations. If you can donate your game, you just got the
name of your game on a list sent to many people. Some will say "what
is that?" and inquire into it.

USE ZINES OR ELECTRONIC MAGAZINES

Game Developer's Magazine actually contains the shareware games it
advertises in the magazine itself. It is read by thousands of people.
Thousands of people will get the shareware version of your game. Most
will try it at least once. Think about it.
There are many other zines where you can have even more success.

MAKE A COOL WWW PAGE

Not just devoted to IF, but with enough cool stuff that you get many
people visiting. After you are fairly popular, make a plug for your
game. Considering how many people have pushed the Very Big Button That
Doesn't Do Anything there's a big potential market here.

ASK MAJOR COMPANIES FOR HELP

Believe it or not, there may be a daring commercial company or two
that would go along with an IF. Most people would see on the shelf
"interactive fiction", have no idea what it is, but buy it anyway
because it sounds cool (or they think it is hypertext fiction). While
I'm on the subject...

ADVERTISE TO HYPERTEXT LOVERS

It's new, it's hip, and there was even a recent article on it in Electronic
Entertainment. rec.arts.int-fiction even got a mention (for discussing
"adventure-style" games, it said).

MAGAZINES

If enough people mail Newsweek's "Cyberscope" mentioning the
Annual Interactive Fiction Contest, do you think they might consider
mentioning it? The best part is you are grabbing the fresh newbies who
have not yet been lulled over to the side of multimedia snazziness.

SEND MESSAGES TO PEOPLE WHO SEEM INTERESTED

I often still see people in comp.games.ibm.pc.adventure asking for
help on Infocom games. Direct them here! Get them interested in the
new stuff!

--
Jason Dyer - jdyer@indirect.com