Devs: How to get your game reviewed?

[fairlady]

Do any of the other devs out there have advice on how to get your game reviewed? We're getting great customer reviews, but it would be nice to be able to put some quotes from review sites into our Appstore description. Thanks! :)

[Oliver]

I'm no dev, but from a reviewers perspective:

1. Have a polished, unique game (or complete crap).
2. Offer promo codes (most review sites do not have money)
3. Offer a lite version or something else to give reviewers a copy of your game, which cannot use promo codes
4. Send a nice mail with the appropriate information on the game, release date, description, video link.

[PoV]

Contacting each site directly with a freebie (Ad Hoc's back in the day/non US sites). Many sites are just as flooded with new games these days, so you *must* do this for them to see you at all. Many sites exercise editorial control these days, so it'll be hard to get noticed as something that isn't unique.

Many sites have backlogs, so don't expect a next day review.

[Wegmans]

I would think you could just go ahead and quote people from the site here...

All you'd have to do is say something like:
"User Oliver from TouchArcade.com says 'This game is freaking awesome!' " or something along those lines.
if you're looking directly for a specific website's take on it, probably send a promo code out, and they'll most likely get back to you shortly with a review! Good luck!

[VWXYZ]

To sum up:

send promo code to review site with a nice mail asking them to do a review!

Last time I heard GameTrailers.com said they reviewed every single game people send to them (they said so on a podcast at least)
And well.. they don't usually do App reviews, and they said it before the App Store

just send it to Kotaku! if it gets a good review from Kotaku you are pretty much garenteed a server crash! (thats how things often go when on Kotaku)

[yourofl10]

send promo codes or ad hoc (thats how i write reviews for my website is by getting promo codes but i do take ad hoc also)

[PoV]

GameTrailers put my video up, but they don't have a direct iPhone games page link, so you only ever saw it in the main feed. Mobile is the "non" iPhone section. You can expect about 1000 eyeballs before it's old news.

[PlayScreen]

Unless you get a review by a major site (TUAW, PocketGamer) it will not effect sales all that much.

[Dorfdad]

Unless you get a review by a major site (TUAW, PocketGamer) it will not effect sales all that much.

That is not true, Alot of these smaller sites do have some loyal fans, and TUAW and Pocketgamer are basically shells and do not give you unbiased anything. I can tell you plenty of BIG sites that stink.

What you need to do is have some creative advertisement and get your app noticed. There are a Million apps coming out each day and TONS of good ones get lost in the muck of crap.

[PlayScreen]

That is not true, Alot of these smaller sites do have some loyal fans, and TUAW and Pocketgamer are basically shells and do not give you unbiased anything. I can tell you plenty of BIG sites that stink.

What you need to do is have some creative advertisement and get your app noticed. There are a Million apps coming out each day and TONS of good ones get lost in the muck of crap.

Is this creative enough?

5vZ0WcIk16k

The critical thing with apps is to get into the top 50 and/or get featured by Apple. It is not a sure thing.

[PlayScreen]

Also, some sites are doing review-for-pay. Be warned.

[yourofl10]

Yeah go to our sites and contact us :)

See my link!

and click on my developers tab for info on getting a review done.

yea please contact us! See my website for more info (in signature)

[fairlady]

What you need to do is have some creative advertisement and get your app noticed. There are a Million apps coming out each day and TONS of good ones get lost in the muck of crap.

Yeah, we've been brainstorming about that. It's difficult when you're just starting out and have little or no money for advertising, and you're uncertain whether you'll get a return on your investment. There are so many apps in the App Store, it's really hard to get noticed! But hey, we have to do something, because there are more and more apps every day!

[arn]

my two cents for toucharcade.

- We review games we like
- We review games we think people are interested in (major titles, for example from major developers) even if we don't like them
- Videos are helpful to provide. We have to really like a game or think it's unique to shoot our own video for it. And we don't generally post about a game without a video. So the bar to getting a story is lower if there is a good developer provided video.
- We accept promo codes, but don't require them.

arn

[fairlady]

Thanks to whomever moved this thread; I had accidentally posted it in the other forum.

[jasonf]

For my game Theseus (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=292035008&mt=8) (and the Lite version (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=302451507&mt=8)) I've sent promo codes and review requests to every iPhone app review site I could find reference to. As far as I know I've only received one official review ever, and that was from Pocketgamer (and even that was a review of the older version, but still received a gold award (http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/iPhone/Theseus/review.asp?c=9501)).

It's pretty discouraging when no official channel cares about your work, but I try to keep at it with different marketing concepts. The latest one is in this thread (http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=4022) where I'm trying to get some viral marketing by offering promo codes for the full version to people who email their friends.