Good stuff there, who knew Eli had a tumblr?? I know I am and was guilty of a lot of those things Eli mentioned. In fact... I think what he posted there might have been actually copy/pasted out of the initial pitch I sent to TA 6 months ago! Boy have we learned a lot in the past 6 months... I liked what he said in this post, as it very clearly describes the experience of being on the other end: Now excuse me while I go and rewrite my old press kit Sell Sheet...
I too believe games get lost in obscurity never to be found. I also learn its better to look at examples of games that didnt make impact immediatly but stayed steady. Let mention a game that wasnt wildly successful but did well enough to eat. Rouge runner wasnt a smashing success , but wasnt a failure either. The developer of Rouge Runner kept adding content , so much content that slowly he built a solid fanbase witch promoted his game word of mouth and got featured in the front page of Toucharcade. I dont have time to go into all the stories but that one was recent. So games like that , were much added content to the game results in a huge spike in sales. Thats the goal keep the game on consumers devices long enough so that they mention it to thier friends through word of mouth. Maybe in the future Flybird will be mentioned in front covers of assorted gaming blogs and maybe not. But word of mouth is everything is this saturated marketplace. Also keep up your marketing its not a one or 2 day affair. Its a consistant process day in day out. If you have all day to market , then use all day to market the game. We wont stop till Flybird stops selling ,we will continue to push the marketing and push updates till the Flybird game is so content rich people have to talk about it. We are aiming to do what games like pocket god and angry birds did. It may not be as fast as them , but we will get there. You got to believe in yourself or nobody else will. Even if you dont get to were your going , at least you got somewhere. Good luck!!
Something that also works is getting in contact with traditional media like news channels and newspapers, I emailed several local outlets my press release about Bouncing Birds! http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bouncing-birds!/id449095015?mt=8&uo=4 They love "local resident has big dreams on Apple's App Store" kind of headlines. It's an easy sell to them..
I've been looking for this for a while, and finally found it. It's the 9magnets.com document for getting published and noticed in traditional media and even getting on tv. They also share sample emails and tips for writing a better pitch: http://www.scribd.com/doc/32354431/9magnets-com-s-App-Success-Guide
Thanks LaughingPanda, BravadoWaffle. While fun, do local media articles or stories have any positive effect on sales or visibility though? Considering how untargeted towards the potential audience such things would be, and small scope, I would guess not. What was your experience in that regard?
Any type of gaming press showing your game has an impact. Like when cnet and applebestvideo collection put up our video's it had a small impact. The more press you get , the better the impact. Even small things like blogs can give you immediate impact and help your sales. The larger the site , the more impact a feature will have.
I would guess it's a minimal impact. However, you can leverage that story to get bigger media attention. When approaching one of the bigger boys, you can say something like "We were covered in an article here and here, and would be interested in doing an interview with your editors."
