Promotion, Promotion, Promotion

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

The key virtue of a review or any other internet coverage is the opportunity for the game designer actually to put on a good face to the public.

It doesn't matter what the review says. It could be complete ass. What matters is that you, the person who did it, appear as a decent kind of person.

Anyone who is attracted by whatever merits the game has (if any) that the reviewer pointed out (if any), has already been attracted. Your presence will help these folks go from X% might-getto 100% get.

But more importantly, your presence will also influence those who have not been attracted especially by the review itself to take a second look and (here's an important concept) decide to decide for themselves.

That's why I'm always advising people never to try to refute reviews, always to answer questions, and to acknowledge valid criticisms.

Every time I've done this, regarding any review or any mention of my games which permits a non-spam response, it's paid off tremendously.

Best,
Ron

[Ria]

I think lite editions are a good way of getting interest, as long as you don't make them too good (a mistake made by Dying Earth).

GB Steve, my husband and I have talked about whether to release a sample or just sell the game as is, no sample. I think that's what you are talking about here. What are the pros and cons of this, and what do you mean, "as long as you don't make it too good"?

[Eero Tuovinen]

Ria, you've stumbled on the etiquette: dragging up old threads (anything out of the front page, or many weeks without responses) is something we don't do here. Instead, start a new thread, summarize the old discussion you want to continue, and provide a link to the old thread.

The reason we do it this way is that discussion always lives in time. The participants hopefully reach each other and change their minds, as well as develop otherwise as human beings. Thus it'd be a folly to require anybody to continue an old discussion later on. The river is never the same when you step in it again.

For more stuff about the local rules, read the stickies on the top of the forums. We also discuss the finer points to death on the Site Discussion forum.

Anyway, it's not a big deal. Ron will no doubt split this to it's own thread when he gets around to it.

--

As for what Steve meant: if you make the light, free version of your game too good, you lose the curiousity factor, and in the worst case make buying the actual product useless. You should always make sure that the light version is functional for something, yet hints very strongly on even more delights to come. The purpose of a light version is to prove your mettle to the customer, so he can be sure that what he's buying is good. The purpose is not to make your product redundant.

I personally think that a light version of a product can be made to work very effectively, although it's also overlaps with actual play accounts and reviews as far as it's purpose goes. That doesn't of course mean that all three can't be used simultaneously. I suggest considering whether what you got to sell could be "lightened" by making it a one-shot scenario, for example, with only the rules that you need to play it. No need to try to lighten the whole experience. A textual solo adventure could also be used to great effect, especially as a web enchancement.

More discussion to come, I'm sure. And in this case we still have GB Steve with us (or at least did a couple of days ago), so he might tell us more about the lessons of Dying Earth.

[Ria]

I hadn't realized this was such an old thread, and my apologies. I get a little single-minded sometimes.... Seriously, we were just talking about whether to do a sample game Thursday. Thanks for the heads-up, Eero!