As some folks will be aware, I try and punt out the news of other people’s videogames I like wherever possible. I’m the EXTREME version of The Pickford’s noble Games We Like Project except I run a whole site dedicated to posting things I like these days*
So I get some emails, obviously. Some of these emails, I’m not so keen on getting in my inbox – they’re for other people not for me and it’s easy to moan about things I don’t like so I do. It’s probably also worthwhile mentioning the things I do like too, yeah?
There’s lots of sound advice out there for approaching the games press in general (and me 
), if you’re considering plugging your game and you don’t know where to start, if you haven’t read Gillen’s How To Use And Abuse The Gaming Press…, you’re probably off to a bad start. For more personal preferences, you can always gander over at Gamasutra or Indiegames.com’s “wot we like” things. You should not, however, follow this advice. That is very bad advice.
Pixel Prospector have been compiling a rather comprehensive amount of information on this very subject that should land soon, Craig Grannell’s “Press Tips For Devs” is worth your time and now, with things like presskit() existing, there’s other aids too. So that’s covered.
I’m just going to add this though. I like looking at pretty pictures. I like to post pretty pictures. If your game is pretty and you have pictures, there’s a good chance that if they catch my eye I’ll want to post them. But I don’t necessarily want to have to go trawling through something like #screenshotsaturday to do so. It’s fairly safe to say I won’t accidentally stumble upon them tucked away on your blog on your site thirty links deep either, y’know?
To put this bluntly then:
I LIKE LOOKING AT PRETTY PICTURES. IF THE PRETTY PICTURES ARE GOOD, I WILL POST THE PRETTY PICTURES.
Don’t wait until the day of release or a few days before to send me these things unless you’re in some sort of weird stealth mode. Because that’s weird if you want people to actually find out things about your game. Send them as soon as they look great. The worst case scenario is that I won’t think they’re up to much and won’t post them. The best case scenario is that someone is impressed and posts them and people start getting excited or intrigued (or horrified, whatever).
From the now defunct xnPlay, I was able to punt the word out incredibly fast about games like (the ill fated) Paws, Leave Home and the where-is-it-hurry-up of Grapple Buggy. That two of those games didn’t make it out the door isn’t important. What’s important is that good screenshots let me tell people about the game faster than having no good screenshots. There were other examples but for the sake of brevity and not trying to stress my brain out thinking of them, we’ll just move on. Oh ok, here’s one for today and with bonus points for letting me reference this.
Here’s Alexander Bruce of Antichamber with something for you to think about…
@retroremakes Yeah I’ve spoken with people like “Nah I don’t want any news getting out before release. I want the release to be interesting”
— Alexander Bruce (@Demruth) July 17, 2012
@retroremakes To which I was like “How often do you look up more information about something you’ve never heard about before?”
— Alexander Bruce (@Demruth) July 17, 2012
So, yeah. Don’t just release your game, send over a press release, a video and some screenshots (and certainly don’t release your game without providing all those things in some form), if you want people to be interested in it, help people with things that can interest people. Like, for example, pretty pictures. Moving pictures are great too but sometimes, sometimes I just like posting a post full of pretty pictures and wouldn’t you want that to be yours?
*since the downturn in actual real retro remakes made by people who aren’t giant corporations has declined to single figures a year anyway, it seemed a waste to let the site just die. Besides which, I enjoy it.