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Ask HN: Best Way to Distribute an Independently Developed Games

5 points| catwork | 12 years ago | reply

My 14 year old just released his first game:

http://ninjacharlie.itch.io/redshift

He did a great job on it and is wondering about the best way of distributing it. For publishing - would it be worth it to publish this elsewhere (the Mac App store, port it to a Chrome App for Google's store, etc)?

Also regarding promotion - what are the best places to promote these sort of games?

I am a software development guy but don't know much at all about the game industry and the current trends.

3 comments

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[+] fredophile|12 years ago|reply
Getting on Steam is a good way for an indie game to generate sales. However, you'll need to do a lot of promotion to get there. The current process for an indie to get onto Steam involves getting users to vote for your game. If enough people vote for your game you get on Steam. "Enough" is some value that moves around and isn't public. Valve has recently started letting more games on through greenlight so this may be getting easier to do than it has been in the past. If you search you should be able to find blogs by devs that used this route and copy some of their strategies.

The game looks good for something made by a 14 year old but it's unlikely to get any press from major gaming sites because it isn't unique enough. Now is an especially bad time to try to get their attention because GDC is next week. They'll already be flooded with stories to write.

Your son may have some success building word of mouth by posting it a few places like reddit. There are subreddits for indie gaming and for game development he could post a link from. If this doesn't work don't try again right away because it will come across as spammy and give the wrong kind of publicity. Asking for feedback on those boards should also get some useful advice.