Hello, I run a free multiplayer online game called BattleCity Classic. You can view the website at http://www.looble.com/bcc/ I was wondering if anybody had any good advice for a way to market such a product. It's a pretty good game, its fun, but I'm having trouble driving traffic to the website in order to get people playing it! I have no budget, so buying ads wont work. I cant charge for the game, because I am having trouble getting players right now while its free I do have ads on the website, but I don't have enough traffic right now for these ads to make much. They currently bring in about 5$/month. So, I was wondering if anybody had any good ideas of how I could market my product. I am giving it away for free, so you would think it would be easy, but it's not! How can I drive people to the site to get things rolling?
I've been interested in getting into online gaming, do you develope it all yourself? If you do this all 100% yourself with not freeware engine PM me, I'm looking to invest\build an online gaming network.
Post frequently in gaming forums, with your link in the signature file. You might as well use a squidoo lens and a blog. Try writing articles as well. how do you plan on monetizing this idea further? greetz, jobic
Might want to try classifieds on sites such as Fark. I've seen several games advertised there, multiple times. So they must be doing at least okay.
Yes, I am developing the game myself at this point and it is NOT using any sort of engine. Its written in C++. With respect to monetizing the game, I currently cover my expenses by giving special items to players who donate. Different donation amounts result in different special items. I believe if I could get more than 10 players online at a time, that this could make even more money. My main difficulty right now is getting players! Thank you everyone who shared suggestions. Posting on game forums with my game link in the signature does sound like a good suggestion. I don't think it will bring in lots of players, but any little bit helps
Hey, me being only 16 years old, but I might look into being a game developer, programmer, what are you using to make this game and are there sites to start you off or give tips. Can you please post any sites or tips. Thanks.
I would recommend social networking sites to build initial awareness. 1. Digg.com 2. Metacafe.com (post video demo) 3. Youtube.com (post video demo) 4. Gaming forums I am not a gamer but I do know there are lots of games out there so I would focus on writing a good "story" about the unique benefits the user gets by playing your game. Good luck
I think you should also move the game to a more 'catchy' domain name. And I would also make the home page a lot simpler, look at http://www.travian.com/ for example. But otherwise, forum posts, blogs, articles and so on should work. I would also write some AI bots to play the game to keep the current players entertained, otherwise they will not tell their friends about it if there is no action on the site. FFMG
I used to develop Playstation portable games and they have a very busy forum and LARGE fanbase. If your program is written in C++ you could probably port it to the PSP easily as the games are in C. You could reuse all your graphics more than likely. Supporting play through the PSP and web would bring xxx,xxx's of people to you rapidly. It's a thought to make you instantly known. Google "playstation homebrew" if you want more info. The dev kits are free. You just need a PSP.
Make lots of friend on myspace! Put up funny videos of your game on youtube. Find those interested in gaming and ask to be their friends... I know posting on blogs and myspace sounds like the slow way of doing things but that kind of traffic is just about priming the pump. Once you start it going, it increases at a much higher rate.
I had another thought. Try to get those on your site to promote it for you. Give medals or extra passcodes to people who help you get traffic. That way you don't have to pay them outright. have you tried using a tell a friend script?
Thanks for all of the great advice! I've just recently mad an account here on Digital Point and am amazed by the quick/quality responses I am getting! FFMG mentioned the website should be a bit simpler and have a better URL. The current game website is at http://www.looble.com/bcc/ I've just made a new one that is NOT public. I was hoping to get some feedback on which web page design do you think would be best for my game. Here is the second link. http://battlecity.looble.com Thanks again! I'll definitely work on using FRAPS to get some videos to share in YouTube and will start participating in more discussions on gaming blogs and forums. Even though it will bring slow traffic, I agree it will be quality traffic that will build up over time! About the social networking idea, I think I will give StumbleUpon, Facebook and maybe MySpace a try, althogh I will need to actually leave myself some free time to working on developing the game LOL!
The reason for having BattleCity sitting on http://battlecity.looble.com is because BattleCity is not my only project and I wish to have each of my projects promote the other. For example, Google didn't get a new domain for Google Maps, they have it sit on maps.google.com. Same with Gmail, which is mail.google.com. Of course, you can go to http://www.gmail.com, which re-directs you to http://mail.google.com. Similarly, you can go to http://www.battlecityclassic.com and will be re-directed to http://battlecity.looble.com. My hope of including BattleCity on my looble.com domain is that I indirectly gain advertising to my other websites via my URL by promoting my Looble Network, which is basically a portal to all of my websites, with many more in development and coming soon. Again, starting up with no budget, I think its important to try have each of my projects share traffic with the others in some way to help each grow more quickly.
I think you are mistaken. The reason why google does it is because of 'google.com' itself. mail.google.com works because google.com is so well known. It is not for a practical reason at all. People are lazy, if they cannot remember the name or it is too hard to use they will go somewhere else. FFMG
I am not sure that using the default phpbb3 skins colors will work. You might want to get a web designer to help you out. Someone might want to design a template for you. I think that a great website is vital for those kind of games. SEO is 50% promotion and 50% development. Sadly, the greatest software in the world is dead in the water with no promotion FFMG
1. As others have said before - get a better domain name. One that is easy to remember. A $8 investment will work wonders for you. 2. Add a refer-a-friend form to the site. And reward people with cheat codes when they refer 5 new friends. (You'll have to build in some kind of a cheat code in the game...)
Ah, but web-hosting is more than an 8$ investment. A domain is no good without a website to go with it, and given that my users need to download the game, I require a quality host with sufficient bandwidth. As I've mentioned, I do have a domain for the game: http://www.battlecityclassic.com However, I only have 1 web-hosting account for all of my websites, which is http://www.looble.com Therefore, when a user visits http://www.battlecityclassic.com, they are re-directed to http://battlecity.looble.com Therefore, I do have the advantage of an easy to remember domain. The name of the game is BattleCity Classic, and I have the domain battlecityclassic.com bringing users to the site. At the same time, I only pay for a single web-hosting account, which I use to host all of my websites. Then, at the end of the day, because all of my domains re-direct to sub-domains on looble.com, my looble.com Alexa ranking goes through the roof. In fact, its currently around 180,000, even though each site alone would be ranked above 500,000. Therefore, this have opened up more advertising opportunities to me. Finally, i am BUILDING up recognition of my company, LOOBLE. In fact, users who take a look into the URL space automatically see LOOBLE.com advertised. As I continue to grow my assets and other websites, the name will become more and more recognizable and new products I release will have more authority associated with them. People will be like, "Hey, I've heard of Looble somewhere before... lets download this!". I therefore feel there is more long-term value in keeping the sub-domain, while of course still giving users the easy to remember battlecityclassic.com URL which bring them to the website. I guarantee you that many users who become fans of the game will eventually be curious about what else I do and will therefore go visit looble.com to see what's there (many have already told me they have done so and have contacted me asking about my other websites, interested in knowing if I made them, etc...). At this point, they are presented with a landing page connecting them to all of my other websites, increasing my page views, ad revenue, and user base to each if the user finds something else of interest to them. I must say though, the refer-a-friend feature is a must and I will definitely get to work on that Thanks again for all the suggestions and opinions. This has been a very excellent discussion and has brought many good ideas to the table which I will definitely put to action. I will definitely start more discussions on more forums with links in my signature as well as take the time to comment more often on related blogs. The friend referral rewards system is another thing which I'll need to build right into the game. If anybody has any further suggestions, I am eager to hear and discuss them!