I'm shortly going to be releasing my racing game for mobile phones, Oval Racer. It's been a major development project for the last 18 months, and I now need to figure out how to let the world now about it. One obvious route is to get it reviewed where ever possible, but seem to be tons of websites doing reviews, is there any easy way of letting them all know about it, or do I have to surf the web tracking them down one by one and firing off details to each one. Also how do you go about providing review copies of games, it's going to be sold using a registration key, I could make the demo copy freely available, but to unlock it each reviewer would need to contact me with their IMEI number and I'd need to manually give them the unlock code. So I could possibly make an unlocked build of the code, but feel there's a risk if I send it to the wrong person it could get out there as a pirated copy, could make it time limited to help work around that though. Guess I also need to figure out how to write a press release, never done that before, how do you impress reviewers and journalists to have a good look at your game? Not just reviews I want I suppose, need news announcments as well, so again that's the same old idea of how to track down everyweb site that I want the news posted on. Wish I could just stick to writing code and not have to bother with all this selling lark.

To answer one of your questions, just go on Google and search for "how to write a press release"

Good luck!

>> I'm shortly going to be releasing my racing game for mobile phones, Oval Racer. It's been a major development project for the last 18 months, and I now need to figure out how to let the world now about it.

Congratulations!

The Association of Shareware Professionals has many good answers to these questions, along with answers to questions you didn't ask.

I'll give a brief summary, but you really ought to read their articles.

>> is there any easy way of letting them all know about it, or do I have to surf the web tracking them down one by one and firing off details to each one.

Either you seek them out, or you pay an advertizing company to do it for you. Unless you are well known, they won't be looking for you.

>> Also how do you go about providing review copies of games, it's going to be sold using a registration key

Send them a specialized release or use a different key for the build. There's nothing wrong with having a simple splash screen with a message like "PREVIEW VERSION for Bob's Super Reviews Inc" If it leaks, you will know exactly where to point the finger.

Places that do reviews normally don't leak software. It would give them a bad reputation and encourage lawsuits.

>> Guess I also need to figure out how to write a press release, never done that before, how do you impress reviewers and journalists to have a good look at your game? Not just reviews I want I suppose, need news announcments as well, so again that's the same old idea of how to track down everyweb site that I want the news posted on.

It will be an iterative process of refinement, just like development. There are guides online about writing announcements, and the ASP has many good templates.

>> Wish I could just stick to writing code and not have to bother with all this selling lark.

That's part of doing business. There are many other hats you will need to wear if you want to have the business succeed; marketing is just one of them. Fortunately there are 'support groups' of people in your same situation. The Association of Shareware Professionals is one of those groups you should check out.

Check out http://gamespress.com/ which is a PR site that allows you to submit a press release and the distribute it to all the sites/magazines.

Thanks a lot for the answers so far, yes should have thought of googling for "how to write a press release", it's turned up some very useful stuff.

The Association of Shareware Professionals looks very useful, I may well join up there. Their current spotlight article alone is a very useful start, sure more like that will be a great help.

http://gamespress.com/ looks like just what I need to get word out, how well can I rely on most relevant journalists keeping an eye on it? Is it a very widely used industry standard that will do most of the job alone, or should I still be actively targetting reviewers individually?

Thanks for the help, I'm feeling a lot more condfident about getting this part of the operation of the ground now.

Ultimately it depends on how interesting your announcement is. "X launches mobile game Z" is hardly major industry news, especially if it is a first game from someone that readers have never heard of. If you can find some angle that makes it more interesting that will increase the chances of getting coverage. Its most likely that the only people who will contact you as a result will be "editors" of small amateur web sites. That means that you will still need to do follow-up contact work and offer to send review copies.

How to write your press release: hints & tips

PR services:
http://www.dpdirectory.com/
http://www.indiegamebusiness.com
http://www.softpressrelease.com/
http://www.promaxum.com/
http://www.vgsmart.com