Hi, I am a long time game developer, but never had to deal with the business side much. Now recently our bunch of oldschool guys decided to go on and create our own small commecial game (for a big part for fun of it). Its for iPhone. The game is now out and I ended up with the black mark of having to market it. I started sending out review versions of our game but got stuck at big game webs like IGN or Gamespot. Im not really sure how press releases \ review versions are delivered to them. Im having trouble finding any contact saying "send your games here" or "request review" forms etc. And of course I don't want to go into it completely naively - spaming all they emails with "who to send the press kit to?" ;) I will be glad for any advice ! Jan

This is generally for your publisher to work out.

If you are too small to have a publisher, then you are probably too small for a professional review in the major media.

Also, they aren't reviewing games out of the goodness of their hearts. They invest time in the review and a lot of money in getting that review out to people. Be prepared for a submission fee roughly the cost of running an advertisement in their publications.


Understanding all this, you should look for their business contacts and use a telephone rather than their web site's consumer contacts using email.

Thank a lot Frob for the info!
I had a notion it might be so.

Theres a catch though - with iPhone games you can't have a publisher.
Applications and games are distributed exclusively via Apple's e-portal 'AppStore' and de-facto if you are developer of the game, you have to distribute the game under your name. (Since a licence and certifications needed for distrib. are linked directly to you as developer)

So I guess there must be a way (now) to approach IGN and Gamespot directly as a developer.
Of course the major Developers like EA or Glu (who are in fact also publishers) have theyr games reviewed on those sites.

Oh well I guess it will end up with phonecall to IGN anyway.
I wish my spoken english werent totaly broken :( :(
Anyone willing to call them for me ? ;)