People - promote your open source games

[michalg]

Hello,

There are many great open source games. Unfortunately many of them are unknown, because authors don't promote them.
Not everyone is browsing sf, google code, etc.

Also, there are many people who don't know about sites like happypenguin or freegamedev community.

So, please announce also your games also on another sites, like:
http://gamejolt.com/ - this page even has open souce section
http://forums.tigsource.com/ (DevLogs or Feedback, remember that first you need to introduce yourself in "introduce yourself" thread)
http://www.moddb.com/games

[charlie]

One issue is that many open source projects are rather incomplete as games, and they are not ready for exposure on such sites where they will get unfairly low ratings because of the aforementioned fact.

[michalg]

Yeah, not every site is friendly for work in progress games. But on moddb there are many games in progress, also tigsource has section "Devlogs" also for writing about games in progress.

Edit:

For example there is some dungeon keeper clone on moddb http://www.moddb.com/games/natural-born-keepers-evolved
I think that for example opendungeons could also be added there

[qubodup]

So, please announce also your games also on another sites, like:

I have some links to add:
http://db.tigsource.com/
http://gameboom.net/

[michalg]

http://db.tigsource.com/

Unfortunately, from what i know, only tigsource admins adds game there. But maybe if someone will post game on theirs forum, it will be noticed and added.

[qubodup]

http://db.tigsource.com/

Unfortunately, from what i know, only tigsource admins adds game there. But maybe if someone will post game on theirs forum, it will be noticed and added.

Nope

register, login, then "submit" - links top right

[amuzen]

Unfortunately, advertising your project takes time and effort. You need to learn the rules and etiquette of each community, you need to write high quality posts to actually get any attention, and you need to check for feedback and questions frequently and write replies. You also need to notify every place separately whenever you make a new release, which means posting lots of updates frequently if you embrace the holy mantra. It can be quite tiresome if you actually want to get some work done too.

Besides, why is it always the developers themselves who need to do all the promotion work? I think that anyone who cares a bit and has the necessary time and guts can advertise just as well. Think of it as a way to contribute. It's easy and tons of fun, which is why so many people are volunteering...

[NeoStrider]

One thing that eventually happens (and its happening to me) is that when you stop to make the your promotion right (and in my case, Im doing a low profile one), you end up spending so much time doing it that you get too busy to work on your next games.

My game is episodic and the second episode is already delayed beyond control. When this happens, what to do?
My current decision is to seek for help, but eventually, this wont work...

[michalg]

I forgot about this site:
http://www.pixelprospector.com/indev/

Which specializes in game in development.

There are couple of open source games there:
http://www.pixelprospector.com/indev/tag/open-source/

[ghostshell]

hi, i started the gameboom project. our goal is to promote open gaming through sharing and collaboration. we are probably the youngest of most websites/projects that promote open source games, but we have a very active team. many of the members of our team either develop or contribute to open game projects, and like most of you know it's difficult to get people to know about our games. we use commercial games and their popularity to bring new eyes to open games using search engine campaigns, cross linking and blogging.

Project highlights:
- Projects that support open game development (like Blender, Ogre3d, OpenGameArt, etc) get special free advertising from us.
- Every two months a game is chosen for campaign, we write a teaser blog and promote it on our website and search engines (no cost)
- Our game list is not static, so those games that people are looking at get moved to the front of the list
- Almost every action on the website earns credits that will go toward a credit store to reward member participation (work in progress)
- We are setting up a profit-sharing system to let authors earn cash from google through their postings, simply by configuring it in their profile
- GameBoom is the website that will power our next project, a steam-clone for open and free games (Linux, Windows, MacOSX).

As you can see we are pretty busy, we want open gaming to succeed and be known. We welcome anyone to help our project and promote their games. if you want to learn more about what we do go, to - http://gameboom.net/about and on IRC @ irc.freenode.net channel #gameboom

Edit: changed IRC to a link, thanks.

[qubodup]

As you can see we are pretty busy, we want open gaming to succeed and be known. We welcome anyone to help our project and promote their games. if you want to learn more about what we do go, to - http://gameboom.net/about and on IRC @ irc.freenode.net channel #gameboom

Hey there gameboomers,

Should you want to promote your channel to people who don't know irc, you can try either linking to a web client or embedding it as a small or big iframe. If you don't like the look, you could install & tweak the software on your servers.

[TheAncientGoat]

Hey ghostshell, dig your site

Didn't know you guys where planning to do a steam-thing, I guess I'll have to pull up my prior-art archives and share.. Plus plus, I'd like to discuss a few Syntensity things.

[svenskmand]

ghostshell: is GameBoom not only for open source games? StarCraft is on the front page right now, and that is not open source (of what I know)

[Sindwiller]

Sticky this! And collect all the links in the first post!

[Andrew]

One thing that eventually happens (and its happening to me) is that when you stop to make the your promotion right (and in my case, Im doing a low profile one), you end up spending so much time doing it that you get too busy to work on your next games.

This happens to me as well. Replying to forums posts, having to make news every week so people don't think the project is dead.. It all takes time away from actually working on the project.

I still do my best to promote my project. Here is our moddb page. http://www.moddb.com/games/hardwar-remake

[charlie]

I would only post updates to forums etc when you feel you want the feedback on something major. Otherwise use a blog and add it to the planet. I think we are a (slowly) growing community because of these various tools.