Thursday, September 8, 2011

The Beginning is Nigh!

Well here we stand. Call Connect is finally submitted to Apple for their review process (which we'll hopefully find out if we're successful by next week), all the contract payment paperwork is in the process of being completed, and now we stand on this precipice of the daunting abyss that is having a released product.

Where we go from here is the big question. That fantastically enormous topic that is "marketing" is staring right at us and as this is our first proper release we have no idea what we're doing. There is plenty of articles already on the internet and many new ones constantly being tweeted about and that surely gives a good overview of the dos and don'ts but it still doesn't help with knowing exactly what we should be doing. Especially as we have a game based around a technology that was popular 50s-60s. Who am I kidding every loves and knows about the old switchboard telephony system right? Right?

I guess we will be targeting all the major points: review websites large and small, blog spots, newspapers, etc. Of course we won't know if they'll actually listen to our cries for attention until we start a-yellin' but it'll be interesting to see what happens. We'll let you know when it does, of course.

There's also the big question of whether you need to have all these things ready for release or if you can trickle out PR with reviews and articles and so on. Will this drive sales or will sales remain separate anyway? These are the tricky questions. This article from Games Brief attempts to answer this in part.

In my opinion I think a lot of the time the games tend to sell themselves and your PR efforts can only take you so far. Make that special game and it'll catch on now matter how much marketing you do. You still need to make that first push, of course, but once the ball starts rolling you become Tiny Wings in the top 25 where you can lay back on your gold plated bed of money.

Will Call Connect do that? I'm not sure, we'll see. But I do know that whatever happens we'll be taking it all in and using it for our next game.

Here's a new screenshot with the new region lamps, just because I'm nice:


-Shaun
*Listening to: Blind Pilot - 3 Rounds and a Sound