

We announced our company and game on Monday. Here are the numbers - aakour
http://blog.sharkpunch.com/post/79568764866/spamming-the-gdc-2014-press-list-lessons-learned

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csense
From the information available, this game could be literally anything. It's
one thing if no gameplay video is available. It's another thing entirely if
there's no way to figure out even what genre the game is.

For all that this tells readers, it could be anything from a tower defense
game to an economic simulation.

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joelrunyon
I have no idea what this is, but the name is awesome & catchy and if I saw it
in the app store - I would probably try to download it.

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aakour
Happy to hear that! We wanted to see if the vibe of the video would resonate
with people, and it seems like it did.

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aschearer
Thanks for sharing. I too struggle with getting the word out for my games and
have experienced similar levels of success.

Some unsolicited feedback,

1\. I watched the trailer and came away with no clue what your game is
actually about. Ideally it would tip your hand a bit more

2\. I didn't find the trailer very compelling, either. In fact if anything it
made me skeptical that this game was going to be some crazy political message.

3\. With that being said, I thought I'd learn more about the game but didn't
see any easy way to do so from the YouTube page or from your website. Add a
link in the description and put the game in the top level navigation for your
site.

4\. The art style seems cool at least.

Best of luck, I hope you share more about your experiences as they develop.

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aakour
Thank you for the excellent feedback! We were hoping to have a dedicated site
for the game before the launch, but the realities of being a three man
development team (or, bad planning) made that impossible.

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woebtz
Thanks for sharing this.

Will you be planning a gameplay video? I think it's particularly difficult for
viewers to extract value from non-gameplay trailers/teasers involving new IP.

Can you explain an embargoed press release?

Is it:

a) giving your "favorite" journalist(s) an exclusive time period to make
announcements,

b) a heads up of when you will be submitting the press release,

c) a firm "time" when you'd like all press/media to hold stories before
publishing?

If you're heading to GDC, good luck! It sounds like an exciting conference.

~~~
aakour
C. "For publication on 3/10/2014 at 9pm GMT or later"

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cwal37
I've found something similar with reddit. Posting in a niche subreddit might
look like a nonstarter with many posts only receiving a couple upvotes and 0-2
comments, but the actual site visits seem to be a couple hundred times the
upvote count (at least for me).

It makes sense to me, in that small subs see something like a trickle of
content, and subscribers tend to be pretty into the topic to have sought the
specific community out. So you could get a much higher % of the subreddit's
total population visiting your site, even if they don't bother to actually
upvote it.

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aakour
Makes sense. And to be honest, that reflects at least my Reddit behavior very
well - out of a thousand clicks I link, I'll probably comment on a couple.

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Tloewald
Nice post and interesting information.

And I love the name of the company and your logo. I think the video doesn't
quite hit the nail on the head. (The art kind of reminds me of Interstate 76,
which I love -- assuming that's the goal, you're not quite there.)

~~~
aakour
Thanks!

We'll be releasing some in-game footage soon - hope that'll give you a better
idea of what the game is about.

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enra
I wish more people would share these kind of results for comparison.

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mathattack
How can you not like a game called Sharkpunch?

