As of 2:00PM today, we’ve been on Steam Greenlight for 7 full days.

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After 7 days, we are achingly close to 50% of the way to the top 100 games on Greenlight:

As far as traffic goes, we’ve definitely hit a big wall:

Maybe other people have written about this, but your “free pass” of exposure looks like it lasts about two and a half days, after that you’re on your own. Which is totally fair; I’m not dissing Valve at all. I was completely taken aback by the interest level we got after initially launching our Greenlight page, and the fact that we climbed so quickly really shocked me.

Here’s what I thought would happen: I’d put the game on Greenlight, get a minimal response, and then return to my preparations for SGC this weekend. Coming out of SGC, I was hoping for an increase in traffic to the Greenlight page and maybe also gain some press interest which might give us more of a bump.

Instead, when the game started doing really well on Greenlight, I spent a lot of time improving our page there, putting together a FAQ, updating our website, etc. All of which were great things to do, but they took time away planning for the show this weekend.

So, now that the traffic has died down, back to the original plan:

Contact all of the appropriate press that are attending SGC and ask them nicely to stop by our booth and meet with us and check out the game. Looking at the press list from SGC, not everyone is a good fit for our game, so I researched their web sites and writing to find the press folks that are the most likely to be interested. I emailed each of them with a personal message, and also included links from itch.io to download preview copies of the game.

Started the process of contacting various indie press outlets and sending out more preview copies of the game.

Make the game ready to play at SGC, and stop making changes! One of the things I have heard is don’t futz with your game right before or during a con, and that sounds like good advice.

I also learned a very valuable lesson. My brain goes way too fast for my hands, and I make a crazy amount of typos. My awesome wife Jane now proofreads everything I do to make sure I don’t send out something embarrassing and riddled with stupid typos. Like I did to one of the editors of RPS, one of my favorite gaming sites.

The lesson here is always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS have someone proofread your work before sending it out. Most people make lousy editors for themselves, and I have proved that rule.

I plan to do a big write up and take lots of pics of SGC, so stay tuned!

On a side note, I have nothing but the highest praise for itch.io. Putting our game up for sale and managing the page has been incredibly easy. Kudos to them for supporting indies with such a great website.