Reviews.
greyorm:
Another data point on reviews: I don't know they actually help that much on their own. For one of my games, I've received a number of reviews; a few of them glowing and a couple so-so (I hesitate to call them "negative" because they liked the basic game, just not the style). You might think this is pretty good, and it is, but the thing is that it hasn't helped at all with sales.
I think one of the larger keys to potential sales success is that people want to see/hear people having fun with your product. It makes them think "Hey, I'll have fun with this, too!" which inspires more purchases than even a positive review. I'm not saying "Go out and lie about how much awesome fun your product was!" Just real, honest accounts of spiffy things that happened playing your game.
So, Actual Play. Post it here and there maybe once a month and see what happens.
Stregheria:
I found your comment about your sales not improving even though you had some good reviews very interesting. I assumed that good reviews might be the difference between selling lots of copies of a game and selling next to none. It's good to hear from somebody with experience in the matter and maybe actual play examples might be the better way to rack up sales after all.
Thanks for the info.
Nathan P.:
I've gotten a couple of glowing reviews and a couple of "meh" reviews, and never a wholly negative review. I've never noticed a change in sales directly attributable to any review.
Some people do get sales out of reviews. I think there are particular combination of (a) timing (b) the game itself (c) the reviewer and (d) the game designer/author/publisher that can lead to sales, but it's a strange and unpredictable alchemy.
Reviews sure don't hurt (particularly as additional content to point to for "here's some more info about my game"), but they're not a make-or-break kind of thing, for me at least.
Stregheria:
After reading people's comments here, it has spurred me into action to try and organise a group of players to run a PBP game using my rules. I'll be giving those people free .pdfs of the rules and the first supplement due out in October: Blood on the Battlefield. (Check out my game's just revamped site that was updated today, that now has better product informaton and pictures of the front and back covers of the books.)
What I'll do when that's up and running in a few weeks time, is to leave the links here for Forge members to be able to click on and go and see the actual game being played. I know there's an actual play section here but it isn't for PBP games. I'll post some summarised info in that section myself, based on the progress of the PBP game.
Chris_Chinn:
Has any of your playtesters run the game without you present? Getting a playtester or two to write up some actual play experiences online can help a lot.
Chris
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