XBLIG Network - Networking and Promotion

Being an advocate of the Xbox Live Indie Games channel I have always tried to stay on top of the games being released and follow many of the developers on social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

The thing is, there are many more XBLIG developers who I'm not following, and many games which get very little exposure on the internet and they don't get the coverage from the gaming media either.

I'm now preparing the release of my first XBLIG game and I started to think of ways in which I can help promote my own game and those of other developers. Thus, I began work on a design for a website which would allow developers to do exactly this. Effectively acting as an index of XBLIG developers and games.



I'm finishing up the site now and will be inviting a few developers I know to fill out the first few profiles and test functionality before opening the site up to all developers. The list below details the basic functionality of the site:

Developers
XBLIG Developers can register themselves and register the name they use when distributing their XBLIG games. For myself I would then have a personal developer listing of Martin Caine, but I would be listed as being a part of Retroburn Game Studios.

As the creator of the developer listing, that account can then add listings for games, whether released, or in development.

That user can also add as many links as they like to the developer profile. For example I'd add Twitter, Facebook, Website and YouTube links. You can add links to press releases linked to the developer and other articles. All posted links and updates are shown in the global timeline.

Games
Once a developer has created a page for a particular game, they are able to add in media and links for that game. There is also a section on here where you can add links to reviews of that particular game. What I want to encourage here is for all users (not just the developer) to post links to reviews for particular games so they can be indexed on the game's listing page. I think most developers would like to see who is reviewing their games, and who is reviewing other XBLIG games too.

Reviewers / Journalists
My original intention was to allow journo-types to register and allow XBLIG devs to contact them, but after receiving negative feedback regarding this I've decided instead that reviewers and journalists can sign up, and can opt in to receive the regular email updates of the global timeline changes. This will include game releases, updates and press releases related to games listed on the site.

I hope that the site's ease of use will attract developers to spend a small amount of time creating pages for their games and I hope that XBLIG fans will want to help fill in the content with links to social media links, news articles and reviews for the games and developers. The community can help each-other out and help eachother gain some exposure and ultimately provide a portal for the media to use to find out about your games. It should also allow all us developers to stay up to date with what we're all working on and find eachother on Facebook/Twitter/YouTube etc..

I'd be interested in hearing from XBLIG devs on their thoughts or ideas for this site and if you'd like to be included in the initial set-up of the site and help me tweak it before it goes live. Please leave a comment below or email me if you have anything to say.

If you found this post helpful please leave a comment below: