Best techniques to get greenlit?

I look forward to hearing from people who've run successful campaigns. I can share what I've learned:

* Get feedback on your game before you open it for voting. This will help you address issues early on and not in the middle of voting.

* NEVER react negatively to negative feedback or trolling. Most likely, some folks will say some VERY mean, sarcastic things but any kind of negative reaction will be met with 1000x more negativity. Your best thing is to simply ignore the cruelest comments. Trolls are just trying to get a rise out of you so they can tear you down afterwards.

* Don't expect greenlight to be an effective way to market your game - you will need to get the word out before hand and during any way you can.

*The first couple of days are when you will get most of your traffic. Plan and act accordingly.

big Infinity - that's a good start, although making a good game that people want to play is my number 1 recommendation <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile">

Anyway, I'm part of small team that got our (non-Construct 2) game greenlit in the very early days of Greenlight - we got through on the 3rd round and were something like the 32nd game greenlit and one of the first greenlit games released on Steam. After 3 expansions, we re-released the game as free-to-play and now have a sequel in Early Access on Steam.

Looking at the stats for the current top 50 games, your goal would be to get just over 7,000 people to visit your Greenlight page and then get half of them to vote for it. Chances are if they are visiting your page then they are already sort of interested, so really it's all about traffic.

• Get yourself on social media - Facebook and Twitter - and make sure the information is up to date and accurate, with links to your Greenlight page. Tweet or post every few days on development/Greenlight progress or just an awesome screenshot to keep people interested. Use hash tags #greenlight #indiedev #gamedev on your Tweets. Even if you don't get many followers, it's good to have these so you can at least refer people to them
• Make sure you have at least one good gameplay video on YouTube to include in your Greenlight page. People want to see what the game is about. If a picture says a thousand words, a video says a million. And remember, 30sec of in-game action is better than 5mins showing off your fancy menus. If you need help putting together a trailer, consider using someone like Trailer Squad http://trailersquad.com/ I have no idea how much they cost but they say they are indie friendly
• If your game already has a following or you have a lot of email contacts, send out a newsletter asking them to vote for you on Greenlight - you can use something like Mail Chimp free if you have less than 2,000 followers http://mailchimp.com/pricing/entrepreneur/
• If your game is still in development, set up a Kickstarter (even if only for a small amount) and cross-promote with Greenlight so traffic from one goes to the other.
• If your game is complete, try to get yourself into a Greenlight bundle e.g. Groupees Build a Greenlight, current one is https://groupees.com/bagb30
• Put out a Press Release announcing your game/Greenlight, e.g. with Games Press http://www.gamespress.com/about_howtosubmit.asp - even if none of the big sites pick it up, some of the smaller sites might
• Contact games sites or "let's play"ers and ask them to preview/review your game
• Contact relevant Greenlight Collections and ask them to add your games. I have one for Construct 2 games http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =103535227

Hope that helps someone

OddConfection

That's a lot of great tips!

Yes - thanks!

You're welcome

I think there was an element of luck with us as well because we already had a following of over 20,000 people, there were less than a 1,000 games on Greenlight and there was a lot more traffic coming through to Greenlight because it was new and being promoted by Steam.

Now, even though the criteria is less and more games are being greenlit, it's arguably harder because you really have to drive traffic there yourself or be lucky not to be lost amongst the shovelware. There are some really great C2 games on Greenlight that seem to have been overlooked.