Note from Tom This is a post from our recently newly appointed social media manager Laura!
So, you’ve made your game using Construct 2. You’ve exported it to browser, mobile, console, whatever. Now what? How do you get your game known? Well we’re going to try and help.
Here at Scirra, we really enjoy seeing the creations that our community has come up with - sometimes we wish you’d tell us more! That’s why we’ve come up with these guidelines to make it easier for us to work with you.
First of all, these guidelines apply to Social Media ONLY, so that’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and we’ll throw our blog in there. At some point in the future we might address the games featured on our website - but not at the moment.
Now, we’ll take this opportunity to say: We can’t promote every single game that you guys make. We simply don’t have the man power! And we’re pretty sure you’d get annoyed quickly by the inevitable volume of posts. So what does that mean for you?
Basically, if your game is a straight clone, something that’s been built by copying a tutorial or just something you threw together in 5 minutes, chances are we aren’t going to promote your project. But feel free to post them in the arcade or the forums, the community has a lot more time to check things out than we do!
So let’s break down what we’re looking for for each platform:
Twitter:
This is probably the easiest platform to promote things on. At a basic level, you can tag us in a tweet using @Scirra or the hashtag #Construct2. If we think your stuff looks cool, we’ll retweet. Boom, instant promotion.
Or, send us some photos, GIFs, links to Steam etc and we’ll do our own tweet(s) about your game!
YouTube:
The home of videos! We’ve got playlists specifically made to show off your creations! If they start to get cluttered we may rearrange them, so if you suddenly can’t find your video, we may have moved it to a new playlist!
In order to be featured on our YouTube channel, your videos will need to meet some basic requirements:
- Title - Does your video have a good title? Does it clearly explain to the viewer what this video is about? Have you got capital letters in the right places?
- Description - All videos should have a good description, some ideas of what you could include:
- Game Genre - have you made an action, puzzle, platformer etc.
- Release platform - is your game for mobile, browser, Scirra arcade?
- Greenlit on Steam? Have you put your game on Steam Greenlight? Has it already been Greenlit?
- Expected release date - if you know when you plan on releasing the game, it’s good to include it, even if it’s just something vague like Early 2017.
- Spelling & Grammar - As a company, we need to look professional so we’d like to be posting videos that also look professional! So please try and check your spelling and grammar. We may offer tweaks to titles, descriptions etc to improve any English. Please don’t be offended, we want you to look as good as possible! (If your video is not in English, we can still feature it.)
A couple of things that we’d be really happy if you included:
- Tags - if you want to tag your video with Scirra or Construct 2, we’d love it!
- A link to our website/where to download Construct 2 - share the C2 power!
Your videos don’t have to be anywhere near as fancy as the ones below, but they’re good examples!
For a Let’s Play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC2jkFwlPeQ This video demonstrates what a good description contains. A little intro to the video, a bit about the game you’re playing and some associated links.
For a Trailer/Gameplay Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPUiN5pMhBk Again, this video has got plenty of information for potential players in its description.
Facebook:
Ah Facebook, the platform we’ll have to be the most picky with! In order for your game to be featured on Facebook, we’ll need something snazzy - lovely screenshots, funky GIFs, YouTube trailer. The kind of thing you’d put in a PressKit.
On the subject of GIFs, if you want us to use them then you’ll need to either make sure they’re hosted on tumblr or GIPHY (or something similar) and give us the link OR send us the GIF file and we’ll upload it to GIPHY. Facebook gets a bit funny about GIFs you see.
If you want to learn more about getting your images just right for Facebook (or anything else for that matter), then you can check out the link below:
http://makeawebsitehub.com/social-media-image-sizes-cheat-sheet/
It would be helpful if we knew a little about your game. So you can provide us with a little bit of background, genre etc or if you like, show us where we can play the game and we’ll form our own opinions! It does help us to have a good idea of what your game is before we promote it. We need to make sure that it fits in with our company image, and that it is something that we should be promoting!
So, if you want to get in touch with us about promoting your game you can:
So get busy and send us your projects. We look forward to seeing what you come up with!