I’m always wary of being too self-promotional, because I’m not fundamentally a sales-person type, and yet I run a business, so I have to be, and I never know where the balance lies.
And then I saw this:
forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/173197
For SOASE, which has sold a million times more copies than GSB, and I thought to myself ‘aha, maybe I’m being a bit timid about this’.
That’s a call for people who play sins to promote the game to their friends and on websites where they hang out. This sort of stuff is REALLY helpful to small devs like me. I don’t have a tenth the ad budget of Ironclad software, and the vast majority of people who are in the target market for GSB have just never heard of it, so getting the word out is still something that just hasn’t been done.
Advertising is all well and good, but what reallty really helps out an indie game is when people mention the game positively on forums, or sites like facebook or twitter, I occasionally mention it as #gsb on twitter, but lets be honest it’s never going to be in the top ten topics 
Now the last thing I want to do is encourage people to spam about GSB, which is counter-productive and ethically very dodgy. We’ve all seen blatant forum shills who need a good slap :D. But I would really appreciate it if people remember to mention the game when the topic of indie games or space/strategy titles comes up. A lot of people tend to think that they can’t have any impact because they are just one person, but I can assure you, that every little bit helps.
Ultimately, I’d love to keep expanding GSB and working on it, and I can only keep doing that as it keeps selling. Obviously it sells less now than when it was released, but if the game can carry on bumbling along and paying the bills, it could evolve into something really l33t given enough time.
Anyway, all forum posts, social network mentions, digg votes, forum signatures, tweets etc that promote GSB are much appreciated
Here’s the banner ad I use these days, which is probably sig-able.
Seemed fitting because of the mention of DF earlier:
bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61036.0
Copypasted it to another forum I frequent while I was at it.
Another plug for the dorfs! bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60716.0 
Saw that you mentioned DF in one of your recent blogs. Also managed to get several of my WoW guildies to pick up the game. GSB and DF are both great in that they take opposite approaches yet both fill their niche extremely well. DF is all about amazingly detailed and downright OCD gameplay depth. GSB is about pretty explosions.
I know a website that would be a perfect place to advertise your game. A website called www.Roblox.com. I have an account there, and every day I go on there are close to a hundred thousand people online.
Hope this some what helped!
Already changed several sigs I’ve got around with the awesome banner. Also, I’ll see if I can hook some spanish people I know
i feel really stupid for asking this, but how do you put the banner in your signature?
We don’t have banner sigs here, but many forums do. You would save that file to your hard drive (right click and save image) and then many forums have a user ‘control panel’ where you can change your sig, and they let you browse to an image and upload it.
thanks, already using it on a few forums
I do try and spread the word, but I have a few friends who are waiting for it to go on sale on steam. Infact, I would likely buy another version on steam if it came down in price and was bundled with all the expansions on steam, just so I don’t have to remember where I put the installer. You missed a golden opportunity with the summer steam sale. Also, have you tried the sponsored links at reddit.com? An ad on penny arcade?
The original game is still the same price as when you released it. Also, they don’t quite see the value of the expansions, they see it as just different art on ships that shoot differently. Perhaps your next expansion could include new battle music, and a few new levels, along with new equipment and a new race.
Except for the battle music, all expansions have two new levels and at least three new pieces of equipment.
Anyway, my friends think it’s too expensive, although their comparison (the orange box) is not entirely fair.
The game was 50% off on steam throughout the sale
I never promote steam on my own site, because obviosuly steam take a cut of the money, and I’d rather people buy direct.
Hey cliffski,
The banner ytou posted of the winner I have that as my sig for like six seperate fourms I visit I do hope that you have got a incress in buyers or demo downloads. As with sending an invite to everyone on my facebook list. My Dad has even gone to the site and looked at it but has not downloaded the demo. I hope that it helps, this game rocks i just wish i had the small cash to get the updates but as of now I can’t even aford one expasnion at $6. 
Lonestar “The Charactor”
Thankyou, it is much appreciated!
Hey Cliff, over at Gamers With Jobs we have a thread for GSB. It hasn’t been as heavily commented in as I would’ve thought it would have, but everyone’s responses have been positive. Over at GWJ (which has a great community, if you weren’t aware) threads that get dev posts in them tend to get a lot of love. GWJ has a heavy PC following and the community loves to support indie devs, so it might be worth a few minutes of your time to create an account and say hello.
Yup, I just signed up for an account, although I’m sure I had an account there in the past at some point. I like GWJ, the whole idea of the site really appeals to me. It sums up a certain attitude to games, as so many of them these days assume you are 13 years old and have 6 hours a day to spend gaming.
Thanks,
Hi Cliff,
This is my first visit here, but I absolutely love the game. GSB will feature in a blog post I am working on (slowly), and I will post again when that is up.
Dan
Something that really seems to work well in terms of getting the word out about the game is reddit.com. I don’t know why, but reddit readers seem to really take to the game, when they read about it.
If you have a reddit account, and see any coverage of the game, voting it up there is really appreciated. If you don’t have a reddit account, you can get one for free here:
reddit.com/
We are also on facebook here:
facebook.com/#!/pages/Gratui … 0716033342
Please add us as something you ‘like’ as a fan if you have a facebook account. Lets try and get more fans
In fact here is a reddit link in needs of upvotes:
reddit.com/r/gaming/comments … c_battles/
Cheers!
As someone who runs quite a few forums. I would like to say that as long as people don’t sign up just to post the game it should be fair.
I have posted a couple of videos on one of my less traveled tighter knit sites showing the video from the game.
There is a fine line between sharing something you like and spamming something.
