I am getting ready to release my game on Itch.io. I’m following @princec 's advice and not releasing on Steam. I’m going to release it for no cost. Besides the usual stuff like a video and screen shots, does anyone have any advice as to how to get the game to be seen by people and played? Is there any promotional tools I should use or any incentives I could give the players on Itch to play it besides it being free? Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I’ve never released a game before.
Is the trailer music also the game music ?
If yes, change it.
Thanks for the advice! Fortunately, they are different. The trailer uses a Good Charlotte song and the game uses all original hip hop beats. Now come to think of it, can I put a trailer up that uses a Good Charlotte song on Itch? I feel like that might be copyright infringement but I’m not sure since it will be for free.
Kev glass has made a success of some of his games which are low priced. Some might be free.
http://www.cokeandcode.com/main/
If you wanted to go all out with spending your time to promote it, create a blog or forum or some other community group meeting place. Then post updates there and ask for suggestions from players. Spam gaming forums about it. Since it’s free most should be ok with it. Make a leader board or ideally a multiplayer element of some sort to keep players coming back.
I have no personal experience releasing a game so take this advice with a pinch of salt.
Interesting. Can I ask why?
It sure is.
This is a huge topic, and nobody has figured out a fool-proof method of getting people to play your game. It’s not an exact science. It’s a little bit like an artist asking “I’ve painted a picture. Does anybody have any advice for getting people to look at it?”
The best advice I can give you is to not expect much. If this is your first game, chances are it’s not going to be the one that makes you famous. Every game developer you can think of created dozens of games before the game that made them big, and that was because they slowly built up a following from the games that came before it. Build up a portfolio. Get 10 people to like this first game. Get 20 people to play your second game. Slowly build on that instead of hoping that one game is going to put you on the map, because that’s not really how it works.
It sure is.
Why is that if I’m not making money?
This is a huge topic, and nobody has figured out a fool-proof method of getting people to play your game. It’s not an exact science. It’s a little bit like an artist asking “I’ve painted a picture. Does anybody have any advice for getting people to look at it?”
Not really, it’s like saying I’ve painted a picture and put it up in a gallery, so what’s the best way to get people to see it.
Because that’s not at all how copyrights work.
That’s still a huge topic without any definitive answers.
@KevinWorkman I didn’t mean that to seem snarky so I apologize if you took it that way. Reading the post now looks like I was trying to be an asshole which I wasn’t. I appreciate your help.
This. You’re lucky if you even get a comment from someone when posting games to the WIP section of this very website!
Oh dont I know lol.
Pretty sure that sentence is going on my tombstone. 
No worries man.
Creating a youtube video and a facebook page should help for promotion.
Creating a website would help a lot more as everybody isn’t on Facebook and then, there is no need to use Youtube, playing a video with HTML5 is very easy nowadays.
Bandwidth is still a not insignificant cost. Always best to get it hosted somewhere good at delivering video IMO.
Cas 
Pretty sure that sentence is going on my tombstone. Tongue No worries man. :cranky: