24.9. The Gaming Avant-Garde

| Chapter 24: Publishing |

| 24.9. The Gaming Avant-Garde

The IF community is not the only potential audience for a work of interactive fiction. Some authors have successfully written and pitched IF to other groups -- audiences interested in a particular historical period, role-playing game universe, or web comic, for instance -- and those groups have to be reached through their own community forums and meeting places.

Even if we do write material mostly meant for the existing IF community, that doesn't mean the audience has to stop there. There are a number of independent gaming websites and weblogs that feature IF reviews occasionally or regularly. These things change quickly, but at the time of writing, IF is featured with some regularity on:

> PlayThisThing (www.playthisthing.com): a blog devoted to critiques of independent games, which primarily focuses on works the reviewers think *are* worth playing; there are few negative reviews. There is a suggestions page for submitting review requests, and it is allowable for an author to recommend that his own game be reviewed. Not all suggestions are accepted, but many are.

> JayIsGames (www.jayisgames.com): a popular blog devoted to casual games, which occasionally profiles IF. JIG has also developed its own Flash interpreter for z-code games to allow the blog to host interactive fiction without requiring the casual audience to do any downloading. Experience suggests that JIG players are most interested in short IF -- serious or lighthearted, but humor goes over especially well -- and that they prefer very rigorously implemented work where a wide variety of player actions get customized replies. Small, polished gems do well here. JIG accepts game suggestions as well.

> The Independent Gaming Source (www.tigsource.com): occasionally publishes reviews or shorter announcements, and has even hosted an IF-writing competition. It may be worth drawing something to their attention.

This is hardly a complete list of gaming blogs with an interest in interactive fiction, just a collection of the most accessible ones, so it's worth doing a little research. One way is to pick a handful of works that you think come closest to our own game in design and style, and search for reviews of those works. Where were they reviewed, and where were they well-received? Those venues might be good targets for our own production.

Finally, there is a constant round of competitions for independent games in general. Unlike IF community competitions, larger indie game comps usually don't require that a game be previously unreleased, only that it have no commercial funding. Some of these competitions offer substantial prizes in cash or computing equipment; some explicitly seek text-based games. Placing as a finalist in such a competition can mean having work displayed at a gaming expo or hosted on a special wesbsite, and this will garner substantial outside press. The field of competitors will be large and serious, but that doesn't mean it's not worth giving it a try.

This may all be a bit overwhelming. All the publicity options can seem like more work than we want to handle while simultaneously finishing a substantial opus. In fact, we don't have to do it all at once. One sensible approach is to release to the IF community first, and then approach the external websites later with a second or third release that puts a final polish on the game in response to player feedback. That process is even more important for indie gaming competitions. Having a release that's been polished, together with an attractive website, cover art, and maybe even some quotes from IF reviewers, can make a game look much more like a legitimate contender among semi-pro works.

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