Wolfire’s John Graham candidly shared a lot of their PR tactics and marketing techniques.  John’s first point: big companies have lame PR tips that don’t relate to Indies so nix all of these common PR practices and do the opposite:

• Only Show Off Finished Assets
• Never Mention the Competition
• Avoid Direct Interaction with fans
• Don’t Generate Buzz too Early
• Let the Game speak for itself

Wolfire realizes that like a lot of indies, they’re a small fish in a big pond.  Or as John put it…

indies are the Little Guy against the whale of the internets

Wolfire has made their development process completely open, but the most important takeaways are to make noise, make friends, and build a community.  Start a website and start making noise.  Send press releases, do regular blog posts, show concept art, share personal experiences, etc.  Get people coming to your website and make that site sticky so they keep coming back.  Exploit social media (facebook, steam community pages, ModDB, YouTube, etc).  The biggest takeaway is that indies are agile and they should play to that strength.  It’s never too early to get marketing.  Don’t let the whale crush you.

You may be interested in: