There are two things to look at here: Sales & Publicity.

1. Sales. I do not think having an early version online has hurt my sales at all for Best Friends. Perhaps Joe can comment on this as he had a version of P&P on 1km1kt that was subsequently removed?

2. Publicity. How many people look at 1km1kt? Will it get you more awareness than if it were hosted somewhere else? I only periodically look at that site, and mostly only as part of games design competitions.

Would you be served as well by putting the file on the Giant Brain site? You are going to have to get word out about it wherever it is, anyway.

If you would want to have the opportunity to delete it or amend it any way then I would seriously recommend having it on your own site. Though, as I note above, Joe did have a game that was removed. I always felt that was a bit of strange mark against P&P, but I guess UKG wanted it that way.

By the way, the one thing that I would really want you to listen to is this: as important as the months before release are for building interest in a game, they are nothing compared to the months after release. Once the book is out there you have to make sure that you get word out and promote your game appropriately and sensitively.

Fred Hicks did this incredibly well for SOTC. Also Agon came, seemingly to me, out of nowhere and really ran hard on forums with AP after its release.

I'm interested to see if you will have more AP for Mob Justice.

Putting an early version of your game up won't harm you. But, s Gregor says, put it up on your own site. That means you can control versions and access.

Following on from Gregors point about post-release marketing, I couldn't agree more. Pre-release hype and marketing is all very well for building expectation. What you must do is meet that expectation AND capitalise on it. Those first few weeks are vital. 'Press releases' need to be well word, concise and cater to your audience, they can't simply be slapped out saying: "I have a game out!" that doesn't tell anyone anything about your game, why they should buy it, etc.

Follow up on your marketing efforts as soon as the game comes out and you'll see a marked increase in sales. Simply putting out an initial press release and hoping for the best will not, under any circumstances, cover it. Especially in a very small and niche market like ours.

Cheers
Malcolm

Contested Ground Studios

I really dropped the ball with Dead of Night - I failed to make much of a fuss about it coming out (except some press releases), when I should have been spamming the internet with design blogs and actual play reports.

You can have the best game in the world but unless YOU talk about it in a way that doesn't come across as shilling, no one else will unless you're very lucky.

I was very lucky, in the end, but had it been left to my meagre efforts DoN would have been DoA.

Having said that, I write a mean press release - I'll try and post a column about that at some point, if there's any interest.