Given a chance for free promotion, why don’t developers promote their game?

On Wednesday (November 20, 2013) I launched an experiment. I posted a list of 112 of my favorite kid and family games to a public Google doc. Anyone and everyone had the ability to edit it.

Anyone can edit it, even those with games that are not family friendly. (There’s a section for that, too.)

The doc is still posted (and publicly available for editing) at http://bit.ly/1fHpSYv

Why would I do this?

So what’s happening?

The list is growing. It’s now around 150 games.

That’s a lot slower than I expected, especially considering I shared this with a lot of developer friends and developer lists.

Why aren't you promoting your game?
When I talked about it with colleagues and friends, a few have joked about putting their own games in, but few have actually gone so far as to add their games. A few have also joked about putting their games at the top of the list, but no one has done that either.  

I think that's being short-sighted. It’s free promotion. Hundreds of people have seen the list so far. Yeah, sure, that’s not going to make you a zillionaire, but are most developers in the position to turn down even the chance of a few more users? What if this list does catch with the press? Can you afford to not be on the list?

Still feeling creepy about self-promotion? Then make the changes anonymously.

Yeah, I’m poking the bear with this post. Obviously I don’t want people to be total jerks and destroy the entire experiment. But seriously. It’s free promotion. It takes 5 minutes. Anyone?

I'll report back...