New School Blues Dev. Diary #30: Press Kits

So we’ve covered press releases, now time for another crucial part in your game’s representation concerning the media: the press kit.  A press kit is a bigger bundle of information then a press release that details your product and the story and people behind it, amidst other information.  Notice we say “product” because along with press statements, press kits are certainly not unique to games and virtually all products intended to be sold for consumer use have one.

The idea is to send the press kit to the media so they can actually use the product and/or see it in action, read from experts who recommend it, and so on.  The media is more often likely to post information about your product’s release the more they know and understand about it; and what better way to do that then offer a chance to directly experience a piece of the product, or, if late enough in development, the entire thing?  As an example, think of a movie company sending a trailer along with a plot synopsis to a film critic to drum up buzz about their movie, or a game development team sending reviewers a demo along with some cool artwork to show how interesting their game is.

If you read the past week’s content on press releases you probably already have a good idea of at least some of the elements a good game press kit should have (company bio, contact addresses, short game synopsis), but there’s other items that a press kit can contain to not only address press needs but also make a game stand out.  We’ll cover those in more detail later this week.

But just in case you think we’re slacking over here we’ve got some juicy news for you.  First off, Team YoyoBolo has been hard at work polishing the game and tweaking both visual and gameplay features to reflect beta testing results, so expect a few changes from the scenes and animations you’ve seen so far in the final cut!  The other news is our iPad version is officially ported!  We’ll go more into the porting process in the coming weeks, but suffice to say it has been really exciting to see NSB playing on three separate consoles.  More news on an official release date to come, but it is set for sometime in early February of 2013.