Facebook Groups?

Would Facebook be a good channel to promote regular releases on a print-and-play website like Invisible City? If so, how? I'm ashamed to admit that I'm pretty new to the entire Facebook thing, so I don't entirely understand how promoting a group or a concept like a print-and-play games group would work.

Use a hammer for nails, use a screwdriver for screws. The right tools for the right purpose.

Facebook isn't some magical salve you can rub on something and make it sell. It's primarily a social networking site that makes it easier to see what your friends are up to. It's also useful for roping those friends into activities or keeping them informed about what's going on in your life.

If you're already on Facebook, and have an established group of friends, many of whom might be interested in your board game design, then you can create a group to announce releases, coordinate local playtests, and the like. This basically would be an opt-in listserv, just like the old days, with the added benefit that they can tell others about it easily and you can grow it much faster, if you have something worth announcing.

Facebook, however, is NOT an ideal platform for actually conducting a play-over-the-internet game, unless you have the wherewithal to set up an app, as Scrabulous (now Lexulous) facilitated playing Scrabble, or any of a thousand chess apps let you play chess over the internet. Indeed, you could probably implement a fairly barebones javascript version of your game and just host it on an HTML site.

Either way, this strikes me as a great deal of work, especially if your game isn't finished. Unless you have a particularly compelling reason to do otherwise (you live in Siberia; you work exclusively nights and weekends; you have leprosy), you would be better focusing on getting playtests going in person, and then worry about doing things online afterward, if at all.

Devin,

how would you capture the playtesters reaction to certain situations? If the game is electronically tested a lot of reactions would be lost. The frown, smile, folded arms, yawn etc. It is these reactions that need to be questioned after playtesting - especially if the testers are friends.