Serious Games and Games for Impact often have limited funds for development, and even less funding available to cover the cost of marketing. This has been no different for our case: while we are fortunate to have a grant from the NSF supporting our research and development efforts, the funding does not extend to promoting our product now that it has launched. So, we are promoting it ourselves through any means available. 

Apart from our own social media posts, we've also shared details of our games and processes with news outlets, and are excited to see some traction there: 

https://kion546.com/news/santa-cruz-county/2025/07/05/ucsc-launches-free-new-gam...

https://www.ksbw.com/article/new-video-games-from-ucsc-help-communities-prepare-...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/new-video-games-from-ucsc-help-comm...

https://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20250703-games-can-promote-preparedne...

These all seem to have been picked up from a piece written about our project by UC Santa Cruz news: https://news.ucsc.edu/2025/07/wildfire-games/

We saw a noticeable jump in views and plays from the moment we started getting news coverage, and fortunately itch.io shows the source of incoming links, allowing us to see that the article from KSBW has gotten us the most visibility. 

Prior to the local news coverage, our main route for spreading our game was through our local partners who helped co-design the games during our workshops over the past two years. Since these residents and local leaders were involved in designing the game, they have a vested interest in seeing the games used in their own communities, and offered us support in the form of sharing via newsletters and local outreach. 

We have also been considering social sharing options: local leaderboards, social media sharing from the game, and encouragement to pass along the games to friends and family, as well as flyers with QR codes distributed at local sites such as libraries. 

If you work in serious games, game marketing, or streaming, and have any other suggestions for how we might spread the word, please reach out, we'd love your help! Contact the project lead MJ Johns at mljohns@ucsc.edu