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A few weeks ago two indie game developers, Wolfire games and Unknown worlds (UWE) struck a deal, sell pre-orders of their future games and then give their customers a free pre-order of the other companies game too. For a price of $40 (around £25) the offer was a roaring success. And why? Well, that'll be social media.

This success for both companies follows on from an initial successful pre-order push for UWE that saw them generate nearly half the amount of funding that traditional "angel investors" had already put in, a success pushed largely over the companies Facebook and Twitter pages as well as their own stand alone micro-site.

The lesson here, as you can see from the first link, is that the power of trust and loyalty over social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook simply cannot be underestimated. The combined success of both marketing efforts, efforts vital to continue the production of their games, was so heavily driven by word of mouth without an official publisher or publicist being used.

Even more interesting is the lack of exposure that was hoped for on large volume gaming sites. Perhaps the developers could have achieved more pre-orders with these sort of websites on board and making news about the offer, but that sales so excessively exceeded their expectations without only goes to prove that nurturing a loyal fanbase should generally come before nurturing a relationship with the industry big-boys.