Your Dream Does Not Have to Die aka The Power of Community

Nuclear Thone is a good example of a game that wouldn't surprise me if the game was shown on these forums many people wouldn't think much of it. That might not be true just saying I wouldn't be surprised at all in that case to see comments about "another 2d game", "looks like an old game", "might be good for mobile", "what makes it unique?" and so forth. lol

It actually looks pretty cool to me. A lot of action, characters and weapons. Events such as the special portals. Looks like a ton of work went into it.

 

Well in the case of nuclear throne for example its a really good game, that they spent alot of time working on it (over 2 years) and the devs were already big established devs which is probably the more important thing.

 

I think this is the game that originally was in Ludum Dare and they made continuous updates based on the play testers and basically grew their fan base through that practice all the way up til launch, right?

Which of course is the best way to go of all in my opinion. Just work on a game or games and build the fanbase over time. That is what I plan on doing if I ever get into it as a biz. That way you know at the end you actually have some people looking forward to buying it. As opposed to just locking yourself away and building for a year or two then coming out and trying to launch it and maybe it all flops. To me the fanbase is more important than the actual game as far as business side goes. Of course, you need something for them to be a fan of. If not your work then yourself.

 

If you look at one of the top paid game on IOS - its pewdiepie's game, its pretty lame, but sells just because of his "brand".

I bought this game areannis after I saw it was at the top of itch.io - its a stealth based metroidvania set in a dystopian feminist cyber punk future (sold less then ~1500 units on steam). I guess thats happens if no big news cover the game.

 

I might not have gotten my point across very well, let me try to phrase it differently. Imho it's like a set of gates you have to pass through on one way to an at least semi-successful indie game release and I think that having a great game comes before getting the exposure for it. Of course there are different ways to success and having a big brand slapped on it will certainly help selling even a bad game. And of course you can still fail horribly with a great game due to lack of exposure. But imho getting to the point where you have a great game is a lot harder than getting the word out. I might be mistaken because I have no significant experience in either of the two. But from my personal experience I rarely find out about a game and think "Wow, how did I miss this? I wish I had known about this earlier." (mostly happens when something isn't sold on steam at all). Usually I browse steam and just think "meh" because I'm having trouble finding something that appeals to me.

@Aiursrage2k : Areannis looks like a game that actually might be good but suffers from its lack of exposure. But this also looks a lot more polished and consistent in style to me than most small indie games I've seen on steam and on forums. I've not seen this game before, but I also dislike platformers and metroidvania games, so I'm not the target audience anyway.
I wonder how they managed to have this set in a "dystopian feminist cyber punk future" and still stay under the radar.

Does anyone know how accurate those steamspy numbers are? I wanted to look at the sales for Hatred because that seemed like a bad game with "effective" PR. At least many people knew about it.
http://steamspy.com/app/341940
Doesn't do anything to prove any of my points though, since it seems to have sold pretty well for what it is.
But one could argue that you can't create that kind of buzz around the game with social networking alone, the product itself needs to be something people want to talk about.

A few years back there was a mobile puzzle game that had a well integrated heist theme and a gimmick where it would surprise the player with a fake phone call. That got people recommending it to others because the game did something new and creative.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this... it's late and maybe I should stop writing now.

 

Uh, haven't a clue as to the game that would surprise people by calling them that's a quick way to the heap. So creative and original aren't the only criteria needed - respect is needed too. That game you referred to is no longer talked about. Most people in the US now use call blocking and private numbers.

 

But...if you don't find the game, then how do you know a great game is not out there that you did miss? Besides, you browse Steam to find games you want. I checked out Steam the other day only to realize that the genres I wanted to search are not even part of Steam's list. So some games, will be hidden under tags that are meaningless to people searching.

The best way to get word of a game, especially a niche game, is by word of mouth. And that requires advertising...and if you can't afford an advertising budget, that means Twitter, Facebook and other social media.

As for success, there are a lot of different definitions for success. There are successful Indie game developers out there with successful games and you have never heard of them, or if you did, you skipped over them. Why? Because they are not your style of game.

That is why word of mouth is so important. A blogger somehow finds your niche game and writes about it. Soon others are talking about it and the game starts attracting those niche players that can be so hard to find. The game is a success, if not a financial one, because it has attracted a player base.

 

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/34987/TopGrossing_iOS_Games_The_Heist_Rivals_Zynga_Poker.php

Well at least it climbed above Angry Birds in top grossing, so I'd say it was a big success back then for a mobile game.
It wasn't a real call, it was all ingame so no way to block it and no need to be concerned about respect for privacy etc..
Here is a video of it:

Skip ahead to 9:30 (edit: seems like there is also one right at the start, I really didn't wanna put much effort into researching this )
It's nothing mind blowing in hindsight, but it seems to have done the job pretty well combined with all the other marketing efforts they made.

Fair point, but I browse steam like a time-waster-website. I've checked out 1176 games in the discovery queue alone (a friend of mine went through every game on steam with that feature and if it was loading quicker I might have too) and I don't even feel like I use that thing often. For some genres and themes I've looked at every game that has the corresponding tag. So I'm very confident that I have for example not overlooked a mech game on steam that would look interesting to me if only I had seen its steampage. But I'm probably not very representative since I spent zero time on facebook or twitter...

 

I can honestly say that I have missed every mech game on Steam...because I don't enjoy playing them. So..we do not tend to spend much time or notice games that are not in our play style.

That does not mean that the other games are not good..or even great.

 

Another game that Im interested in is "read only memories", its a cyber punk old school point and click adventure game in the same style as snatcher, I had actually watched an LP of the demo over a year ago and the only reason I knew it was released is because it was cross promoting in areannis. It looks like its not getting much coverage either, I wonder how many other good games are simply flying under the radar just because they dont get the coverage they need.

 

The idea here is for honest reviews. People are sharing/posting to their own networks, I doubt anyone here wants to compromise their own hard work by promoting a game that doesn't meet their expectations/standards. For me personally if I was asked to review a game, tried it and didn't like it then I'd tell the game dev what my issues were and see what their response is. If they want to fix the issues then I'd wait for that and review again then post my review. If they were happy with how it was and didn't want to fix what I saw as problems then I wouldn't post a review.

The idea here is increasing exposure for people, a negative review won't help them but no review at all at least won't hurt.

Edit: Also in terms of relying on social media for exposure the idea is that this will help each other. It isn't the be all and end all, far from it but a bit more exposure can't hurt. For me personally I've given up on finding games on steam. I'll check out the front page banners every few days but the majority of games I find are through YouTubers and articles on various websites. Going to a store to find a game just doesn't work anymore (for me), need to know the game you want before searching.

 

Nuclear Throne is great. Started out in a Game Jam I believe, it was called Wasteland Kings - still have that in my humble bundle library. They're in early access at the moment (getting close to release) and generally have weekly updates. I've played it a fair bit...thought I'd spent 20 hours in it then checked my actual time and it was around 80.

The thing is that after playing Wasteland Kings I pretty much forgot about it and only bought Nuclear Throne after someone I'm subscribed to started posting vids about it on YouTube.

 

LOL, I wouldn't even look through the locked display cases at department stores to find games. I've always mostly relied on friends & family and now the only recommendations I get from them are from games directly to FB and I know that my FB friends aren't manually telling me to try the game they are playing so I ignore those FB game recommendations. Another case of advertisers and businesses abusing access until banned.

Oh, I did used to wander through arcades long, long ago and try games that looked interesting but not many because that is expensive.

 

man, i remember buying shareware discs from the department stores just so i could try something different that wasn't a big blockbuster.

as for the original suggestion, people should just feel free to promote the games they like &/or the ones they think their followers may be interested in. There shouldn't be an obligation to maintain a certain ratio as some devs may make certain types of games that some others don't like or don't want to promote due to the game being inappropriate for the type of followers they have (they could still mention it with a link & a warning if they wanted). People will eventually work out who can be relied on to cross promote, who doesn't for legitimate reasons, & who doesn't just because they're a tool.

 

Yeah this is something I have been wrestling with tonight when I was working on the site again. I am basically at the design phase of what exactly it will need. And due to the nature of it I think it will end up fairly complex to do as I was thinking. And on the other hand be incredibly simplistic to just do it as a sort of giant page listing stuff. lol

Anyway, I am coming to the conclusion it's not something a site is needed for. And actually I am wondering if it will really even work in a public manner at all.

The idea is sound I believe and as I originally was saying in the OP I think it can be implemented by anyone. No site or any other thing is needed for it. Basically you find someone out there and you contact them and say hey are you interested in doing some cross promotions? The main reason I was thinking of building a site is because I thought it would be a way to bring together all of the people who had such an interest. But I think that is all the site could really do. People will still need to contact each other and discuss how they can collaborate. It isn't something that can be automated via programming because people need to talk to each other. Discuss what they can give and what they would like to receive.

I am thinking now if anything would be helpful to facilitate such a thing it is a simple forum. So basically I could just set up a free forum somewhere whether on one of the public boards out there or on my site it won't matter. Then basically each person can just post saying hey this is so and so, I have this game/website/twitter/youtube channel etc that I would like promoted and this is what I can do in return. Or they can say hey I have this game I would like tested and this is what I can do in return.

Really, I think that is all that is needed. Because the more I work on a website to facilitate it the more the design is continuing to increase as I think "well to do that I'll need group management better add that in" and "oh yeah so people of course need a way to list their assets" and "of course there needs to be a messaging system so these people can communicate with each other" and so on.

Like I said, I think on an individual level it makes great sense and will work. Contact a bunch of people and say hey would you be interested in working together? Then they say yes or no. A group is formed. Simple.

However, trying to do it in an organized across the board public manner seems to me like it could be a nightmare. I mean we'd either need something like Guru.com on the one extreme or something like a simple forum where people can list themselves and look for other people to team up with.

So, yeah since my whole intention with the site was just to allow people to list themselves and their interest in such a thing at this point I am thinking a simple forum is the way to do it.

 

Okay, let's try this: never mind it is junk.

Seems slow as hell to me and hopefully that is just a glitch only for me or because it is just a free forum. In the latter that is no big deal because it only costs like $45 for a year of Pro I think I read.

I'll ask their support "so... why is the forum slower than molasses in January? Is this because I am an el cheapo free user? If I spend the $$$ to upgrade will the forum speed suddenly increase?" and see what they say.

 

I will register.

If that server can't handle the load this is this:

http://groupspaces.com/a/group/

for <= 250MB and 50 members or less.

 

That might be a good one to check out. Maybe I should have just created accounts at 4 to 5 and report back later. Amazing every time I go to do something I need to spend hours sorting through all of the crap. And I did a search first and found good comments about freeforums.org before thinking okay cool seems good. But for me anyway it is agonizingly slow.

 

It is slow as all get out and when I try to see the confirmation code to sign up I instead get ads???

 

Alright scratch that as junk. Give me a day or two to dig through all of this crap and when I find something decent I will return and post. lol

This a good example of why over the years I have generally just built everything myself. I got into that habit because every time I looked for something that I had a use for it was either unusable for one reason or another (usually a ton of ad crap) or overly expensive. So after messing around for a day or so I'd say forget it and start writing my own. lol

 

I remember the 'custom social site' Ning from Andressen from long ago but that costs money. This one has a calendar and basic group email (which I don't think we'll use) and different memberships in the different group niches can be created which is what we were after.

If that site cannot be reasonably configured to serve this thread's intent then I think the coop was too much of a reach to begin with.

http://groupspaces.com/tour/examples-case-studies


I have to get something else working by Monday though....so if no one has created a group and played with it be then I'll give it a try next Monday.

 

Yeah I have used Ning before. Even that one is slow at times despite the monthly membership charge.

I deleted that forum. I will do more research and find out which is known as the fastest. I don't care if it as is simplistic as possible as long as it works and is fast.

Thanks I will check out that groupspaces first.

 

Alright groupspaces seems like it may work. Completely unfamiliar with it but it looks usable and is very fast.

http://groupspaces.com/GameDevCoop/

Since the interest seems to be more than just cross-promotion I changed the name accordingly.

 

OK, I've joined. I'm waiting to for it to list me as a member.

 

Interesting. It appears I need to approve each member. lol

Not a big deal really. I will check it a few times per day.

 

That's not so surprising but will I be able to create entries in the calendar for me to offer to test? Or join the Game Testers sublist you made without you further intervention?

 

I certainly hope so. I could only make two lists with this free version so had to choose wisely. I figured those were the best to create.

I know nothing about this thing so will take a while to learn it. I did knock out a little header image for the top. lol

 

Crap, it used my email address as my user name!

I can join the GameTester & do other things though without your intervention.

User name can be changed though.

 

Okay great. I was just looking at mine to make sure it has my user name.

 

I'm going to have to learn how to use the calendar so I can add testing dates I'm available for but that's just for general knowledge of availability. After each testing is complete I will make a wiki page for the game I tested.

 

Aha! Found option to allow people to join without needing to manually approve each one.

 

Problem with using other people's "stuff" is understanding their design well enough to make the best use of it.

I'm not sure how to best use this yet. Am slowly digging into it.

 

We should like, band together and all work on a little piece of a big game. It's ok if I'm in charge right?

 

Be cool with me for you to take charge of such a project. I don't develop in Unity the same way the majority of people seem to though which prevents me from collaborating with them. I just don't get into the Unity workflow.

The big problem is getting people to actually complete their stuff. Long ago on the Amiga I was part of a group that came together from a mailing list to build a game. I thought it was a great idea with each person developing one stage of a game and it mixed all different styles. I made a side scrolling shooter for my stage (the second). A couple others completed their stages as well. The rest either dropped off the radar completely or simply never finished. And oneI think just went on to build an entire game around their stage. In Unity, the scenes would actually be ideal for such an arrangement though.

 

I've looked around the GroupSpaces. It can probably be used in some manner but definitely has a very different format than what I was thinking of.

Admittedly, part of this might just be due to my not being familiar with it. I think a big part of it is being a generic thing it is just not set up to provide the kind of streamlined functionality I was thinking of.

Am tempted to return to building a custom solution for this. Having gave it some more thought I think I actually had a very good basic design with my data model and original plan.

I had made it to the point of registering, logging in and started on the Account Details page which serves as sort of the main hub for each person:



That is as far as I got. The idea is each person can select from a predefined list of services. They choose from the list the services they are providing and the services they are requesting. I can easily add more services to the database upon request. And more Service Categories. I only added 2 to begin with: Promote and Test.

When selecting services there is a details field available where a note can be added or a URL. If it is a URL I turned it into a clickable link as shown in the screenshot above.

Obviously, there would be a good amount of work left to do things like adding a calendar if people want that, perhaps some communication. But it might just make more sense to returning to building this thing from scratch.

In this case, I directly entered the data for the services I am offering into the database. I'll need to add a little button to the bottom of each section Add Service and build a little form to handle that piece.

 

Well I was a bit surprised by the calendar on GroupSpaces too but looking around again Google+ has communities and can but customized more easily in ways members have learned from Google+.

So then one can create a Google Gmail account based on the name the publish to te various app stores as and create a Google+ page for that and then join the Google you create. You have the option of Public or Private - Private you must send the invite but anyone can request to join. Public anyone can join that happens to the community and joins.

So the advantage the Google Communities offers is allow the users to develop pretty detailed private profiles and use those profiles to you the community.

 

Well set something up so we can check it out. I am kinda burnt out on trying to "force" other things to work. It is work to develop something from scratch but I generally use this approach because at least then the time I am spending is good for something. I know it is always progressing to where it needs to be. The problem with other stuff is one can spend time checking it out trying to make it work only to discover you can never quite get it to do what you need.

If you want to set it up as a Google Community of some kind that is great. Then just put the link in here.

I think I will continue to build this thing as well. Over the long term. For one thing it helps me knock the rust off my db-driven website dev skills. And second that way there is something to fallback on down the road if needed. I am not in any hurry on it though. I will just return to doing a bit here and a bit there.

 

I did create a community, that's how I know, then I deleted it. I don't want to take your group from you. I haven't followed this thread with the intention of managing a community but contributing 2 tests per week. If you change your mind in the future on building your community site but still want to manage a community, there you go. That's not to say Google Communities would only be of interest to you, others could use it that want to find their own game dev or other type communities too.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities

 

You're not taking the group from me. lol Remember this all started as just a post with an idea of how hobbyist and indie devs can increase their chances of success to some degree by helping each other.

People can always do this on their own, create their own group, use email whatever. I was just playing around with building a dedicated online system just in case some people out there didn't want to spend the time trying to track down people receptive to the idea.

So I am fine with anyone building it wherever it works. Not sure there is even enough interest to warrant it but in time there might be.

I think the other reason I was thinking of building something is just because sooner or later this thread will slip to the depths of Unity where it will rest among the hundreds of thousands of other threads people rarely see.

 

LOL, well, I was thinking we've been the only 2 to post in it for a couple of days and we are still the only people in this thread that joined GroupSpaces or the MyPHPForum you set up and I'm like well we've made the effort already and there is no interest maybe.

 

Yeah consider it an idea crash n burned. lol Well, hey I can only try to help out by suggesting a solution and explaining the benefits of it. It's up to people to whether they are open to the idea or not.. And who knows maybe some people are collaborating in private. I'll chop away at a dedicated site with no deadline in mind for when it might be done. Maybe Christmas. Maybe never. lol

For now, I am debating whether to do a Game Jam this weekend or just relax piddling around.

 

I am stripping varnish off my floor.

 

Oddly enough I stopped getting alerts to this thread for some reason. Only just discovered the latest posts because someone liked one of mine...forum glitch.

 

I joined the GroupSpaces and I did not know about the MyPHPForum. We have a new puppy so things have been sort of crazy in our house during the last week.

 

Well that's 3 and 2 is enough to help each other out so mission accomplished.

 

I didnt even know there was anything to join

 

You are getting past it old man. Keeping you FB up to date is modern basic social skills.

You only get one alert per thread, until you read all of the posts. So if you don't read the alert you stop getting them. I typically scan the forums just to make sure I didn't miss anything of note.

 

LOL! Well I have been liking Twitter this time around so I might just be making some kind of progress.

I seriously do like the Internet big time and all of the instant communication. A couple hours ago I contacted a few new artists to see if they were interested in doing some art for me. Already have paid one for 1 static image and 1 animated sprite. On a related note I also like how easy it is to find good artists these days. Now I just need to continue contacting the rest on my list. I seriously want to have about 7 to 12 of them working with me so that anytime I think up something I can send out the request and get it in 10 minutes or so. Okay, I might need a list of 20 to 30 for that. Also I probably should clarify for people who stumble across this post. The word "easy" has different meanings to different people. What I mean is about every 10 to 20 artists I locate and contact turns into one that is actually reliable to work with. Not like every time I find one and send an email presto another artist is eager and willing to do some paid work for me. lol

 

Yeah, I'm aware of that but I click every alert and read the thread. Even to the extent that when someone likes a comment of mine i'll click it to see what the comment was.