itch.io

Doesn't seem like a fail at all for your first game. The one mistake you didn't make was to never finish the game and just endlessly move on to new projects without releasing them :P

Many of those free games include an option to donate, so there is still a bit of revenue coming in there. I'd be curious to know how many games are actually free with no donation option, although that section probably also includes the highest percentage of unfinished or extremely low quality content (and therefore not much bandwidth usage)

I don't haha, that's why I said "note to self"... I used to just use mIRC. I think I used kiwiIRC for in-browser at one time but right now the site seems to be down.

What about good old IRC

There are several mobile IRC apps around, not to mention embedded chats on websites that work just as well if you don't want to download an app.

"The thing is, Discord is a place where most people are. "
^ This is sort of the lynchpin of the entire Web2.0 exodus. The herd mentality is strong. But, to break out of it someone has to be first. You can't start a community by just expecting it to already be there when you arrive. I think the best strategy would be to start small, find a couple friends who also don't like Discord and get a small chat going. Then share your (hopefully positive) experience with others. People need to be shown an alternative, just saying "Discord bad" won't change much at all. Also telling people about an alternative is not as good as actually using and promoting that alternative (note to self lol)

hmm, I guess you could call it a directional lantern or something :) or some sort of magic device, flare, etc. With the idea to just take away some of the safe area from the player

Wonderful, I didn't want to get hired anyway!

Really nice idea, pretty fun for a few levels! It didn't seem like the difficulty was really increasing though, so I got lazy... it would be cool if some guards could actually chase after you, shine a flashlight, etc to challenge the player more. Nice to play something that is simple to play but still captures the feel of hardcore roguelikes.

Ah, that's what I figured, but I think that will look suspicious to most people. Having surprise .exe files in a google drive that is supposed to be a music portfolio screams malware. A video of the game would be much more likely to get clicked on, especially if it is on youtube which enables you to embed it directly :)

Why some of them are .exe?

I played Barony! Was really bad at it so I didn't get far haha, but it was pretty cool

I like when random dungeons are allowed to get a little bit crazy. I used to play a lot of ZAngband (roguelike) and sometimes a floor would be super small, which often meant that it was packed with monsters and items. Other floors would have huge open spaces (like almost the entire level). It really helped to break up the monotony of predictably sized hallways and rooms. It made things more fun to explore and also introduced strategic decisions, for example when entering an open-cave style level you could easily aggro too many monsters and get surrounded, so finding a safe spot to use as a home base was more important. 

I think your email is not listed anywhere?

"I was thinking about midi music that would sound like pc music" seems pretty clear but ok

I have some MIDIs that I could send you, if you would like to hear them feel free to send me a message at: magicsofastudios@gmail.com

MIDI is a specific type of music file, not related to chiptunes in any way. It is actually a communication protocol for musical information, so for example you can send MIDI data to an external synthesizer and it will play the notes using its own sounds. But your computer can also play MIDI songs, it will sound a little different based on what system is playing it but the file sizes are incredibly small compared to real audio.

"Effective in communicating the game's play" is a really good way to put it.. that's what I would say about Baba is You, when you look at the screenshots you literally start understanding the gimmick and imagining how to solve the puzzle, before even playing the game.

None  of the things they mentioned are specific to puzzle games. Also there isn't a single reference to anything other than The Company. It is basically an ad. "Backed by private investors in the IT sector"

discord is OK but pretty annoying with their whole gamify everything crap... also their privacy policy is pretty bad afaik

I like how it went from "I kinda do art" to "I got hired to do video and level design" and you're not even out of hs... haha give yourself some credit!

Dang, it really uses that much battery? What if you use an in-browser client, wouldn't it pause when you navigate away from the tab? 

I haven't used IRC in a long time, I used to just join rooms and say "sup", heh good times

I spend a lot of time on www.doomworld.com because I'm into oldschool Doom and there's a big modding community there (and I've been a member there since 2003!) I think it will be harder to find a good forum if you don't have a specific thing like that in mind. Most forums revolve around a specific activity so I would think first about WHAT you want to talk to people about, then look for websites related to that topic. Try not to be too general - so if you want to hang out with game developers, consider narrowing it down to the type of game you are interested in. I mean, there are general game dev forums (this is one) but I just think it can be a better experience if the topic is more focused, because the community will hopefully be a bit smaller and more intimate. And, you'll have a common ground to start conversation from.

You can also really do it the old way by making your own forum :P

EDIT: just realized you made a classic Doom map, awesome!

I've been thinking about this a lot lately and have this festering plan to de-google and de-facebook my online life... but damn is it hard to kick the habit! It doesn't help that I actually have a life now... I should have done this when I was still in school and had outrageous amounts of free time, but back then web2.0 was just getting started and things didn't seem so bad.

Thing about itch is that it is very focused on projects, which is probably a good thing from a wider perspective. It makes the site a little more professional (a little). I mean, there isn't even an "off topic" section of the forum, which is where this thread really belongs. The lack of direct messaging also reduces the social aspect.

I would say don't just make a website, go visit other sites and specifically look for forums related to your interests. Many people are still out there posting on forums other than reddit. Also try looking for ways to chat with people, preferably other than Discord... IRC is still a thing. There are also some modern platforms like VRChat where people actually just hang out. 

There is a whole internet still out there, just because most people only visit the same 5 social media sites doesn't mean you have to. Webrings still exist even! But you will need to search for them the old way, with non-SEO search engines and a bit of determination.

That's brutal... but I don't think selling digital products will count as royalty income. That would be if someone was paying you to use your IP for example.

Hey... thanks for your message on Soundcloud, I tried to reply though and it just says "cannot send message." :( I'm not sure why

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You could make a collection of projects that have used your assets, at least to keep track of the ones you know about.

You can also email the people who have purchased something, although I would be careful not to do this in a way that looks like marketing as the buyer email is only intended for messages specifically about the thing they bought.

lol Ignored

They have to cover up that the boss isn't actually fun :P

haha.. funny that you mention art rock because I'm in an art rock band >.<

I guess my point is, if you are willing to accept obscurity then you free yourself to do whatever you want. And, there are at least some people out there who will appreciate it, and even communities that are ready for the experimental and avantgarde. Small communities most likely, but isn't that going to be more like the Web1.0 experience? You join a forum and get to know the people there, form actual relationships, and share creations for the fun of it. But yeah, don't expect to make a living this way...

As I said I've been toying with game development since before 2000 so I wouldn't say I missed it, I spent many years using BYOND and even released a couple games there.

Since you mentioned music... there are people pushing the envelope, and listeners enjoying it. You just have to search for them. Like Sevish, who writes microtonal electronic music:

Cute, but you really shouldn't share your age online...

Troll games are not usually engaging. Maybe good for a laugh, but that's about it. The quiz is the only thing that really counts as a game in my opinion, and it is still a troll quiz. Kinda hard to tell what you're trying to accomplish here... if you want to engage players you'll need more than a few seconds of haha

It is interesting to read this at a time when I am just beginning to "go public" with my work - I've been a hobbyist developer since before 2000, and barely released (read: finished) anything in that time. It was only in the last few years that I started trying to A) actually finish stuff and B) share it somewhere other than a single forum. Dang, am I one of those bandwagoners? :)

I feel there is a bit of contradiction to what you are expressing here. You said that you enjoyed making games when it was just an underground thing, and now the space is crowded. But you also said that art games never took off. So if they didn't take off, how is that space crowded? I guess what I mean is, don't you have a choice as to who you are competing or not competing with? Can't you create the art that you want to create and say F-off to the asset flippers? If you stay underground, the exploding indie market will simply ignore you. You can only be butting heads with other people if you are actually trying to make a name or a dollar in the same market as them. You also said "there are way too many people trying to do the same thing." So? What is forcing you to also try the same thing? Do something different. That option is always available to you. Sure, you might not make any money or fame, but as you said the golden age was when people were just making and sharing freeware. That still exists, there are still communities of people who just make and share art without it being one giant branding/advertising shitstorm. YOU just have to put in the effort to find them, the same way you had to back in '00. The Stream will not serve it to you. Google will not show it to you easily. You have to talk to people, and look for different avenues of information (non-SEO search engines, websites by real people [check out neocities!])

As for the mistreatment that happened to you, I'm really sorry to hear that. Keyboard warriors can become a major problem if they all group up... I think this kind of thing did happen in the earlier days but today there's a much greater volume of people online, as well as bots to ruin your day. I'll put my armor on now before I make it big...

I'm a musician too and it is always nice to take a break from development to just focus on composing for a bit. I've been tempted more than once to drop games and just make an album, but then I remember how I promised myself that I would really commit to dev life :P

I think - and hope - that the saturation of the market can be seen as an opening for new innovations to rise above the flotsam. And actually, old innovations too. Specifically in the realm of mobile games, there's just so much garbage going on with micro-purchases, pay to win, poor gameplay and superficial rewards. To me this is a window of opportunity to say "Hey, here's something different - an actual good game for a normal price, without all that noise." I've heard several devs say that you can't be successful on mobile without having ads or manipulative spend-more tactics. I hope to prove that wrong, it might be an uphill battle but I know there are consumers out there who wouldn't mind paying $5 for a breath of fresh air.

Just a random example because I experienced it first hand, the last mobile game I unfortunately played was Scrabble Go. What a CRAP experience, literally every five seconds there's a damn animation of a chest opening and pouring out gems or tokens or who knows what. Watch ads to gain powerups. Horribly designed interface that struggles on old phones. But does it have any cool additions to the game itself? Not really... just a standard board, and you get powerups that help you by picking a word for you or something. There are other alternatives but most of them are just pretty straightforward scrabble-likes.

I want to see a word game that actually iterates on the core idea. How about custom board layouts? Not just rearranging the doubles and triples, I mean totally different configurations. Islands. Mazes. Anything you want. HOW ABOUT A BOARD EDITOR. Now players are creating custom boards and puzzles to share. How about some interesting game modes such as 2v2. Takes very little programming but Go doesn't have it, so that's +1 for your product. How about customizable themes for the board and tiles. +1 for your product.

OK I'm really rambling here and need to eat lunch, lol. But I'm just trying to provide a counterpoint to this sentiment that I have seen from others as well, that we're all just going to drown in the sea of "successful" indie developers. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and the rough times you have been through, and it sounds like taking a step back to rekindle your inner artist is a really good idea. In general the way people use the internet is turning majorly into streaming, scrolling through a feed, basically just attaching an IV of information/entertainment to your arm without any critical thought or effort. However that is not the requirement, it is just a habit that the masses have fallen for. You have the option to connect to websites other than the usual FB/IG/Twitter circuit. You have the option to create art games in lesser known spaces, and ignore the pressure to turn yourself into a brand.

And WE, as developers and artists who don't want to support the current racket, have the option to create our own spaces and our own rules. After all the whole stream-everything paradigm pays next to nothing to the majority of creators. I'm opting out. I'd rather have to stay at my day job than to post vapid nonsense every two hours in order to keep my views up. 

Nevermind, this doesn't seem to work in comments, only on the forum?

yeah hold on, that was a comment... lol

That's in the profile, not in comments

No, I don't have any Russian or Chinese language support.

What I mean by "random" is just that they are hits from places that I didn't specifically post or advertise.

Views are going to spike on any platform when you have big updates or promotions.

I barely promote at all and still get views on my projects, sometimes very few like 1 or 2 in a week, sometimes more. You can see where people are visiting from so that definitely helps to determine what is working. It is also interesting because sometimes people come from pretty random places... I have had a few hits coming from russian and chinese search engines. 

NEAT

can you stop spamming about yourself on other peoples' threads? Thanks