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Making My Old Games Available, Kickstarter, and Other Ideas

5 years ago2,446 words

I've been thinking about a few different ideas for how I might actually make something of this whole games development thing. Here are four things: "crapps", "talky thing", Kickstarter, and making versions of my old games available using a pay-what-you-want system.

I've done absolutely nothing to promote Sindrel Song in the past week, and I don't know whether I will do or not... There's still a while before the release date, at least. Maybe I'll post about it after it's released rather than before. I don't know.

There are also a few long comments I've been meaning to reply to, but I've not yet because it takes time, and I've been quite busy. I've spent a big chunk of my time on Pokemon, though I'm not rushing it (I've got five badges now); I'll talk about that more when I'm done. I've also been redirecting my attention towards personal creative stuff that I won't be releasing, for the sake of skill development without having to worry about judgement.

Alongside that, I've been thinking about what the best path might be going forward. The current trajectory I'm on doesn't seem to be leading anywhere good, so at least some change is obviously necessary if I want to make a living from this. So here are some thoughts about that.

Crapps?

If I put my mind to it and get into the swing of things, I should be able to release a game or two each year. But that's not a lot, especially compared to regular content providers who are able to post things like new videos every few days, or even every single day. It's hard to retain a fanbase, I think, if you're providing content so rarely.

∞ About a year ago ∞, I felt that I should try to make some shorter projects that might allow me to make a bit of money to support development of the longer ones. I brainstormed a few ideas, worked a bit on a couple, and eventually that manifested as Sindrel Song... which I imagined would be done in maybe a couple of weeks, but went on to eat up the majority of the year. Whoops!!

This has been a recurring theme through my development 'career'. Assuming I'll be done with things much more quickly than I actually am, getting carried away, feature creep. I'm no good at making snappy little things because I always want to cram so much stuff in.

Still, my mind's been directed towards this idea of shorter projects yet again, and I've been brainstorming a few. I've only got a few vague notes so far though. If I have any solid ideas, I'll post about them.

I used the term 'crapps' in the old post about this, to describe simple apps crapped out for profit, usually made by people who start with the thought "I want to make money", around which they make something to exploit people in order to achieve that. I don't want to make something valueless to exploit money out of people. But if I could make something that had a low barrier to entry, which had easy appeal, which I could make quickly, which helped develop the Alora Fane world (and 'brand', I suppose), and which could also make me a bit of money, that'd be nice.

Talky Thing

The thing I've been devoting my time to lately is a 'personal project' I've described a few times over the course of this blog, which I seem to return to every few months. It's not something that other people would enjoy since it's even more specifically catered to my specific mind than the other stuff I make, plus there's not actually much content and the pleasure comes primarily from creating it, but I've wondered before whether I could make it into a format I could use to fairly easily produce regular content.

∞ This video ∞ (which I've linked to a number of times) uses an earlier version of this thing to show a single silly scene of two characters from my old Miasmon game. It gives a good idea of what I'd have in mind. (I never uploaded that to Youtube since I never considered it complete or worth showing, hmm.)

Personally I like it, and I'd be interested in both making and watching a story told through scenes like that. But I also remember when I mentioned this ages ago, someone (I can't remember who) wrote a long comment (which they later deleted, perhaps realising how discouraging it would be) pointing out all the issues with the format, and why it wouldn't work. They're probably right.

It's annoying reading text in a video; it'd be better to be able to progress at your own rate. But that'd require a different kind of technical integration, which there are barriers to. Plus videos are more easily distributed.

There are a bunch of webcomics out there which I feel have less in the way of content, like half a dozen (or fewer) panels with only two or three sentences between them, two or three (or even fewer) times a week. So I thought something with emotively animated full scenes like this might add a deeper kind of appeal. They'd be like full conversations, rather than snappy exchanges of snarky barbs (or whatever); the only example I can think of which did a similar thing was Homestuck (I've yet to look into the sequel that there apparently is), though that was just written text. It seemed to appeal a lot to some people, but others said they just skipped it.

I suppose it's like how these long blogs and their long comments - or three-hour long Joe Rogan podcasts - will appeal to some people, while others prefer easily digestible soundbites, 300-word super-condensed articles, and action scenes with just a few one-liners.

I've written before about telling the Taming Dreams story in this format. I don't know if I'll actually do anything with it, but if I come up with an idea, it might be worth making a few scenes to see if people like it. If not, at least I'll know.
I keep returning to this, anyway, as it has appeal for me.

I suppose this and the previous idea are opposite approaches to the problem of knowing what to make. The 'crapps' thing would largely strip out all the story fluff to focus entirely on (hopefully) appealing gameplay. This would strip out all gameplay to focus entirely on story scenes.

Kickstarting

Apparently, Undertale started off with a relatively successful Kickstarter campaign, where it asked for $5000 and earned ten times that. Recently, I randomly came across ∞ this Kickstarter project ∞, which I'm not exactly interested in myself, but which I saw as quite niche so I was curious to see how it'd progress since I saw it right at the start. I can't remember how much it was asking for (probably less than $10,000?), but it's earned $76,520. I find this surprising, but it's very probable there's just something I don't know that'd explain this.

I've always been reluctant to do Kickstarter - despite many people suggesting it - just because it means that you have to actively run a campaign, focusing entirely on marketing and promotion for a whole month, plus you have to be good at selling yourself and your product, all things I'm no good at and am anxious about. You also have to provide various incentive rewards, which always felt like as much - or more - effort than actually making the product itself.

But I've been realising these past few months that I'll need to do promotion anyway, for whatever I make. I've also been realising how much of an impediment my anxiety issues are. I mean, that's never exactly been a mystery to me, but usually it was just preventing me from doing things I didn't particularly have any interest in doing anyway. In this case, it's serving as a thick barrier to a specific and important goal, which gives a stronger incentive to try to overcome it.

So I've decided that next year, I'll really try to tackle this head-on, to do all I can to push myself into uncomfortable territory. I'll see about getting therapy yet again, though I feel what'll be more useful will be doing my own research (since it'll only be what the therapist would be telling me anyway; the only benefit of one would be having someone to report to... plus it takes months to get an appointment).

While working on Taming Dreams a few years ago (2015?), I used to go out for long walks, listening to audiobooks about spirituality, which motivated, energised, and inspired me. Perhaps I should get back into that, but while listening to audioboooks about things like marketing, networking, all these things I'm terrible at?

The biggest thing I need to do is shift my perceptions, how I think about these things. Rather than seeing them as something dangerously aversive, I need to see them as challenges, problems to solve. Rather than seeing other people as judging me from above, rejecting me, I should see them as puzzles to 'manipulate' in a way that makes us both happy. My step-dad was talking to me back during trips to the brain hospital about how he manipulates people in this way, and it served him well in his career, took him to fairly lofty heights in the business world. It annoyed me since I don't like the idea of seeing people like that, but I can also see the benefits in it.

There's a mentalist called Derren Brown who I've been a fan of for years (though I don't really keep up with what he's up to these days), and I remember in one of his books he talked about how the burly rugby players he'd once feared as a frail, shy young boy transformed from threats to opportunities once he started practising magic. Rather than worrying about what they'd do to him, he saw ways to play with them, to manipulate their minds, in a way that'd lead to positive feelings for both parties.

It's not as if I've never tried to address my issues before. I've spent years doing that without working wonders, sometimes going backwards. But if I don't try again, what fate awaits me? I can't escape this rut unless I do something. And just accepting defeat won't get me anywhere.

I imagine most Kickstarter campaigns aren't successful. But it might be a good idea of assessing whether or not a project is worth sticking with, and it'd force me to at least try promotion. It'd also be great if I could earn money early on to fund the rest of the development! A constant concern is whether I'll even earn anything from what I'm making, so with that relieved, I'd be able to focus on actually making things. Even just getting a few thousand dollars would be amazing for me.

Old Work Archive

I'll wait until January before doing that. I like the idea of making 2020 a new start, A NEW ME!!! and all that. That gives me just over a month to do something else, and I like the idea of having a kind of deadline to finish what I set for myself during this period.

I've got a few messages over the past few months about making my old games available somewhere; it's what prompted the ill-fated thinking about remastering and continuing MARDEK. I've been told that Flash will become obsolete in 2020. There are also a bunch of old Flash games in various stages of completion that I've just never released.

So I'm thinking that it'd be worthwhile to upload them all on my site somewhere, which I've been meaning to do for months anyway but I've never found the time for. Perhaps I could look into getting Flash again, to see if I can export them as exe files or something? I'm not sure how that works, or if it'd introduce a bunch of incompatibilities.

I'd also be uploading games like Alora Fane: Creation and Taming Dreams, which have either never been widely released before or which are now unavailable.

I'm thinking of implementing a pay-what-you-like system for downloading them, meaning you could quite easily just get them for free if you want, but if you want to show your appreciation for what they're worth, you can do that too. I'll need to look into systems that make this process easy, accessible, and trustworthy.

I'm also interested in uploading a lot of my music since I'd hate to lose it (I've already got a bunch of backups, but an additional public one would be nice; I used to have a page on Fig Hunter with midis of my music, but I want to make them available in mp3 form). Obviously that's not going to be appealing to people in the same way, but it might be of some interest to the archaeologists of the future when I'm long dead and revered for my amazing creative contributions or whatever (ha).

Once or twice a week, I get sales on my Bandcamp page (only a few dollars, typically, though some people pay more), which I usually assume are people wanting to give me a little something rather than actually being interested in the music as such. So this'll give new ways to do that. I'll also upload soundtracks for all my games on there, including Sindrel Song. The non-game music will either go on a separate page, or in some non-game albums.



So those are some ideas I've been exploring. I'll work next on uploading my old games, setting up a system for that. I'll continue brainstorming ideas for simple games, maybe I'll play around with building prototypes. I might also set up something in the 'talky thing' format to see if there's any interest, though it's not a priority, just an 'if an idea strikes me' kind of thing. Sindrel Song will be on Steam in a couple of weeks. Then in January, I'll start seriously researching how to better myself, how to network and promote myself and appeal to people, and I'll run a Kickstarter for Belief. Probably.

We'll see how it goes.

I still want to get around to replying to some comments, but it does take time. I really appreciate that people write long comments though! I'd much rather have a few people who do that than hundreds who just post the same old sentence fragment memes.