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WU 2020-9P - Redirecting for a bit?

5 years ago920 words

I've been enjoying development, but I do need to focus on some other related stuff - like promotion - for a while! Despite the usual annoying depression.

Well, after talking about trying to break out of my shell at least a bit in the post I wrote on my birthday earlier this week, I've actually been worse at replying to anything these past few days! So that's a bit annoying.

I do appreciate the comments that people leave though, and it seems like every week there are some people saying they've remembered me from the old days and come to check how I'm doing now, or that I've inspired them in a significant way over the years. Comments like that matter a lot and keep me going.

I know I still need to push myself out there more, but I've been wondering: what would be the goal, exactly, if I were to promote at this point? What target could I even strive for? "Becoming more connected" is valuable, but vague. Increasing the number of hits each blog post gets would give a numerical target, but I suppose I feel the number of people interested in the process is always going to be lower than the amount who'd be interested in regularly-produced finished content.

I've also been thinking: even if my own promotion attempts don't amount to anything, I could always try to get a publisher. I imagine they'd be more interested in something like this than in Sindrel Song. The MARDEK games had sponsors, and I wonder how much of their success was because of that.

Still. I've been working on Divine Dreams a lot for a while now; this is the ninth week of writing these weekly updates (which I've stuck to without missing any, shockingly!). I've got a lot done in this time, but I've got a whole lot more still left to do. I've been able to maintain focus and motivation by working only on weekdays and taking the weekends off, but I've not been able to use that down time to do the other stuff I need to do because I spend it resting.

Well, I say 'resting', but it's more like slumping into depression. I've managed to not miss a work day because of it, and I've experienced some high moods (relative for me, anyway) quite often while getting stuff done because it's a wonderful feeling to be caught in the flow, to feel that what I'm actively doing in the moment might amount to something eventually, maybe. But when I'm not working, I just... crash.

One of the symptoms of depression is anhedonia, which is basically the inability to enjoy things. It's more than that, though; there's a profoundly heavy feeling, which I've compared before to wearing a suit of leaden armour while submerged under a dark ocean or something. Doing anything while in that state feels like deciding to go for a run with your legs chained to the floor. Even if you want to, it doesn't mean you actually can.

It's like the weather, though; it comes and goes. Today's been quite bad, but many days it's not. It's inconsistent.

At the start of development, I was giving myself all morning of every day to really focus on development, but I intended to use the rest of the day for other concerns like research, promotion, and playing other games. I fairly quickly realised it'd take too long to finish at that rate, though, plus I had the motivation to continue each day so I ended up using that. I suspect the relative pleasure of the creative process also made it highly alluring; if the choice is between actively making something people might enjoy - and which I might benefit from, eventually - or feeling so crippled by the weight of an obese black elephant on my mind that I can barely think, then, well.

But it's true that I've got other stuff to do. So I wonder whether I should give myself a week off focused development to at least try to do some of them. I still need to finish off the plan for the story (I dove into development when it was only roughly-mostly-finished), and obviously there are things like getting the word out, attracting interest, becoming less isolated, etc.



I talked about some specific plans in the previous post, though I wanted to finish my work week before tackling them. So I'll probably spend the next week on those things.

I also want to reply to some of the old comments that have built up, so if you get a reply to something you said ages ago, this is why!

I should probably make a separate page for Divine Dreams roughly summarising what I've already talked about in blog posts, so it's all in one place and anyone new I tell about the game only has to check that rather than the whole archive. As it is, I get the same questions repeatedly despite answering them in older posts. I don't know whether the sort of people who'd ask things like that would bother checking an info page, but it'll probably help me clarify some things about the project in my head anyway. Maybe it'll heavily stress the differences and similarities between Divine Dreams and MARDEK.



I feel this post's not the most coherent one I've ever written, but I'm fighting through the depression at the moment and honestly I just want to finish it so then it's done!