PERSONAL

21

2,806

Can I keep doing this?

5 years ago - Edited 5 years ago1,598 words

I struggled to sleep last night because I was fretting so much about whether I can continue doing this games thing.

I like what I'm doing, so that's not the issue! I mean, it's probably taking its toll on my body and mental health... but there's enough I enjoy about the creative process to make me want to continue doing it. It feels like I'm not cut out for anything else, and I've cultivated these skills which allow me to do what others can't, to produce end results that could potentially bring a lot of pleasure to a lot of people in a way I can't see myself doing in any other role. It feels like it'd be a huge waste to give it up.

The issue though comes from making enough money from it all to survive. Frustratingly, it feels like little's changed since I last talked about this months ago. If anything, the attention this blog gets has been decreasing over time, though that might have been because the reminder emails are no longer going out? Earlier today I (finally) heard back from my webhost about fixing my site's email addresses - which were broken for the same reasons the site went down recently - so that might be fixed now. Hopefully you got an email about this post (if you have an account set to receive notifications of personal posts)! I'm aware that quite a few people made accounts they've been unable to verify due to this issue, or they're locked out of their old one, so I'll look into adding a way to resend the verification email when I have time (if you're locked out though, I think you can do a password reset now? I'm not sure).

(Hmm, I got the notification emails myself, but they were marked as spam...)

I was hoping that the MARDEK release would attract quite a bit of interest - and a decent amount of sales - without effort on my part, due to the existing fanbase that seems to exist. I know it's still early - it's been less than a week since I moved to Coming Soon - but so far the number of people who've added it to their wishlist is... not promising. It's at 344 currently. Even if every single one of those bought it - they won't - that's around $3440 (not all of which I'll get), which isn't nothing, but which is far less than a minimum wage worker would get in a year. Not everyone who's going to get it will have added it to their wishlist, I know, but I suppose that's the only metric I have to go on at the moment.

I'm not sure what I'm expecting or hoping for really. I suppose anything over $10k - so 1000 sales - would be nice, though obviously getting ten times that would be even better. It's hard to judge though because MARDEK does have an existing fan following, but it's also a port of an amateur browser game which has been freely available for a decade. So who knows.

I haven't really put any effort into promoting it for a few reasons. One is that I hoped it'd do okay without worrying about the stress of that, as it has existing fans. Another is because I don't know how to promote. I know a bit from when I released Sindrel Song, but that only has just over 100 sales total so obviously whatever I did do wasn't worth the stress and effort it took.

I should probably put Sindrel Song on sale soon, actually, if a lot of people only buy games once they're on sale. I'll probably do that sometime this week.

I've been hoping that MARDEK would attract enough interest to this site that people would find out about and be willing to support Divine Dreams, at which point I'd be able to run a Kickstarter for that to secure some funding before I start so I'm not constantly worrying about whether it'll even make money.

I've not made any progress on actually starting a Kickstarter - or even researching how to do it - though I do think this video offers a valuable insight into the process:



I don't know anything about this person - Youtube's algorithm's just suggested him recently - but what he talks about in this video lines up well with how I've been seeing the crowdfunding thing myself, based on the research I have done. It's an awful lot of effort, it might not even work out, and there's the feeling of owing people which I really want to avoid myself. I feel that kind of obligation kills creativity.

He also mentioned his Patreon, where he has 128 backers contributing around $500 a month despite having hundreds of thousands of subscribers on Youtube. Things like that are... concerning. I've been planning to set up my Patreon properly for ages, but I keep putting it off for a bunch of different reasons. After being tormented by thoughts about all this last night, I had a renewed motivation to finally get around to doing that, so I likely will, probably also sometime this week. I don't know whether it'll amount to anything though.

I know at least a handful of people will support me, and I wish that were enough; I love the idea of having this little community of people who I can keep regularly informed with progress posts, and who contribute with their own intelligent viewpoints, like what already happens on this blog. It keeps motivation up, and there's not so much that it's overwhelming. Not some bickering, faceless crowd of critics to appease. It's just a shame that the cost of living is as high as it is. I'd need to earn $1000 at the bare minimum just to scrape by in a state of poverty, so if I had, say, 50 backers, they'd need to be paying $20 of their own hard-earned cash every month just to make up that amount. And I feel bad taking anything at all from people, so the whole thing just feels so uncomfortable to me...

I'm still uncertain of what I'd offer to make people's contributions feel worthwhile, like they're getting something out of it and it's not just charity. Like that guy mentioned in that video though, making various perks is a full-time job in itself, so I don't want to do anything like that; I want to make games! I know that's more of a crowdfunding thing than a Patreon thing, but I don't know what people do on Patreon. We've talked about it on this blog before, but I can't remember. I'll probably have to look to other people's Patreons to see what they do.

I also need to start using Reddit more frequently, playing other indie games and commenting in those communities, like I've been talking about for ages but never seem to actually get around to. It feels like once I break down the initial barrier and make it a habit, it should be easier, and perhaps the slap in the face that is poor sales will be a big motivator towards that...

I should probably use Twitter more too; I've been posting updates on there recently, and I've added it to the main page of this site so you can see what I tweet even if you don't use Twitter itself, but I still don't follow anyone or do anything social on there other than reply to comments that I get. It feels really rude, but it's just me being awkward and anxious, thinking either I'll do something wrong somewhere and embarrass myself, or that I'll read about what other people say and just end up crippled by comparison envy or get riled by constant arguments (Twitter apparently has a reputation for being full of these).

Speaking of embarrassment - though it's really more of a tangent - I also found this video from that same guy quite interesting:



It reminded me of the Old Shame I felt about MARDEK, and it makes me wonder whether MARDEK comes across as cringey teen literature or something! But I don't have the same revulsion towards my old work as he does; maybe it being played by millions and getting essentially universally positive feedback makes a little bit of a difference there. Still, I've made other stuff that'd make it feel like my life is over!!! were they to be mocked by the masses. I suppose every creator has at least something like that that they've made. It's worrying that the internet immortalises it all too. Hmm.

Anyway, it feels like ages since I last wrote a mostly personal post! Honestly I've not been doing well mentally recently (shocking, I know). I've been getting some work done, but I've also been depressed a lot, spending a lot of time just lying in bed. I've been taking days to reply to some personal messages from friends etc despite wanting to communicate with them because of low energy. I suppose that mental state leads to vulnerability to worrying about things like what I talked about in the rest of this post. Or maybe all those other factors are why I'm feeling like this. It's surely a mix.

Hopefully you're all doing alright yourselves! Thanks for reading! And thanks to those of you who reach out to me in emails too; there have been a few of those recently, and I've not been able to reply to them all. I don't know if they'll read this though!