Alora Fane

I've been really busy recently! Though unfortunately I've not exactly been aiming my creative energy in the ideal direction...

Last week, I set up a Steam page for Dreamons. By which I mean I created the page, though the full setup includes multiple pages of information that need to be carefully filled in, several 'capsule images' that require a lot of work to get right, screenshots, a trailer...

I ended up just staring at the forms I needed to fill in, feeling tense, anxious, my head swimming, basically paralysed. I hate filling in forms in general, and I hate the convolutedness of Steam's in particular, but I suppose what making a Steam page for this game represents to me - a step towards opening myself for the inevitable disappointment and/or criticism - activated 'avoid this stressor!' compulsions, basically, that I suspect aren't all that neurologically different from those faced by people with OCD.

(Even though it'll likely be months between setting up the page and actually releasing the game. Atonal Dreams' page has been up for ages.)

That was on Friday afternoon, and I'd had a fairly rough week up until then anyway - insomnia, constant stress, etc - so I decided to just leave it until Monday and try to relax a bit over the weekend.

I then spent all of Saturday - as in like 90% of my time awake - working on a couple of personal projects with crazed, possibly-hypomanic focus, which then led into composing a couple of pieces of music (sort of related to or inspired by those projects), which ended up much longer than originally planned and which I've spent most of my time on since then. It's now Thursday morning and I've just finished.

The demons in my mind spit venom at me for devoting any time to these 'personal projects'. They tell me that everything I create should be for an audience, should be monetised. It's wrong to keep things I make for myself.

I often wonder how people who don't make things, but who do consume them, perceive the creative process. I know some people (including my mother) have responded with something like bafflement, confusion, or disgust when I've said that I spend a lot of time listening to my own music compositions, which I suppose suggests some fundamental assumption that artists create purely for an audience, or - perhaps more accurately - for them, the one with such a response, or at least they should, otherwise what extrinsic value do they have to the world?

The response I have to these imagined, disappointed critics is something like "well, do you film, publish, and attempt to monetise every time you go out with friends, or have sex with your partner?", and then I imagine a similarly baffled and disgusted reaction to that; "why would you even suggest such a thing?? It's not remotely the same thing!!"

I know, though, that I 'should' be putting more stuff out there, if for no other reason than because I'm not earning enough money to survive.

I've written in the past about some (local HTML/PHP-based) tool I made for myself a few years ago to track my daily moods. I made some improvements to that the other day, in the hope that they'll help motivate me to achieve things.

(I was planning to include a screenshot of how it looks now, but feel uncomfortable about presenting a week's worth of my moods and tasks for the scrutiny of strangers!)

Previously, it showed a graph of the recorded moods and tasks for just the current day. Now it shows graphs for all the days of the current week, stacked on top of one another. I tend to perceive time in week blocks anyway, and my hope is that by being able to see several days at a time, I can better notice patterns, or maybe aim to do better than yesterday if it went badly, or keep up a streak if it went well.

I'd integrated features into the old version to help with specific motivations - like recording steps to motivate going out for walks, or daily to-do lists to motivate clearer plans for how to spend my time - but they never really worked for me, and I mostly ended up ignoring them.

So I scrapped those and replaced them with a kind of medals-based achievement system:

The tool displays this column on the right, showing all the days of the week. The pie chart summarises the moods for that day, and the two bars show how much work and how much non-work creative stuff I've done that day out of some arbitrary goal (5 hours for work, 3 for the other, I think?).

So from that you can see I've been doing between 7 and 9 hours of focused work (not merely being 'at work', but actively focusing on a task), and feeling much better than usual (I rarely have yellow moods)... though that's because it's not been 'work' work, but rather a break from that in the form of for-myself creative stuff.

Which I suppose is a sign I've been badly burned out and needed to focus on something else for a while? Or maybe it's because I don't have to worry about other factors like negative evaluation or monetisation with this stuff.

The medals start out dulled for the day, and I just have to click them to 'acquire' them. Gameification is meant to help with motivation, so I'm hoping this will, though obviously it's been far from perfect thus far. Yesterday was the best day so far though, medals-wise!

I had to decide on a list of little achievements to strive for every day. Currently I've got, in order:

- Make some meaningful work progress

- Go for a walk (or at least leave my damn house!)

- Meditate for 10 minutes, which I haven't done in ages but want to get back into

- Piano practice, which I've also neglected for ages

- Engage socially, either by having a conversation, replying to comments, or posting online (this post will count for that for today)

- Upload some music to YouTube. I set up a channel for this a while back, but haven't uploaded to it in months because it takes time and effort to prepare the videos and I know they'll get few views. Someone suggested once that I put my music on Spotify, which I don't personally use (I'm odd for this), so I looked into that... but you need to go through a music distributor, which essentially disqualifies it as a possibility for me.

- Do something creative but not game-dev-related, so usually either music composition or drawing. I'd like to do both more often.

- Work briefly on various new or old side game dev projects, which I use to get out some creative urges without committing to anything publicly that'll only end up growing the abandoned project pile when I inevitably grow tired of the idea. I'm resisting the urge to talk about a new one I started the other day since I'm both excited about it but fairly certain nothing will come of it in the long term.

Essentially I'm trying to use gameification to establish habits that I'd like to do regularly, and which are small and clear enough that I can do and mark them as done every day (rather than, say, "lose weight!" or "eat healthily!" which are valuelessly vague).

The point (and my reason for talking about this even though this tool is for my use only rather than something you can use too) is that I'm trying things to address my obvious shortcomings that are holding me back. It's better than just whining about struggling and failing, at the very least!

Whether or not these medals help me to actually do these fairly basic things more regularly remains to be seen.

I'll chip away at the Dreamons Steam page over several days rather than trying to do it all at once, and I'll post about it when it's ready to actually view so then I can start collecting wishlists. Apparently you're supposed to spend months accumulating them on your public page before release. I didn't know that when I released Memody: Sindrel Song!

One of the personal projects I dabbled in was one of the inspirations for the format of the video at the top of ∞ this post ∞ (that was 3 months ago?? I thought it was like 3 weeks!), because I think I'd said or written somewhere recently that I was hoping to get back to that format with the actual Dreamons characters. I'll need to finish their models first, but I hope to get around to that sooner rather than later. If I could get the ball rolling with it, it'd be much easier to release new episodes than it would be to finish and release games.

Oh, also, just remembered: Despite feeling good and being productive for days, I woke up in the middle of last night trying - and mostly failing - to scream, which I think was sleep paralysis? I've experienced it a few times before, though not in years.

Interestingly, it involved a UFO, but despite my openness to abductions being a real phenomenon rather than just the effect of sleep paralysis (as some claim), the UFO outside the window (which was on the wrong wall) in this experience resembled some small prop, and the crane holding it up was on full display. I heard it, though, as clear as any sound while awake, which is the oddest part of experiences like this.

Have you ever woken up in the night trying to scream but your throat feels too paralysed to let out more than a gurgle?!?

2 COMMENTS

GrayNine35~6M

Have you thought about releasing a version of the motivational tool the public? It reminds me of Backloggery, but for bettering yourself instead of getting around to beating games. I tried a similar app on my phone before, but it was riddled with adds and bloated with menus.

Not to make your anxiety worse, but getting the Steam page right is very, very important. I think one thing in particular that's lacking on the Memody and MARDEK pages is a visually appealing "small capsule image," the picture you see on the main store page (not the game specific one) and when searching for the game in the search bar. Before viewing the page, all Steam users have to go off are the name of the game, its tags (in smaller, de-emphasized font) and the small capsule image. Most successful indie games I'm looking through either:

- have a logo taking up the left or right half with an image to hook you on the game's aesthetic focused on a single character on the opposite side, usually with a single background behind both (One Step From Eden, A Hat in Time, La Mulana 2)

- have a logo in the middle in front of art depicting a scene from the game (not always in the game's art style), *sometimes* with a character on it, but rarely the focus (Cave Story+, Hollow Knight, Palworld)

Of course this isn't necessary, games like La Mulana 1 and Inscryption succeeded with just a logo, but it's common enough that it's probably helpful. Or it could all just be superstition, or maybe the human mind trying to find a pattern where there is none.

Not to make your anxiety worse, but getting the Steam page right is very, very important.  I think one thing in particular that's lacking on the Memody and MARDEK pages is a visually appealing "small capsule image," the picture you see on the main store page (not the game specific one) and when searching for the game in the search bar.  Before viewing the page, all Steam users have to go off are the name of the game, its tags (in smaller, de-emphasized font) and the small capsule image.  Most successful indie games I'm looking through either:

- have a logo taking up the left or right half with an image to hook you on the game's aesthetic focused on a single character on the opposite side, usually with a single background behind both (One Step From Eden, A Hat in Time, La Mulana 2)

- have a logo in the middle in front of art depicting a scene from the game (not always in the game's art style), *sometimes* with a character on it, but rarely the focus (Cave Story+, Hollow Knight, Palworld)

Of course this isn't necessary, games like La Mulana 1 and Inscryption succeeded with just a logo, but it's common enough that it's probably helpful.  Or it could all just be superstition, or maybe the human mind trying to find a pattern where there is none.

Tobias 1115~6M

Something I think about a lot is forming a new small community for self-betterment which would include both this motivation tool and a Big Five test I also worked on a while back (but which I never finished enough to make public). Something like that would address many of my unmet needs.

...Or it potentially could, though I know from experience that I'd have to be constantly worrying about and dealing with disruptive people, and the thought of adding that back into my life again is like the thought of getting back into a car after surviving a car crash, or getting back with a previously very abusive partner after escaping, or something. It's such a shame.

I'm very aware of the importance of the Steam page and especially the capsule images, which is why I felt (and I suppose still feel) so paralysed with anxiety about it. Because I know it really matters (now, anyway; I was clueless when I released Memody). I lurk (but don't yet post) in several game dev subreddits, and every day there are several posts by devs about their capsule images, often asking which of two or three options would be best to go with.

And even if you get it 'right', it's still a huge gamble with no guarantee of anything like success, so I just keep putting it off.

Imagine going to work and doing all your duties, but whether or not you get paid for them depends on whether or not the boss notices and likes your outfit! I can't imagine that'd fill most people with eager enthusiasm.

...Or it potentially could, though I know from experience that I'd have to be constantly worrying about and dealing with disruptive people, and the thought of adding that back into my life again is like the thought of getting back into a car after surviving a car crash, or getting back with a previously very abusive partner after escaping, or something. It's such a shame.

I'm very aware of the importance of the Steam page and especially the capsule images, which is why I felt (and I suppose still feel) so paralysed with anxiety about it. Because I know it really matters (now, anyway; I was clueless when I released Memody). I lurk (but don't yet post) in several game dev subreddits, and every day there are several posts by devs about their capsule images, often asking which of two or three options would be best to go with.

And even if you get it 'right', it's still a huge gamble with no guarantee of anything like success, so I just keep putting it off.

Imagine going to work and doing all your duties, but whether or not you get paid for them depends on whether or not the boss notices and likes your outfit! I can't imagine that'd fill most people with eager enthusiasm.