I've been unable to work for the past few days due to dogsitting, though I've been unusually social via phone calls with friends. Also: canine social networking, R-CPD as a possible explanation for my lifelong inability to burp and recent chest pain, an intriguing game called Cocoon, a film called Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, and Patreon porn profits. READ MORE
I spent this week trying to tackle some things I'd been avoiding, including posting my music on YouTube, which I've finally started doing after talking about that for years!! I also spent a lot of time both on and waiting for phone calls. READ MORE
How's your first week of 2023 been?? My mental state's improved a bit, but I've only touched Atonal Dreams briefly. I should post on Reddit about it soon; I altered ∞ its Steam page ∞ a bit for that. Also, some thoughts about a side project I've been working on, the game Child of Light, and are you worried about AI too? READ MORE
This week, I've seen the light at the end of the long tunnel I've been frustratingly stuck in for the past several weeks, and have been preparing to face the promotion stuff I've been avoiding. READ MORE
Gasp! I'm ready to start the next Atonal Dreams alpha test next week! Also I've maybe revised Alora Fane's logo and cosmology a bit? And a brief look at another 'solo' dev's Kickstarter, which evoked very mixed feelings in me... READ MORE
I want to talk a bit about money again: how much I'm earning each month, and how the amount that other indie games raise on Kickstarter does convince me to give that a go. READ MORE
I was hoping to have Atonal Dreams ready for some kind of alpha test by the end of this week, but frustratingly that's not happened yet because there's so much to do! Also, this week's Music Album contains music from Deliverance (and Fig Hunter and some old stuff)!!!1 READ MORE
I saw this video the other day, in which a just-starting indie dev interviews another who claims to be earning six figures a year from what started as solo games dev, and felt it was worth a post of its own! READ MORE
2021's got off to a decent start, productivity-wise! I composed three pieces of music for Atonal Dreams! I've also added an additional album of my old music to the Bandcamp page I set up recently, which is something I intend to make a weekly habit of. READ MORE
My intention today was to read a bunch of articles about how and when I should release a demo. I ended up getting through a single r/gamedev post-mortem and some of the comments before running out of steam! READ MORE
I started this post wondering how best to build my Twitter audience so as to help my game's sales, but I've come out feeling that the best use of Twitter is to network with other creators rather than to appeal to potential customers. READ MORE
Here's a look at some sales stats for my games so far, as well as a couple of articles about the financial suicide of trying to make a living from indie games!! READ MORE
I don't know enough about marketing an indie game, so Atonal Dreams is unlikely to succeed financially unless I learn more. I've written out a list of questions I don't know the answers to, which I'll spend the next week or two researching. Seems more directed than just fumbling around watching videos in the general area! READ MORE
Have you ever heard of a game called Among Us? Probably not. It's really obscure. I mean, it only has 104,597 reviews on Steam. I feel sorry for the developers, honestly. READ MORE
Here's an interesting video by a dev who's been working on the same game (sort of) for five years (do you think I'm slow??), who gets a lot of attention on his well-made Youtube videos, though surprisingly that doesn't seem to translate to Twitter followers, which makes me wonder how well attention on any social media translates to actual sales in the end. READ MORE
To have any hope of succeeding with this games thing, I'll need to do a lot more promotion than I have been doing... as I've said in a bunch of different, fairly scattered posts over the past few months. Things do come up on my radar throughout the week, and to get better at focusing on this, I've made a new category of posts here, and I'll add a new post in this category every Sunday (a new dev post will be every Saturday). READ MORE
Here's another post about my continuing journey into the unfamiliar territory I need to explore if I'm to make anything of this games thing! In this one, I mainly talk about stuff from the comments on the last post. READ MORE
I've looked at a few other indie developers' Patreons to get ideas about how to structure mine. There have been disheartening things, some hopeful things; it's been a journey! READ MORE
I need to release Sindrel Song on Steam, and I'll be devoting this week to that exclusively rather than getting distracted with MARDEK or Belief or whatever like I have for the past few weeks. Since I don't have anyone to talk with during the process, but it helps to do so, I'm writing out my thoughts and observations in this post. Specifically, here are some observations and thoughts about a Reddit thread where an indie developer announced the completion of their new game... READ MORE
We all play games for different reasons. Some psychologists have attempted to categorise different players based on their preferences, and I think it's worth talking about them - and the personality trait Openness (to Experience) - to explain some of the aversions to the projects I'm trying to make. READ MORE
I've just been naively assuming that Sindrel Song will do okay without too much promotional effort on my part. I very much doubt that it'll make millions!!, but I thought $10k+ would just 'sort of happen somehow'. That if the game were out there, thousands of people would notice and buy it. I've been avoiding actually doing research about promotion and marketing though because it's stressful and unfamiliar to even think about, but now that release is upon me (or delayed, if anything), I've been looking into it and... well, experiencing the anxiety I'd been avoiding it to prevent. I'm planning to do more research and to keep updating this post with everything I learn, even if nobody reads it and it's all for my benefit! It'll be useful to have it all in one place. READ MORE
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