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Hostility towards indie games? (big drama thread) (Forums : General Banter : Hostility towards indie games? (big drama thread)) Locked
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May 22 2014 Anchor

So i kinda had a depressing experience recently....let me start my story....

Many months we worked hard to make a great teaser trailer for our projects..with hundreds of revisions and uncountable hours in after effects.
A few days ago the day arrived that we decided!

We were going to release our trailer to the public!

That moment...adrenaline rushed through my veins, finally i thought! Finally i can show the world the awesomeness that we managed to create in our spare time through hard work any many man-hours.

I felt like i was ontop of the world, nothing could stop us anymore now that we finally had that awesome trailer to promote our project!

My initial master marketing plan was to just announce my project on all the big gaming forums.

hours on end i kept creating accounts on forums and share the world about our project! Just some information, our trailer and a call to people to help us build this game and give us feedback.

Most of my accounts got permabanned.

I did not ask people for money (crowdfunding), i had no malicious intentions...i just wanted to share what i have been working really hard on and wanted people to know about it and engage in conversation.

banned.

Banned like some filth that wasnt welcome.

Even my IGN account that i had for a while and had a nice post count......perma banned.
Same story on other boards, and if it wasnt banned i got a PM saying i needed moderator permission first before making a post like that.

I simply do not know how you can build a community around your game in 2014.
when i was 15 (9 years ago now..) i started a project...i had no skills..but with a small team i still managed to make some nice stuff in the torque game engine...and back then we just had a phpbb forum..without advertising anywhere....people just found it on google and tagged along on our forum. Stuff like that just doesnt happen anymore.

At times this is really depressing because sometimes i just wonder if im wasting my time, if i will just make a game that nobody will ever hear about...it might have been funny if i wasnt betting my future and likelyhood on this.

Its like making a game is not special at all anymore...and another thing that i find disturbing is that alot of games from studios with extensive portfolios are being called INDIE. For example Loadout ....those guys helped on games like mass effect...even though major youtube personalities are calling it an indie game...that doesnt help guys who work for free as a hobby and make true indie..it just makes things harder.

Please share your stories about how times have changed and indie games are treated like those beggars asking tourists for money.

Edited by: Fencing_Zealot

Nergal01
Nergal01 #MakeArcadeGreatAgain
May 22 2014 Anchor

From my observation, most communities from major gaming sites (i.e Gamefaqs) are indeed more or less hostile towards (almost) anything indie, perhaps except for massively-hyped indies like FTL or Papers, Please.

I think it's more or less their way of 'venting their anger' on why AAA games can not deliver anymore, plus people stereotypicalizing indies too much with '8bit' and/or 'Minecraft-like' graphics.

On other side, it's more or less the same case on why everyone seems so hostile towards anything arcade/non-simulator genre lately

Edited by: Nergal01

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Information is ammunition

May 22 2014 Anchor

If your posting to a community that you are not actually a part of (eg you made an account there just to post about your game) its very common that the regulars will see you as spam, even though you were posting there because you figured it was on topic. To them youre an outsider with no interest in the community, you just want to advertise your game. Promotion is tricky, even if you have an established reputation there its very easy to come off as spammy. I suspect most successful promotion now comes out of sock puppet accounts and other trickery to make something look accepted by a larger group of people as to not come off as spam.

Nergal01
Nergal01 #MakeArcadeGreatAgain
May 22 2014 Anchor

Plus some communities just don't like anyone promoting their game or such. Shamelessly or not.

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Information is ammunition

May 23 2014 Anchor

If anything I think people are more for indie games (indie games are hot right now) as for forum mods that make money off paid advertising they are not for anyone getting free advertising on their sites.

May 23 2014 Anchor

Creating an account in different websites and directly going and posting a promotional thread for your Project is considered by many people, and me too, spam. You will never be able to advertise a game that way, you need to make connections and be an active member in the Overall Gaming Industry Community.

May 23 2014 Anchor

Mistergeorge, i agree.

Im only really active on teamliquid (starcraft community), and it seems to be one of the few places where the replies were actually positive.
Elsewhere, if i did not get banned or the post got deleted...people just decided to take a crap on the project.

But its a lesson learned the hard way. I should try to engage a conversation about the genre im working on (arena shooters)...and try to get the ball rolling that way.

But besides that, i got a bitter reminder of how much i hate non-constructive criticism. Having your project called "a complete worthless pile of shit" without even as much as to why...its the best kind of thing to read in the morning, really makes your day.

Edited by: Fencing_Zealot

May 23 2014 Anchor

The times where indie are cool has gone :P

Spam is an unsolicited advertiser. Be a nice or the interest of someone don't change its nature.

Always read the rules careful. Most of game zones have special places where developers could post they ads.

May 23 2014 Anchor

Someone wrote: But besides that, i got a bitter reminder of how much i hate non-constructive criticism. Having your project called "a complete worthless pile of shit" without even as much as to why...its the best kind of thing to read in the morning, really makes your day.

I completely I understand what you mean. Personally I don't mind negative feedback because they allow you to fix things you may haven't thought of and enhance your Project and yourself. But this kind of criticism is the worse, you learn nothing from it. Mainly try not to get dissapointed and sad by these types of persons. Also something a lot of people think is that Marketing and Advertising doesn't matter from the time the content is good, that's completely wrong. You need your Project to be eye-catchy and you want to promote it through different ways (Forums, Videos, Posters, Collaborations e.t.c.)

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