IndieDB losing popularity... Thread

This week, it has been the first time I saw IndieDB falling under 1000 currently on line visitors while MoDB has always 3500-5000 visitors. And it seems to getting even worse by falling under 800 visitors, only week-ends make it hardly rise to 2000 visitors.

This is quite bad because I found out that IndieDB and MoDB are the best place in the Internet for indie developers to make their games known during the development, when your game doesn't get any coverage from the press and that there is no way to bump a title at Steam Greenlight

Is there anything planed about IndieDB that could attract more visitors ? Does spitting ModDB into 3 different websites was a good idea ?

Devdan wrote: Is there anything planed about IndieDB that could attract more visitors?

We are working on user improvements, keep an eye out for the developers update posts. Traffic our side seems consistent.

It is due to a number of reasons, but typically when school and people are working visitors are less than in the holidays. But yes we have a number of big things coming for developers that we hope will continue to grow, expand and improve our site - as you are right, there are not enough places to get coverage.

Also bear in mind that all content shared on moddb is also shared on indiedb so you get expsure to the entire audience there as well.

Also after IOTY/MOTY there is much less traffic (except for the falloff 1 month after). IMHO DBolical should host something MOTY/IOTY/AOTY-like every month to attract more visitors or at least make regulars out of members/guests - things like contests and events don't really bring more readers yet they are nice little community building thingies (converting passersby into actively participating community members).

I think it has been in v2 where there had been something with monthly mods and such? Contest might be a bit much but covering some mod or a topic or something like that could be interesting. Right now the coverage is quiet "biased" towards the not so interesting main-stream mods.

Yes and that would require editorials in place. Maintaining editorials requires a great deal of gaming as you have to play through tons and tons of games/modsin order to be as little biased as possible.

Actually, including yours, there would be two ideas for editorials:

- an editorial about 1 specially selected (non-mainstream/not usually frontpaged) mod/game
- an editorial about all monthly game/mod releases (bringing monthly spotlights back)

but they require a way too much effort to even start, as of now, at least.

That monthly MOTY/IOTY/AOTY idea (Mod of the Month/Indie of the Month/App of the Month) would have to be totally system-based - and that means it would be still quite biased towards mainstream mods/indies as well unless there were restrictions what profiles can win it monthly, for example

- can win MOTM/IOTM/AOTM only once a year (so games/mods winning 5 times in a row)
- only 3 profiles can win each month
- only released mods/games/apps can participate
- released game/mod/app page has to have released a new game build that month to be voteable

^- and fully automated, with the site staff only monitoring progress/results nothing more as there is already a lot of weight put on mere 3 staff members.

Is it just me, or has ModDB kind of died?

I always felt IndieDB cannibalized the community and split it.

You guys ever think of turning to your community for help with some of these duties? I mean we have a huge resource of people just sitting here. I know that there are some die hard gamers/developers here.

Hell I would love to read some editorials, tech news, game news something.
It's a database I get it.... but can't it be more than just that?

I sure hope you don't take these comments the wrong way, I think a lot of people that care about your site just want to find ways to make it more attractive and lively.

Either way don't be afraid to ask the community for help......... I think were already waiting for you to ask!

Help is always welcome, we are like a wiki, everyone has the opportunity to contribute in some way if they want.

MrMattWebb wrote: Is it just me, or has ModDB kind of died?

I always felt IndieDB cannibalized the community and split it.

I think so too, in a way.

I think the website is a bit discouraging and not helpful for developers to write interesting articles.

First of all, I would think it would be nice to think of a way to help developers write news updates or articles.
It sounds funny, but as a developer even if I want to write updates about my game I don't always know what I should write.
All sort of ways to encourage developers write interesting news could help everyone out.
I don't know what. maybe all sort of "news jams" like, write all the times developing your game was frustrating or funny or whatever. I don't know.
It's kind of hard to think of things to write every week...

And that brings me to the second point.
It seems the popularity contest in this website is set so that developers attempt to figure out how to exploit the system.
I mean, be the most efficient in becoming popular.
It might make sense in a capitalist market where big money is involved, but here it just makes everyone waste more of their time and energy trying to compete with other developers that pump out articles just for the purpose of getting to the top.

I guess what I am saying is that you should help and encourage developers to write interesting articles of higher quality and at the same time make it worth while for them.

PompiPompi wrote: I think the website is a bit discouraging and not helpful for developers to write interesting articles.
First of all, I would think it would be nice to think of a way to help developers write news updates or articles.
It sounds funny, but as a developer even if I want to write updates about my game I don't always know what I should write.
All sort of ways to encourage developers write interesting news could help everyone out.

Developers are encouraged to read this news guide, when their news doesn't hit the front page.
Indiedb.com
Short of these recommendations, its down to you to sell your game, why should people play it?, when promoting your game your the salesman, you know how to sell it best.

PompiPompi wrote: It seems the popularity contest in this website is set so that developers attempt to figure out how to exploit the system.
I mean, be the most efficient in becoming popular.

There's no way to exploit our systems, It comes down to, Do the public like your game, and do you keep the community updated with, development updates packed with media, video updates, demos etc...
Its a tough gig promoting your game specially when time is best spent improving the game not promoting things that will change, you need to strike a balance and that will come from experience. Experienced devs know how to work the system (social media, marketing etc), just look at what other developers are doing and use their experience to build your own flavor to your promotion.

feillyne wrote: - an editorial about all monthly game/mod releases (bringing monthly spotlights back)
but they require a way too much effort to even start, as of now, at least.

We do a monthly newsletter featuring mostly all releases, I'm not sure if there's any point doing the same with a news article, Do you all like seeing the same content over and over? Moddb.com

Could do a quarter wrap, but they tend to have to much content and not enough room.
Moddb.com

Monthly mod of the moment / indies has been mentioned in the v5 ideas, as it was a great v2 feature id love to see come back.

I am saying you could help out developers writing better and more interesting articles.
Of course this could be learned on your own, but why not help out developers?
Of course it needs to be solutions that don't eat up your entire time...

TKAzA wrote: (...) Experienced devs know how to work the system (social media, marketing etc) (...)

Actually that's what he's getting at. Majority of people do not have PR people all over their team or have a degree in PR. The majority of teams are small even down to a single person and they can not spend half their time for PR. These are drowned by those able to afford PR people which is a shame. Certain projects I watch do not have PR people on board and majority of people here for sure don't even know they are around. Could be just me but I remember a ModDB where there had been interest in "all" mods not just "PR-drama-queen" ones. But maybe this is because I have the oldie tag?

Edited by: Dragonlord

To note again, a lack of staff-written editorials that could spearhead more renewed interest in the site, this lack effectively encouraged the community to steadily fall asleep. And those "newsletters" are not even done monthly in the first place, and would definitely be sort of outsiders compared to homy editorials right on the spot.

The problem is Indie DB is drowned by all kinds of articles, and quite unfortunately most of them are either lacking in quality or lacking in both quality and quantity.

That is why only those who put some more effort (than usual) into their promotion (articles, uploading media, building demos and uploading them as well etc) have their news/game featured while others do not which is yes, totally biased towards mainstream/PR-heavy projects.

PompiPompi wrote: First of all, I would think it would be nice to think of a way to help developers write news updates or articles.
It sounds funny, but as a developer even if I want to write updates about my game I don't always know what I should write.
All sort of ways to encourage developers write interesting news could help everyone out.
I don't know what. maybe all sort of "news jams" like, write all the times developing your game was frustrating or funny or whatever. I don't know.
It's kind of hard to think of things to write every week...

Yet it is not a matter of what you should write about - it was always about how well you can present your article, for example a text-only postmortem without any early (late, and final) development screenshots (for the record) would seem completely bare. Same an article filled with media yet without any textual content or description of any kind, no information of what, how and why.

You do not have to have a degree in PR to be able to spice your news up and make it truly captivating - what you need is to keep records/logs of everything you do, including media and old code backups, perhaps to use them one day as a basis to describe e.g. your recent progress compared to your previous one or mistakes of the past or discarded game mechanics that you turned into something workable, and so on and on.

So down to the core of the problem - it is and will be the fault of time developers can spend on their promotion, and that cannot be helped as it depends almost solely on developers' time management skills. Also if too many bad quality articles had made it to the front page, those with some some real effort put into them, would be buried with terrifyingly less chance for exposure for any (and all) of them - which quite would defeat the point of even trying to write better articles while better/best articles would be not gaining any exposure at all. So some form of discouragement is a must, one way or another.

At the end, there are a few general tips how to write good/better/best articles
- include lots (tons of, not merely 3 or 4, but many many more) of media, screenshots, renders from different sides/viewpoints, both early sketches and final, completed drafts/artwork, etc, medialess articles tend to be unattractive articles
- it is always about the history of your progress; so you have to record everything you do; as long as you remember what you did right and what you did wrong, or what (and how) you simply succeeded with, you can write about it; textless media-filled articles may lack depth and depth was always about history (lifespan/progress-span/linked events) and multiple layers, facets of it

Only if your game or your game progress is not memorable there is nothing to talk about, but in many cases it is only because you do not remember and not because it was not remarkable thus it is always best to record and remember history of your development, whether you would be writing about it or not - always helpful when you sit down to actually begin describing it.

And the site staff is already more or less assisting in fixing, formatting and promoting articles. Nobody can remember your own development history better than you and if you do not remember, that is a real obstacle in writing articles. If you already wrote about everything you could, you should just close the chapter and not write about anything as there is no need to push yourself if everything has been said.

Yea, this attitude of "survivor of the fit" for this website really encourages more developers.
If your end goal is to have developers abandon this website which doesn't bring too much traffic or player involvement anyway then I think you are successful at that.
This one sided attitude in which the developer is on his own and there is no point of a 2 ways communication between the developer and the community and the developer has to single handedly bring people to even care about his project is really working well for this website.
Why you son't want to help out connect between developers and the users?
The vast majority of the articles have minimum interaction or feedback from the players but you claim it's because the developer didn't put enough effort and is not "strong or fit enough in PR".

Also most developers don't work on their project full time and given the very little traffic this website have it might not be even worth while to invest time in an article that competes with other developers that do work full time and have a lot more to show in a shorter time.

PompiPompi wrote: Why you son't want to help out connect between developers and the users?
The vast majority of the articles have minimum interaction or feedback from the players but you claim it's because the developer didn't put enough effort and is not "strong or fit enough in PR"

Sorry, when is it claimed so? Please quote where? Amount of feedback and popularity coming from the community is not related to how good articles are, it is related to how good the site staff is at promoting the sister sites (i.e. Mod DB, Indie DB, Slide DB) in general.

All that is claimed is
1) we will be working on bringing developers and players together as well as bringing more visitors to all profiles on the site
2) nonetheless, whether it is in the present or in the future, only quality content will be featured on the front page, the only change we should hope for is that it will be more worthwhile for you to actually have your news (and other content) frontpaged

Someone wrote: and quite unfortunately most of them are either lacking in quality or lacking in both quality and quantity

If the vast majority of articles are of low quality and you will only allow high quality articles in the front page and you are not helping developers make better quality articles... then only a select few developers will have actual benefit from this website.
The rest are here to just inflate the numbers and help the developers who "put more effort" in their articles get constantly featured at the top.

Yes, it is exactly about that.

1) we will be working on bringing developers and players together as well as bringing more visitors to all profiles on the site

Whether developers of those profiles put some effort in PR or not.

If the site staff started editorials and featured mods/games/apps that have not written articles (thus writing articles for them = helping devs write them) or not put any effort in PR, the site would start to be balanced towards both mainstream and niche indie/mod content that often can hide an undiscovered gem.

On other hand, the Mod/Indie of the Month is only supposed to help released mods/games gain more exposure, nothing more.

Edited by: feillyne

A gem is not being discovered, it's being made.
Part of making a game is getting feedback from players and community involvement.
Most of the games that are featured here at the top are either playing the system(according to you it's all part of the "survivor of the fit" attitude where the guy with the most pushy and loud PR wins) or they are already established elsewhere anyway.
Or they become popular and stay at the top for years taking the spot for many "undiscovered gems" and never let go.

Games that don't have a community around them(and I think this is the point of the website in the first place? To build a community around your game?) have less chances to get finished or become a game.
So what is the point of this website again? To be the PR of the already pushy and loud developers who already know how to do this kind of PR and already have their own community and support before getting into this website?

There are many examples of games that have great PR but have never become gold even years after they have cashed on all that PR.
Again, most developers don't really have a good reason to put their game here except for the delusion that this website is somehow beneficial to them.
Even if you bring more traffic to this website, which I doubt, only the top 2% will enjoy it. And if that is your goal then make it known to most developers joining here, tell them that they have to work hard for great PR otherwise they won't belong to the top 2% who are the only ones benefiting from this website.

Well you have many valid points and that is exactly why the site staff should bear responsibility for listing and spotlighting mods/games that have not been popular or PR heavy lately, and this very thread is for ideas how to make this happen.

Edited by: feillyne

Thank you,

While I agree that it is the responsibility of IndieDB to promote the site, to highlight what's going on and to generate a sense of community, I don't agree that they are responsible for quality of the content that people generate. I don't even think IndieDB is responsible for generating a community around any one particular game or developer.

I've submitted short pieces (600 words) for another web-site that are vetted and chosen by an editor but at no point is there any feedback as to whether they liked it or not other than it being used and what kind of comments it generates. Even if it is used, they have no control over whether their readership find it interesting or not. Everything I've submitted has been used but nothing I've written generates much conversation in the comments section, so learn from that what you want. However, I keep writing stuff because I enjoy it.

The big problem with the internet in general is that there are a lot of people all clamouring for attention and a lot of things get lost and while it's a shame I don't think that there's anything that can really be done about it. There are only a finite amount of gamers and they only have a finite amount of time to both play games and find games and give feedback.

I've also noticed on other websites and forums threads similar to this one, where someone's pointing out a general decline in the traffic, so I don't think IndieDB is alone in this respect. I suspect that things like Twitter and Facebook have something to do with this.

Facebook and Twitter are though not useful at all. It's all about buzz-word throwing around and PR-drama but nothing sustantial. ModDB (back then) had been about the sustance and the core aspect of modding and it should stick to this. PR-whoring is already huge in places like Facebook or Twitter. No need to lower yourself to that quality-less niveau as these sites are and end up producing/hosting only hot air that's not worth the news-slots they occupy.

29_games,

Your introspection doesn't mean much to this website.
IndieDB can continue what it is doing but don't expect different results from keeping doing the same things everyone are doing.
Again, you want this website to be beneficial to only a select few titles which most of them are being covered in most of other websites anyway? Good for you, but don't get surprised that you don't get much traffic when this website features the same things that get featured everywhere else.