Game Update
Releasing took a lot out of me. I’m glad that I took time off of work and that I happened to have the presidents day weekend to help out with an additional day. I worked all weekend to make sure that everything was lined up for the best release I could provide. Spreadsheets were scrutinized the most during the process. My oldest son helped me a lot with testing which ensured that players could finish part one of the game. I was less active on social media and twitter as I was focused on getting everything ready.
On release day I did get some interest, but it was about what I had expected. Another interesting thing happened when I finally got my authorization to put the game on Steam that morning on the 22nd. I had a real dilemma as I could have released there as well if I rushed it and worked all day. The problem is that the chances of a mistake being made were pretty high. I decided not to do it.
After releasing the game I finally set myself to the task of creating the trailer. It went a lot faster than I thought that it would and I’m very happy with the result. It feels good enough for now, and I think that it shows off the game well. The soundtrack that my musician created helped out a lot too.
This past week, and during testing one thing was bugging me about the game. I had noticed that on the force organization screen the attack numbers weren’t quite reporting correctly. I checked the spreadsheets yesterday and found the issue. It would seem that I was reporting all five rows as the value that was in row 1. Luckily this wouldn’t effect combat, just what the players expectations for attacks might be.
Moving forward I have more stages to build, but before I do that I think that it’s going to be important to build in a system that will be better for dialogue during the stage. I need to start turning more to story and really figure out what this game will be about. There’s a lot of world affairs right now that might subconsciously work their way into the plot-line.
I’m starting to think more and more about how I can create random enemy squads, and possibly even random stages. I do have a way to load random stages on a single stage click, and so that’s a start. Worst case scenario I make a bunch of random stages and find a way to increase their difficulty in some way related to the players actions.
I’m not sure when I will get the game on Steam but I have started the process of adding assets to the page, and writing out the descriptions. I will probably wait at least a month or maybe try to hit the next big Steam indie event.
Personal Update
Things are still going well with my girlfriend, although there were a couple of bumps in the road this week. It’s been four months already since we started talking which is kind of crazy. I should see her again soon when things line up for us. She’s been very supportive which is so important to me.
After releasing my game my attention turned back to my family and I have a renewed fire to try and get some things handled with my boys. They have been slacking in quite a few areas and it’s time to bring the proverbial hammer down. Sometimes I think I’m to hard on them.
The value of twitter still remains to be seen. On the plus side somehow in this past week I gained 100 followers which is pretty crazy. If this keeps up I will pass my old record which was around 1300. A tweet came up in my feed which kind of lends itself what I think it might be though. It feels like most of the people I’m engaging are indie developers that are doing amazing work, but not actual customers. I will say that I’ve had some solid connections, but I don’t think they are my target audience. One good thing is that my hashtage #SixAspects seems to have started to get picked up by twitter now as it auto-fills it for me and now says about 100 tweets, instead of less than 100.
Maybe something will happen on twitter eventually but I’m not sure. I’m considering setting up a bot to do some work on there for me, but I like having an organic account. I only really use it when I’m relaxing watching TV, eating, or walking on my treadmill, etc... Right now it’s the kind of publicity that I can afford, and maybe I can consider more when I get closer to the full release.
I think one of the main things to understand with Twitter, or social media in general is what it does to your brain. It creates the same response that gamblers get. We keep scrolling because we are randomly rewarded. Also I saw a tweet where someone was frustrated with the amount of interaction they were getting. I understand that twitter can hide your tweets also if they don’t like the things you’re saying, just like other social media platforms. It’s a bit disturbing to me the things that these platforms can do to push an agenda. I guess that’s something else I can put in my video game maybe.
In order to keep sanity on social media I’ve taken to doing the following.
Give 99 and take 1 - this simply means that I do my best to find ways to engage in meaningful ways to add to and not take away from others
Same team mentality - figure out a way to make things a win win for everyone in the interaction, if I feel my interaction would have low value I don’t do it a good example of this would be how I interact with hashtags like #screenshotsaturday . I only reply with my project if they ask, otherwise I only retweet them.
Reply as much as possible, when I have something that is of value
Only use social media when I have nothing better to do, if I have work/chores/human engagement/etc… those things take priority
Freedom from outcomes - I don’t have expectations for people to reply, follow, retweet, or my posts to have high engagement - I don’t check my metrics often
Abundance mindset - I feel value inside myself and I abundantly give what I can without expectations, if it isn’t well received that’s no big deal I’m to abundant to worry about someone else’s problems