my various projects and thoughts
Often when developing games we find ourselves in a bubble of development. We trick ourselves into thinking things are set in stone when they aren’t. We start believing that we have to do things a certain way. Everyone does it eventually. So I created a series of questions to ask yourself while in different stages of development. Did I miss any important ones? Send them to me on Twitter or Discord!
Thought I’d make a quick post this week on a list of things you can do right now to kickstart your brand new social media account. I got the inspiration for this when someone in Devtalk+ was asking me for advice on their game dev / art Twitter that they hadn’t used for years so they were looking for a fresh start.
This guide is primarily for game dev and art accounts. However, other types of accounts can take some ideas and implement them as well. If you find any of these helpful or something I missed, please let me know!
Before we start… decide what your account will focus on. Will it be for your studio? Or promoting your graphic design to game devs? Or sharing your art to the world? This will make it much easier moving forward.
Note: for personal accounts (such as my own) they can have multiple aspects but can have 1 primary focus. For my personal account, I’ll RT fanart from anime and games I like and post about my chihuahua Leroy, but the primary focus is game development ideas and philosophies (i.e. not sharing my game dev progress but rather talking about game dev concepts like marketing).
Continue reading “4 Things to do Right Now to Kickstart Your New Game Dev Twitter/Instagram”
A few months ago foleso and I were sitting around as usual trying to answer the 2930809384 questions we have about marketing and target audience and whatnot. We were talking about boys love / yaoi media—namely, who the target audience for all ages games were. Most of the boys love games we see are 18+, while both of us would rather make all ages games.
As marketers, we come up with assumptions and then try to prove them wrong. Marketing ≠ advertising. Marketing is about trying to find who can benefit from your product/service and how to better build it for them. We had a lot of assumptions about yaoi fans and what they enjoy, so the only next step was to test those. I started a survey.
Some terms, before we get started:
As I mentioned before, foleso and I are both fans of boys love media, but we know our tastes don’t represent the majority. Our assumptions at the beginning were:
The survey we conducted ended with 222 responses and was posted on Discord, Twitter, Amino, deviantArt, Facebook, and more. We asked people to share it around, especially other BL game developers, since our reach is only so big.
Click page 2 to get started! (Warning: very long)
Enamored Risks was my / Crystal Game Works’ NaNoRenO 2020 entry. At the time of writing this (or at least, starting), we released it a couple days ago and are currently working on the Steam build.
A few stats on the game:
So, where to begin? I suppose the beginning…
Click page 2 to begin!
I just wanted to make a quick update post to talk about the past month, what my next few months hopefully look like, etc. I also just… really wanted to put this down in writing? Namely, this whole “thing”. This whole pandemic. We’re in such an odd, scary time that most people never thought possible. Over spring break, my plans- my future- came to a screeching halt.
We decided to go to the beach, to the Mississippi coast just for a day or two (at this time, there had been no confirmed nor alleged cases in Mississippi). I had been making jokes with school friends on Discord ever since spring break started, but as the days went on things started to get more serious. “What if someone comes back from spring break with it” stopped being a joke and more of an actual future occurrence. The night before we were supposed to leave, all of the US’s borders to Europe (i.e. travel) were closed. Some people a few days prior had joked “what if they cancel school”. Now most of us were hoping they would. The next day, they did.
In one email, our Chancellor gave us an extra week of spring break, ordered all teachers to move to indefinite online learning, canceled all on-campus or campus-sponsored events, and postponed graduation ceremonies. (Exactly a week later he ordered us online for the entire semester, but I digress.) I love college- I love all of the cool events I get to go to and help put on, I love hanging out with friends, I love living down there. I hated high school- I never went to things besides choir trips, I had very few friends, and I just hated it. I’d been working on several campus events, all of which are canceled or slimmed down & moved online.
So, what am I doing now? I’ve moved back in with my parents (something I was planning to do after graduation for a time anyway). My job hunting has basically stopped- as has all my email threads with potential employers. I’m working on school work at home (typically from 12-5). I’ve been self-isolating for 3 weeks now. NaNoRenO has been going strong- there were a few road bumps but we’re still on track. I’ve been working on Asterism some still as well as another script on the side.
That’s about it. I wish I had all day every day to do VN dev, but sadly I still have the same homework load as before… I’m hoping things will pick up but in this climate that’s unlikely. I’ll be working on a few new marketing / dev editorials soon though!
Thanks for reading- stay safe and please don’t go to large gatherings!