Well not all empty and pessimistic, but yeah there’s certainly a lot more of that than good content.

Dang I need one of those spinner things…

An unfortunate ‘secret’ for most indie titles is that the vast majority of their sales are on discount, usually during launch or one of the big week long sales. Not a lot of people buy indie games at full sticker price unless its a pretty high quality title.

So your $200K net revenue would be at absolute max, but is realistically ~50-80% of that.

As I recall, its around 5%-20% of players leave a review, usually closer to 5% unless something about the game makes people want to talk about it, for both good and bad.

A long time ago on a random modders forum, I was a part of a very small contest to judge mods at the end of the year. No prizes, just kind of a honorary showcase post which I guess was considered cool at the time.

It essentially fell down to just me to play about ~6 entries over the course of the month and then post the rankings.

Well I was having dire internet and computer issues at the time. My internet was bad but my average was suddenly dragging at 0.5kb/s on average and I had what I later learned was a failing HDD. I kept thinking it would eventually get better but it didn’t. I barely got a single mod downloaded.

Now the dumb part: Rather than be a sane person and admit I was having technical issues and would have to hand it over to someone else (which I was already running up on the deadline, leaving anyone I handed it to unable to complete it before then), but instead I tried to power through.

I kept expecting the internet to magically get better and then use the power of last minute energy to tackle it. When the magic never happened, at the last minute I simply ranked the mods based on vibe with the only one I played being in the number one spot.

No one seemed to dispute it until one contestant saw his entry didn’t have a single download and immediately figured out I never played it. Then it all came into question and soon enough the site Admins banned me from being a judge and canceled the whole thing.

That was the last contest the forum hosted until it ended up folding a year or two later.

I’m not so sure - I’m in the world of indie game dev and silently publishing a game without any advertising is usually a death sentence for a game. Especially in a busy market where finding anything decent is a chore.

Granted, the more effective advertising is usually getting streamers or reviewers to check a game out. Traditional ads, in my experience, have not been valuable.

I think ghosting is a bit much. I know it sucks to bring the player aside and have the talk if something isn’t going quite right, but I’d usually much prefer to allow them to try and course correct a bit.

One of the first times I ever joined a DnD campaign I got ghosted and it sucked. I wouldn’t want to inflict that feeling on other players if I could help it.

In retrospect its obvious. At the time it happened, it just seemed like this player was just suddenly mid-campaign throwing a wrench in everything. No one knew about the personal beef, not even the DM it was directed at.

Everyone in private said they were enjoying the game but this one player kept ruining the fun. DM said he’ll talk with him (which is how he found out about the personal beef) but they couldn’t resolve it amicabily.

So hence the very awkward campaign-ending-but-actually-a-new-one starting without that specific player.

You are correct though, the ‘new’ campaign went on for awhile but then the social group eventually went their separate directions anyways and it ended for good.

Edit: Actually rereading my original post, I’m not trying to argue that this was a good solution. I’m going to edit this and the initial post to clarify that.

The situation I got to witness was the player was upset with the DM for personal out-of-game reasons. To be petty and spiteful, they started to do many actions to derail as much as they could.

Eventually the DM pulled the player aside and they had a talk but the enthusiasm for the campaign was gone and everyone just kind of dropped out.

Much easier to prematurely end the campaign because the DM is “busy with a lot of stuff” but then he does a one shot with the exact same group minus one person - Then what do you know - The one shot went so well that they want to turn it into a full campaign. Oh but, they invited a new player who is joining their new campaign and its the “just right” amount of players and they can’t really add anyone else right now, especially the person excluded, but maybe next time?

Edit: This is intended to be mostly sarcastic as this is a real funky thing to do. Ideally if you have a problem player, its better to talk it out and either solve the problem or end it on understood terms.

I worded that poorly, I meant too late in progression of the game’s biomes*.

By the time you’re in the Ashlands, you’ve likely moved hundreds or thousands of tin/copper/iron/silver/black metal. It feels like tier 2 portals should have been unlocked around the time you get an artisan table since the game makes you double back for more iron to make the padded set and then once again for mistland weapons - Which just feels tedious since roaming the swamps with plains tier gear makes the enemies laughable.

(I know you can mine the ancient giants armor for scrap iron too but I seem to get like 95% copper 5% iron scrap.)

I love/hate them.

I generally like the sandboxy gameplay and exploration, but what I dislike is that nearly all of them have some BS design flaw that the devs double down on, and a lot of them tend to rely on padded grind as ‘progression’ which often just feels awful.

They introduce a tier 2 portal in the Ashlands that let’s you teleport metal.

IMO, a little too late (in terms of the game’s biome progression), but still useful because sailing to and from the Ashlands in a bloated barge is a real bad time.

Edit: added a parenthesis for clarity

And on top of that, not make sailing a skill, the map reveal range hilariously short even in wide open oceans, not having much to do other than sometimes stopping to fish or collect chitin, and really only one threat in the ocean for 95% of the game who stops being a real threat once you’re beyond wood/flint arrows (the actual threat being your fellow players shooting the boat’s wonky collision)

I fully expect them to go back and rework sailing but right now its not a great time.

Fake one. Bought it a decade ago and its still doing just fine.

That actually sucks man, I’m sorry, that’s not how a first time DM for any new system should be treated.

I’m in the same boat. I also got rulebooks for Pathfinder 2E + Mutants and Masterminds in case I wanted to mix it up.

Now they all have a neat little spot on the shelf to collect dust.

Readers are voracious and always looking for new things to devour. But your writing isn’t for them, its for you. Every page is slowly honing your craft, getting your ideas onto paper, and turning an amorphous idea blob into a tangible story.

I hate when people tell me this but annoyingly it works, but sometimes ‘just write’ is a solid strategy to just start putting words on the page. Sometimes its rough and you’ll want to go back to edit it, sometimes seeing things start to flow is a great feeling, and the words get easier.

The other trick is spite. Just lots of spite. Spite for the sometimes terrible writing that gets published anyways, spite for the reader who you might lure into falling into love with a character you plan to brutally murder, and spite for the music player that can’t seem to find the right song to match your mood for the scene you’re writing.

I’ve been struggling to get a game project rolling forward. All my previous games have been average to mediocre so I’ve been having this fear of focusing on the wrong project and landing on another weak entry.

I told myself that I have to just decide on something this week but its Thursday and I’m only marginally closer to deciding than before.

Also my computer mouse broke and I can’t quite find a comfy replacement.

It most definitely takes a toll. Most devs don’t even talk about the weird sadness you get after finally getting something out the door either.

I don’t mean to make it all sound bad though, there is some genuine joy in making something and seeing it come together. Anyways good luck on your game dev projects.