Distribution Questions ~ Good Practices for Playable Demos

[ZettianJuggernaut]

Let me give a little of who I am and where I'm at, then I'll get to my questions.

I'm a hobby game designer with one published mobile game, but life catch up to me a couple of years ago, so I had to put all of my other games on the back burner. But as of recently I've decided I want to get back into the game industry, but this time a little more reasonable (mainly aiming for a QA job). I've been working on my resume and portfolio website, but I'm hoping to make splash with putting one of my unfinished games (I'm going to refer to as RH) reworked as a playable demo up on my site.

Which leads to my questions, is there a better format for that? Is it better as a window executable or HTML5? What kind of restraints does HTML5 have? Everything in RH is designed for mobile, on- screen clickable, smaller screen sizes, ect.

The main reason for me asking here, is I don't own either the Desktop and HTML5 Licenses for GameMaker, and I've been eyeing the idea of HTML5, but I don't want to find out I can't do anything I want with it. Also just looking for insight from other people who have created demos before.

Hopefully I've made my questions clear enough, and thanks you in advance.

 

[Yal]

but I'm hoping to make splash with putting one of my unfinished games

This is very unlikely, especially if your portfolio website is the only place you upload the game. A lot of the big indie splashes lately had to work for the recognition, and many got known through Kickstarter campaigns (since that's one of those places that get a lot of traffic - at least it used to a couple of years ago).

mainly aiming for a QA job

This is just dangerous with the industry being what it is today - several of the big companies basically just hire QA testers when a new game is in development, overwork them because they're young and starry-eyed, and then fire them the moment the game hits gold master status because now they're not needed anymore. Make sure to do some proper research and avoid companies like EA (and anything they've gobbled up) and Ubisoft like the plague.

 

[ZettianJuggernaut]

This is very unlikely, especially if your portfolio website is the only place you upload the game. A lot of the big indie splashes lately had to work for the recognition, and many got known through Kickstarter campaigns (since that's one of those places that get a lot of traffic - at least it used to a couple of years ago).

To be clear, I just meant as a good look for my portfolio, not as something like the next big indie hit. I know that takes alot of work, I've followed the game industry pretty much my whole life, I'm not new to the scene.

This is just dangerous with the industry being what it is today - several of the big companies basically just hire QA testers when a new game is in development, overwork them because they're young and starry-eyed, and then fire them the moment the game hits gold master status because now they're not needed anymore. Make sure to do some proper research and avoid companies like EA (and anything they've gobbled up) and Ubisoft like the plague.

I get that (most QA jobs are listed as temporary anyway), but I want to get my foot in the door somewhere, and it's at least in the industry I want to be in. This isn't something I've decided on a whim, I'm not expecting Unicorns and Rainbows here.

What I was looking for, was some insight from people experienced in using GM, and exporting to different platforms.

 

[chirpy]

It really all depends on the gameplay. Web is indeed way more constrained and has all kinds of pitfalls and details with browser implementations, but it is also way more accessible to players. You can easily publish to sites like newgrounds and see how it goes; with reviews, interviewers may not need to play the game to be impressed.

If the gameplay is small and simple enough (no physics, no file saves, no special aspect ratio nor resolution, not too much audio nor shaders), you probably won't get into too much trouble on the web platform. ** Absolutely no guarantees though **

If the gameplay is a bit more complex, making a demo reel from the PC build (or even existing mobile build) is probably best way to demonstrate it. Consider that we all know how lots of players buy Steam games that they never install, you get the idea how difficult it is to get people to install your game and try it out.

Take a look at itch.io and newgrounds, you'll get an idea about roughly what kinds of projects generally work in PC browsers. Good luck with job hunting.