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Misu

Guest
I agree with Chance earlier. Basically this is just a simple activity forming part of the social culture; nothing much.

I also dont like to contribute this at all for several reasons. One of them is that I dont use Twitter, and not even fond by the slightest (even if I do have an account that I rarely use).
The other reason which is a bit controversial, I only see social media useful getting audience ... but giving "likes" is completely meaningless. If someone follows your work, that is all that matters because your expanding your possible download rate from there. Second matter would be providing commentary and feedback, which contributes a lot for the person working. But "likes"... are the rock bottom importance in social media and its useless.
Another fact... If 100 followers is poor to you, then you have a terribly ambitious mind. For me, a hundred is fine. Of course more means better spotlight and support in the near future. But seriously. I never really gotten more than 100 in life and Ive gotten good reputation to stand on. There is no shame of getting 100 followers.

And to finalize my brutal honesty, Its not cool to tag large list of people regardless of knowing they would appreciate this thread or not. That is some class spam you did there. When I want people to see my thread, I just let them be. You dont see me tagging 100 people to one of my odd off-topic threads.

Anyway, not sure to say good luck. I really despise these stuff even if it has an advantage.
 
Thanks for your reply, Misu! My apologies to anybody who felt inconvenienced by being mentioned - that was not my intention, of course. This thread is a little more polarizing than I thought it'd be. That's too bad, but I'm glad for the people who do like the idea.

I think we're all kind of looking at each other's stuff right now randomly, and probably will be for the next few days, so I guess we can start going down the list this Monday? All we'll do is look at the person ahead of us on the list the first day, then the second person the next, then the third, etc. I think it'll be a nice way to keep up with everyone, despite some of the negative comments here. Hopefully it turns into a nice daily routine for us, and we get a larger and larger group going.

Cheers, everyone! Have a nice weekend and Easter, if you're celebrating. =)
 
I agree with most of your post, @Misu - especially about the @ mentions - but this:
Another fact... If 100 followers is poor to you, then you have a terribly ambitious mind. For me, a hundred is fine. Of course more means better spotlight and support in the near future. But seriously. I never really gotten more than 100 in life and Ive gotten good reputation to stand on. There is no shame of getting 100 followers.
I disagree greatly with this. You are vastly undervaluing the benefits of having a substantial social media presence in independent game development. The number of impressions you get on content grows exponentially with more retweets. More followers means more potential retweets, more awareness of your game, more potential customers. I hate Twitter too, but there's a reason people - especially people selling products - use it. And you just can't get the full effect of Twitter's business-related benefits without a large amount of followers.
 
I agree with most of your post, @Misu - especially about the @ mentions - but this:
Huh. I really didn't think people would mind being mentioned. The people I mentioned are all people I've talked to and know by name, and I figured it was easy enough to ignore the mention if you weren't interested. I actually went back and added extra people I forgot at first, because I felt bad about not including them. Lesson learned, I guess. Sorry, guys.
 
Huh. I really didn't think people would mind being mentioned. The people I mentioned are all people I've talked to and know by name, and I figured it was easy enough to ignore the mention if you weren't interested. I actually went back and added extra people I forgot at first, because I felt bad about not including them. Lesson learned, I guess. Sorry, guys.
Personally, I appreciated it, but it's rude to call out specific people. It puts them on the spot and they can feel like they are obligated to respond. Not to mention the amount of people tagged can make it outwardly seem like you think this topic is the most important one on the forum and everyone needs to see it.
 
Personally, I appreciated it, but it's rude to call out specific people. It puts them on the spot and they can feel like they are obligated to respond. Not to mention the amount of people tagged can make it outwardly seem like you think this topic is the most important one on the forum and everyone needs to see it.
I tagged the people I thought would like to see it, nothing more or less. I wouldn't mind being tagged like this (rather, I'd be happy someone made something and thought I'd enjoy it), so I didn't think much of it. I feel a little naive now, though. When you say it out loud, it seems obvious. Ah well. Apologies again to anyone who was offended by all my mentions.
 

Fern

Member
I would like to point out that twitter marketing does not lead to sales. I know a number of games that regularly post tweets that get 200+ retweets/likes yet they haven't sold nearly anything on Steam over the course of two years. Twitter is a good way to network with other devs and form a presence.

Something I was too lazy to say in my last comment was that I see one major flaw with this entire idea... The people in this twitter circle only benefit from those who already have a following and those who have done no marketing up until now are basically timeline pollution to those who have carefully built up a name for themselves.
 
Tagging people like this is fine, it was a once off tag about an idea that Rich potentially thought these people might be interested in. Hardly call that spam, and it's needed for people like me that don't check this sub-forum.
Rich has his heart in the right place, it's clear to me that this idea comes from a place of complete optimism and all the concerns or disagreements are mostly cynical views on social media. The motivation behind the idea, and the goal of the idea is very nice, but the implementation probably isn't the best, though I wish you luck anyway.

Also, Steam is probably a bad metric for sales nowadays, considering how much junk comes out every day, I'm not surprised that people's games aren't being seen or bought. So it sounds like you really do have to build your audience on social media or something for now, or just get extremely lucky.
 
Twitter is a good way to network with other devs and form a presence.
The people in this twitter circle only benefit from those who already have a following and those who have done no marketing up until now are basically timeline pollution to those who have carefully built up a name for themselves.
...What is a professional developer's "presence" for if it leads to absolutely no sales? If your presence leads to no new sales, then why are you worried about your fellow gmc members "polluting" your timeline?

Thank you for the kind words @Siolfor the Jackal, and others who reached out via PM. I was indeed approaching this thread from a place of complete optimism - the "issue" Seabass raised is obvious and mentioned in the original post, but it wasn't a problem to me. I knew most (or all) people joining would have less followers than me, but I thought this would be a cool way to motivate all of us and to make the climb together. I see from some of the replies I've gotten here that my thinking was a little naive, hahah!

The response to this thread has been mostly positive, but there've been a few extremely negative posts in here, along with a number of positive posts with small suggestions for changes. Because of that, I'm going to sleep on the idea today, and post tomorrow with an updated plan for the group. I think something a bit looser like a few members mentioned is probably a good idea, so I'll think in that direction. If anyone has suggestions for what they think is the best tack to take in the meantime, feel free to post them too, of course. Thanks, everybody! =)
 
D

Dylaniza

Guest
Just set up my game dev twitter and even if it doesn't help me gain followers, retweets and so forth. I still get a lot of inspiration from others work and helps me keep going on a project. Here's my twitter @DylanBrownGames.
 

chance

predictably random
Forum Staff
Moderator
(snip)
I'm going to sleep on the idea today, and post tomorrow with an updated plan for the group.
I think the wording changes you've made already are a good step. The original version seemed like a quid pro quo scheme to gain retweets and likes, just by being a group member. That's what caused concern.

The current version is more of a group (list) that shares a common interest. However, I would go a step further and avoid overt suggestions that list followers/members retweet and/or like each others tweets. Better to leave that to individual discretion. Twitter lists are fairly benign when used that way.
 

Joe Ellis

Member
This is an amazing idea and I'm gonna start a Twitter account because of this post! If you think how many millions of people are on twitter looking at "unimportant stuff" our games deserve more of a chance to get noticed

This is an amazing idea and I'm gonna start a Twitter account because of this post! If you think how many millions of people are on twitter looking at "unimportant stuff" our games deserve more of a chance to get noticed
I'm kind of intrigued why you came up with this idea, my guess is creative desperation lol, its what drives me most of the time

I agree with Chance earlier. Basically this is just a simple activity forming part of the social culture; nothing much.

I also dont like to contribute this at all for several reasons. One of them is that I dont use Twitter, and not even fond by the slightest (even if I do have an account that I rarely use).
The other reason which is a bit controversial, I only see social media useful getting audience ... but giving "likes" is completely meaningless. If someone follows your work, that is all that matters because your expanding your possible download rate from there. Second matter would be providing commentary and feedback, which contributes a lot for the person working. But "likes"... are the rock bottom importance in social media and its useless.
Another fact... If 100 followers is poor to you, then you have a terribly ambitious mind. For me, a hundred is fine. Of course more means better spotlight and support in the near future. But seriously. I never really gotten more than 100 in life and Ive gotten good reputation to stand on. There is no shame of getting 100 followers.

And to finalize my brutal honesty, Its not cool to tag large list of people regardless of knowing they would appreciate this thread or not. That is some class spam you did there. When I want people to see my thread, I just let them be. You dont see me tagging 100 people to one of my odd off-topic threads.

Anyway, not sure to say good luck. I really despise these stuff even if it has an advantage.
After reading that I see what you mean and its a good point, but I still think anyone making a game deserves to advertise it with the amount of work they put into it
I don't feel any shame about advertising (If its something that you, yourself has put hours and hours and your heart and soul into it) which probably most people making games do, well if not, you shouldn't be doing it cus thats where all the poop games come from lol
 
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True Valhalla

Full-Time Developer
GMC Elder
Participation is simple! Each day you look at the list and retweet somebody if you like their stuff. On your first day, you start with the first person after you on the list. [...] Repeat forever.
I have accumulated 20,000+ followers on Twitter (@TrueValhalla) over the past 5 years, and I really want to caution against this idea. An echo chamber like this isn't going to help you reach an audience that is genuinely interested in what you offer: your ideas, your games, your products.

Acting like a bot that mindlessly retweets whoever is "next in line" is a bad shortcut to nowhere special.

Take a genuine interest in others if you want them to take an interest in you.
 
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F

FROGANUS

Guest
so you mean just "let's follow each other on twitter"? sounds good! isn't that how it works?
the account i've been using lately though in 'experimental' phase: https://twitter.com/dudeMang44
i'll run through and try to follow a bunch of people.

i don't post or reblog tho.. i just like random stuff.. maybe i don't get social media..
 

TrunX

Member
Generally I follow (back) accounts that seem human and are related to gamedev or indiegames. When ever I see something I like I press the heart-button but I also try to not overdo it as i don't want to spam my followers feed too much. That's also why I would not participate in the mandatory RT thing but I would leave my Twitter here for the ones that are interested in following fellow GameMaker devs:
@CatboyGame
 
I have two Twitter accounts that would be related:

My main account is @retrogamingdev - I spend most of my time on this account, though I am mostly discussing retrogaming type stuff, but it can occasionally stray into newer stuff. I will warn you, I don't follow everyone who follows me - I follow people I am specifically interested in hearing from. I am trying to keep a clean follow list so I can use my main timeline effectively. It doesn't mean I won't follow you, I just wanted to get that out of the way.

My other account is specifically for the game I am working on - @100HeartsGame. I don't go on here as often, mostly when I am deep in development and sharing updates. I am using it mostly as a means to interact with other game developers and as building a promotional piece for my game (even though it isn't really available yet, or even close... but someday).

I will tell you in all honesty, artificially inflating interest in stuff doesn't really do a lot long term. You really need to tap into a community, provide real dialogue and people will naturally move toward you and find you. If you are lucky, they will find you interesting and follow you.

My best piece of advice is to honestly find 'your' community on Twitter and participate in it in a positive manner (and many people here would probably be in the same 'communities'). It might mean that you are just taking part in other peoples conversations, you may not get a lot of responses at first. But, as time goes on and people see you in their discussions, they will trust you and eventually might follow you too. Share your own stuff, screenshots, ideas... thoughts, etc... Use hashtags to help find those places, such as #indiegamedev, #gamedev or #gamemaker. I also see a lot of activity around #pixelart.

Basically, treat it like you are trying to make friends out there. Like you are trying to socialize at school, work or the bar... you have to get to know people, let people get to know you. Don't make it all artifical feeling, like just promotional crap, but honest humanity. You can end up with 100000 bots following you that will never buy anything from you, or you can have a few thousand real people who are interested in what you have and be way better off.

Good luck everyone!
 
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I don't think this idea was about artificially inflating interest, but about helping fellow developers out by exposing each other to a wider potential audience. Some of your followers might be interested in some of these projects and you wouldn't know.
 

True Valhalla

Full-Time Developer
GMC Elder
I don't think this idea was about artificially inflating interest
"Let's all follow a list of names and retweet whoever is next in line to increase the number of likes/retweets we get and inflate our follower counts regardless of substance."

Artificially inflating interest is literally the definition of this scheme.
 
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True Valhalla

Full-Time Developer
GMC Elder
"Let's all follow a list of names and retweet whoever is next in line to increase the number of likes/retweets we get and inflate our follower counts regardless of substance."
Your interpretation as illustrated by your text in quotations says more about you than anything else.
My mistake, I'l quote the source material this time:

> "keep a master list of members"
> "we'll be retweeting a new person each day"
> "go to the next person, then the next, then the next"
> "we'd have a bunch of followers"

You know, I don't think my interpretation was actually that far off the mark...
 

sylvain_l

Member
@chance
agree on the ethics, but to be honest, I think we stand on the naive side of social media.
that's not how it works. Bots, specific software to manage social media presence, data miner to find good content to share, etc... a few member of a community that decide to RT more often each other stuff is basic playchild thing.

To the others who were interested, but don't have a Twitter account yet, feel free to join as soon as you do. It's never to early to start sharing your game with a wider audience. The earlier you do, the larger your audience will be when you really want them there. Thanks for the questions and interest, everybody!
problem, I have a twitter account but don't have a game to share ;p

more seriously, will watch that thread and if something popup worth sharing will RT. But I have only 4 followers and I'm pretty sure they are all bots, so that isn much exposure XD
 
A

Ampersand

Guest
I don't have a Twitter for my gamedev I just use it mostly to spout nonsense poetry to nobody. But this certainly makes me think I ought to make one! Great idea.
 
So far, I've been using this topic solely to find other interesting projects and connect to others. A lot of people on the GMC don't use it for many things other than Q&A, tech support, game releases, and significant game updates. Because of that, I'm glad I've gotten back on Twitter. I think an ideal version of this topic should:
  • Provide a list of consenting users' Twitter accounts in OP, preferably formatted in a way so as to not appear to be a "follow these people" list
  • Talk about the benefits of properly using social media to market your games to an audience
  • Encourage others in the topic to discuss ways of doing so
Nothing more.

@True Valhalla makes some excellent points. He knows what he's talking about, and I definitely recommend following his advice.
 

sylvain_l

Member
"Artificially inflating interest" is also a definition of marketing, no?
for me it's only a small part. buzzing without doing all the rest of the marketing (= analysing the market to know what's in demand, defining your product accordingly, producing it, promoting it to the target audience and distributing it) lead to great deceptions.

and buzzing is only a specific strategy of promoting that if not done right as mostly no effect.
My notions of marketing are limited and not a social guru, but I find funny the "follow us on twitter/RT our contest to get a chance of winning our game for free campaign" it's not a good way to get more followers that are real future buyer of your game.
IMHO it just get you more followers that want your game for free. (I know the idea is that it buzz enough that even with a low ratio of transform you get some customers and inflate the followers base, but what quality of followers you end up with ? )

In that vein, the #hashtag_game_name fanart contest for me make more sens (participants are going to be genuily interested in your game and so good ambasador of it!). Of course the catch is that you need already a game out with a fanbase for that XD

Is there any good strategy that can help build a good ambasador follower base for a game that's in construction ?
(only thing I can think of is to sneak into already existing fanbase of games that are similar to the game you are creating. And that sounds like a very unfair fight: existing game fan vs. your unfinished/unplayable game, going to be hard to gain followers )
 

Phoebe Klim

Member
Analysing the market to know what's in demand, defining your product accordingly, producing it, promoting it to the target audience
Yeah, Ubisoft does that and you can see how well it's going for them. Very well! But their games are trash.

While I make games for myself, so none of that works.

My plan is to make ~5 games over 10 years, dump them in stores, maybe even consoles - heard Switch is the new gold mine - and get sales naturally.
Over those 10 years, my games will become impossible to ignore, I'll find some fans and I'll get at least minimum wage.
Which is good enough for me, I'll be able to make games for the rest of my life.

I'll probably share 10% revenue with someone in future - to do social network stuff / light marketing / send emails to PR, l because it's not my thing.

That's why I joined this Twitter circle - to motivate me to go Twitter more often than once a week.
It already was useful, I found a link to neat GML script for my next game.
 
I don't think this idea was about artificially inflating interest, but about helping fellow developers out by exposing each other to a wider potential audience. Some of your followers might be interested in some of these projects and you wouldn't know.
Sorry if my post was mis-interpreted to mean that. I was giving advice from my experience on Twitter. In theory, we all here have similar goals and could exist and help expose each other in the #gamedev community. And I don't think it would necessarily artificial.

But, it is also important to understand how Twitter works best. Follow for follow doesn't benefit anyone, sharing blindly doesn't do much, etc... instead have real conversations with each other on the platform. Have real conversations with others (people outside of this forum) in the gamedev and videogame communities on Twitter. Existing there as a real person is what is most effective in the long run.

And this maybe what was in mind already, but I just wanted to make sure people realized that just blindly sharing stuff you aren't really into just for the sake of hoping to get the same thing back isn't really a good plan of action.

It's all good either way... Good luck everyone!
 

Zodaris

Member
I haven't posted in AGES on Twitter, and honestly probably won't have much to tweet about for awhile. And noting how long it took me to login and see the notification for this thread (I check the forums often enough but only rarely login) I doubt I'd be very useful sharing posts. So maybe sometime in the future I'll come back to this.

Now, as far as "Gaming the system" goes, can you really call it that when it is specifically designed to allow and even encourage these practices? There's a reason why not only are there many bots, but also that those bots don't tend to get banned and often even get many followers. Not saying whether it's good or bad, just that Twitter (and Facebook) seem to encourage it. This may serve as a good short term boost for people, but to keep growing we should take TrueValhalla's advice as well.
 
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