haha, isn't accusing other people of psychological disorders kind of worse than talking about a tangent? (besides which, it doesn't even make sense; narcissists believe they are great, they don't believe their work is terrible at all, it's very hard for them to find faults in themselves or anything they make, they tend to easily overlook or explain away any faults as actually being virtues)

anyway, here's a comic i found today that illustrates what i mean pretty well i think:

i've heard of it before; it sounds like the inverse of narcissism -- the believe that you are great and a genius despite a lot of evidence that you are pretty ordinary

as far as psychological conditions go i think the most common one for indie game developers, or at least the one that affects me the most at least, is perfectionism. sorry if this is a tangent, but:

perfectionism is responsible for two types of indies who don't finish games: those who work on one game forever, and those that switch from game to game constantly, starting a new one without finishing the old one

with the first, the reason is that they are never satisfied with that one game, so they keep working on tiny little details of it forever, and never actually finish it, like changing particle effects here and there but never working on big parts that need getting done, or else spending inordinate amount of time on areas of the game that don't actually matter

with the second, the reason is they aren't satisfied with their game at all, they think it's going poorly, and want to make a fresh start with a new game idea. they get bored with their game, see all its bugs and problems, and just want to throw it away and start from scratch, getting rid of all the bad terrible feelings associated with the old game, and hoping the new game will go better; of course, the same thing winds up happening with the second game, and they eventually ditch that for a new project too

(a related type of the second are people who make engines forever, rather than games, and start making new engines. this type is particularly common among hardcore coders who hate game engines, because they see game engines as *not perfect enough* for their games. these type almost never finish games)

both types are afraid of playtesters playing their game, or releasing it too early, because they don't want anyone to see the problems in their work. sometimes they'll have a very few people who they trust to play their games and give them feedback, but often they won't show it to anyone at all

the answer to perfectionism, if there even is one, is to just be more objective when judging one's own work, not focusing on the few bad parts, instead focusing on what you do well. one thing that seems to work particularly well for me is playing other games, and looking for parts of those games that are worse than my own. that way you can think 'well my game may be poor, but at least it's not THIS bad, this game is truly horrible, and if this game does well and sells well and has so many fans, maybe my own game's flaws aren't as big as i think they are'

this is why everyone should go support timw's patreon; he is basically one of the only people who still focuses on finding good freeware games (there are a few others too of course)

but in any case, my personal favorite freeware game from the past 2 years is echoes+ by binary zoo (it's a free version of their xblig game, and an updated version of their old freeware game echoes)

marketing can take up enormous amounts of time, but it's also possible to pour enormous amounts of time into it with no or almost no results if you don't know what you are doing. so by paying for a marketing person, you are not only paying for the actual effort they put into it, but also for their knowledge about what to do: what works and what doesn't work

that type of knowledge you might think you can get yourself by reading books or online articles, but that's only partly true; because the marketer has done it so much, they've spent years building up that knowledge, and you can't really match that knowledge just by reading a few articles and books

basically i'd say if you can *afford* a marketer, or if you can find one who will market your game for 10% of the sales or something, then by all means go with that marketer if they have marketed games before. that will always be better than doing it yourself

but if you can't afford one or find one in your budget range, doing marketing yourself is the next best thing

also, even if you do have a marketer, you may still want to help that marketer do it, as like an assistant marketer, making the marketing a team effort, that way you can learn from what they did for your game, and then do it yourself the next game if you feel you are capable of it. that way the marketer also benefits from the knowledge you have of your game and its audience that they might lack

i'd say that about 90% of the time when an indie attempts to market their games themselves, they typically waste their efforts on things that don't work, and which if they were more experienced they'd know they wouldn't work. so just going through the process *once* with someone experienced at marketing games is often enough to teach them what works and what doesn't, after your first time marketing a game, it becomes much easier to market a second and third. but the first one will be the biggest hurdle

also keep in mind that what games succeed and fail has as much to do with luck as with the game's quality and the marketing. all 3 of those are important. you can have a great game, and a great marketer, and do *everything right*, and still the game might fail just due to some bad luck

for indie game marketing in particular, here's a list of skills any person marketing an indie game should have:

- knowing what trailers work and what doesn't, and the ability to make a good trailer
- having a website design that looks appealing/professional / the ability to create a nice website for the game
- knowing how to select screenshots that work and avoid those that don't
- knowing how to write about the game in a way that causes people to want to play it
- knowing how help a game succeed on kickstarter
- knowing how to get a game through greenlight (although this is changing, soon it will be knowing how to get a game into steam curators' lists)
- knowing which journalists, youtube let's players, streamers, etc., to send free copies of the game to for review, and how to word the emails that they send to those people
- how to price the game, and when to have sales, and how often
- maintaining social media accounts (tumblr, facebook, twitter, etc.) and getting people to like/follow them, and updating them frequently with interesting material, and interacting with fans
- maintaining a newsletter, and how to get people to sign up to the newsletter
- how to reply to the emails of players, how to answer their questions quickly and nicely
- knowing when and how early to release a game, when to update it, and what to focus on when updating/patching the game (this is more of the developer's job but also affects the game's marketing a lot)
- recognizing the game's particular niche, audience, and what makes that game special, and emphasizing that game's 'hook' to that audience so that it stands out from other games and doesn't seem like just another game in that genre
- how to build 'hype' by slowly meting out information rather than just unevenly revealing everything all at once and then having no new material to show anyone for months
- optionally, knowing how to run contests (e.g. fanart contests or something) to bring attention to a game, if a game's audience is responsive to that type of thing
- how to overall 'manage' all of the above, knowing what to emphasize at what times, and what to put the most focus on, when

the main thing is time. generally, it takes more time to make a game's code or its graphics than to make its soundtrack.

e.g. take a 3 year game project. the coding might take 3 years. the art might take 2 and a half years or 2 years. but the music? you can do the music for a 3 year game project in 3 months.

that means even if there were an *equal* number of programmers, artists, and musicians, the musicians will be oversaturated, because there's not much demand for their time

or to put it another way:

in a 10 year span of time, a programmer can code maybe 5 big games. an artist can do the art for maybe 7 game projects. but a musician, during that time, can do the soundtracks for 40 to 50 games.

as others have said, generally this varies by keyboard and OS, so we can't really provide any generalized rules. your own game might work differently on different computers, and there's no way to predict how

to avoid this, design your game such that it does not need simultaneous key presses at all is probably the best thing to do. this is not always possible, but remember that keyboards were not built to play games. they are really really horrible as game controllers, despite pc game fans thinking otherwise. you shouldn't be forcing your players to use the keyboard, have them use a joystick/controller or mouse (or perhaps a mouse plus a few hotkeys, like RTS games do it)

i've done it in less than 30 seconds, i think taking 30 seconds to verify each email is reasonable, particularly because it takes more than that to get a set of keys, paste them in an email, and hit send anyway. even if you are getting thousands of key requests (which no indie actually gets -- it's maybe a few hundred max) it's not a huge time investment to make sure they are real

also, but teegee's guidelines could be followed even if you don't want to take the time to investigate each request; basically if they are asking for more than one key, and if they are using a public email like gmail or yahoo rather than a site email, *then* investigate them, otherwise send away

math fail, 30 seconds times 100 isn't half an hour, it's 50 minutes

but think of it this way. every 30 seconds you save *saves* you from 3 copies of your game being sold that you don't profit off of (these emails ask for 3 keys or more). those sales would have gone to you, but instead they go to the person you gave the keys to

if your game is 10$, that's 30$ that you wouldn't have had

30 seconds for 30$? i'll take it, it's a dollar a second

i preferred the old icons, but i may be in a minority cuz a lot of forum members weren't even born yet when zelda1 came out or something

ya this dev sounds dumb. i *always* verify if a person is legit when giving away free copies of my game. typically this takes 15 seconds: you google their name or site and see whether it actually does review games or not, and its traffic etc., i doubt this trick would work on devs who do this type of checking, i just wonder how common it is to do what i do vs doing what this guy does

it's worth reminding people to check for fakes though, especially if the fakes can mimic the real ones so closely

i got an email one minute ago from an aol email saying they couldn't register on tigs even though they have a non-gmail account, and that they never got the email to their aol account. i'm not sure if it's related to this issue but it might be

i would have posted here already if i got a reply

idk its just really frustrating being a "representative" of sorts for this forum and not being able to do anything

who here is friends with derek and/or matthew or knows them IRL?

i know them on facebook, but barely talk to them (derek did wish me happy birthday yesterday though)

anyway: for the time being i'll edit my first post to include the 10MinuteMail trick

this is why we need new admins!

just want to note that i interviewed rekcah for the frontpage, if anyone is interested in reading more about this game! i found his answers to my interview questions pretty interesting:

http://www.tigsource.com/2014/09/24/bandsag/

no, cause all the things i mentioned have the same source -- people having power over other people, groups having power over other groups. if you remove 'power', you remove oppression.

damn it ron paul if you overthrow the govt. the patriarchy isn't going to disappear.

ya, but the state is more than the government, the 'state' means power structures in general, it includes corporations, police, military, courts, academics/universities, doctors and lawyers, even the IGF

@paul

At least you finally reveal your true card: anarchy

BUT

Your summary is incomplete and that you are right does not mean I'm automatically wrong.

Let's unravel this more closely!

1. You don't get to define when modern feminism start to be modern to win an argument, because modern mean that we are talking to the up to date version, which does include intersection, there is a reason it was inlcude in feminism and it was to adress shortcoming : P nice try

2. Within your own summary you failed to report the point I was making, ie that because the whole exist independently of its part does not mean the part does not exist on their own. A circle of flower is still a circle if made with fire even though the parts are different however a square of fire or flower is still not circle despite sharing similar part.

Similarly you know we can have vastly different game base on similar rules or even assets, as long the structure itself is different. It's not so much these parts need name but that they are also independent element from the whole, the whole forest vs trees dilemma. That one is true does not preclude the other to be true, a forest is made of tree does not preclude trees from existing. It works both way it's a non argument!

So that first part was already a way to demonstrate the shortcoming of your rhetoric, my second statements is more about calling a cat a cat as it does little to be a real argument.

Effectively, while it explain why you think that way, it explain very little about why you don't think patriarchy exist nor demonstrate it does not exist. Nor you demonstrate how patriarchy is effectively inside a bigger system you failed to define entirely at that point. That's why your statement is rhetorical, while in previous post I make a case about why patriarchy exist and is essential to define feminism, and how it produce gender role even in its anthropological definition mechanically. Not such things with your statements.

3. Regarding your example with a monster, you can also say that targeting vital part is essential to bring the monster down, ie attacking the heart or the brain who happen to be part, also correctly identifying part also allow to have control of the fight by understanding the interaction between them, ie understand them as a "system", i our monster metaphor it mean that to aim for the vital part you need to weaken the monster first like cutting appendices to reduce option to the monster. BTW that's how hercules dealt with the hydra, he burned the head so it could attain a vital part and land the final blow.

4. You haven't demonstrate the relation of the state with feminism problems at all, so the truth assertion not an argument but a belief. BTW bringing down the state does not mean that the social practice is brought down with him. If anything reality shows that the state lean favorably in terms of law toward feminism but the social practice does not follow. And if anything patriarchy is what allow the state to continue as it effectively target part of the population and weaken them by blocking access to resource, effectively allowing control of it's individual against themselves, that's why in the law he can pretend to be feminist and not enforce this value, it allow itself to escape criticism and appease the weaker element. Patriarchy enforce the state not the other way around, because institution are born from the power of the few.

A good example of this is how socio economical pressure have increased after the first social action of feminism like increased gendered toys add (like lego or video games who were gender neutral at first) letting society taking care of its member despite the law. BTW patriarchy transcend gender roles as we see that through the ages, even when gender attribute reverse the power remain ties to men, the last example of this is the reverse perception of who is "the childlike sex driven idiots incapable of managing money", use to be women, now its men, without power or prestige switching hand at all.

the thing ca mentioned was part of what i meant, yeah -- there are definitely e.g. black women feminists who resent that white feminists care so little about racism, and tend to downplay its importance. you just have to read twitter to find many discussions about that. so when i said that most feminists don't even know what intersectionality is, i meant that literally. even this browser doesn't know what intersectionality is; it's underlined in red, whereas patriarchy is not. that should tell you something right there

and i haven't demonstrated that the state causes the problems i mentioned, sure, but that's because that isn't the thread's purpose, and because other people have already done that better than me. if you're interested, read the anarchist literature; you are familiar with the feminist literature so it shouldn't be a stretch to expand your horizons a little

also, to be clear jamesprimate, i'm not "progressively minded" at all, except in the loose sense of wanting progress, but it's progress in a different direction. but i do not believe in many leftist causes -- for example, free health care or the minimum wage or a law saying that women have to be paid equal pay for equal work. those are progressive causes that i necessarily wouldn't support because i don't believe the state should exist. i don't think it'd hurt to do them, it'd probably help even, in the short term, but it'd be a band-aid, it wouldn't be solving the core issues

going after the heart of the monster rather than the limbs doesn't mean you don't care about what the limbs are doing, though. e.g. if one limb shooting someone, and another limb torturing some people, and another limb holding innocents in jail, and another limb forcing people to starve, going after the heart stops all of that at once. you have to choose your target somehow, and it's best to choose the target that will do the most good

i am not saying it's a bad thing to do things that are short-term good of course, for instance, i set up the indie game kiva group, which collectively has lent $54,000+ to the working poor in the third world -- http://www.kiva.org/team/indiegames -- that too is a "band-aide" in that microloans won't solve the fundamental problems of poverty caused by the state. i also do minor things like sign and spread petitions and articles about gamergate, etc. (you can check my twitter for that, at rinkuhero). also my current game project is an action-adventure game starring two women with a developing romantic relationship between them, and one of them is a scientist

but if that stuff were *all* i did, it'd be fruitless, you have to hit the heart, or evil will just keep happening. some people can specialize in cutting off limbs or fingers if they want though, sure, that's not a bad thing. it's not even necessarily a bad thing if they, individually, incorrectly view their own target limb as the biggest danger to the world. but it becomes an issue if they *help* the other limbs while attacking their target limb

so basically, as gimmy mentioned, gendered toys are a problem, but i don't think you can fight every problem in the world, you have to pick some. the doctors without borders group right now is fighting ebola, not gendered toys, and that's fine. feminists are fighting gendered toys, and not ebola, and that's also fine. but we shouldn't moralize and say that one group is more important than any other, or that if you don't do everything you can against one particularly worthy cause that means you're a bad person. e.g., have you donated to doctors without borders, to help them fight ebola? i have, but i don't hold that up over you, saying you don't care about ebola if you didn't donate anything

basically, here is my advice for how to do the most good in the world. this will matter more than anything else you can do. buy some property. put some solar panels on it. go off of the electricity grid. have a career that allows you to work from home. grow all your own food. get a 3D printer, and learn to create most of the items you need through it. through opting out of the "system", and becoming self-sufficient, the structure of society can be changed, and oppression reduced. what creates the oppression is the system of some people having power over other people. what can reduce that is people becoming self-sufficient as much as possible (in food, energy, financially, and however else possible). if enough people do that, most of the problems of the world can be resolved, through a change in the way society is set up. patriarchy, poverty, the drug wars, racial inequality, classism, and many other problems would be greatly reduced if people lived like i describe, rather than as cattle serving corporations and governments

also remember that interactivity is more than just gamer-style gameplay; traditional gameplay is a subset of interactivity. a game can include interactivity that isn't gameplay too, as part of its theme. for example, in planescape torment, there were a lot of interactive conversations; the player chose which responses to say out of a list (and that list was influenced by your stats). or in persona 4, there were the social links thing, where you'd talk to friends and increase friendships by making dialogue choices. so interactivity doesn't always have to be in the form of the traditional gameplay of 'collect weapons, shoot baddies' but can also be something like 'select dialogue responses' or 'decide who to become friends with'

either write your other ideas down and save them for later and continue to work on one, or include your other ideas as mini-games in your main idea

this is a pretty common thing among indies though, and i've come to feel that it's a part of perfectionism. someone desires to make the "perfect" game, or even the "perfect" first game, and they can't decide which of their games is perfect rather than bad. the solution is often to give up on perfectionism, to admit that it's okay to make bad games sometimes, as learning experiences. i think everyone recognizes that it's better to *finish* a terrible game than to start a bunch of great game design ideas that never get done and constantly move from project to project. everyone that is except a person's own unconscious mind or ego.

spoiling a game should not be a bannable offense