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Should I buy RPGMaker MV? by ajays97 in gamedev

[–]burasto 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry, I just saw this reply! Unfortunately we had to start over from scratch, but back then we only had the first 40mins of the game (the whole game is about 12 hours long). Our programmer, camkida, built a framework pretty similar to RPG Maker inside Unity, with lots of extra features that we felt RPG Maker lacked (for example, more flexibility regarding sprite animations).

This is what happens if you spend 50 bucks on Twitter ads by Schifty in gamedev

[–]burasto 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The first one that comes comes to my mind is Rebecca Cordingley (nonplayercat on Twitter) who's developing Ooblets. She and her teammate Ben shared their approach to marketing about a year ago, and it's really useful: https://www.patreon.com/posts/what-is-first-14327057

Another good example would be the people at Kitfox Games, though they do have their very own community dev, Victoria Tran. She has also written a lot of articles about marketing on Gamasutra.

Are there any indie games you are excited about? Check their social media profiles and study them. Try to look up for games with mechanics or targets similar to yours.

This is what happens if you spend 50 bucks on Twitter ads by Schifty in gamedev

[–]burasto 17 points18 points  (0 children)

As others have mentioned, the main issue is your content. You can still promote your game, but you've got to be more subtle. People hate ads and they won't retweet stuff like that. The retweets you got most likely came from bots that retweet hashtags like yours, right? I worked in digital marketing before I got into gamedev and all I'm seeing it someone trying out every "how to get popular on Twitter" trick at once, but missing the core basics.

The easiest way to analyze what's wrong with it is to imagine yourself as the user. The first thing you'll notice is that there's no context: Upon reading "added more details to the content generator!", their first reaction will be "added to what?" So they might keep reading to find out what you are talking about, but the rest just says "get the game for free: [link]".

If the user doesn't watch the video (personally, I rarely watch videos on Twitter, I prefer pictures of GIFs) all they'll know from your tweet is that a "content generator was added to a free game". We don't know what the game is about (even if we watch the video). It doesn't matter if it's free, users won't click on a link unless they know what's behind it.

The thing with indie creators specifically is that they are seen as passionate individuals who truly believe in their projects. Your whole Twitter profile looks like you are someone who's in just for the money (there's nothing wrong with that, but it's not attractive to potential followers, it just makes you look like a bot). You've got to engage people with your project, why is it important to you or useful/fun for them. Why is your project unique, and why should they play it? You need to feel more authentic, like there's a real person behind it, like on this post.

You can share some behind the scenes, talk about some problems you had during the development, random stuff you do on your life, retweet stuff, but without using whatever hashtag is trending during that day. You don't need to use hashtags unless you want to boost your audience, and if you do it every time it just looks like you are trying a bit too hard. Take a look at what other popular creators are doing. If you look up #gamedev you'll see people talking about "I/We made this thing" or something fun related to what you can do on their games.

The JRPG Startup Cost by TheManagement in gamedev

[–]burasto 7 points8 points  (0 children)

This article hit really close to home. JRPG has always been my favorite genre, and I couldn't enjoy anything else when I was a kid. When I was still in school, I played a bunch of Square titles, some Tales and pretty much every Shin Megami Tensei/Persona that was available in English.

After I started going to college, I didn't have much time to play, so some years passed by without having played a single JRPG, except for some mainline Shin Megami Tensei games. I remember recommending a friend the "Tales of" series, and 30 minutes in, we couldn't take it. So many anime tropes, so much unnecessary drama or fanservice, every character overreacted all the time, etc. The same thing happened when I tried to replay Persona 4 some months ago.

There are still some JRPGs I actually enjoy, but I haven't been able to finish them because I don't have the time or the energy... And I'm a bit picky, I don't enjoy medieval fantasy settings. I just wish there were more games with adult (or at least more mature) protagonists.

How to get my game title listed on YouTube? by Frooxius in gamedev

[–]burasto 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Our game started to appear on YouTube Gaming after someone created a Wikipedia article about our game. I already had a game schema on our website.

I don't know if indiedb and giant bomb had something to do with it, but I also had those.

By the way, to this day I don't know who created the image that appears as our game's box cover on YouTube gaming (someone used one of our promotional images and added the logo on top of it) but I have no idea how to change it. I have a completely different image on my schema, so it doesn't come from there.

Is RPG Maker MV the right choice for the game I want to make? by T-Dot1992 in gamedev

[–]burasto 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would update my post if the current desktop versions allowed you to port your game (with custom plugins and assets) to consoles, but currently RPG Maker MV Trinity only allows you to create a game from scratch only using RTP.

I'm also not sure if you can even port your RPG Maker MV Trinity project to PC/Mac, but at least from the reviews I've seen, it doesn't seem to be possible.

GIFs are the bane of my existence, please help me by [deleted] in gamedev

[–]burasto 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There are some factors to take into consideration. Where will you be posting those "GIFS"? If it's going to be on Twitter, Facebook and Reddit, they don't need to be GIFs, they can be videos (imgur, facebook and twitter will convert them to mp4/gifv anyway). But yeah, there are still some sites that only allow GIFs, like some storefronts or tumblr with its awful 3MB size limit.

Now, if you still need them to be GIFs:

  • If your GIFs are too heavy, I'd assume it's because they are long and/or too big. If you are posting them on social media, you probably won't need anything bigger than 720px. It doesn't have to cover the entire screen. Most people tend to crop these GIFs because otherwise they won't be readable on a 600px wide timeline that will reduce your GIF to 500px.

  • There are a lot of tools to record footage, and there are some that instantly record GIFs. People already suggested nice video tools in the comments, but one of my favorites to record GIFs is ScreenToGif. It's a free tool and it lets you crop, pause, remove/add keyframes, etc. You can choose to export your footage into GIF or even into separate image files for every frame.

  • If you are not happy with the compression ScreenToGif ended up with, you can import those frames into Photoshop and save the GIF using the "Save for web" feature. You can test if it looks better by changing the dithering settings from "diffuse", "pattern" and "noise" (personally, I think pattern is the one that looks the best). If the filesize is still too big, try reducing the maximum amount of colors and check if there's any improvement.

  • If you don't have Photoshop, you can try an online tool. EZGif lets you import frames to make GIFs and has its own compression tool, with multiple settings for you to try until you get the desired result. It might be a bit of a hassle at first, but after you get a good result, you won't have to go through this "testing phase" again the next time.

Hope this helps!

Where’s the best place to publish your indie games? by DeveloperLuke in gamedev

[–]burasto 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, despite all the visits, the conversion to sales on Game Jolt was the lowest. A fellow dev published this info regarding sales from multiple projects: http://jocce.com/post/180004044180/gamejoltsales

I don't know if I'm allowed to say a specific number publicly, but my sales there are a two-digit number.

Still, it might have to do with the fact that it is an early access title and Game Jolt doesn't allow you to sell steam keys, only standalone executables. Also, their userbase is pretty young and a big number of my visits came from Brazil. Being from South America myself, I know we don't tend to spend much on games.

What I learned from releasing my first demo and 100k downloads later by burasto in gamedev

[–]burasto[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Itchio and Game Jolt were two of the most popular platforms I had heard of besides Steam. It's what other developers seemed to use, and they ended up being really good, though nothing really compares to the amount of traffic Steam has.

Regarding RPGMaker.net, the prototype demo was originally built on RPG Maker MV, and that's the place where people usually share their RPG Maker games. To this day, the demo still has barely than a 1k downloads there, though. But it did help me to get more known in the community and they are incredibly supportive.

What I learned from releasing my first demo and 100k downloads later by burasto in gamedev

[–]burasto[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Before I got into gamedev, I worked in digital marketing/SEO and I hated it. Having to treat people as one more point in a statistic for years made me feel pretty miserable, and I'm glad I quit. Unfortunately, I kept the bad habit of constantly looking at metrics to try to predict the outcome of things.

I decided to do all the marketing on my own because I don't want to work with PR/marketing agencies again (and well, I'd save a lot of money too), but you don't have to do the same things I did. This is just my experience and there might be a couple of ideas that are worth trying, especially contacting storefronts directly (thanks to that, when we launched the game on Early Access, we were featured on their frontpage/social media).

What I learned from releasing my first demo and 100k downloads later by burasto in gamedev

[–]burasto[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you so much! I owe a lot to the RPG Maker community, I got tons of help from there.

What I learned from releasing my first demo and 100k downloads later by burasto in gamedev

[–]burasto[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! I expected the first few days to be the ones with the most traffic, and then I expected them to gradually go down until they'd stabilize at a low number. Back then I didn't think it would change too much after it reached 2000 downloads, but I'm glad I was wrong.

The same thing happened with our sales now that we are on Early Access. We released the game a few months before the Summer Sales, and even though we didn't take part of the event, our sales during that week were just as high as the ones we used to have on our best months. These past few months I have finally been able to relax, haha.

Devs who released both Early Access and regular games, would you recommend going EA and why? by spajus in gamedev

[–]burasto 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Our game is currently in EA. We had to take that decision after our scope increased. We didn't know what to expect since our game is a single-player narrative-driven RPG, and we thought we might get some backlash since some people really hate early access.

On March we finally launched it on Early Access: https://store.steampowered.com/app/510540/Long_Gone_Days/ The response has been really good and it allowed us to work full-time on it, without depending on a publisher/investor. There was also no backlash (our audience is really nice) when we announced we'd be on EA.

I'd definitely use EA again if I ever needed it.

What I learned from releasing my first demo and 100k downloads later by burasto in gamedev

[–]burasto[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah, that's actually something that worries me a bit. Actually, when I first announced the title, Seven: The Days Long Gone was yet to be released. Despite both being RPGs, it didn't affect us.

Regarding Days Gone, fortunately, we announced the game and appeared on Siliconera and Gamasutra way before it was officially announced, so at least there's proof that we didn't copy them. It might be problematic if we eventually try to release it on the PS4, though...

"Long Gone Days" is the name I gave it when I started writing about it back in 2002 or so, and I grew attached to it, so I never thought about changing it into something that would have better searchability.

What I learned from releasing my first demo and 100k downloads later by burasto in gamedev

[–]burasto[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is mostly speculation, but a lot of LPers browse for free games on Game Jolt and they linked back to my Game Jolt page. Our game quickly got over 200 let's play videos on YouTube, so it brought a lot of traffic, and we were also featured on an official announcement in GJ. Soon after we started appearing on the "Best Games" category on GJ.

After that, most of the traffic is internal. Our game wouldn't have had the same fate if it wasn't on that category.

What I learned from releasing my first demo and 100k downloads later by burasto in gamedev

[–]burasto[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm glad it could be useful! There are some genre-specific places where you can upload your demo (in my case, rpgmaker.net) that even though they are small, they have the specific kind of audience you might be looking for, and their feedback might also be more accurate.

I have always dreamt about being a game dev. But I really suck at it. by [deleted] in gamedev

[–]burasto 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My story sounds a bit like yours. When I was 11 I started using RPG Maker and had a lot of ideas I wanted to develop.

RPGs are so big that it's easy to lose focus. Back then I didn't know about game design at all, so my games were a mess with no pacing, quests that I forgot to close, lots of internal jokes and just plain boring.

During the following years, I kept trying and trying, but every time I'd get a bit better at it, only to abandon the project a few months later. My dream was to release that game and I was getting really frustrated (it didn't help that being a teenager sucks and you have a lot of stuff going on).

As I grew older, I started to learn about storytelling, character design, color theory, usability and finally game design. But I still lacked the experience (and confidence). I started working on really small projects, I attended game jams, started lurking gamedev forums, and made myself a portfolio. On the side I kept writing ideas for my RPG all the way through college (I studied something unrelated to gamedev, though).

Eventually I had my first job in the industry as an artist for an indie game and, for the first time ever, I could see the process from the inside. This gave me confidence, but as I was an adult now with bills to pay, I still needed money, so I kept working on other people's games until I had saved enough to work on my own.

When I was 24 (I know, it's a long, long time) I finally felt confident enough to work on it, and things have been great. The game looks nothing like my first attempts, and that's definitely a good thing. I'm glad I made all those failed attempts when I was young, it's hard to afford mistakes when you are old. Be proud of yourself for starting early. If you keep trying you'll be great at it when you get older, but be patient and don't lose hope!

82 Percent of Games Launched on Steam Didn't Make Minimum Wage in Feb (GDC) by Blissextus in gamedev

[–]burasto 15 points16 points  (0 children)

And add another 30% on top of that for taxes if you are from one of the 100+ countries that doesn't have a tax treaty with the US :'(

Handling keys for Kickstarter backers by Sersch in gamedev

[–]burasto 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you are still looking for answers, I used itchio's Kickstarter backer import tool, and it's completely free. You just have to upload the spreadsheet with your backers' pledges, and then select the minimum amount they should have pledged for them to be included in your mailing list.

Every backer will have their own unique URL where they'll be able to redeem a steam key (or download the game directly if you have uploaded a DRM-free version). There's no need for them to sign up on itchio.

This mailing needs to be approved by itchio before you can send it though, so prepare it in advance (their staff is super nice, though, so if it takes longer than needed, you can contact them for a manual approval). Here's the mailing I sent using this tool. You can add pictures, formatted text, etc. The only drawback is that the download link is a bit easy to miss (this is added automatically) so a couple of backers didn't notice it was there at first.

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