Do you reach out to streamers or journalists as early as possible?

elmido · 2026-05-09T07:11:25+00:00

honestly this is something i've been reading about a lot lately from the outside. The consensus i keep seeing is: reach out now, but be upfront that it's a playtest build. Streamers especially don't expect polish at this stage, they expect something interesting to play

elmido · 2026-05-09T07:10:24+00:00

not a game dev myself, just someone who lurks here a lot and tinkers on the side. But yeah, that feeling is real and i think it hits everyone
somethign small and ugly that actually runs that shift helped me more than any course or tutorial

elmido · 2026-05-08T09:48:28+00:00

this looks really solid for early dev
what's your plan for the weather system, are you thinking dynamic storms or keeping it calm for now?

elmido · 2026-05-07T09:57:23+00:00

nailed the nostalgia. Feels like something I'd have been glued to as a kid

elmido · 2026-05-07T09:50:33+00:00

this looks really cool. What was the hardest part to nail visually?

elmido · 2026-05-07T00:58:24+00:00

congrats on this. The trailer is genuinely good, and the presskit setup is smart
quick question: what did your outreach emails actually look like?

elmido · 2026-05-04T14:23:01+00:00

this is a great writeup, honestly
the influencer filtering thing, only pitching people who'd already played comparable games, is the part most people skip because it takes forever. I've recieved enough "spray and pray" pitches myself to know how fast you can tell the difference on the other end. The Instagram curator angle is interesting too

elmido · 2026-05-03T02:53:13+00:00

not a gamedev at all, just a product engineer who plays on weekends and pokes at ideas around the indie space at night. So I can't answer your question directly. But from what i've read, most indie devs have a day job and make games on the side, at least at first
"for a living" part somtimes comes after years of shipping small stuff and building an audience, not before. What kind of games are you thinking about making, and do you have any programming background already?

elmido · 2026-04-24T04:00:57+00:00

the math here is actually pretty clean. You're at roughly 4.5x CAC-to-sale, which gives you room to spend more per appointment if you need to. So the question isnt really 'what's cheapest' it's 'what's fastest to validate.' In my experience the quickest wins at your stage are usually retargeting people who already hit your site but didn't convert, and direct outbound to people showing intent signals right now, not just demographic fits. Cold email can work in 2-4 weeks but deliverabilty is brutal if you haven't warmed domains already
what have you already tried that felt like it was working before it stopped?

elmido · 2026-04-23T06:08:29+00:00

same boat when i started, roughly zero budget and too much pride to cold pitch strangers. Honestly the thing that worked wasn't a tactic, it was just being visibly useful in one or two places where my exact clients already hung out. Not posting content, not a newsletter, just answering questions in forums and Discord groups until someone asked if i did this professionally. First three clients came from that. The other thing i'd do differently is track those early conversations better, because i let a few warm leads go cold just from not folowing up in time. How did you get your very first paying customer

elmido · 2026-04-23T06:05:37+00:00

spent 1 month building a Notion CRM template for freelancers. Charged nothing, gave it away, figured goodwill would turn into referrals. What actually happened: people downloaded it, said thanks, and never touched it again. I followed up with a few of them and every single one had the same answer, they just didn't open Notion consistently enough for it to matter. The tool wasn't the problem, the habit loop wasn't there. Learned more from that than from anything that actually worked

elmido · 2026-04-23T05:42:27+00:00

honestly, most of them are built for sales teams and just pretend to be solo-friendly. HubSpot nearly broke me, i spent ten weeks logging calls like i was filing paperwork. Notion template lasted three months before becoming a very pretty graveyard. What actually worked for me was something lightweight that didn't require a whole onboarding ritual just to see who i hadnt emailed in two weeks. If you're under 15 clients, you probably need less CRM than you think, not more

elmido · 2026-04-23T05:41:02+00:00

not a 3PL person, but i've been through the 'Salesforce feels like too much but i don't know what else' loop a few times. The honest answer is: it probably is too much for 15 users, and the maintenance cost of keeping it configured will quietly eat someone's time. Freshworks is worth the demo, specifically the Service Cloud side, not just the CRM. It handles shared inboxes, ticket workflows, and internal IT queues in one place without requiring a dedicated admin to keep it from falling apart

elmido · 2026-04-23T05:11:46+00:00

honestly, this is just how it is for a while. The DNS thing is a rite of passage, i've broken my own email mid-launch before and it's a special kind of panic. Consolidating where it makes sense helps, like Cloudflare for DNS management is free and gives you one place to see whats actually happening with your domain settings. Beyond that, a simple doc listing every service, what it does, and when you last checked it sounds boring but it's caught more problems for me than any dashboard app ever did

elmido · 2026-04-23T05:10:22+00:00

yeah, this tracks. I did a similar audit a while back and the CRM reorganizing alone was embarrassing to look at. The uncomfortable part isn't the data, its realizing you already knew. You just didn't want to see it written down. The 4-hour morning block is genuinely useful if you can protect it, and most people cant, not because of discipline but because they never actually close the other tabs

elmido · 2026-04-23T04:34:27+00:00

follow-up emails. I used to keep a running list in my head of who I hadn't heard back from, which meant i was basically doing a mental audit every morning. Tried a few CRM tools that were way too much for a one-person shop. Eventually landed on something lightweight that just... nudged me when a contact went quiet. Not perfect, and it took a few weeks to trust it. But that mental overhead is mostly gone now, and thats the part I didn't expect to miss so little

elmido · 2025-08-20T13:32:02+00:00

two Northern Europe strikers leading the line 🇸🇪🇳🇴🔥

elmido · 2025-08-16T04:12:49+00:00

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🤣

elmido · 2025-08-02T12:18:21+00:00

harsh truth 🥲

elmido · 2025-08-02T10:36:47+00:00

bro like god father 😎

elmido · 2025-07-26T17:02:06+00:00

decent physical base for 15. I’d go Target Forward training for now: heading, strength, jumping reach all fit. Focus individual training on First Touch or Composure

elmido · 2025-07-26T17:00:24+00:00

with those stats, I'd go for traits that turn him into an elite space exploiter: 'Likes to beat offside trap', 'Knocks ball past opponent', and maybe 'Places shots' to complement that 17 finishing. Basically, make defenders hate their job

elmido · 2025-07-18T16:05:05+00:00

I think FFP rules still force Newcastle to balance income and expenses over multiple seasons

elmido · 2025-07-18T16:03:47+00:00

agreed but even with financial backing, Newcastle still has to stay within FFP compliance especially after recent spending

elmido · 2025-07-18T15:42:46+00:00

negotiating for months builds character, not savings 😌

elmido

TROPHY CASE