Post Next Fest Bummers
A small forward: A lot of the below is going to read like a bunch of complaining. I’m writing this for myself for a few reasons, which I will hopefully get into!
I released a demo for my upcoming game Life on NEPTUNE about 2 weeks ago for Steam Next Fest. How’d it go?
Not great!
Being honest, I think I had my expectations set way too high for the event. I came into it with about 140 wishlists and left with 296. I’m glad there was an increase, but I am still so far away from getting to the goal of 7,000 - 10,000. In my mind, I think I imagined the capsule art naturally being intriguing enough to draw in people to play. Maybe there would be some word of mouth or a streamer would play it. In reality, there were over 4000 games included in the festival, and my game got drowned out. I’ll include a footnote with a bit of an expansion on it.
A big reason for this failure is I didn’t do much/any marketing beforehand. I posted a trailer to youtube and tried to shoot out messages onto every platform I use. I uploaded a build to itch, hoping to maybe catch the interest of the 1000 people that follow me there. I put the steam demo out a bit early since I heard it was good practice to do so. Unfortunately, it really didn’t work! A lot of people ended up not even playing the demo even when they wishlisted- only 62 players during the event. Itchio had more players, at about 180.
I posted 2 short form videos to TikTok and Instagram, but I think both of them were too dry and promotional to catch any attention. I have other theories on why these videos underperform, but they’re a little conspiratorial. I’ll mention it in a footnote below.
In the midst of all of this, I read a manifesto from a manifesto jam on itchio named NO ONE IS GOING TO BUY YOUR GAME:
https://illomens.itch.io/no-one-is-going-to-buy-your-game
My gist of it is a call to free yourself from the idea of making a game for anyone but yourself. This is an idea I agree with! It’s something I’ve sort of been doing for the past 5 years of game development. Unfortunately for me, I decided at some point that I would tie my life into the hope that I have great success with a game in the future, and the trailer I have hitched the horse of life onto is Life on NEPTUNE. It was a game that seemed easy to market and hit on a lot of trendy and acceptable traits- home building and socializing. Stardew like?
Talking about my game in this way and talking about wishlists, marketing, etc. feels so crass. I've heard many other artists express this sentiment, but all of this business stuff is antithetical to productivity, creativity, etc- yet the world requires this and I will try to meet it with☺.
In the process of doing this, I feel as if I have almost corrupted my spirit of creation in some ways. Let’s see how it happened:
My initial scope for Life on NEPTUNE was far more limited in scope. You’d only see one room at a time and click on doors to load a new room. You’d look out windows and use a long stick to fish packages in. It was a lot more passive as a game. I then introduced the concept of exploring an island. I had intended the player to just walk around the island the whole time looking for boxes. The flying to boxes thing is a result of not setting a limit on the distance of activating boxes, and that eventually was spun out into the idea of a combo system later.
Somewhere around here, I became convinced that this game had “Market Potential”
I decided next that maybe there should be some sort of way to go between islands. So you’d need an inventory to store everything… And then you’d need this, and this, and this…
In the chase to make my game feel more like a Game, I built up a bunch of systems. I am actually happy with a lot of this- I think it’s a pretty unique gameplay loop I’ve landed on that once is understood, is fun. But all of this came from the desire to make something I could Sell.
In the forward, I mentioned that I was going to get personal. This is where it gets personal. I have the privilege of living at home with the family. I’ve managed to sustain myself from previous projects, but I can tell my time of creating like this is quickly drawing to an end for many reasons. I’ve either got to make this work or find something else to do with my life. (footnote 3) So Life on NEPTUNE has become my Hindenberg, my last hope that I have saddled with all of my hopes and dreams of being able to live off of my art. It’s an ugly thing to burden a piece of art with, and something I am trying not to broadcast (outside of this post).
When I pair my astronomical hopes with the reality of the perceived underperformance of the demo during nextfest, I enter gridlock. I’ve been really bad about working on the game recently, bitter about the desires of the gaming public, and lost with the direction of my life. I struggle a lot with thinking about how much privilege I have to work on games like this, to sit in my room for two weeks straight from noon to morning working on the demo for this game. Having creative ambition seems like a curse- I love/need to work on art, but this drive has led me to make bad decisions about life that leaves me in a space that feels a whole lot like limbo. Like Neptune.
Let’s look on the bright side. Most everyone who has played the demo seems positive about it, outside of a few bugs. Plus, it’s not over yet. I can still post short form promo videos on social media as long as I make it entertaining. I could try emailing more games journalists. While I do feel sort of eh about making this a commercial project, I still believe in this game as a piece of art by me. I believe that the final game will be something that hopefully blooms like a flower for an unsuspecting player.
I think I will get the game done. I feel like I almost have no choice. A part of me wants to spend two weeks (like I did with Ice Cream Machine Needs Power) making a small lofi horror game to post for some quick interest on itch.io. But again, that feels like me caving to the Market. Part of Greener Grass Awaits was caving to the audience as well though, out of recognition that the only way to increase the amount of eyes on your game is through horror. We’ll see.
Where to from here? Well, I’ve got to get back on it. Work on the game, make promotional videos, and get it done sometime this fall. Maybe I’ll put it out in November like GTA 6- I feel like I can safely assume that most people who are playing GTA were probably not going to play my game. I’ll see you there?
Below are the footnotes:
1. There were so so so many AI games this year! It was pretty discouraging as someone who was browsing the event. Only later, when they enabled personalization, did I find more games of interest. I read a common sentiment online that people were sort of burnt out on next fest the first few days since there was so much AI stuff, which makes me wonder if the discoverability of games was impacted.
2. Since I have a creator account on both instagram and tiktok, I believe they are trying to make me pay for views. Everytime I upload a video they try and put an ad in front of me to make it seem enticing. I don’t want to believe this fully, since it definitely seems like a cope, but a small part of me wonders! I generally don’t like conspiratorial thought though, so it’s two things on the scales of thought.
3. I do know having a day job isn't exclusory to making art. However, I do believe it would cut my ability to create. If I sound a bit entitled here: my apologies.
If you’ve read this far- thank you! Here’s some art I’ve enjoyed recently:
Betrayal at Club Low was a very fun and interesting time, and the demo to the followup was fun as well. I’ve subscribed to the Criterion Channel and have been watching movies here and there- Tokyo Story made me cry an unbelievable amount. I bought a Super Furry Animals CD named Guerillas, and while the first listen left me unimpressed I really started to enjoy the second. Lastly, Dead Space has me itching to try and make a third person game.
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