What's with the lack of interest lately in the Upcoming section.

[Killswitch]

Be the change you wish to see.

Grab a buddy or two and tag-team post up the threads, ask questions, whatever. Make a game plan. Activity begets activity. Think Newton's first law of motion.

That's my advice.

Although a bonk in the head as a reminder, like this thread, doesn't really hurt.

I'd listen to her, be the change you wish to see or I can bonk you on the head. Either one works.

[arcticdog]

Excellent post as always arcticdog.

Thank you. Thank you. Here all week. Don't forget to tip your server...

I do hope I didn't come across as some whining self entitled kid who believes they should be successful just because they did something. That wasn't my intention.

As I said, I (mistakenly - I'll openly say it was my fault) assumed that the community here would be interested in getting involved collaboratively with the developers in an open way they don't get to do with games developed for other/larger platforms. I can accept that his approach has been received as being "small time".

My intention wasn't to insinuate that's the case with you. So apologies if you took it that way. I'm sure you've seen examples of those that think that way though.

As far as your "mistake" was concerned.. I don't think it's 100% a mistake. Again, I think it's a matter of finding your audience and not taking an "all or nothing" approach with what you're looking for. You won't get 70K plays on your game on OUYA, but you will probably find a small group of reliable testers since the community is smaller. I'd wager a guess it's fair to say that even the platform you re-directed your efforts to has a limit to the number who were willing to tolerate a game out if it's in an alpha state. The sample just happened to be statistically higher, which should be expected of any other platform competing with OUYA outside of Gamestick, so finding people who may be just curious in addition to actually being willing to provide feedback is pretty high.

In my own experience, I've found "open" to be a bit of a double edged sword when releasing unfinished products for test. Personally (again, my opinion, others may disagree).. unless you need to target a wide array of hardware configurations that you can't begin to afford on your own (such as a release on PC, or devices that connect to Google Play), it's better to have a smaller, focused group of honest testers willing to give you constructive feedback than getting a huge number of people that you can't count on to give you worthwhile opinions. Play count only measures curiosity at worst, or you have a pretty attractive app even in alpha state at best. But when the depth of the sample is super large, people tend to feel they can be invisible and consume without bothering to give you a response, good, bad, constructive or not.

There are also dangers of making an unfinished game widely available to a number of people. The best feedback you get is through iteration. How many of those completely random strangers will just dismiss everything about it going forward because they don't understand your intention of releasing it unfinished, and how many will bother to try the next iteration?

I think there's a fair bit of psychology involved.

I got a fair bit of feedback from Twitter and through my email about the game - some good, some bad, as to be expected. I actually expected about 1% of those plays. I don't have the in depth stats on how many of those plays were unique - that's why I've always used the statistic of x number of plays. I'm just happy that people were playing it on that platform - something I hadn't had enough of on the OUYA.

It's certainly reassuring that you're on the right track if you managed to get a lot of people to play. Just curious... how helpful was the feedback you got on Twitter in 140 character chunks?
Also curious.. if you hadn't gotten all of those plays by releasing it elsewhere, what would have been the fate of your game? Abandonment? Try to fix what you think is broken? More marketing?

As I said before - that was my understanding (from the Kickstarter, and OUYA's own 'marketing') as to what the console would be giving access too. Again, I'm man enough to say that It's been my mistake to make that assumption.

In my opinion, I think it's just a matter of not admitting defeat, but scaling expectations and finding worth in what you get. There's a difference between wanting feedback, and wanting massive affirmation (either that it's a good or bad design). The lines blur, I agree. But a "good job" is not really the kind of feed back that I find useful. A "good job with the way you handled the boss on level 2" is a little better (and wow.. I think that does fit 140 characters).

Indeed, my goals are the same as they always have been since getting interested in game development - to make fun games that are played and enjoyed by as many people as possible. And I agree that, because I do not want to target multiple platforms, the OUYA is not the best choice of delivery method for me. I'm not one to shy away from bad feedback - but just getting it is at least a start!

If you're looking for volume usage, perhaps OUYA will be a bit more viable in time. I suppose the next year or so will be critical for OUYA to prove that with the number of Android TV devices that may or may not flood the market.

[Grimbarian]

Just curious... how helpful was the feedback you got on Twitter in 140 character chunks?
Also curious.. if you hadn't gotten all of those plays by releasing it elsewhere, what would have been the fate of your game? Abandonment? Try to fix what you think is broken? More marketing?

The feedback was helpful through volume rather than large detailed posts - when more people state they "like the firing being automatic as it adds a tactical element" than those that state "wish I had control of the firing" - then I'm happy that I'm on the right track. Feedback on this element on OUYA was about 50/50 (that means 1 liked it and 1 didn't).

As for the fate of the game - I have an average of about 5 game ideas a day, so I'd have moved onto something else. Again, my expectations of games on the OUYA are small, simple, fun games - hopefully some with new unique elements. It's the adventure of discover-ability that I was most interested in owning an OUYA for. If there was no audience for a game I was interested in making, I'd move onto creating the next.

[Jake53]

I used to comment more but I would get my hopes up and then the project would be abandoned or repeatedly delayed and I would post irritable comments. The devs don't deserve my impatience, I'd rather be surprised when something good comes out instead of knowing from the beginning of development.

[Nitrogen_Widget]

I used to comment more but I would get my hopes up and then the project would be abandoned or repeatedly delayed and I would post irritable comments. The devs don't deserve my impatience, I'd rather be surprised when something good comes out instead of knowing from the beginning of development.

Except for the irritable comments i feel the same.
Walking dead anyone?

[azsouthendzone]

Just seems the nature of indie/ android games is hype after release.

[Killswitch]

So the consensus is say nothing and make devs feel like outcasts. Ugh....

[azsouthendzone]

People are excited or they aren't. I want more Whispering Willows, the Cave, Bombsquad, and less 8 bit Zelda clones. Thats what you dont want to hear and probably not what you think Ouya is all about but I have been playing Leo's Fortune side loaded all night, a beautiful and fun game and a lot of the games I see I feel like I played before, a long time ago.

Some of the best games on here are games that unless you play em, it's hard to know ahead of time if you will like it. It's just hard to show massive enthusiasm when you aren't sold yet.

[xAD]

Sorry, even though I visit Upcoming regularly, I'm just not much for posting about someone else's in-dev project.
90% of what I'd like to say is how I'd do things, and I'd much rather see how they did things and possibly learn something.

If a dev wants to gauge activity, they should put in a video and watch the counter, IMO.

[Paul Laimal-Convoy]

Another thing for me is that these threads should get moved and edited into the other existing games that are out now threads. I think people have had posts moved or removed as they were posted in the wrong thread, maybe?

Anyway, I for one am more interested in the actual games that are out now. Even then, perhaps due to my timezone, I have found games out at Discover before they are posted at either upcoming or existing games (or before I see them at the site anyway).

Also, I don't want to get excited by a new game, only to have it not work on my controller and/or for no demo to come out. I am just not interested in shallow sales blurbs or promises at a thread but would rather play the game to see if it's any good.

Plus, in the first/main post on any thread, if that post features a video, it NEVER displays properly. It shows a square window, as opposed to an oblong, with most of the video cut off. I think the link to youtube is also un-clickable. That's another reason I gave up with the upcoming section. With the "already out" section, I can just download the demo (if it's out) and play it, so the video isn't needed.