Indie Games SA

edited in General
Hi all,

We used to frequent the SA-GameDev forums but it would seem that the site has become (and apparently will continue to be) a ghost-town. We have been developing games for a few years and recently started doing it more seriously and we've always felt that there's a serious lack of exposure in South-Africa (even amongst ourselves) when it comes to Indie Dev.

So, we created http://indiegames.co.za/ and it will serve (if the community decides to pick up on the idea) as a place where you can make posts about your games and read reviews and articles about what other indie devs are up to.

Please note that it was never our intention to replace this site as we believe the two sites can work together very well.

At the moment, we need content and we plan on rectifying that by writing about YOU. So if you have something you would like mentioned (even if it's in early stages) give us a shout with the needed info and we'll get on it! You can also register on the site and write the post yourself, whichever would suit you better.

Sincerely,
Bigbadwofl and the Indie Games SA Team

Comments

  • edited
    I'm sorry, but what is this new site supposed to do that couldn't have been done here as a large community?

    SAgameDev shut down and wouldn't give up the URL, so the SAgameDev community started up MakeGamesSA. I'm having a hard time seeing the difference between the current SAgameDev site and Indie Games SA - both appear to exist solely to let certain people be "in charge" instead of letting the community govern itself.

    Side question: As an indie dev, what do I get out of taking time out of developing my game to give your site free content? You can't be offering visibility numbers or partnerships with developers and artists, you need said free content to even have a chance at establishing those, right?

    P.S. Why aren't you posting your Ludum Dare entries here?! C'mon!

    P.P.S. It would be awesome to have your help making MGSA look better instead of splitting community effort.
  • edited
    Thanks for the comment,

    Sure, after 2 hours of being live there might not seem to be much of a difference. At first glance the only thing setting IGSA apart from SAGD is the fact that we know how to develop sites and use grammar correctly. But it goes much deeper than that.

    Let's look at what MakeGamesSA provides users: An active forum and a wiki. I think anyone can agree that if your aim is to get a quick glance at the state of Indie Games in SA (especially from the perspective of someone not active in the Indie scene) this medium is not ideal. Don't get me wrong, it's great for active discussion and in-depth info but to utilize the resource you need time.

    Time is not something Indie Devs give up lightly (as you succinctly stated yourself) and if you are planning on making an impact you need to do it in as little time as possible (again, especially when dealing with non devs) and hence: Indie Games SA.

    As for content: we are very much able to write that ourselves. The fact that you can register and create the content 'for us' is just an extra feature. I think your outlook on the whole thing is maybe just a bit wrong. The community of Make Games SA does not own Indie Development, nobody does. That's sort of the idea of being indie. More exposure is good and if you plan on using it, great. If you don't plan on 'taking time out of developing your game' you will have used one less avenue at your disposal and the loss is ultimately yours.

    Again, allow me to reiterate, Indie Games SA does not plan on overthrowing the amazing community here at Make Games SA, hell we even removed the forum when we found out about this site because we would like to augment the community, not divide it.

    Indie Devs Unite!
    (not squabble)

    P.S. Just found out about this site a few days ago. I definitely plan to be active here on future projects.
  • Your site's objectives sound exactly like what SAGD wants to do.
  • edited
    @aodendaal

    You're right. And we got sick of waiting.

    Edit: Allow me to clarify. We got sick of waiting for SAGD to become what it should be.
  • But it's up and running, it's just that not many people are posting about themselves or their games there (have you posted yours?). How are you going to encourage people to share information on your site rather than there or to bother at all?
  • Cool stuff, the more the merrier.

    Check out my upcoming CCG, System Crash, releasing in the next month or two. If you wanna chat about it, drop me a line.
    Thanked by 1hanli
  • Have you seen the site?

    What I think you're not getting is that I enjoy writing. I am fully capable to write content myself, hell I just need a link to your work and I'm good to go.

    I understand that there will be people against the idea of 'another' gamedev site for South-Africa but ultimately, there is no place for non GameDev people to read reviews and get a quick 5 minute insight into the state of the industry.

    Off home, will be back to check the forums later.
    Cheers
  • @bigbadwofl: When MGSA opened up, there was a lot of discussion about having a front end with support for articles, news items, etc. In the end, it was recognised that setting that up would be a ton of ongoing work for someone and that few members were able to dedicate that amount of time. Case in point: DevMag.za.net has a lot less new content than it used to, people are busy and writing content is hard.

    If you feel that you're able to produce that sort of content and maintain that pace, why not volunteer to be the person that sets up the MGSA front page for that? That way you have all the visitors and traffic from MGSA already, you have extra help when you need it AND you're not going against your concept of uniting local indies, win-win, right?

    I mean, I get that you might have only found out about MGSA a few days ago and that you might have been working on the IGSA site for a while now and would have felt bad about not launching. But honestly, the problems that you're saying you're trying to solve are best solved by working with others and utilizing the attention they're already getting. If you didn't know about MGSA before, how are people supposed to find out about IGSA? Surely whatever solution you have for that problem could be equally applied to MGSA and would benefit the entire community as a whole already here instead of just raising visibility for IGSA on its own.

    SAgameDev refused to work with MGSA because of stupid ego bullshit. I'd love it if you were on the MGSA team (our AGM is coming up alarmingly soon, FYI) and really uniting instead of asking people to start being all amandla at two separate websites that shouldn't actually be split.
  • @dislekcia: Thanks for the well-written reply. You can understand that the fact that MGSA discussed having a front-end for articles, etc... but didn't actually do it couldn't feature in my decision to any extent. Writing content is hard, yes, but I think I deserve a shot.

    Concerning traffic, you're right. MGSA already has a userbase and creating a 'new' site that might split the traffic would be a bad move. But, just because we're on different domains doesn't mean we have to be 'physically' separate does it? I'd be more than willing to add a menu item on IGSA to the forums on MGSA and vice-versa. Or, in a worst case scenario, move IGSA over to MGSA's hosting. Heck, I would even be completely open to input from the community.

    What I'm trying to say is, I'm open to discussion on this topic. Let's make it work.
    Thanked by 1hanli
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    @bigbadwofl I won't go on about the slight irony in creating another site to unite Indie Devs.

    Like @dislekcia is saying we would like to have you aboard MGSA. The writing of articles was, if I recall correctly, left to Dev.Mag since it was an existing structure that deals with articles for/about South African game development. So if you want you can email me at Julian[dawt]Pritchard[at]devmag[dawt]org[dawt]za . Since if your goal is to give South African Indies more exposure a site with a longer history, catalogue of articles, and daily pageviews is surely a better place to promote on?

    Oh and please feel free to browse http://devmag.org.za and see what I am talking about. I am currently thinking bad things about @dislekcia for getting the URL wrong.
  • At first glance the only thing setting IGSA apart from SAGD is the fact that we know how to develop sites and use grammar correctly.
    lol.

    Kneejerk reaction when I saw the topic was "lolwutnotagain", but I have to say the site is pretty! :) Nice job on that.
  • Just had a look at Devmag and my issue is that it isn't very outsider friendly. If I'm not developing games (or at least not actively looking for info on how to develop them), opening a site and seeing 'How to Choose Colours Procedurally', '13 More Tips for Making a Fun Platformer' and '50 Tips for Working with Unity' is a sure fire way of getting me to close the tab.

    And I totally understand that your target audience expects those kinds of posts. It's exactly the kind of site I want to frequent (and now that I know about it, I will), but it doesn't do much to spread awareness beyond the limits of Indie Devs.

    If however you're talking about a redesign to cater for both audiences, and everything in between, that's another story altogether and we can talk. But I get the impression you're thinking of adding Reviews on top of the existing content?
  • edited
    @bigbadwofl well I am interested in hearing your ideas. Yes the most recent stuff has been developer focused, but that has not always been the case. I mean IGSA looks rather cool, and I would like to hear you out and see how we can work together.

    Dev.Mag is a community driven site. The problem is that it's driven by those who write it. So if we just have people who write technical articles: then we just have technical articles. If we have people that write dev articles and news/story articles, then we have those. If the formatting of the site could change to encourage greater readership than should be done.

    Here are some older Dev.Mag articles which are not in the technical direction.

    http://devmag.org.za/2009/04/29/game-dev-from-the-dark-continent/
    http://devmag.org.za/2010/02/18/local-pretties-bounty-arms/
    http://devmag.org.za/2009/04/25/ultimate-quest/
    http://devmag.org.za/2009/11/04/competition-23-results/

    There are likely articles somewhere in the archives which would be more like what you would like to write. But I think I explained the current output rather sufficiently already.
  • Great stuff, let's talk. I'm spending the rest of the evening watching some series' with the missus, but I'll mail you tomorrow morning.
  • Awesome! Now we're cooking with gas :)

    Bringing things under one banner seems the best way to go, merging hosting isn't too difficult - it's the content that matters, after all. What sort of stuff would you see being friendlier on the MGSA front page? You should probably talk to @Tuism and @DuncanBellSA (did I get that right?) about the stuff they were talking about implementing.

    Where in SA are you? Is there a chance you could make a meetup and talk about this with people face to face?
  • edited
    Aaaaand I'm back at work. Thought we needed to chat a bit more here before I spoke to anybody in specific.

    I live in Gauteng. Most of you are from the Western Cape area, right?

    Obviously DevMag has its place and so does MGSA and I don't mind contributing to both. But where do you guys see the division being?

    My ideal solution would be to have a front-end for MGSA (much like indiegames.co.za) where you could spend a few minutes and get a good impression of the indie scene at that point in time. I.e. it would feature a slider to showcase a few things and then have sections for Reviews (SA Indie Devs and Games only), Screenshots and the occasional short article. Perhaps we could also include demo/download links?

    I don't see myself taking the role of a technical article writer as I spend way too much time doing technical stuff while developing. (I would however like to contribute some tutorials to DevMag from time to time.)

    Like I said, at the moment MGSA only serves to benefit developers and I don't think DevMag should be modified to cater for two vastly different audiences. But then, maybe I'm wrong? Maybe MGSA doesn't benefit from serving two audiences? Maybe neither site does?

    Am I rambling? Let me know what you guys think and we can take it from there.
  • My first reaction (like @Elyaradine) was also one of "oh no, not again", but looking at the site, you really do touch on something none of the other local sites has never really focused on, and that's reviews of local indie games. I can see that being a great niche, and it really is something that is separate from the dev community itself. If that's going to be your focus, awesome, I personally think it's a great complement to what's happening on MGSA and DevMag. That would mean that your site is more of a home to indie gamers than indie game devs though ;)

    Good luck :)
    Thanked by 2hanli bigbadwofl
  • edited
    Interesting discussions and I see where everyone is coming from.

    From a very early stage I suggested (like @dislekcia mentioned) that we have a front page that's more friendly to the general, non-dev, non-hardcore users. The point being to be useful to anyone who is interested in indie games in SA - not just the core set of developers and coders. A lot of that hinged on articles and news and content that's beyond forum threads. After much discussion, we agreed that there's simply not time for someone to dedicate themselves to that, and without that dedicated person/team/group, that front page will simply be an empty shell, mocked by the same people who we would have tried to cater for. Case in point - DevMag's awesome content died down to a trickle then barely drips. It's tough to upkeep content.

    So where our presentation ended up is a function of a couple of things

    1) Content generating time - we didn't want to put unwanted pressure on our members to generate content on a regular basis.
    2) Dev time - we didn't want to put in tons of dev time to make it work exactly like we wanted. There were technical as well as time shortcomings.
    3) Still tried to make it as non-stakeholder-friendly as possible given points 1 and 2

    So if you're onboard and willing to dedicate yourself to content (like really), then I don't see why not doing things under one banner - having a whole bunch of disperate bodies is one of the main reasons why some things don't take off, because people are too busy trying to make noises about their own respective properties. If all related attention were to be drawn to one property, there's no harm in people getting there, then deciding whether they're interested in game dev, or local games, or whatever else we think to apply our group to.

    That said, was the idea of indiegames.co.za purely to review locally produced games? If so, erm, it's not gonna get a fat lot of content (on a future and ongoing basis), and would likely not draw as big an audience as a community that includes devs.
  • Hey man, great to have another voice in the thread.

    Firstly, I've spoken with Julian from DevMag and it seems I'll be getting on board to help generate content for that site. As I mentioned, I'm not too interested in writing technical articles other than tutorials.

    In the mean time, I've been carrying on work at IGSA and I'll probably continue doing so. I'd rather not get into physically merging sites (not that I'm completely unswayable on the point.) We could always extent the current homepage to provide a link to IGSA. I also think it'd be a cool idea to somehow make it clear that IGSA is basically a subset of MGSA (I've already linked to MGSA from my site) but I'm not exactly sure how we'd go about doing that. Simply branding IGSA as MGSA doesn't feel like a logical thing to do. But again, it doesn't matter to me, we can discuss that.

    Lastly, concerning your point on the amount of content that will be available. The idea is to focus on games that are already out as well as games that are still under development. I know that there are forums available that serve that purpose but having to trawl through them to get a quick look is a pain. So even though content will be 'limited' to an extent it's really something I believe needs to be done. We're not going to get anywhere by limiting ourselves to forums.

    If you feel it is 100% required for IGSA to move to the MGSA hosting and completely rebranding it, could you please motivate how that would be more beneficial that simply cross-linking between the two sites?

    Thanks, and looking forward to discussing this further.
  • edited
    Lastly, concerning your point on the amount of content that will be available. The idea is to focus on games that are already out as well as games that are still under development. I know that there are forums available that serve that purpose but having to trawl through them to get a quick look is a pain. So even though content will be 'limited' to an extent it's really something I believe needs to be done. We're not going to get anywhere by limiting ourselves to forums.
    I think what I've said's being misunderstood (which happens ALL the time :P my own shortcoming :P)

    What I meant wasn't that there's not a lot of stuff existing, I meant that in competition with a general gaming portal (lazygamer for example), what would the differentiator be that would make people bookmark and return to that as opposed to lazygamer? My view is that a pure game review and news site would be in competition with another, and by virtue of limiting the content to local, it would lose out, as the audience who would be interested in local games would probably be interested in international games too, unless they were actively active in the dev community. In which case a game dev community would hit more home.
    I know that there are forums available that serve that purpose but having to trawl through them to get a quick look is a pain. So even though content will be 'limited' to an extent it's really something I believe needs to be done. We're not going to get anywhere by limiting ourselves to forums.
    And I'm in complete agreement regarding content being hidden in forums. Previously we wanted to create a system where content could be easily accessed like news articles, while still being initiated and stored in forum format. It may sound nonsensical, but it really would have worked if we had the time/knowhow/inclination to maintain and upkeep it. We eventually decided to move away from a content-based approach due to the aforementioned constraints.

    If we have someone to build the system and to maintain, upkeep it, we definitely should create a content friendly portal, like was described above. But we really ultimately don't want to take away from valuable game dev time that everyone is so short on :) So unless there is real dedication to the function, we should leave it alone. I know I can do some admin, but I know I won't be able to dedicate myself to generating content, whatever the system. The same can be said of so many people too.
    If you feel it is 100% required for IGSA to move to the MGSA hosting and completely rebranding it, could you please motivate how that would be more beneficial that simply cross-linking between the two sites?
    Well I wouldn't say it's a requirement, but it's more of what I think an intuitive solution. People generally hit only so many places online on a regular basis. Having one URL and one place for everyone to go to makes the whole community one unit. Having multiple points of contact will only dilute traffic. More than enough people are too lazy to go to one place regularly, nevermind two. True story.

    When trying to promote a community, if indeed it's "a" community, you share an identity. If one set of people say "check out makegamesSA.com!" and another say "check out indiegames.co.za!" and someone else shouts "remember gamedev.mag!" and someone else says "don't forget to visit sagamedev.co.za!" it just is plain confusing for people who aren't already in the community and induces "argh bugger it".

    I think no amount of cross-linking and "in association with" or "part of" labels will get people to be less lazy :)

    Hope this makes sense to you :) And if anyone else wants to jump in please do! :)
  • Great insights, I'll try to reply as concisely as you have.
    what would the differentiator be that would make people bookmark and return to that as opposed to lazygamer?
    I see sites like lazygamer catering for more mainstream games. Sure there's the occasional review / mention of the more indie stuff, but ultimately that's not what they're catering for.
    the audience who would be interested in local games would probably be interested in international games too, unless they were actively active in the dev community. In which case a game dev community would hit more home.
    I agree with this in part. People interested in local games would be interested in international games too. But running a site that caters for both, I think would be a bit of a disaster. I know people who are interested in seeing what indie developers are up to in SA but aren't active developers themselves. Sure, they're in the minority, but they do exist and I don't think we're in any state (in SA) to ignore any people interested in indie games.
    Previously we wanted to create a system where content could be easily accessed like news articles, while still being initiated and stored in forum format
    The indie scene is small enough here as it is so, you're right; content would be limited and as such I don't feel it necessary to automate the process of making forum posts visible. If we were to reach a point where the amount of projects gets too hard to post about 'manually', I'll be the first one to volunteer to help write such a system.
    When trying to promote a community, if indeed it's "a" community, you share an identity. If one set of people say "check out makegamesSA.com!" and another say "check out indiegames.co.za!" and someone else shouts "remember gamedev.mag!" and someone else says "don't forget to visit sagamedev.co.za!" it just is plain confusing for people who aren't already in the community and induces "argh bugger it".
    You convinced me. Argh, but I am a fickle fool!

    Lastly, I'd like to talk about content again. I'd be willing (and I have a friend who's also a bit of an indie dev who can help - what does that even mean?) to do everything manually. But a CMS like wordpress is key as I also need lots of time to work on my games. I don't know if you've been on IGSA today but I did a little Screenshot Friday post and I think we could easily do that weekly (including games that might just be simple experiment projects, albeit fun to look at).

    I think that, combined with a weekly to biweekly review and possibly even a kind of 'featured blog of the week / month could be content enough. Keep in mind that I also intend on covering games that have been out a while already; like I said, nobody really knows how to find SA indie games and there's no reason we can't revive some older projects (even Ludum and other Jam entries).

    I'll stop typing now. How do you suggest we proceed, regarding...THE MERGER (Should we decide on doing that.)
  • edited
    I just want to jump in on something, @bigbadwofl.
    I see sites like lazygamer catering for more mainstream games. Sure there's the occasional review / mention of the more indie stuff, but ultimately that's not what they're catering for.
    I can't speak on behalf of Lazygamer, but as a member of the local game media, there is no intention (or I'd argue, even room) for a local gaming website that has such a narrow focus. Gaming is gaming: gamers come in all flavours and there's no reason why someone who plays Gears of War or StarCraft wouldn't enjoy, say, Bastion. We as journalists are acutely aware of the lack of coverage for local game development and it's very often a case of lack of access rather than lack of interest. When we cover an indie game it's because it's either a game that we've been following the development of or they have sent us a press release and bombarded us with information. Very often it's the latter which sparks our interest in the first place.

    Local readers want to see local games, and they're generally loyal to a few, trusted sites. Actually, garnering trust is going to be another issue. A website entirely dedicated to local indie gaming is going to have a hard time selling the "trusted reviewer" stamp to readers when it reviews local indie games.
    But running a site that caters for both, I think would be a bit of a disaster.
    Not at all. With systems in place and loyal readers ready and waiting it'd actually be easier to branch out to cover local game dev than start a whole new site. It's as simple as hiring another writer, if that.
  • Gaming is gaming: gamers come in all flavours and there's no reason why someone who plays Gears of War or StarCraft wouldn't enjoy, say, Bastion.
    I agree with you but you're looking at extremes. Gamers who play AAA games would most likely enjoy indie titles as well, given that those indie titles are extremely polished. Nobody, except someone interested specifically in indie games is going to care about a half-finished, basic indie game. The issue I have is that very few games are actually ever polished, leading to outsiders to believe that not a whole lot is happening on the indie scene in SA.

    Lumping half-finished content like this into a site like LazyGamer will just lead to alienating people.
  • edited
    Maybe I worded it wrong, but I'm referring to reviewing local indie games - which I gathered would be a key offering of your own site. Those games would be finished products.

    Also, I think you don't give "AAA gamers" enough credit. Many (or most, even) people who play games do so for the gameplay above all else. These gamers are also starved for interesting, creative gameplay due to the watered-down, overly safe gameplay of these AAA games. Aside from the few who only bother about visuals and polish, I think they're the perfect market for the sort of innovative gameplay that indie is best known for.
  • Ah ok. In that you're right but part of the main content would be games that are still in progress. When I want to read about indie games, I don't want to have to trawl through dozens of AAA games before I find an indie game. Like you said, this would be mostly relevant to devs but there is the odd 'non-dev' who is interested in that as well.
  • edited
    It's definitely an interesting challenge that you have ahead of you, and the way you present your content is going to go a long way in determining its target market. Personally, I feel that the local dev scene is a little too "underground" (or, frankly, most members of the public don't even know there's a local dev scene that's actually putting out quality products), and it's the link between the public and the devs that is lacking in this country. If you manage to form that link, then you'll be on to something. This is something that we're starting to work on this year and I hope that there's some competition to keep things interesting :P

    Best of luck!
  • Competition is always a great thing! The indie scene is really underground atm and it's rather sad. But I feel this is a step in the right direction and i wish you the best of luck.

    Let's see what happens, shall we?

    Thanks for the input, cheers.
  • I think a bit of this is that sequestrating an entire site only to review "local" and "indie" games, is going to be difficult to convince the market that it's "fair" and "trustworthy", because the site may be rubber stamped "proudly south african", and to be honest, we all understand that mentality: The man upstairs and a bunch of hyper-patriotics shouting "you must buy proudly south african even if it's crap".

    While I don't believe that's your intention, that perception is established. I know that if I see a south african only anything I tend to make that connection, and make me less inclined to bother with the content. Maybe I don't speak for everyone, so having some alternative opinions may be better than just mine.

    Now if the site/a site throws local and international content in one pot and stirs it all together, I wouldn't necessarily think twice about their coverage about this or that title, because it appears more unbiased. Of course I'm not saying you should go and start your own international coverage game review site :)

    I believe that local indie games need to stop marginalise themselves in order to be seen by the public - saying "look at these south african indie games" is less convincing, to me, than saying "look at these indie games". Or even better, "look at these awesome games". But this is obviously only from a reviewing and mainstream media point of view.

    From that point of view, I think it would be even better for the indie scene to form a stronger relationship with local media, for example lazygamer and NAG, if we haven't already. To be honest I don't watch those media quite as closely as I maybe should, but I know that there's been a few outcries in the community that whenever local indie games get coverage always end up to be the same tired interview of "how did you get into it? What do you think local indie devs need? What advice do you have for budding local devs?". If we can get the local indie games to be presented and treated just like any other games, international or local, with the additive of "hey btw it's made here" instead of that being the focus, I think we would have made a big difference.

    As for MGSA, we're definitely a fringe group that caters to devs. I want to open up the channel to let more people explore for themselves what the field entails, what our output is, without necessarily "reviewing" or "featuring". Presenting facts and involvement, rather than opinions, I think is what we should be doing.
  • @Tuism said:
    I believe that local indie games need to stop marginalise themselves in order to be seen by the public - saying "look at these south african indie games" is less convincing, to me, than saying "look at these indie games". Or even better, "look at these awesome games". But this is obviously only from a reviewing and mainstream media point of view.
    This. Lots and lots of this...

    I can't emphasise enough how much more traffic and interest you get from a site like Indiegames.com or Gamasutra than even the largest local sites currently. I'm not criticising the local stuff here, I'm just saying that the market size and reality means that aiming for local eyes isn't a great idea. Plus it's not like getting international press is impossible - Free Lives get a lot of coverage for their projects all over the place, we've had tons of interviews and previews of DD. Sure, having a story to tell the press helps, but mainly you just need to have a good game.

    I find that so often the idea of trying to aim for a local viewership or a local market is a silent killer of ambition or an encourager of mediocrity: People somehow feel that things are "good enough" way too early when they're working for some imagined "south african baseline". That's not cool, you have to compete with everything else out there anyway! Build the best thing you can build, then build an even better thing after that! The local audience that cares about indie games will read international sites anyway, we can show this from experience.

    I'd also love to have MGSA have better game showcase functionality and be more friendly-looking for new people and/or non-developers. It's just that historically aiming at creators has worked better, it's not like MGSA isn't the result of a lot of time spent by a lot of people over the years, trying all sorts of weird and wacky crap to see what works and what doesn't.

    P.S. In the spirit of constructive crits: I'm not too sure that a 167 word review for a game like Broforce is very convincing. The game's awesome, it's got lots going on, you can ask the devs loads of questions and there's a ton of content there waiting to be shown off. When I was writing for NAG, a half-page, quick look review was 450 words, minimum ;)
  • edited
    Some very good points here! I'm starting to see what you're all trying to get across:
    It's just that historically aiming at creators has worked better
    @dislekcia: You're right about the reviews though. I'm not the kind of person who should be writing reviews, I feel to bad to say anything 'harsh' about a project someone has slaved away at for days, especially after releasing Morf this weekend.

    But I think the one point we all agree on is that indie devs in SA need somewhere to showcase their work to others. I'm trying to get a feel for the scene and it looks dismal. I refuse to believe that's the case though.

    EDIT: Thinking about it some more, I believe a better format for 'posts' would be: screenshots, info about dev and a link to his or her blog / website.
  • Thinking about there is a kind of gap that needs to be filled. Dev.Mag kind of differed the news aspect to IGDA SA when that started. So Dev.Mag kinda doesn't do that much specifically local these days (Though we are currently hatching devious plans to kindnap @BlackShipsFilltheSky and make him answer many questions about Strange Happenings On Murder Island 'cause we are just so happy about it)

    So when I look at IGSA I kind of think about how Gamasutra and Indiegames.com have this weird relation where Gamasutra is about making games and Indiegames.com is a kind of marketing/PR place.

    So I think there is a place for IGSA. We've talked about the Wiki and such, but there is kind of the visibility issue. IGSA is a lot more juicy. I agree about the pigeonhole aspect that there is South African focus, so it's something that needs to be done right: the niche can't just be we're South African. Though I have to say @BigBadWofl is a rather great writer, and there is some interesting stuff coming from Dev.Mag soon.

    On the other hand it is late and I am probably blathering on so I am going to get off the net before I say something really stupid.
    Thanked by 2hanli bigbadwofl
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    Visibility of games has been a big thing for ages. We've tried numerous approaches to fixing it, but the thing that it seems to always come down to is that developer attention is the actual resource that matters. Essentially, if developers can keep working on their games past the point at which they become a bit of a chore (because, face it, interface polishing is pretty crap, so is figuring out that stupid bug that happens on 28% of machines because people have old driver fetishes) then they're far more likely to build the sorts of supporting information and systems that make a game more visible.

    I've seen this over and over again: @Xyber's attempts at making a local game/studio repository; The GreatGamesExperiment tags and stuff that Game.Dev encouraged people to use; Heck, even building your own website on things like Google Pages or Yola. People just don't DO that if they don't get a critical mass of feedback feelsies at the earlier stages of their game's development.

    It's also not like regular forum participation isn't an effective method to getting a game noticed by other people either. I know I keep harping about Desktop Dungeons, but it was only on the Game.Dev forum, @DukeOfPrunes (dunno if he's still on here) pointed IndieGames.com at it and shit absolutely exploded. It took ages for us to have a website for the game, truth is we didn't need it - it was plenty visible already, just on those forums alone. @Nandrew's even had other game prototypes be featured on international sites simply by posting them on forums because people were watching him now. In fact, Game.Dev was regularly visited by indie journos looking for interesting stuff as part of their regular news gathering cycle before the forum died.

    Bottom line: If the goal is to raise visibility of South African indie games, we're better off with a cadre of evangelists that go out and TELL OTHER SITES about the games people here are producing. That has several advantages from leveraging existing traffic instead of trying to generate your own, to focusing dev effort at the point that makes the most difference (the building the game part), to focusing the community support at the point that so far seems to make the most difference (getting devs to not give up). Yes, I agree that things should look better and everything should be amazing and I'm not downvoting IndieGames.co.za, I'm simply saying that having evangelists works fucking well too and we don't need a custom site for that to happen, we just need to step out of our self-imposed isolation shells and tell people what we're doing.

    Morf is a case in point: It's solid, it's got a couple of interface niggles, it could get a post on IndieGames.com quite easily with a little more work, yet @bigbadwofl seems to be working on something else right now and only mentioned polishing it in a couple of months.

    P.S. Seriously, look at some stuff that gets attention: http://indiegames.com/2013/02/freeware_game_pick_lyssandra_a.html - This is some dude's take on Super Crate Box without the awesome, health that you can't tell is going down and more internet memes. And they say nice things about it. Yay! They could be saying nice things about your slightly more polished games too!
  • nods I won't disagree with that. I actually remember the DD explosion rather well. Mainly 'cause I was rather in love with OOTEZ and found some of the aspects of DD rather weird by comparison. That, and watching the traffic and stats grow for Dev.Mag over the past year.

    In early 2011 our best article was @Dipso's 11 tips to make a fun platformer. Which after being linked on Indiegames.com got about 600 hits. When I started at Dev.Mag an article in out top 10 was doing about 80 hits a day or so. Then Herman wrote the 50 unity tips and the Colour Procedural Generation article. I can't remember off hand what the initial hits for the Unity, but we hit the front page of reddit with it. Procedural colour got 6000 hits on it's first day, and really got around the web. And even without posting an article since then we've had a steady month on month increase in traffic since then.

    But I look at some of the stuff that Dev.Mag used to do like

    http://devmag.org.za/2010/02/18/local-pretties-bounty-arms/
    http://devmag.org.za/2009/12/14/attn-for-immediate-reading/
    http://devmag.org.za/2009/11/19/loads-o-links/

    And I kind of think, well there should be a place for this stuff. Since like I said the what's up with the local scene was deferred to IGDA SA. I mean the focus on dev articles is what has helped pull Dev.Mag to where it is. And that kind of focus to really push this thing because eventually it will get there is something that I saw with Rodain in DD early days and the QCF crew, for which I was mistaken as a member of again, really just pushed out these things that I am really proud to be associated with, and mistakenly associated with.

    So ye there is a purpose for IGSA. What exactly that is: I feel that is the nature of this thread right now. I feel it has it's place somewhere. I mean Creative Freedom is wonderful, and has that South African focus of so what do people need to do to make <insert relevant field> in SA.

    tl;dr I really agree with @dislekcia, but I still have this niggling feeling that there is a definite place for IGSA.
  • My 'in a few months' comment was written at a bad time. After the weekend's massive feedback (including lots of critique and needing to work fast to get critical issues sorted) I was in a bit of a bad place. I need some time to chill right now as testing Morf just makes me annoyed and so I'm working on a mini project / experiment. I've gotten to the point where playing Morf makes me feel that I've wasted the last 6 weeks working on it and that it's no good at all.

    Did you ever reach that point on DD? I do need to polish Morf however, you're right. And that mindset is very prevalent among indies, except usually it happens much, much earlier. Game 50%? Let's give up.

    My idea was to throw some light on indie devs without them needing to go the extra few yards but I'm starting the get the feeling that SA devs just don't care about blogs. I've been managing mine for a few years now (shameless plug: link) and regardless of how much feedback I get (or don't get) I've pushed through. I simply can't understand why more people don't do it.

    I find it really sad that it's so hard to find devblogs that are well maintained. I honestly don't care about polished products at the moment (although that is the ultimate goal) I just want people to care.

    That was a fairly pointless rant and not very relevant to the topic. Just wanted to get it out there. Have I mentioned how much working on Morf annoys me?
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    I honestly don't care about polished products at the moment (although that is the ultimate goal) I just want people to care.
    But your A and your B are reversed... People care when there's a polished product. Having people who care doesn't lead to polished product, unless I've completely misunderstood you.

    I also blog, but only insofar as *I feel like I have to*. I'm not nearly as active or consistent in my output so my blogging is extremely disperate and scattered, but at least it's there... Is what I tell myself.

    The idea of giving already lazy people a lifeline so they don't have to be lazy about things is a noble one. Whether that is sustainable or not is another question. Or maybe, it's more HOW to make it sustainable... And have impact.
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    @Tuism: Sorry I meant that I'd like to work towards people 'blogging' about a project regardless of its completion in an attempt to get them active and then we can worry about polished-ness.

    I'm hoping that giving lazy people a lifeline will show them what can be achieved through non-laziness and ultimately lead to them starting to take it upon themselves.

    EDIT: Really happy about the outcome of this discussion btw. Just wish there were a couple more voices in it.
  • Did you ever reach that point on DD? I do need to polish Morf however, you're right. And that mindset is very prevalent among indies, except usually it happens much, much earlier. Game 50%? Let's give up.
    We've been working on the same game for over 3 years now. Sure, sometimes I get disheartened, but that's more about the scope of a task or the amount of work that I see needing to get done. I still really enjoy playing the game, but @Nandrew's games tend to be like that and DD feels like something special. We're also a team, so we keep each other going, plus it's what's paying the bills. Waking up and checking how many pre-orders came in while we were asleep is a pretty big motivator ;)
    My idea was to throw some light on indie devs without them needing to go the extra few yards but I'm starting the get the feeling that SA devs just don't care about blogs. I've been managing mine for a few years now (shameless plug: link) and regardless of how much feedback I get (or don't get) I've pushed through. I simply can't understand why more people don't do it.
    I have some theories on why people don't do it, but instead of jumping right into those I'm going to do something strange and ask what your resolute blogging has returned? I mean, QCF was in PTA until late 2010, we ran meetups and devlans and did tons of stuff at rAge and generally just frothed about with the rest of the Gauteng Game.Dev people since 2005. Why weren't you part of that? Note that I'm not attacking anything here, just asking what happened. Surely there's a comparison to be made in terms of return on effort with writing 1 single post here vs blogging for years?

    Could it be that blogging felt like enough? Could it be that the effort that many people seem to put into maintaining their own sites or blogs is fooling them into thinking that they're doing enough, that if there were "other game developers out there in SA", that they'd have seen them by now, so we should just carry on with the blog for when others eventually appear? What happens if everyone is too busy writing blogs to look outward and go find each other? Is finding each other a better, more useful thing than having 3 years worth of blog posts to reference when one of your games finally gets some attention? Which activity helps us make more games?

    And yes, there's totally a place for blogs (we recently had to revive the QCF blog because press people that we respect wondered if we were dead) but they're always best after you've got a following and a fan-base already. Blogs are a great way to keep a large number of people regularly in touch with something they like, so that they don't forget that the thing exists. So blog once you've got a game people like. Before that, it seems a lot better to take the sorts of posts you'd be writing in a devblog and putting those up on a forum instead. That way you'll get a lot more people giving advice or help or simply commiserating with you when a task is just boring and crap and you need a boost to get through it.

    Are people missing the wood for the trees? I think so. I want to figure out how to stop that happening... The best answer that came out of Game.Dev was to have a huge success story and use the media coverage of that to Shuttleworth it up and keep pointing people to one place.
  • edited
    Why weren't you part of that?
    Honestly, it only recently came to my attention that there IS a community for indie devs. This can be attributed to the low web presence we have sure but ultimately, I'm to blame for that and I'm ready to accept that.
    Surely there's a comparison to be made in terms of return on effort with writing 1 single post here vs blogging for years?
    On the one hand, yes. And without a massive following, a blog is largely useless. The reason I continue to blog is because it motivates me. Seeing my work 'chronicled' on the site shows me what I have achieved and gives me a reason to finish things. "I need to get the blogpost out" isn't strictly true but it's something that helps me immensely.
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    Oh, I agree that discoverability is super important! Don't get me wrong, I want people finding stuff to be easier than it is right now, I'm just asking why the pattern of people working in isolation pretty much right next to a rather vibrant community, often for years at a time, keeps happening. It seems to me that "putting out a signal" often means people don't look for the signals others are putting out... At least, that's what happens in SA - we expect other people to come to us.

    On top of that I really just wish everyone was trying to solve the discoverability issue for one place, instead of trying to solve it for like 30 different sites each year. That's one of the reasons I moved Game.Dev to SAGD eventually. Sucked that SAGD shut down after that, but hey, we're all here now.

    -edit- Blogging for motivation is perfectly cool, I'm just asking what the returns on that time investment are like in general and if there are other, more motivating things that could be done instead. It sounds like you're using blogging as a sort of design repository and tracking system - there are great systems for specifically that sort of stuff (basically, know what you're getting out of an activity and maximise that any way you can). You've already said that Morf makes you annoyed, hopefully people encouraging you here can help that. Communities like this one certainly have had that effect reliably in the past (and I'm hooked on GDC every year since our first one).
  • Sorry for the delay in my response.

    I really can't comment on 'other' forms of motivation as I've never been active in the SA indie scene. This is something I plan on rectifying though. I can however speak for blogging.

    This is basically my process: Blog about something I'm developing every week or so. If it's noteworthy I make a few posts on reddit. I also occasionally do a few tutorial posts and those get a few thousand views whereas 'norma' dev posts get a few hundred. I also slowly get twitter followers and blog followers (the blogspot follow functionality) that way. It's by no means perfect but the progress combined with my love of writing appeals to me. I can understand that not all people feel this way though.

    As for motivation on Morf, I got over 200 comments on reddit and most of them were either amazing or constructive. So again, it works for me. My comment on begin 'over' it came after the weekend of answering 200 comments and having to hastily fix things.

    But don't get me wrong, I really want to get involved locally (when is the next Jhb meetup?) as I'd really like to see what it's all about. I'm missing the person-to-person interaction.

    As for my previous comment on people not blogging enough though, regardless of there being more productive ways of staying focused, I still think a screenshot every week (or two weeks) would go a long way. Let me motivate my opinion: Regardless of what you do at a social meetup every month and what you post on a forum. I (and again, this might just be me but I'm sure there are other people that feel this way) like to have a list of blogs to follow. Currently, my favorite blogs folder in chrome contains 40 blogs. Most of those blogs are by really small developers that might never amount to anything. I enjoy reading their posts every morning and leaving constructive comments. And they do the same for me, it's a small little community we have but it serves as a great motivator.

    Sure, this is almost the same as what we have here in the forums, but again, the forum media is boring. I want to open a site and be presented with up to date information and new things I can comment on. Not trawl through forums for something I might have missed.

    But that's the point of this discussion, isn't it? To make this site better at that aspect?


  • I gather everyone thinks it'd be best for the community if our traffic was focused in one place. As well as, we'd like the place getting the traffic to be able to benefit from having the community behind it rather than it be maintained by a single person who may eventually move on.

    I know it's been said here already, but indiegames.co.za looks really good.

    Is the possibility of a more content heavy landing page being discussed? Is the possibility of BigBadWofl helping with that being discussed?

    I'd love for MakeGames to have a landing page that has outsider-friendly information (for journalists and parents looking out for their children's prospects and government officials etc).

    Kinda like http://www.animationsa.org/ ...I think animationsa.org is a pretty decent ambassador to their industry...

    But I share the concern that it could turn out to be a fair bit of work... For the initial setup maybe someone could be hired to get it to that point...

    And we'd need to be certain that we have enough interested members to maintain the landing page... The animation industry is a LOT larger than us (for the moment).

    Also, we intend to submit a shot to the next screenshot Friday... we should be doing Screenshot Saturday as well. http://screenshotsaturday.com/ (which interestingly was partially set up by another South African)
  • Sooo, when and how do we get @bigbadwofl started on making the MGSA front page look awesome?
    Thanked by 3hanli LexAquillia Tuism
  • So, not to necropost this thread too much, but Desktop Dungeons is today's spotlight on Indiegames.co.za so first up, thanks.

    But I'd like to take the chance to see what that means for us. Because this is a link to domains that I control, I can check website referrers to see how many hits both the links to QCFdesign.com and DesktopDungeons.net got from that post. Short answer: zero.

    That's right, none. I have to assume that anyone that visited that page either already knew about Desktop Dungeons, or didn't care enough to click there due to the content.

    So how could that be made better? Obviously the reach that the site was going for hasn't appeared yet, unless it's only local developers/people in the know that are seeing the site, but the content might be something that could be improved. I mean, we're right here (figuratively speaking) it would be really easy to ask each local developer that has been featured on the site so far a couple of questions to create some unique content. Bonus points for asking wacky/odd/interesting questions that people would want to share the answers to... Maybe that would get the traffic up?

    But yeah, I'm trying not to play the "I told you so" card here.
  • @dislekcia The Desktop Dungeons page on indiegames.co.za appears to be missing.
  • @retroFuture: The site has gotten a hefty overhaul (with regards to its mission statement). This came after I realized that many/most SA devs don't really care much for maintaining an online presence other than the odd post to these forums.

    I know that dislekcia believes that this aspect of dev is unimportant and I respect his opinion. I'd really rather not get into another lengthy discussion on the topic.

    IGSA (or IGB as it stands now) is dedicated to devblogs (or tigsource threads - or even forum threads here if they are particularly actively updated by the creator) devoted to indie games.
  • I don't really think dislekcia believes that self promotion and maintaining an online presence is unimportant for SA game devs (DD's page is often updated and has a very active community, they have had mentions in many major websites and media), but I'll let him speak his own mind :)
  • @bigbadwofl, I think IndieGames.co.za and MakeGamesSA.com serve seperate purposes. IndieGames is a blog, you'd simply submit review and preview of locally developed games. Which I think is great!

    MakeGamesSA is a community, a place where locals hangout and show what they have been working on and getting feedback from other people with similar interests.

    So in my perspective as a prof blogger and web designer, they serve two different purposes! Keep it going!
  • @bigbadwofl: Seems like you completely misunderstood what I was talking about. I think publicity and visibility are incredibly important if you're trying to put people in front of your game (either when you're selling it, or you're looking for feedback) that was one of our major points of focus in going to GDC. The Free For GDC promotion that we ran last week (and the emails that I sent out to various press about it) got featured on RPS, Indiegames.com, Destructoid, Reddit and the SF forums (among many others, but those were our main referrers). We peaked at 14K new uniques on tuesday last week (that's nearly 7 times our normal daily uniques) and 13K on wednesday, the tail off is still at 3x our normal traffic, so we're doing really great on that. Over 2K people are playing the free beta and we hit a really good sales spike, with another one coming tomorrow when the free beta ends and people want to keep playing.

    So yeah, I can talk for ages about this sort of stuff... I was simply pointing out that Indiegames.co.za isn't a site that I would count as useful from a PR/visibility perspective at the moment. Again, I'm not trying to give you shit, this is just what the realities of the indie games business are. So, in order to do the stuff you said you were trying to do with Indiegames.co.za, it seemed like you needed to switch things up and put in a little more time - or focus on efficiency and stop spending time trying to generate an audience from scratch when one already exists here. I'm interested to see what sorts of results your new direction has - note that both DesktopDungeons.net and QCFdesign.com have blog elements, in case you run low on sites to feature ;)

    @Landman: My recent post on the traffic that Indiegames.co.za pushed in our direction was asking the question of "how well is this site doing what it's trying to do?". I think it's worth asking things like that of endeavors every once in a while, reality checks are useful, how else do you know if you're wasting your time or not? That's why I suggested things that might help the site grow its traffic and audience.

    I've written about efficiency of effort on this thread before, but it seems like a lot of that sort of thinking runs into a strange sort of stubbornness in a lot of people for some reason. I'm not attacking anything, just asking if there aren't other ways to achieve the goals people say they have faster and with less effort.
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