See, when they told us "being an independent artist is hard", we thought it was because art is hard.

Nope.

Art is challenging.

Business admin is hard. 😂

If I may offer you a bit of unsolicited advice - and feel free to ignore me -

If you haven't yet, please start a mailing list.

I refused to believe these were effective, and I was utterly wrong. They do work, and they are the most secure way of protecting your connection to your audience.

I think the community building is has to built outside Steam. (Making it easier to follow creators would definitely be a help tho)

But ideally: getting the audience off platform and into a more authentic environment would be better.

It's hard to have a meaningful conversation at the market.

I have done this several times before in different mediums, with varying degrees of success, and yeah, the answer always seems to come back to this.

Hasn't it always required years of work before anything begins to take off?

If anything, the barrier to entry *is* lower now. But the long road to sustainability hasn't gotten why shorter.

Shoot, even Michangelo was taking Pope money to make ends meet.

We *can* go back to pre-algorithm days. But I think we have to also acknowledge that the pre-algorithm audience was *extremely difficult* to reach.

Maybe I've got blinders on, but I want to immediately say the answer is authentic community building.

To my mind, the algorithm enhanced (and then replaced) the power of word of mouth. If we want to exist outside the algorithm, we have to foster the conversations that create the word of mouth.

I am being massively in my head right now, but need to underline: I'm not trying to gotcha anybody or put anyone on the spot. More trying to invite someone who is in that space into the discussion.

Esp bc "people who succeed without being household names" are by definition not talked about as much.

I mention him because he seems to have identified his niche and really serves it well, and seems to be able to make it go.

I would love to know what someone like @wadjeteyegames.bsky.social feels about this idea. He's been steadily making (and helping others make) indie point and click adventures for a long time.

I can't tell how likely this story is to be true.

On one hand, he clearly wants people to like him.

On the other hand, I cannot imagine him putting in any amount of work to make anyone else happy.

"Keep up" will hit me in the heart for years to come.

Have you watched Matt Colville's recent video on community? He nails a lot of things that I want to try get right with any community building I do.

youtu.be/emdki5B_O7Q

You will never convince me that that isn't the cow's tongue.

.... Where do I wishlist it?

As your scope increases beyond your capacity to pull it off, polish goes down.

If you want to increase the polish, you have to increase your capacity, or reduce your scope.

All this to say: a teeny, polished game is entirely valid.

You're assuming a fictional novel set 400+ years in (their) past was accurate in the first place 😁

What was it?