I think Leena has a valid point though. If something about your (commercial) game is not clicking with players to the point of getting a sea of bad reviews, it can kill your game's reputation and potentially your livelihood. Difficult to recover from but not impossible

As art - yeah who cares

Yeah agreed. I think there's a difference between the type of fear-based design I'm hating on and making something more approachable based on feedback

I think a lot of the loud displeasure is usually a mismatch of expectations between what people think they're playing and what they actually are

I think F2P design that started on mobile is wrapped up in there, too. Those live service games live or die by having enough people they can basically trick into spending fuck tons of money

When that's your requirement for success you start caring about "engagement metrics" and "KPIs" and shit

I don't think much of anything good comes from it. Being scared of your players and their attention span is how you get "nag lines" and all sorts of dark patterns in games.

On one end of the spectrum is over-tutorializing so people don't get confused, on the other is malicious FOMO tactics

we must end the era of Fearful Game Design

I firmly believe it's a self-fulfilling and exacerbating problem. if someone's attention span is so short that at the first sign of needing to think for 2 seconds they stop playing, then fuck em.

100% this. end the insecurity and fear in game design, just make good shit people want to play

It's sad because it waters down what could otherwise be great games and it insults the intelligence of the player

"It's to help kids" idk man I think kids are smart enough to figure it out and we should respect them enough to let that happen instead of further erode their attention spans

Is it more dev focused or player focused?

I'm thinking about player focused ones that serve as higher maintenance newsletter lists.

I will never understand the appeal of discord servers, either joining one or running one

I cannot keep up with a chat like that and I don't want to moderate the speech of 12 year olds all day

"Cringe!" declares Gex avatar Darth Cheney

I still like seeing and sharing numbers and whatever for transparency of knowledge especially for newer devs who might have unrealistic expectations. But increasingly getting the same scammy hustle bro crypto type vibes from who you're calling corpo indies

I feel like I'm in recovery from it and still in a place of mixed feelings on it.

I don't want to care about financials and steam knowledge or whatever, but if I want to do this full time I also feel like I have to care about it.

But my first game was born of this and I kind of hate what I made

alright 1 wishlist it is

You'll have to rizz me if you want a wishlist, I don't wishlist for free

Updates for my pomodoro idle game:
- UI shows what train (or work) cycle you're on
- Gold is earned while in a train cycle
- Gold can be spent to purchase a new cosmetic
- Can't really tell in this video, but the window becomes always on top and flashes white until you focus it
#godot #indiedev

It's coming together! Cleaned up the UI a bit, added a shop screen for cosmetics, and added some little Z's during the breaks.

Pretty fun to have something come together so quickly because of its simplicity and my experience level.

Oo very nice! Thanks!!