Friday Rambles 2023-07-07

It's July, and it's the Friday Rambles. Welcome. Welcome.

Game Dev

Not really much game dev stuff to talk about. I fixed a few Japanese text formatting errors that I saw while lurking in a few streams of people playing the game, nothing serious or anything most people would even notice unless they were me. I've actually fixed a lot of little bugs and typos that way over the past couple months lol.

That's right! Endless Monday: Dreams and Deadlines has been out for a couple months! With the Summer Sale well under way, and Japanese localization out, the sales for the game have picked up better than I'd expected. So now I'm pretty comfortable saying that I'll be making another game. But now I have high hopes for the Visual Novel Fest and Autumn Sale too...

Searching "Endless Monday" on Twitter is basically completely all Japanese Twitter users talking about how much they like the game. There are no English speaking people talking about the game. At least not on Twitter. But there are no Japanese players leaving reviews! Don't they know leaving a positive review on Steam is one of the greatest gifts one can give to a game dev?

Anyway, I've been doing a fair amount of "research" lately, ie. playing other games. One game I played through had a little thing in the credits sequence where it tells the player to leave a good review. And I'm like, that's something you can just do? Well, it's not like I've never told people to tell their friends to buy my game or subscribe to my Patreon or whatever either, but adding it to my game feels, idk, tacky or something. I think it's just a personal hangup and I honestly don't blame them for doing it.

As for the planned content update for Dreams and Deadlines, I've started writing a skeleton of a script, and have a good idea of the premise of it. I really need to hurry up with it if I want to make it in time for Halloween (hint ;-)) but I've also been busy with family life (still). Agh! I want to actually be able to work!! (Never expected to be saying that, but...)

Social Media

Well, it was a "fun" week for social media. I got an invite to Blue Sky, and then Meta launched their Twitter competitor "Threads by Instagram: a Facebook Joint." And after having used both for 2 days, and being somewhat of a social media expert myself, I can give my opinions on the matter to you as fact.

Blue Sky: Made by the Ex-Twitter Guy, it's basically a clone of Twitter, except without any artists (or anyone else) on it. There is a chronological feed. You can also make your own feed, but it requires you to have a degree in computer science. The default "What's Hot" feed is just people complaining about Twitter and Threads. I tried to post a picture and it errors out every time saying "Image Context Has Been Lost." 

Above: I literally cannot post this picture of Cirno on Blue Sky. I have tried 999 times

On the plus side, I can refresh my feed once a day and not miss anything.

Threads: Meta's Twitter clone. It launched with like 30 million people pre-installed on it, thanks to the power of Instagram. It's exactly how I would imagine a Twitter populated entirely by Instagram creators to be like. Every time I refresh my feed I have a fresh new batch of influencers and brands to mute. Everyone else is just posting about how positive the vibes are and how good the algorithm is. At least that's what the algorithm is showing me anyway. There's no way to show a list of posts made by people I follow in chronological order. I have 10k followers on there already and I have never felt more empty inside. It made me realize I'm too old and cranky for whatever modern social media is now. 

Above: Follow me on Threads 🥰 Spread positivity and good vibes, everyone ✨💕

It's also currently banned in the EU for not complying with privacy laws or whatever. In 6 months it'll be full of ads and everyone will be complaining about how the algorithm isn't giving them enough reach.

Twitter: I still like it there, despite everything. It's the international artist and indie dev community that I really love about it. It'd be a tremendous loss if everyone fucked off to Threads and melted into the algorithm soup ala the Evangelion LCL scene. 

Wait, am I allowed to curse here?

Conclusion: I am now extremely tired of new social media websites. I just hope the current success of Threads scares the Twitter Guy In Charge into stopping the bleeding with actual good decisions for once, but I don't have a lot of hope there. I want Twitter to continue to exist, because everyone I like is on there already, and every time I open Threads I feel like I instantly age another 2 years, and I'd rather quit social media altogether than have to post there primarily because Twitter died.

Speaking of quitting social media, I've decided to fix up my website at https://endlessmonday.com and make it a real personal website that I actually put effort into maintaining and updating regularly. Like adding a blog there, and gallery, and things like that. Then you can bookmark the site, or add me to your RSS reader. What? No one does that? Well, maybe they should. Anyway, stay tuned for news on that front. Or just add it to your bookmarks list and visit each time you remember that it exists, like we did in the old times.

I have come to realize that I'd like nothing more than to just be able to not have to depend on social media for "marketing myself" at all, and just work on my games and release a new one every year or so for people to enjoy, and just update my personal blog and newsletter once in a while for funzies. Maybe one day I'll have built up enough of a reputation and fanbase as a game dev that I'll be able to do that. In the meantime I've loosened up a bit on Twitter and now I'm posting whatever because who cares anymore.

Anyway, thanks for sticking around on my personal blog site where I bring you the latest in self-absorbed TMI. Oh, and also for your love and support. See you next week!