Why Forums Can Be Great for Indie Community and Discoverability

[@AmericasComic]

I'm not in the video game industry, but I love GDC lectures - video games are the only art form out there that has something like a developer's conference where they talk about creative efforts with a design and engineering framework. And I think a lot of what is said has resonance outside of just video games. GDC has been increasing the amount of lectures recently on online community management and the problems and solutions within the medium, and I think...honestly...in the big, big, big political picture right now as a society one of our problems is online culture in a lot of different ways, and it's nice to see people with a platform to discuss the ethics, behavior, the movement of those online communities. It's just a bunch of nerds on a lectern talking about a bunch of nerds on a message board, but I think that small act has a lot more resonance than you could ever imagine it having.

[@RobLang]

As a solo indie Dev with a solo game, I'm going to stick with KZbin and Discord for now. I can definitely see that it doesn't scale well but with time constraints, I have to cut back somewhere!

[@k0nidias]

Totally fine, they even mention forums aren't really the best for small studios with one game. You can always do what they did and create a forum later on and direct your community there.

[@RobLang]

@@k0nidias Absolutely, they did indeed. I found the scaling of all the different accounts fascinating!

[@MetalHeadsGame]

A very useful and informative GDC talk yet again :D I set up the Steam forums for Metal Heads, but despite almost 1000 downloads of the game demo, there isn't much discussion happening. I'm not pushing for a massive community just yet anyway, but this talk is very helpful and something I will refer to in future I think :)

[@killymxi]

I would compare Steam forums with Stackoverflow. People only come there looking for solutions when they have issues. Valve kinda support this by providing the "answered" checkmark.

[@sirdiealot7805]

Good to hear you could make forums work. Even though I hang out a lot on Discord I don't trust it enough to make my own "server" on there and I find the centralisation very worrying.

[@MissZizilan]

Yay more GDC

[@nemtudom5074]

Wait, both these games are made by the same company? Who would have thought. They feel distinctively different. I already have niche from a humble bundle, so i might aswell give that a try, but i've had my eye on nimbatus for a while

[@BleachBasket108]

I only have niche but it's pretty enjoyable. Though it is what you make it - I personally prefer doing challenges for some extra pizzazz

[@StrayFawnStudio]

Hi nem tudom. Indeed! Both co-founders of the studio had aleady started working on a project before they started the company together. So they just decided to finish both games with the studio ^^

[@nemtudom5074]

I dont know why, but after this video now i feel compelled to give Niche a try, even though it hasn't grabbed my interest before

[@EyesOfByes]

I guess Blizzard missed this presentation...

[@nemtudom5074]

Honestly, in the days when they were truly indie (lost vikings, anyone remembers that?) they did know the importance of this. Then those greedy bastards sold their company to activision so they could live like kings while the rest of their pretty great studio went down the drain.