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There is an interesting article about Indie Game development over at Rampant games

Ten Tips for Becoming an Indie Game Developer
http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=3785

I should point out that I am Not a game developer. But I have been a freelance programmer.

My favourite item is

I struggle with that one a lot.

Another tips that has worked for me is to do the minimum necessary. Explanation: I like to over engineer things. I like to add features because it would be really cool. I end up spending time programming something that very few people are going to use. If you game doesn't need an inventory system, don't put one in because it's cool!

Susan

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I read the article :B I guess it was pretty interesting if you want to become an indie game developer (or if you want to have a serious hobby/do a long term activity). My favorite points were #1 and #10, Commit and Finish respectively xD

I think the one thing that caught me off-guard was "be humble and ruthless." At first I thought that they wanted to say you should be humble when you release your game, but also ruthless in self-advertising and getting it out where people can play it and give you feedback on it. It seems to be that the author was actually saying you should be ruthless with yourself to make sure the game is enjoyable for players. I personally think my interpretation of being "humble and ruthless" makes more sense. But what do I know? I haven't even made a decent game (yet) xD

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9 and 10 are key.

My first VN was a quick little derpy thing that was more or less just me going "okay I want to learn how to use this system" and I did it in three days. I of course spent a bit more time afterwards proofreading it and making sure it all ran well, but yeah it wasn't something I put too much effort into at all, but was ultimately very beneficial to finish. And somehow it got around 500 downloads without me really advertising it, so yay!

I think the author is trying to say that you should be ruthless with cutting crap out, even if that crap was time consuming to create. This kind of editing is actually needed especially in VNs and will improve the quality of your story. You're not just doing it for others either, since when you're done, you know you've done everything and made something really cool ;)!

Also, do tell me how you're being humble with releasing your game, when you advertise it all over the place XD? I'm really curious.

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Nanolife | Dev Blog | Pegasi's website | Twitter

Ahh, I agree that that was what the author was trying to say : )

You can remain humble with a release even with a lot of self-advertising. The point of making games seems to be so that other people can play them (unless someone makes games just to play them alone without sharing them), so self-advertising your game is essential for people to see that your game exists, and then they might play it and enjoy it. Self-advertising is important because it's very rare that someone will advertise your game for you, and if they do, it's usually because they already played it and enjoyed it and want to share it with more people so they can enjoy it as well.

I think you can remain humble in advertising your game if you only advertise it in a few choice places where it makes the most sense to advertise it (e.g. you can post about it on Facebook to tell IRL friends, you can post in the Completed Games section here at LSF, you can advertise on your personal blog, etc.) As long as you're not saying "Omg look at this game I made it's cool everyone on the internet should play it right now!!!", posting an advert for your game on forums/sites unrelated to your game, or incessantly making repetitive posts about your released game, I think you can retain your humbleness in receiving whatever feedback you get while putting your game out for the world to see.

I guess what I'm trying to say, is that you need to be "ruthless" in self-advertising in the sense that you cannot be afraid to tell people about your game! Some creative people are hesitant to self-advertise their works because they feel like it makes them look desperate for attention, they aren't confident in their work, or they have the "my audience will find me if I do good work" mentality so they just wait for whoever to see their stuff without really pushing it out there. This is understandable and I'm guilty of this to a degree as well, but if independent artists/game developers/musicians/writers DON'T self-advertise, then what's the point of creative work no one will see?

I hope that made sense xD;;;

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Jay is a dev friend, and those are good tips, my favorites are 9-10: start small and finish. It's kinda fun because he admitted on twitter that he was referring to me when he said:
"Some developers can do several projects at once – usually with a lot of outsourcing – but most of us work best on one project at a time."
I definitely confirm that this is driving me nuts and won't do that again anytime soon!

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Oh yes, it did. I never wanted to say that you shouldn't advertise your game as much as you can without becoming annoying, but I was wondering what you meant with being humble - I get it now though :3.

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Nanolife | Dev Blog | Pegasi's website | Twitter