Reach
Reach is something I'm sure all game developers want for their passion project. I'm no different. This game of mine has been with me since 2010, and it has slowly grown and evolved over the past 16 years. Only this year did I decide to actually put more effort into making it a reality, and I think I decided a little too late.
A few prompt entries back, the word was Charm, and I mentioned that I lack that — this ties into the same idea. To reach others, a developer needs some sort of network: friends, family, coworkers, etc. When I originally had the idea for REDACTED (name's a surprise for closer to release), I didn't have many friends, and none of my coworkers played games. Just the industry I was in at the time, so I wasn't expecting any miracles there. Fast forward to 2023, and I'd built a small community of like-minded friends who play the types of games I do. A handful of them turned out to be into TTRPGs and talked me into running a few campaigns for them — some hits, some misses, but enough to prove the group had staying power.
What stuck with me afterward was a residual feeling from one campaign in particular. My players kept bringing it up, even asking if we'd run something like it again. Towards the end of last year, I decided I should do something with that energy. I wanted to build my game, but I also wanted to keep playing with my friends — and I didn't have time for both. Then I remembered a lesson from my first Game Design class: if you want to make a good video game, test it as a board game first. That's when it clicked — build my game, but do it as a TTRPG with the friends I already had.
It made sense at the time, and it still makes sense 8 months later. I'm building a video game via a TTRPG with my friends as playtesters. Now I've decided to share that process on social media, hoping to reach more people who want to join in. The platforms I've picked to share my world are a hit or miss with the reach aspect.
- Patreon contains part of the information for my weekly creature bestiary
- Ko-fi contains the other part of the weekly creature bestiary
- Itch.io is new and currently gets a crosspost of my Dev Logs from this website
- Gamersesoteric.com is my main portfolio site, which is now repurposed to provide others a play-by-play for my game dev journey on REDACTED
- Byte Vorex gets crossposts from the free part of my Patreon's weekly bestiary
- Discord gets crossposts from my Ko-fi entries
- Mastodon gets creatures blurbs for the weekly creature bestiary
- Twitch has a subtle call to action graphic and a BRB screen that shares excerpts from my weekly creatures
Most of these platforms haven't given me much of a reach so far, but I kind of expected it. I've gained a few unknowns on Patreon, few interactions on Mastodon, way more hits on this website than I have in the past, and that's about it. I won't post to some places because either it's an experience I'm not willing to deal with (Reddit is a great example of this) or it has an audience that isn't for me (TikTok is also a great example of this). I'm not against others talking about my creations on those platforms, but I personally don't have the mindset to handle those platforms.
But reach, for me, isn't just about eyeballs. I'm not trying to build an audience — I'm trying to find people who want to help shape REDACTED with me. Every playtester, every person who comments on a bestiary entry with their own idea, is worth more than a hundred silent follows. That's part of why the low numbers don't discourage me as much as they probably should.
I'll admit I'm a little hesitant about opening my community up to the public — I did that once before and it didn't go well. Lessons were learned, and more safeguards are in place this time. Back when hate raiding was new and rampant on Twitch, I had my Discord link posted on my Twitch page. People with poor intentions joined my community, spammed a lot of bad things in numerous Discord channels, then harassed me in my voice channel. They then went after my Twitch chat itself, hate following me and calling me all sorts of things. I'm not new to harassment and bullying, but it did hurt all the same. I removed my Discord channel and won't give it out to anyone unless there has been a few solid interactions. If a join link does happen that I'm unaware of, which is perfectly fine and I encourage my community to invite their friends, there has to be someone who vets for them. Until they get that vetting, they have very limited access to everything.
Sixteen years is a long time to sit with an idea, and I've learned reach isn't something that happens in a single post or a single platform push. It's closer to what happened with that homebrew campaign — something people remember and come back to, months later, unprompted. That's the kind of reach I actually want: not a spike, but something that sticks.
So this is me, reaching out to the rest of the internet, looking for more people who want to join my world and the progress along the way.
Links:
- Patreon
- Ko-fi
- Mastodon
- Byte Vortex
- Cheshire Gaming
- Twitch
- Youtube Channels: