AbsurDock playtest progress 2
Another week gone by, and i’m surprisingly close to having a presentable build. What really pains me is that most of the work i’m doing right now won’t change the outcome of the playtest, people will either like the concept or they won’t.
I fixed the content size fitter 👍
Polish that doesn’t matter (yet)
By that i mean the small things: visual bugs, a typo in the text, details that take a meaningful amount of time to fix but only actually matter if the player didn’t close the game in the first five minutes. The example above is important, it’s one of the game’s core mechanics, inspecting an item to decide what to do with it. But a misaligned panel in the settings menu or a stretched button in the HUD? That’s an investment in polish that won’t decide whether the game succeeds. It only “pays off” once something else already has.
What’s actually left
Only now have i moved on to working on the content actually promised on the steam page and in the trailer, things you interact with, not stare at. That’s a couple of anomalies, a bunch of time-of-day and weather presets, a short tutorial, and the one and only monster. That’s pretty much the list.
The rest of the month goes to bug fixing, and maybe a couple more items if i’ve got the will left for them. Best case, i finish content this week and spend another week sanding rough corners and prepping the build — and there’s your playtest. Realistically, that’s never going to happen on schedule, but we’ll see.
On marketing, or why i can’t do it
I’ve done roughly zero reach or active marketing since starting this blog. Partly a lack of discipline, but mostly a genuine lack of belief in the current indie marketing scene in how transactional it is, and how unfit i am for it.
Here’s the thing nobody spells out: unless you can give value back, nobody gives you anything for free. In this case, value means exposure and views. Developers need exposure for their game; content creators need views for their channel. You and the 476th YouTuber you email have the same goal, you just supply different halves of it, since indies offer views and creators offer exposure.
That’s also exactly where the problem sits: exposure isn’t views. If your game already comes with views (a lot of views), it becomes as sought-after as petrol in a shortage, everyone wants to talk about it and make content about it, because suddenly there’s a real answer to “what do i get out of interacting with this,” which, as far as i can tell, is one of the fundamental principles behind virality. That’s how exposure turns into wishlists.
If your game doesn’t bring its own views, pitching it to anyone starts to feel like screaming at a brick wall. That’s the point where you start feeling pressure to become a content creator yourself, or to spend your time on everything except actually developing the game. Content creators won’t hand you exposure for free, why would they cover your game instead of a bigger one that gets them more views for the same effort?
Steam runs on the same logic: popular games rise to the top of the storefront, games nobody’s heard of sit at the bottom, because a spot that a lot of people stare at is valuable real estate, it’s the same reason the entire ad economy, and arguably the internet as we know it, exists. You have to offer something back to earn that spot. And on the flip side, if you find yourself paying people for exposure, that’s a sign the concept doesn’t work for you as an indie, you’re working for it instead. At that point the fix isn’t more marketing effort, it’s rethinking the concept itself, toward something actually built to carry its own exposure.
That’s where AbsurDock stands. I can’t do social media or YouTubing, i’ve tried, and the results are rough. I’m not able to put on the kind of performative mask modern content demands (which, for the record, is not why i picked up game development in the first place), and AbsurDock seems to confirm it doesn’t generate views on its own.
What’s next
After the playtest ships first in a couple more weeks, i’ve got a couple more concepts i’d like to get out on itch.io quickly, ones that might actually have some demand behind them, so come mid-October, i’ll pick that process back up. Hopes and dreams that they turn out to be a better fit for online consumption than my current project.