It’s been a few weeks of slow progress. At least it feels slow. Major Escape is still in closed beta and I’ve been mostly working on menus and killing bugs. This means that the game looks almost exactly the same as it was two weeks ago. That’s why it feels like there has been no progress. It’s not fun to work fixing bugs and making your menus look better and work better, but it’s necessary work, so I’m getting through it.
All of this means that there is not much to talk about the game, at least not at this stage. My Twitter account and Facebook page have been a bit more silent than in the previous weeks when I started promoting the game. Still, I need to keep the conversation going, but how do I do this?
According to several online articles, I should be posting and “tweeting” regularly. Some articles recommend that I add to my posts an action shot (video or picture) showing the game’s progress. It makes for a more interesting read. Oh and plenty of hashtags ( #indiedev #gamedev #gamemaker etc.). I’ve been doing all of these things, for weeks, and I’ve increased my Twitter followers by 2 (a 200% increase over the previous month) and my Facebook followers by cero.
This is what articles call an “action shoot”. Menus, really interesting stuff huh?
I guess this stuff takes time and sometimes luck. Some developers have commented that their post got re-tweeted by some high profile Twitter account and that greatly increased their followers. But all of this feels so empty sometimes. I don’t use Twitter to socialize, so maybe that’s why it feels empty. I see it as a tool for marketing. Hopefully one day I’ll have enough followers to use it as a way to reach fans and connect with them.
That’s why I don’t use Twitter or Facebook as a way of expressing what I feel. I only post objective stuff about the game. This blog is the closest there is to publishing my opinions about anything online. I’m just not wired to write my opinion about anything on a public forum, mostly because I often feel like “Who cares?”. But social media proves that a lot of people actually care what other people say.
So I for now I’ll keep “tweeting” and posting and sharing. I hope time proves me wrong.
