#chaoticcerise

Are they still going to kiss? I would very much like for them to kiss. Anyways your art makes me very happy keep being awesome

you know what, since you asked so nicely

Thanks for the ask! ^_^ This is a broad question and I wound up actually going way overboard. If you or anyone else has a more specific question feel free to hit me up! I’m not like a mega-successful gamedev. The game I’m most known for is one that’s been funded and is currently in development, and the only full game I released was a physical arcade machine that no longer exists. With my grain of salt granted, I do have a lot of strong feelings on how we can better take care of ourselves as gamedevs and as artists. Hopefully this doesn't come off as haughty lol.

Think Small

A lot of the best advice I can offer anybody looking to make a game is to be kind to yourself. Unlike many other mediums of art video games have been corporate from their inception, so the natural instinct is to compare your art to the work of these expansive teams. If you go into making games trying to hold yourself to the standard of AAA or even “Indie Darling” games you’re going to rob yourself of a lot of necessary patience and satisfaction.

Something I recommend is spending some time browsing (and then playing!) generally unknown games on Itch.io. It’s a great way to set some reasonable expectations for how your work will be received, and has the added bonus of re-calibrating your idea about what games can look like!

When I sought similar advice a few years ago I had several people tell me to “think small” and “make things I can finish”, they would always chip away at the parts of my ideas that were asking too much or unrealistic. It was impossible for me at the time to take this criticism as anything but a challenge. I wanted to prove to them that I was the gamedev savant that everyone dreams of being.

But I wasn’t. Nobody is!

Culturally, at least here in America, there is this push to frame indie games as these products of visionary brilliance. We want badly to believe that there are special people of extraordinary talent and vision who effortlessly produce these monumental games out of thin air, and there is an internal pressure to deny having any sort of difficulty or limits – because that would mean that you’re not that auteur gamedev.

But none of these games are truly made alone, (and I don’t mean this to devalue the work of brilliant gamedevs, their presence as designers and writers is felt in their work and it would not exist if not for them.) art is responsive, and games especially lean on the established languages of interaction that games have been establishing since the 80s. All of our work is on the shoulders of giants, and there’s no amount of creativity or skill that would completely subvert that, because even access to the medium requires some interaction with and response to those systems.

All this to say, the reason people tell you to make small games is because it is as important to learn how to finish something as much as it is to know how to make it.

Don’t Be Afraid to Make Things That Feel Weird

With so many games on the market and games easier to make than ever, it is very tempting to aim to make games that are frictionless. It is easy to think that making an experience that never gets too challenging, never runs the risk of rubbing someone the wrong way, is the way to have the biggest staying power in the attention span of your players.

But all kinds of friction can be flavor!

Narratively, mechanically, things that make your art crunchy or awkward can sometimes be a key “handle” for people to latch onto. It’s true that you will be criticized for making a story with dissonant theme-ing, or a platformer with janky jumps, but to people who like what you like that will become a defining element of your game, something they can use as a wedge to crack open to your decisions and develop a deeper relationship with your work.

Take Breaks, and Make Solid Goalposts

"I can't necessarily tell you when we met exactly.. but we met back during The Battle of Angel Island."

“it was during a meeting with the resistance to take down metal sonic. we both met during said battle.”

I feel like the mean lesbian stereotype was probably created because people think not being attracted to men = hating men, so hating men also means we’re mean.

And I don’t know if the mean stereotype is directly related with being a butch, but I do feel like there’s also the stereotype that lesbians are usually butch because cishets think they’re just like trying to be men to get with women.

I am also a huge fan of vee!

it's cropped from this screen cap from the end credits of thanks to them!

memory of the show is fuzzy but i THINK people died. oh yang was a lesbian too.