So, I saw this post about the Experimental Game Workshop and was like hey, I guess I have made a few rather experimental games, haven't I? Wouldn't that make me a perfect person to apply? Well, yeah, except that I can't comfortably apply.
Yeah, my games indeed tend to be experimental because I think that making something weird, charming and niche is the best thing about being an indie developer. However, my games might just be a bit too weird for their own good. My most prominent offenses probably are, in ascending order of weirdness:
- A first-person gay 3D road trip visual novel(?) with actual driving mechanics.
- A whip-based puzzle platformer with tongue-in-cheek queer narrative
- A textless metroidvania with morphing mechanics, blocky environmental storytelling and apparently too hard to grasp queer themes.
- A virtual pet lookalike visual novel(?) that tells a very personal story using far too cryptic haikus and 32x16 pixel monochrome animations.
So, why not give the workshop a try, you might ask? Well, on one hand, I kind of want to because I need to make my games more visible to put food on the table, but on the other I don't really want to. You know, the perpetually dark winter streets are scary enough without putting your full name, appearance and coming out gay stuff on the internet for everybody to easily find.
I don't know, maybe I'm just overreacting or need to grow thicker skin or whatever, but I'd rather not. Do I really need to associate my full name and everything to my games and make myself some sort of a household brand if I want people to notice my games? 🙄
tl;dr I basically use a pen name because I'm a wimp but you can't really join conferences or anything then, can you?
