Pinnit4

Yes, hahaha... YES!


hi there again!

I'm a gamedev at Brainwash Gang,

making Friends vs Friends and other
nice stuff.

Way too tired to be active anywhere

Maybe not so tired after all, huh

https://pinnit4.itch.io
https://pinnit4.bandcamp.com

the coolest duck in history


PIZZAPRANKS
@PIZZAPRANKS

Recently when I attended the Boston Hassle Flea Market I found myself set up next to Sword and Kettle Press (check it out) and in the course of talking to them I came upon the (I suppose obvious) realization that what I was doing, what Indiepocalypse is, is small press. This should have been obvious to me, but the framework doesn't really exist in games.

Indie publishers exist but that's not really the same as (at least what I think of as) small press. To me small press is exists in that organized-but-not-quite-professional space. The hobby space, if hobby didn't have the sort of condescending "just for fun" connotation. But that's in a way what small press is, a hobby. It rarely pays the bills. "Peow never paid a salary" is a personal rallying cry of sorts. If a true institution of indie comics could never make a salary, then it's not too odd that I don't make a profit.

But a lot of that I think is the age of the medium. Games are a relatively young medium! The widespread ability for almost anyone to easily make and share games is just as young! To stick with comics (cause i like 'em), SPX for instance, started in 1994. I'm pretty sure I didn't have a computer then. Plenty of Indiepocalypse contributors weren't even born yet.

But, I think small press is the lifeblood of any artistic medium! They often publish whatever they want, often more alternative, less commercial, and more (in every sense of the word) diverse works. They (even nominally) pay artists. I think, maybe most importantly, they can provide a low cost entry point for people looking to get a foothold or some recognition.

I think small press is a great starting point for artists and that "starting point" is very different than "for beginners". You can make art for years and be quite accomplished but never receive any recognition for your work. Small press publishers (which often publish anthologies/compilations/low print runs) can very easily be that first entry point. Now someone's paid you for your work! They not only paid you, they like it so much they feel confident that other people will pay for it as well. It's something you can put on a resume!

Game publishing doesn't really operate on this scale. After all I have it on good authority that you can't make and indie game for less than $4 million USD. (nobody tell the Games Industry™ that the budget for Indiepocalypse commissions is $150 and that the games made are quite good(it's also waaaaaayyyy to low but it's what i got))

Instead of feeling desperate and looking for my space in games I know realize that I have a space, there's just not as many other people in here with me as there are in the wider game industry. There are more anthologies than when I started 3 years ago and even more on the way. The Hand Eye Society Mixtape even hits what I think are the essential criteria of

  • Open submissions
  • Paying contributors
  • Having (for now) a semi-regular flow of releases

Most important I think is open submissions since that's the best way to prevent whatever you make from just being another collection of opportunities for the same people.

I think we are at exciting time for alternative self-published and small press games. And now that I've stopped trying the impossible task of fitting myself into the established game industry I'm excited about it as well!


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in reply to @PIZZAPRANKS's post:

Absolutely! Email (indiepocalypse@gmail.com) or discord (PizzaPranks#1049) are the two I prefer since I find they're the easiest to write in. Bundles also totally slipped my mind since most of them are deep discount and massive, which I kinda hate. But Queer Halloween Stories was a great example of it being technically a bundle (likely for convenience sake?) but basically an anthology.

I went to short run (www.shortrun.org) this past weekend, which is a comics / zines / small press festival in seattle that's just reached its 10 year anniversary - it was really inspiring to see the diversity of art and comics there!

(by coincidence I bought a peow anthology while I was there, though I didn't realize they were closing up shop, which is kind of a bummer)

while I didn't see any videogames there (not really what they're going for to be fair), I definitely agree indiepocalypse fits right in with the spirit of something like short run, so thinking of indiepocalypse as small press makes a lot of sense to me too

anyway this is kind of rambling now, but I just wanted to say I think the work you're doing with indiepocalypse is super important and I appreciate the thoughtful posts you make documenting it! :)

Thanks! 95% of the inspiration for Indiepocalypse comes from independent work in other mediums. Like the grants! Short Run does them, and my local show MICE also does them. And they're not a lot of money but they are meaningful to the artists that receive them and encourage the sorts of short-form art these festival celebrate.

One of my lingering projects is an unfinished email to the organizer of the Short Box Comics Fair (an online comics fair) that is basically me saying "I love this and am going to try this with games but want to tell you so I don't feel like I'm just ripping off your style".

But also, and like, I say this a lot, but bitsy I think is so foundational for bringing a really exciting new generation of artists into game development. The appreciation is very mutual!

happy for you to do and think whatever about it, but . . . rpgmaker started in 1992, even ren'py was out by 2004. it worries me that you'd self style as a vanguard then diminish it this way

Yeah, that is very much an oversight on my part. There's been homebrew/independent games pretty much as long there's been games, but in writing I was too focused on this idea of a modern, accessible (in terms of cost, ease of use, hardware requirement) entry point to game development.

But really this is just another attempt at me reframing my own failure to be not be so bad, so if it reads as self-aggrandizing (which is hard for me to judge since I think that of any positivity I give myself) then the really the whole post is also a failing on my part!

I started off (naively) thinking with all the pro-indie talk you see sometimes, a curated collection of varied games from equally varied devs would be an easy pitch. It really got at its worst when I couldn't even pitch it to people who seemed to make indie their whole (or a big part of) their thing.

It wasn't really until I was able to step back and stop worrying about my position within Video Game Culture that I could finally shake off the last of my frustrations.

It's also very weirdly timed that you wrote this (and more so your follow up to the post) because just last night for the release post I wrote about myself thinking about Indiepocalypse as "a place to be published". (spoiler, though I think self-publishing can still be a great starting point, Indiepocalypse is still not quite there yet.)

Doing anything in this space is so tricky, it can feel overwhelming sometimes. I feel like I'm making incremental progress in terms of dealing with my own insecurities and frustrations, but sometimes I feel like it's hard to know what even counts as progress

I suppose to a degree this is something anyone working in an art space feels: you either have to do something very mainstream and polished that you know a huge number of folks already understand and can digest, or you face the possibility of being ignored

That said, it's definitely much harder in a medium that, as you mentioned, is still very young

Good luck as Indiepocalypse goes forward!