hal

rechosting this to read it later!

Yep, that’s me! The surge of attention it got at the time was pretty overwhelming, and for a long while afterwards I couldn’t stand people mentioning it, but I’ve now reached a point where it’s just a neat bit of personal lore :)

Here’s the write-up I did a couple years back:

i loved reading this!!! the pure joy of that community 😭🥰 incredible. amazing ❤️ archival, especially in the games industry, and especially in the digital age, is so important. i saw recently that palestine is being erased from some modifiable sources online, and so obviously paper printed atlases or safely digitally archived sources become deadly important in a way that i think really brings this kind of thing into sharp relief. our history matters, our art matters. dont let corpos fucking erase it for profit.

Found this awesome site full of old web button gifs — Link — Flashing lights warning. You can add them to your profile, by just embedding them. Word of warning about the site though, going on it has made my browser crash twice. Maybe my computer just sucks, lmao.

EDIT: I feel stupid for not mentioning this before, but if you’re sensitive to flashing lights, don’t go on the link above. Not all, but a lot of the buttons there do flash colors.

If your only indie game marketing strategy is posting on social media, you're playing a losing game from the start. Being popular online can kickstart a game's popularity, but actually selling it is a different matter. Posting a few dozen SNAKE FARM keys into the Cohost void pre-launch helped a ton for day-one success and getting those first essential positive reviews, but the vast majority of sales came from sending the game to streamers, playing steam's algorithm game, etc. Social media is only a useful tool if you recognize its limitations and have other methods of driving success!

ALWAYS remember the difference between flashy marketing and effective marketing. A post going viral feels great; annoying fifty streamers into playing your game doesn't.