First game out, I’m not on facebook. I don’t really like interacting with people that much, and the thought of marketing myself was the reason why I folded my first game company back in the late nineties.
I read all my reviews that I can find. Yes, everyone. Maybe I have been lucky, maybe it’s the fact that I’m in my late forties (and an aspie), but the negatives doesn’t get to me that much. That being said, the positives doesn’t give me that much either (apart from a smile).
What does help me then? (apart from this place).
Tumblr.
I started the Fallen Hero tumblr a while before the game came out, and while it has been slow growing, I cannot overestimate how much it has done for me. It’s a way for me to interact with people, see what they talk about, listen in, have fanart and fanfiction, and above all, keep the game alive. That’s the thing, I want people to keep thinking and talking about it, and for that, they need friends. Other people who like it. Tumblr is a way for them to intersect and find other people they can gossip with, and it’s built a nice little community. And that’s what keeps me going.
Retribution will be much larger than I anticipated, and also take longer. I need something to tide people over, and the tumblr is it.
I think my MOST important lesson so far is the fact that I haven’t been the main draw of the tumblr. There are people out there with thousands of people following them, and just having them pulled in meant that all of a sudden other people heard of it, and pulled in more and so on. Influencers is such an overused term, but it’s not wrong. I’ve been lucky having a few being bullied into playing the game by their friends, and watching the virus spread have been fun.
In short, I didn’t create the feedback loop, all I did was provide the content, and I kept providing new content so they stuck around.