Happy Holidays - Updates & Clarifications (Patreon)

Hi all,Just a message to say thank you to everyone who has subscribed so far. As you will probably already know, I don't update Patreon much as it is primarily here as a way for people to access Discord. The Discord is continuously evolving and as I know most of you are developers I'll be looking at new ways to add features and functionality to that Server over the coming months.I thought I'd take an opportunity to update people on the "Indies Under the Knife" videos and how I'll be moving forward with this format. I recently posted a new Channel Trailer video which raised lots of question regarding "when is a good time to have a game looked at"? And to be honest, there are different answers depending on "what's good for gamedev" and "what's good for YouTube". Generally I would be encouraging everyone to make ugly greybox prototypes or stuff kitbashed together with library assets until you know your gameplay is something worth building a whole game around. However, YouTube is a very visual medium, which means it's often easier for me to justify doing a video (in terms of likely views/subs) if the game has something in it to look at. If you've joined Patreon and are already in the Discord, I'm going to set up a monthly feature where games being worked on in our community get a priority playtesting stream from myself. I'll also be looking at ways we can organise regular mutual playtesting (although this may require some help from some of you too).Some rules of thumb; 📧I receive a lot of emails and generally try to give every game a quick try even if it’s just 5 minutes on a stream.

📁 itch.io hosted demos are best for early-development games. I’ve received a few emails which look like malware and the risk of this will increase as the channel grows. So if your game is too early for Steam, put a dev build on itch.io as I won’t be opening Dropbox files etc in 2025.

✍️Your initial email matters. If you don’t describe the game in an interesting way, I’ll assume you aren’t really designing a game but just copying tutorials or something. You need to tell me what your intention is as a designer otherwise I can’t help you. A well-defined problem statement - ie what is your game trying to achieve - can really help me know what to look for, and, ultimately, whether the game is going to appear in a longer video on a specific topic.

🎨 I am probably going to stop showing games which make very obvious use of AI art assets. I have seen some otherwise great games do this, and I try not to judge the devs, but I’ve also made my stance on generative AI clear a few times. Even if you take away the ethical issues regarding original artists’ IP, and the environmental impact of Dall-E and Chat GPT, I simply think the outputs don’t look good and therefore don’t want to encourage their use. I would rather see something badly homemade, or making innovative use of free assets. This is probably a sentiment echoed in the indie game player community at large, too. When the appeal of what we are doing is that it is “DIY”, there is no need to be painting everything with a layer of smooth, over-polished looking symmetrical slop.

Hope all of that helps you know what to send, and the right time to do so!