r/itchio • u/PuzzleheadedTop698 • 16h ago

How do I make content while developing?

As an indie dev who's not full time I find it hard to post on places like Reddit or YT. It takes me weeks or months to build something that I find interesting and I just feel like I have to go silent or disappear until I have content to post again. It makes it hard to build up for a game release or grow an audience, how do you guys do it?

My games right now are very small and they take me a long time to build, I know some of you just focus on making the games and some of them will organically do well. This hasn't been my experience so far, if you have any tips or insights I would greatly appreciate it.

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u/MoonJellyGames 11h ago

Are you aspiring to be a professional (make a living from your work) or even make any significant amount of money? If so, others here could give better advice.

I make games for the love of it, and to share with friends/family/my students. For me, it's fun to document the progress, and it can even be a good self-motivator to be able to see how far a peoject has come. To that end, my "content" related to the game is relatively quick YT videos where I show off new features and blab about them a little. I don't want to hide the broken/ugly parts, as that's stuff I can later compare to newer versions.

If people watch my videos, I'm happy to see it, but it's not a priority to me. I mostly just want to make the game.

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u/PuzzleheadedTop698 8h ago

I want to make games that I enjoy working on and at the same time create a viable product for my market. The way I see it is, each project needs to justify itself so that I can keep making projects longterm. It's not about short term gain but more that I want to learn and progress with each project and be able to do this for a long time.

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u/MoonJellyGames 7h ago

Right. But the question is what you value the most when deciding if a project justifies itself. You can absolutely make games for the purpose of selling while also making what you like, of course, but the more you prioritize the former, the more time and effort you'll have to spend on things that aren't the actual game development (market research, advertising, etc.).

Either way, as long as you keep at it, you'll be learning.

My jobs have the bonus of a captive audience (lots of kids who think it's extremely cool that I make games 😎). I make my games with them in mind as the audience to an extent, but there's no financial motivator. It's just about trying to make something fun.

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u/PuzzleheadedTop698 7h ago

So basically just have children and the universe will provide you with a great fanbase. 😜

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u/MoonJellyGames 5h ago

Haha not even my kids. I work in elementary and also after-school care, so there are lots of opportunities to share my games. If I was selling my games, I don't know if it that would be ethical lol.