Losing & Regaining Community

Hey folks!

I’m (still) working on the v0.4 update for Wunder, it’s taking a bit longer for a couple reasons, I’ve been taking a few meetings with publishers, making pitch decks, etc. to hopefully get a bit of help on the marketing side and I’ve been seeking out some contract work to pay the bills. It’s not very glamorous, but it’s part of the gig.

I took a few days last week to fix up the demo and released it as part of the Six One Indie: Demo Days event on Steam. The game is 25% until the Aug 8th as well!

I have a little bloggy style rant about something I’ve been feeling for the last year that’s been hard to adjust to, it’s not super serious but it has felt weird.

Making Echo for the Playdate was the first time I felt a strong sense of belonging in game dev, for a few different reasons I think.

The Playdate community is far smaller and more tight-knit than the wider game dev world. There’s a few places you can go to mingle, read, comment on games/news; and receive feedback on your own work. Such as:

• The Playdate Community Squad Discord & Playdate Dev Discord

• The Playdate Console & Playdate Dev Subreddit

• And finally Bluesky, but to a lesser extent

  

There is a lot of incredibly charming people there who post frequently. I can’t explain how nice it was to finally feel a sense of belonging.

I’ll call out one person just cause it’s easy to send you to their work. Rae consistently makes cool things, and they frequent the social spaces above, making it a nice place to be with support, commentary, etc.

Now, it’s hyperbole to say I’ve lost this community but what I mean is, I feel disconnected from it for 2 reasons;

First, I’m making a PC game now and it’s unrelated to Playdate. Whilst I’ve been welcomed to post on some of those channels, it is primarily a place for just Playdate games, so I feel some responsibility to look to the outside web to find community and share this little game I’m making with my partner.

Unfortunately though, I feel the same way I did before Echo.

There seems to be a lack of genuine, wholesome spaces to talk about games and game dev, whilst also building interest in the little game you’re making.

Most gamedev subreddits are filled with a sense of doom & gloom and seem to really hyper-fixate on getting everything right when it comes to marketing. No one person is at fault of course, I think it stems (like most problems we face nowadays) from capitalism; we all have to pay rent at the end of the month.

The Playdate communities work well because there’s a huge crossover of players and devs. There’s a back and forth that makes it really easy to engage with peers and the people you’re making your weird little game for.

Playdate devs are not trying to make money, at least not as a primary goal. If they were, they wouldn’t be making a game for Playdate. Conversely, in wider game dev communities, you can see that money is a big motivator for a lot of people.

I don’t think that is wrong, but it does sometimes lead to weird, competitive and judgy vibes. Games are often seen as products that need hooks, USPs, wishlists, ideal store page design, catchy capsule art, etc.

Games are only talked about as products.

This could be a problem of scale, since there’s so many people posting the same thing and making similar games. It’s hard to get invested in any individual person.

There are a few really nice places like jwaaaap’s discord server, Bluesky and r/indiedev, which can be okay on some days (emphasis on some). But a big ingredient that’s missing is players. These spaces are mostly populated with other game devs, which can be really nice but that was the magic of the Playdate community, since it was a small community everyone can be in one place comfortably.

I felt myself getting lost in the “trying to sell my game” of it all and I just miss thinking about a game as a fun little toy.

The second reason, which hit at some point last year and has progressively gotten worse is the next tech bro grift; AI. I’ve spoke about this before so I won’t linger. I genuinely did not think it would affect the Playdate community at all, but it did.

It became a huge controversial topic. Some people were not just using AI to make Playdate games, but some people were actually interested in seeing that stuff in the community.

I’m not gonna judge individual people too harshly for using it (I’ll never understand it personally), but seeing it repeatedly wiped out my motivation to make stuff for the little console. It just didn’t feel the same to me anymore; it’s gross tech and the community started feeling really off because of it.

Something very nice happened in the last week or two. It turns out that I wasn’t the only person feeling the Playdate community had lost it’s way a bit. A small group made a new discord server called Playdate Café and one of the core rules was to not post any AI content. I’ve slowly managed to build up a few spaces that have these kinds of rules and it’s genuinely so nourishing on a day-to-day basis.

Absolutely No AI Content Allowed This is a space to celebrate human creativity, and as such, we do not welcome content created or assisted by Generative or Agentic AI in any form. This includes everything from graphics, music, code and text to store assets.

- Rule from the Café

Over the year I’ve been trying to make more meaningful connections with fellow devs and it’s been really nice! I feel like I’ve managed to be more social at events than I have in previous years. In combination with having these online spaces that highlight human creation, I’m feeling more connected to the game dev community than ever.

Setting 24 goals at the start of the year has been one of the best things I’ve ever done, I’m not sure I will complete all of the goals but it has really pushed me to do things I’ve been putting off for ages!

Progress has actually picked up, I’ve managed about 10% in the last month so the current total is 41.04% complete! We are 58.9% of the way through the year though, with only 150 days left I have a lot of ground to cover.

I’ve mostly focused on the longer, more difficult ones as it would be really painful to have to do them all at the end of the year! This meant getting back into gear on:

• Running & working out

• Cooking

• Playing with the cats more often

• These kinds of updates

Some highlights of this month were:

• Playing through The Mermaid Mask (sequel to Tangle Tower)

• Seeing The Odyssey & Spiderman at the cinema

• Getting a 5k run PB of 24:02 (after trying to break 25 mins for most of the year)

I decided to tag them all with a task type so I can figure out what I’m neglecting. Whilst it was fairly obvious, it did help highlight that I’ve put no time into Personal Art, so I’m gonna focus more on that this month.

I have a mini writing retreat with friends coming up this week so that should hopefully get me moving on trying to “write a short story”. I’m not asking myself to become Stephen King over night, I just want to write a 40-50 page story by the end of the year that is somewhat engaging. I can worry about writing something good next year, the practice is what matters right now.

I also started watching Dragon Ball Z for the first time, I never got to as a kid cause I only had the free TV channels. I’m really enjoying it so far, it’s very much for boys that like it when the power levels of action figures go to the moon, but that is basically who I am tbh.

Until next time, make cool things!